In most discussions of the economy, virtually all people discuss how to help expand the economy as measured in GDP. However, the massive growth in GDP over past decades has done little to help the average person's standard of living. In fact, in real terms, many people are worse off now then they were in the 1950s or 1960s when many middle class families could get by with only one person working. Today, people work longer hours and rack up major debts, but feel like they can't get ahead.
When you talk to people, many people have a sense that there's something wrong with the modern world but can rarely identify what it is. One of those problems is something that has been dubbed "affluenza." I highly recommend the book Affluenza to anyone who's looking for a great issue that resonates with both conservatives and liberals alike.
The book's thesis is that we live in a world where our lives are ruled by the quest to earn more to buy more and more things. Not only that, but things that we don't really need are marketed as essential time savers or status symbols. However, at the end of the day most people have a major case of buyer's remorse when they realize their possessions haven't gained them happiness. A major part of the message of
Affluenza is that we seem to have lost our souls and are trying to fill that hole with stuff, rather than the things that are actually missing like sense of community and tight-knit families.
If you look at a chart of American productivity growth, workers today are some 4 or 5 times more productive than they were in the 1950s. In other words, a worker today can do in an hour what took 4 or 5 hours in the 1950s. Really, we could live in a world where we have a 30 or 35 hour work week and spend far more time with our families and having leisure time. Instead, we've chosen to take those productivity gains and used them to make an ever-increasing mountain of consumer goods. Every year, people think they need a whole new wardrobe, a new car, new furniture, etc. This is a relatively recent phenomenon, only a couple of generations old, but it has caused untold damage.
The increase in the price of oil has brought attention to the rise of China as a consumer economy and how the world can't sustain Europe, the US and now China and India consuming resources at such a phenomenal rate. Either we find a way to create a sustainable economy or begin strip-mining our planet to the point where it will cause massive environmental repercussions. Future wars will be over resources as we fight for our rights to consume as much as we want.
This bleak future can be replaced with a positive future simply by refusing to be consumers and becoming citizens again. By cutting our need to aquire more stuff, we can reclaim our lives. Our society is built around individual convenience and gratification. We live in a disposable society where it's cheaper to buy products that are harmful to the enviroment and were made by sweat shop labor. We need to start attacking these products and making them as unattractive to consumers as possible. The major corporations have billions of dollars invested in convincing you to buy their crap, we need an equally compelling grassroots campaign to promote the opposite.
France has switched to a 35 hour work week and while they may not be as productive as Americans, who has a better life? Earning a living is not the same as having a life. Better to begin this societal shift now than to have it forced upon us later by economic and environmental catastrophe. The sooner we can convince people that the market does not have the solutions to the problems of society, the sooner we can begin to make real progress.
Thank you for reading, this is my first diary entry. This site has some of the most interesting commentary anywhere and I thought I might as well contribute a bit as well.