The Story of Stuff

Part of my purpose in continuing this blog is to bring to readers bits of news and interesting perspectives which people might ordinarily not have time to find.

The video below is quite easy to watch: yet terribly profound. I asked the question of myself some years ago: Who am I without my Stuff? The answer is my journey.

I highly recommend this article on 'Enoughism' along with its links to those who are interested in this question for themselves in today's collapsing consumer culture.

This video below draws the big picture...with a crayon no less. Hope you enjoy it.

Bill Moyers - Kaptur: Cleaning up the gov't aka Wall Street

I have been a fan of Bill Moyers for decades: he is truly an artist in presenting today's crises in depth and with plain talking clarity. The interview below is with Marcy Kaptur (Dem. Ohio), the outspoken critic from the Heartland who advocates that people evicted not leave their homes, and Simon Johnson. How do the banksters view the tradegies of economic collapse affecting the American people? The answer might shock you. A thoroughly engrossing expose of the banker culture.

Click here to watch the video.

Chinese banks owned by the people

Western people might learn a trick or two from China. That is, when all the propaganda is put aside.

THE SECRET OF CHINA'S MIRACLE ECONOMY:
THE GOVERNMENT OWNS THE BANKS RATHER THAN THE REVERSE

by Ellen Brown

Source
To the extent that China's stimulus plan is working better than in the U.S. and the U.K., this seems to be because the government is using the banks for public ends, rather than allowing the banks to use the government for private ends.

"The banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. They frankly own the place."

-- U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic Party Whip, April 30, 2009

While the U.S. spends trillions of dollars to bail out its banking system, leaving its economy to languish, China is being called a "miracle economy" that has decoupled from the rest of the world. As the rest of the world sinks into the worst recession since the 1930s, China has maintained a phenomenal 8% annual growth rate. Those are the reports, but commentators are dubious. They ask how that growth is possible, when other countries relying heavily on exports have suffered major downturns and remain in the doldrums. Economist Richard Wolff skeptically observes:

"We now have a situation in the world where we have a global capitalist crisis. Everywhere, consumption is down. Everywhere, people are buying fewer goods, including goods from China. How is it possible that in that society, so dependent on the world economy, they could now have an explosive growth? Their stock market is now 100 percent higher than at its low -- nothing remotely like that hardly anywhere in the world, certainly not in the United States or Europe. How is that possible? In order to believe what the Chinese are saying, you would have to agree that in a matter of months, at most a year, no more, they have been able to transform their economy from an export-based powerhouse to a domestically focused industrial engine. Nowhere in the world has that ever taken less than decades."

How can China's stimulus plan be working so well, when ours is barely working at all? The answer may be simple: China has not let its banking system run roughshod over its productive economy. Chinese banks work for the people rather than the reverse. So says Samah El-Shahat, a presenter for Al Jazeera English who has a doctorate in economics from the University of London. In an August 10 article titled "China Puts People Before Banks," she writes:

"China is the one leading economy where the divide "" the disconnect between its financial sector and the world normal Chinese people and their businesses inhabit "" doesn't exist. Both worlds are booming again and this is due to the way the government handled its banks. China hasn't allowed its banking sector to become so powerful, so influential, and so big that it can call the shots or highjack the bailout. In simple terms, the government preferred to answer to its people and put their interests first before that of any vested interest or group. And that is why Chinese banks are lending to the people and their businesses in record numbers."

What Wolff calls a "global capitalist crisis" is actually a credit crisis; and in China, unlike in the U.S., credit has been flowing freely, not just to the financial sector but to industry and local government. State-owned banks have massively increased lending, with local governments and state enterprises borrowing on a huge scale. The People's Bank of China estimates that total loans for the first half of 2009 were $1.08 trillion, 50% more than the amount of loans Chinese banks issued in all of 2008. The U.S. Federal Reserve has also engaged in record levels of lending, but its loans have gone chiefly to bail out the financial sector itself, leaving Main Street high and dry. Writes El-Shahat:

"In the UK and US, the financial sector is booming, while the world of normal people seems to be going from bad to worse, unemployment is high, businesses are folding and house foreclosures are still taking place. Wall Street and Main Street might as well be existing on different planets. And this is in large part because banks are still not lending money to the people. In the UK and US, banks have captured all the money from the taxpayers and the cheap money from quantitative easing from central banks. They are using it to shore up, and clean up their balance sheets rather than lend it to the people. The money has been hijacked by the banks, and our governments are doing absolutely nothing about that. In fact, they have been complicit in allowing this to happen."

