A bland future for America?

With a series of rate hikes by the Fed, spiking oil and commodities prices and the threat of inflation and recession on our horizon, the residents of America should be asking where our economy and country are headed.
Looking around at our government expenditures and the fuel that drives our economy, we need to ask, what serves as the foundation for economic growth? What kind of jobs and professions should we bank our future as a country on?
It seems to me, glancing at the landscape of the American economy that we have made some serious mistakes. Mistake number one is relying on real estate as a major linchpin to economic growth. Does America really need tons of real estate agents, title companies, home lenders and tons of other industries that rely entirely on inflated home prices? What are all these real estate dependent professionals going to do if and when there is a real estate slowdown?
Mistake #2 is that our government is mortgaging its future to the military industrial complex. Government spending on defense and the war in Iraq is a depressing figure to comprehend. If we shunted a mere fraction of that to schools, NIH and research funding, and even fanciful projects like the super conducting super collider, we would be much better off as a nation. Instead, 9/11 has served as an avenue for military contractors and the defense dept. to force Americans to open our checkbooks further.
Mistake #3 is relying on spending. How much of our economy is driven by people buying things? We Americans are ruthlessly materialistic, needing to buy too much for our own good. Even our houses of worship have undergone a materialistic expansion and spending spree, taking over sports arenas in places like Houston. What if we have a recession where people stop spending money so freely, or are unable to feed the materialistic desires of American churches with generous tithes? I guess for the spiritual folks, we'll have to see how much God loves them if they can't fill up the collection plate in church. For retailers and the other players in our consumer driven economy, who knows?
We as a country need to focus on things that matter - curing disease, improving quality of life, education and learning, promoting innovation and self-actualization. We need to find a way to distance our dependence or allegiance to sectors that may only give us greater headaches during recessions and may even sow the seeds for recession themselves.