Why are Americans spending less money these days

I keep hearing the reason our economy is so bad these days is because most people arent spending their money. Does anyone have any ideas as to why? Are people making less, therefore have less to spend? Is the cost of living so high that people just cant afford luxuries anymore? Do people have money, but just hoarding it? I make under 24k a year and most of my money goes to paying the rent on my apartment. (I live in Northern California) and other bills related to it. (Electricity, Internet, phone, etc...) So I have little money to spend on other things. Is it like this everywhere else?
      Answer1:Economic theory teaches us that people spend money based on how wealthy they think they are - NOT based on income. When house prices were high, people thought they were wealthy. They spent money according to their perceived wealth as measured by the apparent equity in their houses and in their stock portfolios.Now, both have dropped by about 50%, so peoples spending habits respond to their relative drop in wealth.
      Answer2:Because of the "recession".
      Answer3:Everybody is keeping their hands in their pockets my friend.
      Answer4:Yes, most people for the past ten years spent all or even more of their money then they brought in. This could not continue for the long term and a lot of them were living so close to the edge that the smallest raise in any price caused their whole house of cards to come collapsing down. A lot of this came about when there was a change on how loans and credit cards where handled. When we detached the loaning of money from the income we created a huge mess. Some people had two and three times their income in credit card debt and then car and mortgage payments that they could little afford so when any other thing like gas prices went up, they could not juggle their debt anymore.