Cracks in the Chinese Wall?

The Chinese economy is not perfect. The push to make profits, particularly from foreign investment capital, has encouraged speculative ventures, with a great deal of money going into high-rise apartments and other real estate developments that most people cannot afford. Chinese workers are now complaining of too much capitalism, since they are having to pay for housing, health care and higher education formerly picked up by the State. And while efforts are being made to make more loans available to medium-sized and small businesses, state-owned businesses and large corporations are still getting most of the loans. This is because the banks have been told to tighten their lending standards, and these larger entities are safer credit risks.

Wolff thinks China's "miracle" is a bubble that is about to burst, with catastrophic consequences. Historically, however, when bubbles have collapsed suddenly it has been because they were punctured by speculators. When the Japanese stock market bubble burst in 1990, and when other Asian countries followed in 1998, it was because foreign speculators were able to attack their currencies with exotic derivatives. The victims tried to defend by buying up their own national currencies with their foreign currency reserves, but the reserves were soon exhausted. Today, China has accumulated so much in the way of dollar reserves that it would be very difficult for speculators to do the same thing to the Chinese stock market. A gradual stock market decline due to natural market forces is something an economy can take in stride.

Economic Role Reversal?

For the time being, at least, China's stimulus plan is clearly working better than those of the U.S. and the U.K.; and a chief reason it is working better is that the government has a grip on its banking sector. The government can operate the banks' credit mechanisms in a way that serves public enterprise and trade, because it actually owns the banks, or most of them. Ironically, that feature of China's economy may have allowed it to get closer to the original American capitalist ideal than the United States itself. China is often referred to as communist, but it has never really been communist as defined in the textbooks, and it is far less so now than formerly. Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping, who opened China to foreign investment after 1978, famously said that it doesn't matter what color the cat is, so long as it catches mice. Whatever the Chinese economy is called, today it provides a framework that effectively encourages entrepreneurs.

Jim Rogers is an expatriate American investor and financial commentator based in Singapore. He wrote in a 2004 article titled "The Rise of Red Capitalism":

"Some of the best capitalists in the world live and work in Communist China. . . . No matter how long China's leaders persist in calling themselves Communists, they seem quite intent on creating the world's dominant capitalist economy."

Meanwhile, the U.S. has sunk into what Rogers calls "socialism for the rich." When ordinary U.S. businesses go bankrupt, they are left to deal with the asphalt jungle on their own; but when banks considered "too big to fail" go bankrupt, we the taxpayers pay the losses while the banks' owners keep the profits and are allowed to continue speculating with them. The bailout of Wall Street with taxpayer money represents a radical departure from capitalist principles, one that has changed the face of the American economy. The capitalism we were taught in school involved Mom and Pop stores, single-family farms, and small entrepreneurs competing on a level playing field. The government's role was to set the rules and make sure everyone played fair. But that is not the sort of capitalism we have today. The Mom and Pop stores have been squeezed out by giant chain stores and mega-industries; the small private farms have been bought up by multinational agribusinesses; and Wall Street banks have gotten so powerful that Congressmen are complaining that the banks now own Congress. Giant banks and corporations have rewritten the rules for their own ends. Healthy competition has been replaced by a form of predator capitalism in which small fish are systematically swallowed up by sharks. The result has been an ever-widening gap between rich and poor that represents the greatest transfer of wealth in history.

The Best of Both Worlds

The Chinese solution to a failed banking system would be to nationalize the banks themselves, not just their bad debts. If the U.S. were to adopt that approach, we the people would actually get something of value for our investment "" a stable and accountable banking system that belongs to the people. If the word "nationalize" sounds un-American, think "publicly-owned and operated for the benefit of the public," like public libraries, public parks, and public courts. We need to get our dollars out of Wall Street and back on Main Street, and we can do that only by and we can do that only by breaking up our out-of-control private banking monopoly and returning control over money and credit to the people themselves. If the Chinese can have the best of both worlds, so can we.


Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust."

To consume: the definition

1.to destroy or expend by use; use up.

2.to eat or drink up; devour.
3.to destroy, as by decomposition or burning: Fire consumed the forest.
4.to spend (money, time, etc.) wastefully.
5.to absorb; engross: consumed with curiosity.
–verb (used without object)
6.to undergo destruction; waste away.
7.to use or use up consumer goods.

Source

This is definition well worth comtemplating in our days of consumer 'affluence', ending though they are. The article below examines the modern day urge to 'consume' and from whence it came. What does it really mean to be a 'consumer' today?

Another excellent history of consumerism, and how we came to measure ourselves by it can be found in the BBC documentary Century of the Self.

"We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." - Edward Bernays To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

To hear a free audio recording of E.F. Schumacher's lecture on the solution, click here.

Consumerism: an Historical Perspective

by Sharon Beder
21 February 2009
Source

Consumption was promoted through advertising as a “democracy of goods” and used to pacify political unrest among workers. With the help of marketers and advertisers exploiting the idea of consumer goods as status symbols, workers were manipulated into being avaricious consumers who could be trusted “to spend more rather than work less.” But if we admired wisdom above wealth, and compassion and cooperation above competition, we could undermine the motivation to consume.

The development of consumer societies meant the erosion of traditional values and attitudes of thrift and prudence. Expanding consumption was necessary to create markets for the fruits of rising production. Ironically this “required the nurture of qualities like wastefulness, self-indulgence, and artificial obsolescence, which directly negated or undermined the values of efficiency” and the Protestant Ethic that had originally nurtured capitalism.1 Advertisers sought to redefine people’s needs, encourage their wants and offer solutions to them via goods produced by corporations rather than allowing people to identify and solve their own problems, or to look to each other for solutions. 2

Consumerism also played a major role in legitimising a social system which rewards businessmen and top corporate executives with incomes many times those of ordinary workers. The consumer society gives ordinary workers some access to the good life. Surrounded by the bounty of their work — the television set, stereo, car, computer, white goods — they are less likely to question conditions of their work, the way it dominates their life, and the lack of power they have as workers. Advertisers constantly tell them these are the fruits of success, that this is what life is all about. To question a system that delivers such plenty would seem perverse.

Over-production and the shorter working week

The growth in production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries required growing markets. This meant expanding the consuming class beyond the middle and upper classes to include the working classes. Production between 1860 and 1920 increased by 12 to 14 times in the US while the population only increased three times.3 Supply outstripped demand and problems of scarcity were replaced by problems of how to create more demand.

By the early 1920s, when American markets were reaching saturation, “over-production” and lack of consumer demand were blamed for recession. More goods were being produced than a population with “set habits and means” could consume.4 There were two schools of thought about how this problem should be solved. One was that work hours should be decreased and the economy stabilised so production met current needs and work was shared around. This view was held by intellectuals, labour leaders, reformers, educators and religious leaders. In America and in Europe, it was commonly believed consumer desires had limits that could be reached and production beyond those limits would result in increased leisure time for all. 5

The opposing view, mainly held by business people and economists, was over-production could and should be solved by increasing consumption so economic growth could continue. Manufacturers needed to continually expand production so as to increase their profits. Employers were also afraid of such a future because of its potential to undermine the work ethic and encourage degeneracy amongst workers who were unable to make proper use of their time. Increasing production and consumption guaranteed the ongoing centrality of work. 6

Keen to maintain the importance of work in the face of the push for more leisure, businessmen extolled the virtues and pleasures of work and its necessity in building character, providing dignity and inspiring greatness. Economists too argued that the creation of work was the goal of production. John M. Clark, in a review of economic developments, stated: “Consumption is no longer the sole end nor production solely the means to that end. Work is an end in itself…” Creating work, and the right to work, he argued, had a higher moral imperative than meeting basic needs. 7

Manufacturer, H. C. Atkins, along with president of the National Association of Manufacturers, John E. Edgerton, warned a five-day week would undermine the work ethic by giving more time for leisure.8 If work took up less of the day it would be less important in people’s lives. Edgerton, observed: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance…. the emphasis should be put on work – more work and better work, instead of upon leisure.” 9

