I just stumbled upon two very different pieces of information – in fact, they were so diametrically opposed to each other that I sat up and took notice. The first  was an ABC news report with the headline As Economy Slips, Yacht Sales Skyrocket.

“That's right,” states the author sardonically, “while the U.S. economy slows — if not enters a recession — the demand for these toys for the ultrarich has never been stronger. Several luxury shipyards have seen sales double in the last five years. The rich are not just buying more yachts, but larger and larger ones.”

Which made me think of some financial pundits’ predictions that, as the economy declines further and the average Joe has a lot of month left at the end of the money, we might soon see calls for tarring and  feathering the rich.

And frankly, who wouldn’t get hot under the collar when they read that Countrywide – yes, the same mortgage lender that last October posted a $1.2 billion third-quarter loss after writing down $1 billion in subprime lending losses – is treating about 30 mortgage bankers to a ski-resort trip in Avon, Colorado. Rooms start at $750 a night, and dinner is at the Spago restaurant, “whose menu includes Kobe steak with wasabi potato puree for $105.” Thanks for the grub.

On the other hand, most of us would probably do the same if we had that kind of money. And haven’t we, in fact, done the same already – just on a smaller scale?

After all, in the past decades America has turned into a Disneyland of consumerism. U.S. consumers have piled up unprecedented levels of debt, and statistics from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show that the personal savings rate has been negative for 16 months. The UK MarketOracle reports that “Consumer debt has outpaced, by 18.7 percent, the amount of income left after the payment of bills each month, meaning that for millions of families the cost of living is substantially higher than their monthly incomes can accommodate.”

Of course, some of that is due to the housing crisis, but let’s be honest: not all of it. To a large part, the debt incurred stems from Americans’ insatiable hunger for buying on pump. Why save when you can have it all today, no money down and no payments till April 2009? And why live frugally when there’s so much tempting stuff out there?

“More is better” has been the country’s credo since at least the ‘80s. Alas, consumerism is now consuming the consumers.

Which brings me to the second piece of information I mentioned earlier: it was a Google video of Dr. Randy Pausch, a 46-year-old science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2007, CMU launched a “Last Lecture” series, prompting its professors to imagine their imminent death and writing a lecture about the things that mattered to them most. For Pausch, though, it was not a hypothetical situation: diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer, he conveyed in a short but touching lecture dedicated to his three children what’s most important in life.

“And I just show up in my new car and my sister’s explaining to Chris and Laura: ‘It’s Uncle Randy’s new car, you can’t get it dirty…’ – and they’re just cracking up laughing because over her shoulder, I’m casually opening a can of soda and just emptying it on the backseat.

“And they come running over and my sister goes, ‘What are you doing?’ and I said, ‘It’s a THING. It’s just a thing.’

“And I’m really glad I did that, because at the end of the weekend, as I was driving them home, little Chris, who was about eight at the time, got the flu and he threw up all over the backseat of my car. I don’t care how much value you get out of owning a nice, shiny, pristine thing – it’s not as good as I felt knowing that I made an eight-year-old boy not feel guilty just because he had the flu.”

[View Pausch repeating his “Last Lecture” on the Oprah show here.]

You may scoff at me citing such an obvious tear-jerker, but let’s stop for a moment and contemplate how “things” run our lives. How often do we shoo our kids away because “Mommy/Daddy has to work” to buy more THINGS? How often do we stay late at the office because “work always comes first”? And how many THINGS do we actually need – is it really so important to have a $500,000 home, a flat-screen Hi-Def TV, an IPhone, a Wii Box, and to switch our SUV every three years for the newest model?

A best-selling 1992 book titled Your Money or Your Life (Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, Penguin Putnam) measures money in life energy. It basically says that for every dollar you earn, you expend life energy (= work). So if you make $20 an hour and buy something for $20, you spent one hour of your life energy. Write down for a week or two all the things you’re spending money/life energy on, and boy, I’m telling you, it does put things in perspective.

Before you accuse me of getting all mushy, I’ll stop here. But I believe that in the future (maybe the very near future), we will probably be forced to exchange our old motto “More is better” for another, more feasible one to get us through tough times. How about “Less is more” or “Enough is enough.”