Yoganomics — now there’s something New York Times parenting columnist Lisa Belkin could have really sunk her teeth into. Alas, all we got were bitemarks by Emily Bazelon in The New York Times Magazine this week. Writing about the perilous fate of urban freelancers during the downturn, Bazelon focuses on a single mom named Lisa Feuer who became a yoga instructor after divorcing her husband and losing her job doing publicity for his record label. While Bazelon glosses over Feuer’s childcare issues and how they prevent her from supplementing her meager income by, say, bartending, one can just imagine how, in the hands of Lisa Belkin, this would have been a heartbreaking story about the perilous fate of middle-class single moms who equally desire an honest living and time with their children, and how being an employee usually prevents that kind of best-of-both-worlds, nice-life scenario. What’s more, women require safer working conditions than men, limiting their choices as well as their compensation — because even the rich people on whom these female independent contractors typically depend are savvy enough to cut private yoga instruction immediately in a recession. As everybody knows, though, there is no safety net for trust-fund-free single moms. But the services they provide — yoga, massage, family photography — are often the things that, however trivial and indulgent they may appear to be, promote health and happiness. Don’t these women deserve the same?

Could there be a greater manifestation of our country’s high-low schizophrenia about the economic downturn than the June Vanity Fair? While James Wolcott’s memoir of late-70s New York laments the handover of artists’ lofts to “titled Eurotrash, trustafarians, investment bankers, hedge-fund hotshots, and similar bonus babies” and Graydon Carter’s Letter from the Editor labels bankers “Paris Hilton in pinstripes — showy, thoughtless souvenirs of an age we wish to forget,” there’s an expose by Bernie Madoff’s opportunistic secretary who is promoting her new jewelry line, a 22-page portfolio on “38 of the World’s Most Eligible Heirs and Heiresses” — most of whom, predictably, don’t even qualify for an “Occupation” entry in their bullet-point bios — and cover girl Jessica Simpson, who at the ripe age of 28 appears to earn most of her moolah from such sad downmarket ventures as clip-in bangs (see right). Lying at the intersection of populism and privilege, the magazine could be more forthright about its positioning. But it deserves kudos for documenting the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde sensibility that sees shoppers, for example, buying thousands of dollars worth of designer clothes only to return everything the next day. We loathe the material as much as we love it, and that, ladies and gentleman, is what America has always been all about.

Back in the boom times, Mr. MILF endured countless cheap-bastard accusations from finance colleagues and friends alike. Chief among them being, “Why don’t you own a home instead of making your wife live in a rental?” And even though the numbers he crunched before my eyes always made sense when he walked me through them — he was right, we really did have no business buying real estate in New York City — I have to admit that I often wished we could take the plunge like so many others who clearly banked smaller salaries. It sucks when your furniture doesn’t fit quite right and you can’t knock down walls at will in order to construct, say, a small office instead of smushing a workspace into the corner of your bedroom. But The New York Times Magazine’s annual Debt Issue makes me more grateful than ever for Mr. MILF and his logic-laden ways. Can you imagine working your tail off, as an economics reporter at The New York Times for pete’s sake, and knowing it’s still not enough to pay your bills, much less your mortgaged-to-the-hilt new home? That’s the fate of one Edmund L. Andrews, who works — I repeat — as an economics reporter at the paper. But my favorite story is the “Lives” essay by Ben Heller, a hedgie who, like Mr. MILF, gets a lot of grief for saying “no” to investment opportunities and is beginning to feel validation in his serial refusal of stupid ideas again. Sometimes it sucks to be the grown-up until everybody else is forced to act like one too.

p.s. Does my tribute to Mr. MILF reinforce The Times’s apparent message, delivered via all-male bylines, that the dudes are the ones who understand this money business?

Wait a sec. If the president gets a cover devoted to “His Economy,” doesn’t the distaff half of the country deserve a companion piece devoted to “Her Fashion”?

Oh, mother. The arrival of a geriatric Thursday Styles in The New York Times can mean only one thing: The recession is truly upon us. With stories on chic pieces for the 40-plus customer, vision problems associated with aging and — horrors! — female hair loss, it’s evident that everyone from retailers to manufacturers to reporters at beleaguered papers realize that the youngsters who long dominated fashion trends and coverage have no money, while the oldies just may have a little extra in the bank for clothes and cosmetic procedures and, therefore, advertising. As one who falls right in between the two groups, my feelings are mixed — although if the shift means less Miley Cyrus and more women who look like The Times’s cute model, then it’s a welcome change in my visual landscape. Just no more wrinkly, bald ladies, please.