Most businessmen believed shorter hours meant less production, which would limit the growth of America’s business enterprise. They argued they could not afford shorter work weeks, that they would become uncompetitive and go bankrupt. They also feared that given extra free time, people would spend it in unsociable ways, turning to crime, vice, corruption and degeneracy and perhaps even radicalism. “The common people had to be kept at their desks and machines, lest they rise up against their betters.” 10 And Edgerton, argued “nothing breeds radicalism more quickly than unhappiness unless it is leisure. As long as the people are kept profitably and happily employed there is little danger from radicalism.” 11 In the US consumption rates were increasing in the mid-1920s and the “new economic gospel of consumption” gained many adherents. 12 The idea there were limits on consumer wants began to be eclipsed by the idea such wants could be endlessly created. In 1929 the President’s Committee on Recent Economic Changes stated: “wants are almost insatiable; one want satisfied makes way for another… by advertising and other promotional devices, by scientific fact- finding, and by carefully pre-developed consumption, a measurable pull on production… has been created.” 13

The public was urged by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) to “end the buyers’ strike.” 14 However the desire to consume did not come naturally, it had to be learned: “People had to move away from habits of strict thrift toward habits of ready spending.”15 From the 1920s corporations began advertising to the working classes in an effort to break down these old habits of thrift and encourage new consumerist desires. At the same time they sought to counter anti-corporate feelings generated by the conditions of work in their factories. 16

Hooking work and leisure to consumption

Higher wages helped in this shift from the Protestant ethic of asceticism to one of consumerism that fitted with the required markets for mass production.17 In boom times, workers were given increased wages rather than increased leisure. Between 1910 and 1929 the average purchasing power of workers in the US increased by 40%. 18 With these rising wages they bought more and the upward spiral of production and consumption was maintained. In earlier times higher wages might have encouraged workers to work shorter hours, but once workers had been coached into becoming consumers there was little danger of this. With the help of marketers and advertisers, workers could be trusted “to spend more rather than work less.” 19

In this context it was important leisure was not an alternative to work and an opportunity to reflect on life but rather a time for consumption. In this way the forty-hour week, rather than threatening economic growth would foster it. Leisure goods such as radios, phonographs, movies, clothes, books and recreational facilities all benefited from increased leisure time.20 At the same time leisure had to be subordinate to work and importantly, a reason to work.

Business people still wanted to limit the reduction of work hours and believed that by ‘educating’ workers to become consumers, the demand from workers for reduced working hours would also be limited. 21 Manufacturers expanded markets by expanding the range of goods they produced, moving from the basic requirements of living such as food, clothing and building materials to items such as cars and radios that provided entertainment and recreation. 22 US unions fell in with the consumption solution to overproduction in the late 1920s and concentrated on fighting for higher wages. Union leaders promoted increased production and economic growth as a way of increasing wages. It was not till the Great Depression of the 1930s that they again fought for a shorter working week as a solution to unemployment. 23

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After the Second World War the idea of solving unemployment by reducing working hours disappeared from mainstream thinking. During the war a demand for consumer goods built up and following it workers tended to prefer wage rises to shorter hours.24 Unions no longer pressed for shorter working hours and workers themselves became wedded to a consumer lifestyle that required long hours to support. Many unions in fact gave up their fight for control of production in favour of a share of the fruits of production and “ever-increasing levels of material well-being for their workers.”25

The promise of full-employment assuaged fears that long work hours might create unemployment. Leisure became consumer-oriented, revolving round the home with its entertaining and convenience goods and the vacation where workers could enjoy living in luxury for a short time. 26 As Cross noted: “The identification of leisure with consumption won many to hard and steady work in disagreeable jobs.” 27

Juliet Schor noted in her book, The Overworked American that by 1991 productivity in the US had increased steadily from the 1940s: “we could now produce our 1948 standard of living (measured in terms of marketed goods and services) in less than half the time it took in that year. We could actually have chosen the four-hour day, or a working year of six months….” Instead, workers work more hours now than in 1948 and consume more than twice as much. 28 It was the “social decision to direct industrial innovation toward producing unlimited quantities of goods rather than leisure” that created the foundation for our modern consumer culture, “a culture of work and spend.” The movement for more free time for workers and leisure time free of market forces, was defeated by the middle of the 20th century when mass consumer culture took off. 29 The consumer culture, rather than eroding the work ethic, tied people even more closely to working long hours in order to earn the money for their consumer desires.

