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This is hardly the message families want to hear right after the holidays, when budgets were stretched to the limit to afford parties and gifts and already-forgotten stocking stuffers, and credit cards were used way more than planned. But, for the sake of economic recovery prospects in 2012, consumers are being asked to pick up the spending pace and buy more stuff. Unsurprisingly, few seem game to do so.

Since consumer spending constitutes 70% of the U.S. economy, there’s not much hope for robust economic growth unless consumers do as the name indicates and consume—and then consume some more. The irony, of course, is that helping out the economy as a whole in this way will hurt the individual spender’s financial well-being.

Over the past few years, consumers have understandably been reluctant, or just plain unable, to take one for the team and spend like it’s 2006—when too many people assumed jobs would always be plentiful and real estate values really could rise 20% every year. To pay off debt, deal with shrinking incomes, or just to sensibly play it safe in the light of widespread economic uncertainties, a frugal “new normal” became the norm for consumers. Despite a momentary return to splurging over the holidays just passed, consumers seem to know the foolishness of their spendthrift ways of the past. The two top resolutions for 2012 are both basically flip sides of the same resolution: “save more” and “spend less.”

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So it comes as little surprise when Reuters and the

New York Times quote expert after expert expounding on the unlikelihood of the American consumer being in a mood to jack up spending—especially not to the extent that it’d kick the economy into high gear.

Most forecasters see economic growth of no better than 2% for 2012. In the decade prior to 2007, though, consumer spending rose by an average of 3.6% annually.

Because of personal debt, and the poor states of the job and real estate market, consumers aren’t looking too good, according to one expert quoted in the Times:

“The consumer is far from healthy,” said Steve Blitz, senior economist for ITG Investment Research.

Another observer, Morgan Stanley Chairman Stephen Roach, told Reuters that nowadays consumers aren’t merely unhealthy, but undead. Figuratively speaking, of course, Roach said that he anticipates that “the zombie-like behavior of American consumers should persist.”

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Roach is describing today’s sluggish consumer spending as “zombie-like,” but I’d argue that it was the consumers of the mid-2000s who were the true zombies. In those days, we trudged along dutifully consuming as if in a trance, buying condos with no money down, piling up credit card debt without much thought, constantly seeking the next bite of organic, high-end human brains that we could brag about to our zombie neighbors.

Today’s consumers may seem on guard, even a bit shell-shocked in light of the recession, but they’re certainly wide-eyed and awake. And a consumer who is more awake and aware is one who is less likely to mindlessly consume human brains, or anything else for that matter.

Brad Tuttle is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @bradrtuttle. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.