FALSE NOSTALGIA. I've griped before about Third World chic being an upper-class affectation that has the effect of keeping the poor poor. Now comes Detroit News (motto: all the news we can deliver on Wednesday) columnist Amber Arellano hoping to accelerate the Third Worldization of Detroit.

In my home economics class in eighth grade, my teacher urged my classmates and me to learn to sew. I refused.

My Grandmother Anita, a master of embroidery, crochet and hand-made clothes, had tried to train me, too, as her elders had throughout centuries in Mexico and the United States. Back then, I reasoned silently that if I knew how to sew, someday I would be stuck in the house, mending endless piles of laundry, when I could be exploring the world.

Ah, my careless adolescent mistake! If only I had understood that I was throwing away generations of knowledge and familial tradition.

Now I wistfully admire the pricey embroidered clothes, pillows and other pieces imported to upscale shops such as Anthropologie -- and like other customers, I must spend hundreds of dollars to buy them.

I use that story as an economics problem. It transpires that women in Yucatan make such clothes but wear bluejeans. Noneconomists are baffled by those women explaining the clothes cost too much to wear. Economists recognize that wearing something that could command an Anthropologie price involves a stiff opportunity cost.

Presumably, the columnist could ask an older relative for some sewing lessons. That she earns her keep writing columns suggests she responds to incentives, even if she doesn't understand them.

We Americans have lost so much of our knowledge of how to make things; we must buy what we have lost. The trend is evident in retail, as Generation Xers and Yers fuel the growth of clothing and lifestyle companies that speak to our yearning for a disappearing past.

Hip 20- and 30-something men are snapping up lines such as the Freemans Sporting Club, which markets itself as a collection "built around the vanishing trade of handmade clothing."

Its branding tells us something about who we are today. Its ads feature manly, bearded young men sporting plaid shirts at a camp site, men who know how to start a fire, pop a tent, fix a car.

Complex Proposition Alert. Perhaps those older Millennials and younger Thirteeners would like to recapture The America That Worked^(TM). It is, however, the ability of most people to be able to buy things rather than make them themselves that provides the wealth to support the retro manufacturers such as Freemans. (Thought experiment: would the B-Lectric from O Scale's Bronze Age still be in production but for the availability of DCC-ready rolling stock from Atlas O and all the other imports that bring enough shoppers to the swap meets?)

To the columnist, however, the reversion of Detroit to a farming village is a feature.

Similar interests are motivating the hipsters who are revitalizing the old practice of farming here in Detroit and elsewhere. So popular is this local trend, Detroit now ranks third among U.S. cities for urban agriculture, say city officials. Civic leaders are aiming to turn Motown into "Growtown," or the most farmed big city in America.

Yeah, if you don't mind trace heavy metals in your tomatoes. There's nothing new here. Mayor Coleman "All My Troubles Reflect Your Racism" Young had a program called farm-an-alley 30 years ago.

Motown's urban farmers mirror others around the country: they're committed to local sustainability, self-sufficiency and the need to save money during this brutal recession.

The irony is, as this trend grows, Michigan's own authentic craft of building autos and the craft's associated intergenerational practices -- from tool and die to design -- is dying.

We risk losing an authentically American, local economy-boosting craft. But the Gen Xers and Yers who buy cars made everywhere else but the USA seem to be missing this sad truth.

A General Motors Malibu made in the Midwest is just as authentic as a $200 skirt made in Alabama. We may look back some day and wish we had realized that a lot sooner.

Alabama has been adding automotive jobs. Perhaps there's a different message for Detroit, and for the cult of primitive authenticity.