Consumerism as opiate of the masses

Stuart Ewen in his book Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture showed that advertising for mass consumerism was not only aimed at increasing markets for goods but also at shifting the locus of discontent from people’s work to arenas that advertisers could promise would be satisfied by consumption. Their frustrations and unhappiness could then be directed towards buying rather than political protest against working conditions or other elements of industrial society.30

Ewen claims that consumerism: “the mass participation in the values of the mass-induced market,” was not a natural historical development but an aggressive device of corporate survival.” Discontent in the workplace could lead to a challenge to corporate authority but discontent in the consumer sphere provided an incentive to work harder and reflected an acceptance of the values of the capitalist enterprise. 31 Similarly Robert Lane claims in his book on Political Ideology that: “The more emphasis a society places upon consumption-through advertising, development of new products, and easy installment buying-the more will social dissatisfaction be channeled into intraclass consumption rivalry instead of interclass resentment and conflict… the more will labor unions focus upon the ‘bread and butter’ aspects of unionism, as contrasted to its ideological elements.” 32

If people were dependent on the products of the factories they were less likely to be critical of the appalling working conditions within them. The good life attained through this consumption was also compensation for the unpleasantness of work and distracted attention from it. Advertisements were careful not to depict people working in factories. A leading copywriter in the 1920s, Helen Woodward, advised consumption could help sublimate and redirect urges that might otherwise be expressed politically or aggressively. “To those who cannot change their whole lives or occupations,” she argued, “even a new line in a dress is often a relief.” 33

Department store merchant Edward Filene, a spokesperson for industrialists in the 1920s and 30s, spoke frankly about the need for social planning in order to create a consumer culture where industry could “sell to the masses all that it employs the masses to create” and the need for education to train the masses to be consumers in a world of mass production. He argued that consumer culture could unify the nation and, through education, social change could be limited to changes in the commodities that industry produced.34

Consumption allows people at the bottom of the social hierarchy to feel they have some measure of access to the good life for all their troubles. The escape from real life provided by leisure activities allows people to continue what might otherwise be a dreary and downtrodden existence. Lisa Macdonald and Allen Myers from Green Left Weekly, claim workers attempt to gain ownership of what they produce and overcome their alienation through consumption: “it is only as purchasers, ’shoppers’, that we are treated with the courtesy worthy of a human being.”35 Employers encouraged workers to think of consumerism as the rationale for their work but measures of success were moved from the realm of production and work to the realm of consumption. Advertising messages affected people’s aspirations. They portrayed a bounty of consumer goods as the fruits of the American Dream. Rather than aspiring for their children to become leading businessmen or top executives or political leaders, advertisements offered messages such as “Some Day your Boy will own a Buick.”36

Advertisers also undermined the nineteenth century “culture of character” which was the basis of the myth of the self-made man, someone who succeeded as a result of hard work, morality and discipline. In its place a “culture of personality” evolved which promoted the importance of presentation and appearance, things that advertisers were so helpfully offering to assist with. What mattered in getting ahead and influencing people was the impression a person made on others. Things like their clothes, their home furnishings, their personal cleanliness were all used by others to judge their character.37 Also advertising and consumerism played a major role in the acceptance of the capitalist vision and its associated inequalities. Roland Marchand in his book Advertising the American Dream argued advertisers repeatedly used “the parable of the democracy of goods” to sell their products to the middle classes. In this parable, although there was a social hierarchy with wealth concentrated at the top, ordinary people could enjoy the same products and goods that the people at the top did. Joe Blo could drink the same brand of coffee as the wealthiest capitalist. Mary Jane could buy the same soap as the lady with the maid in waiting. The most humble of citizens (although not the poor who were not the targets of these advertisements) could afford to purchase the same quality products as a millionaire. 38

