Psychologists have long known that people can solve their problems at work and home by “sleeping on it.” Dr. Deirdre Barrett advises individuals to ponder questions just before falling asleep (Should I take this job? Should I marry that guy?) and then let the subconscious provide the answers. “I’ve known artists looking for inspiration who simply dream up a future show of their art and wake up with plenty of new painting ideas,” says Barrett. “More and more people are learning these techniques to control their dreams.”

Dr. Stephen LaBerge, for example, has pioneered a way of directing the sleeping mind through “lucid dreaming,” in which a sleeping person realizes he or she is dreaming while it is happening. In “lucid dreaming,” your dreams are like private movies where you are the star, director, and writer all at once. Lucid dreamers can use the experience for a variety of purposes: problem solving, developing creative ideas, and healing. A person may use lucid dreaming for everything from talking to his/her long-dead father to gorging on sweets. Moreover, a weak swimmer in the waking life may dream of diving to the bottom of the dream ocean without worrying about breathing (or his/her swimming skills). Most importantly, lucid dreaming is free and available to everybody.

The United States is awash in debt. Median household debt has risen to more than $100,000 from less than $60,000 in 1990, even as median incomes have increased only slightly. Much of the debt is held by workers who are building up loans on credit cards, or obtaining dubious mortgages in a bid to secure some fraction of the lifestyle of an upper class that keeps getting richer. This increase in debt has occurred as the gap between the rich and the poor has continued to widen and the visibility of coveted luxury goods on television and the Internet has continued to grow.

Some laud the democratization of credit, seeing its availability to wider swaths of the American population as broadening opportunity; some criticize it as the ruthless seduction by financial institutions of working people who will one day face bankruptcy because they will be unable to pay credit card bills and mortgages.

But this is much clear: the spread of debt is one of the most significant social phenomena in the United States today, allowing the less affluent to spend more than they have. As long as interest rates do not rise steeply, this will continue to happen.