Perhaps these simple realities are behind consumer spending, which drives two-thirds of the U.S. economy.

FORBES: Money, Happiness And The Pursuit Of Both

Service Corp. blamed its poor earnings in part on a lower-than-expected death rate, for example (see box), although Stewart executives note that it's the number of deaths, not the rate, that drives funeral sales-and deaths in the U.S. were up 1% last year.

FORBES: Grave dancer

And in a major rhetorical shift in the nearly four-decade-old Latin American drug war, American diplomats now acknowledge that U.S. demand drives the illegal drug trade.

WSJ: Cocaine: The New Front Lines