A good idea, but will anyone embrace it?

A post from Katie Allison Granju (I've been meaning to put this up. The title is linked to her post if you want to read the comments people left.):

Obama's call for voluntary modesty as patriotism

I, like many others I've spoken to and heard interviewed, was very moved by President Obama's explicit call to responsibility and sacrifice in his Inaugural address.
Yes, I thought to myself. He's right. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
But then, of course, I wondered exactly what "work" I could engage in to answer that call. Was he encouraging me to offer more volunteer hours, as when President Kennedy inspired young people to join the Peace Corps? Or was he calling for something more fundamental and lifechanging - a radical shift in the way Americans view entitlement and privilege?
I tend to think he meant the latter.
What will that mean for me? For my family? I believe what Obama is asking of us is a return to voluntary moderation in America. We are coming out of an era when families making $35,000 a year drove $35,000 cars, while living in $350,000 houses. Of course, the credit binge that allowed these numbers to work (for a time) finally hit the wall, and now we are all suffering.
Not too many decades ago, families who could well afford to buy food still grew their own gardens, just because it was cheaper. "Why spend money when you didn't have to" was the way they saw it. Families who could stretch and afford a bigger house remained in the 1200 square foot bungalow, because it was less stressful than pushing their financial resources to the limit to trade up, and because it was home. This is what I call voluntary modesty.
My children's great-grandfather was a high school dropout, who became a millionaire by the time he died in 2004 by buying and selling small houses. But you never would have known of his wealth, because he drove older cars that were paid for, wore clothes until they couldn't be patched up any further, and never moved from the modest South Knoxville rancher he built for his family in the 1950s. He chose a life of voluntary modesty. There was nothing lacking in his life; he never did without. But he chose to live within his means. In his modesty, he saved enough money that his grandchildren and great-grandchildren have been blessed with private school educations - that he paid for. His life provides an excellent example for how voluntary modesty has a ripple effect throughout society - he never bought himself a Mercedes, but he made sure the people he loved had a better education.
Americans are an ambitious people. We are always going to want something bigger, better, faster and more powerful. But that quest to have more has increasingly become all about stuff - McMansions and consumer goods - instead of about actually accumulating real wealth. We are raising a generation of children who think of $25 as pocket change, and who own more gadgets and goodies than children even 30 years ago would have imagined possible. I grew up in a middle class family, where a new toy was an exciting event. My children have so many toys that they don't even notice them coming and going any more. There is something really wrong with that.
I am just as guilty as anyone else of getting too wrapped up in consumerism; just a few weeks ago, I bought my husband a giant flat screen TV when our old, smaller TV actually worked just fine. I have an auto loan on a car I bought new two years ago. But I am doing some serious thinking about our lifestyle, and about choosing to live more modestly as a conscious act of patriotism. I don't think this has to mean deprivation; instead, it means being sure that we can really, truly afford the stuff we buy, and that debt doesn't become the driving force in our financial lives.
Obama's call to voluntary moderation was also a solicitation to all of us to put people before things, meaning that maybe we won't take that job paying more in another city if it will take us away from the elderly grandparent who needs help. This is how it starts at home, while truly accessible healthcare and higher education for all Americans is what "people before things means" at the societal level.
I believe Obama's call to action was a call to re-orient ourselves, and our children back toward a lifestyle of voluntary modesty - a lifestyle in which we choose to better live within our means in order to better secure our nation's financial stability and moral health.
But I am curious. What do you believe his speech meant? What is he asking us to do when he spoke of the need to now put away "childish things." And what do you think Americans will realistically be willing to do?