" When we got hit with 9/11, it was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to summon the nation to sacrifice, to address some of its pressing fiscal, energy, science, and education shortfalls – all the things that we had let slide. But our president did not summon us to sacrifice. He summoned us to go shopping. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century