We are rapidly becoming a two-tiered society, according to the director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University.

There is an “investor class,” a group of people who build equity through education, home purchases and retirement savings plans. Then there’s a growing, “lottery class,” a group subjected to the “industrial-scale loan sharking” of pay-day loans, charge-card overload, sub-prime mortgages and state lotteries.

It wasn’t always so, according to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, writing in the “American Interest” magazine.

For most of American history, from Ben Franklin through the post-World War II period, practically all Americans thought thrift was a virtue. If you borrowed, it was to invest, perhaps in a larger farm, a small business or in a home – assets you felt would grow in value.

When you did, you did so with care, and so did the lender making the loan. The bank checked your income, your business plan, your work history and credit. Your lender required you to save first, and then make a 20 percent down payment.

The result was a nation of savers and asset builders.

Of course, we still have people who save and invest. But, for many Americans, a credit card or home equity loan is a passport to a vacation, a new boat or a Jacuzzi – or all three.

Today, as the sub-prime mortgage crisis has shown, many Americans are so buried in debt that any reversal of fortune – a large medical expense or car repair – pushes them into bankruptcy.

But it’s not as if American consumers got into this position by themselves. Whitehead says the concept, the virtue, of thrift has disappeared among Americans born within the past 30 or 40 years.

It has been replaced by a loan-and-lottery mentality. Businesses that once existed on the seedy margins of society have gradually gone mainstream: pay-day lenders, rent-to-own merchants, tax refund borrowers and, worst of all, state lotteries.

At one time, most state laws capped interest rates at about 12 percent. As a result, there was little or no profit to be made on very small loans. In the spirit of de-regulation in the 1980s, states allowed much higher interest rates.

Today, Americans have the convenience of borrowing for a new microwave, a new pair of pants or even their weekly groceries, thanks to their charge cards. And state lotteries have addicted a whole generation to the dubious idea that they can get rich without working or saving.

Meanwhile, the federal government has made consumer spending rather than thrift a virtue. Recently, Americans were urged to spend their tax rebates as quickly as possible to prop up the failing economy.

Whitehead’s solution seems lofty: a national public campaign to re-acquaint Americans with the value of thrift. American politicians and business people need to collaborate to convince Americans to spend less and save more.

Perhaps we’re too cynical, but the U.S. Congress can’t, in the midst of a crisis, even agree on an energy policy.

Thrift, we’re afraid, will be forced upon Americans in the most painful of ways – lost homes, repossessions and bankruptcies.

And that process is well under way.