The social message of the parable of the Democracy of Goods was clear. Antagonistic envy of the rich was unseemly; programs to redistribute wealth were unnecessary. The best things in life were already available to all at reasonable prices. Incessantly and enticingly repeated, advertising visions of fellowship in a Democracy of Goods encouraged Americans to look to similarities in consumption styles rather than to political power or control of wealth for evidence of significant equality. 39

According to Filene, the process of buying goods was a means by which people were supporting industry and thereby electing the manufacturers, who made the goods, to a government which would satisfy their needs. They were voting industry leaders into positions of leadership in society. In this way “the masses have elected Henry Ford. They have elected General Motors. They have elected the General Electric Company, and Woolworth’s and all the other great industrial and business leaders of the day.”40 Not only was the desire for social change displaced by a desire for changes in commodities, but political freedom was equated with consumer choice and political citizenship with participation in the market through consumption. Consumption was promoted as democratising at the very time it was being used to pacify the political unrest of workers.41 According to well-known sociologist Daniel Bell: “If the American worker has been ‘tamed’ it has not been through the discipline of the machine, but by the ‘consumption society,’ by the possibility of a better living which his wage, the second income from his working wife, and easy credit all allow.”42

Production, consumption and status

Vance Packard, in his book The Status Seekers argued the use of consumer goods as status symbols was a deliberate strategy of advertisers, or “merchants of discontent,” who took advantage of the “upgrading urge” people felt. The message that workers could improve their status through consumption was particularly aimed at people who had little chance of raising their status through their work because opportunities for promotion were slim.43 employers sought to divert the dissatisfaction of workers with the nature of their work into a more personal dissatisfaction that could be fed with consumer goods: “offering mass produced visions of individualism by which people could extricate themselves from the mass.”44

The advertiser offered workers the possibility of gaining social status through buying goods that were better than their neighbours. With the help of installment plans and credit, they could purchase the signifiers of success even if they weren’t achieving success in their workplace. This was not something that came naturally to working people who were, for the main part, resigned to their position in life. According to Packard “they need prodding and ‘educating’ to desire many of the traditionally higher-class products the mass merchandisers want to move in such vast numbers, such as the electric rotating spits or gourmet foods.”45

Car manufacturers, particularly, exploited people’s desire for status, spending “small fortunes exploring the status meaning of their product.” They found, for example that people in housing developments where all the houses looked similar, were most likely to leave their large new cars parked on the street in front of the house rather than in the garage where no-one would see them. Plymouth advertisements pictured a family in front of their car saying “We’re not wealthy… we just look it!” Dodge advertisements featured a man saying to a Dodge car owner “Boy, you must be rich to own a car as big as this!” And Ford advertisements showed the back of one of their cars and stated “let the people behind you know you are ahead of them!”46

Such advertising was so successful people began diverting funds from other purchases into the purchase of a car to enhance their status, and by the end of the 1950s Americans “were spending more of their total income on the family chariot than they were in financing their homestead, which housed the family and its car or cars.”47 Not to be outdone home builders and sellers ensured the home became a status symbol that rivalled the motor car.

Chinoy observed consumption provided automobile workers in the 1950s with a way of rationalising their failure to advance in their work: “Advancement has come to mean the progressive accumulation of things as well as the increasing capacity to consume… If one manages to buy a new car, if each year sees a major addition to the household-a washing machine, a refrigerator, a new living-room suite, now probably a television set-then one is also getting ahead.”48 Rather than question the American Dream, workers would either blame themselves for their failure to live up to it, or find other ways to interpret it.

Such trends were not confined to the US. The consumerism that proliferated in the US in the 1920s and 1930s, spread to other industrialised nations after the Second World War, particularly in the 1950s. 49 In his book on the rise of a consumer society in Australia, Greg Whitwell said: “The ownership of certain sorts of consumer goods, each ranked according to brand names, came to be seen as guides to an individual’s income which in turn, so it is believed, said something about his or her inner worth. Consumer goods became external signs, used to give a sense of hierarchy by members of a society characterized by an emphasis on change and on social and geographical mobility.”50

More pay needed to buy “goods”

In a British study of the working class in the 1950s Ferdynand Zweig found: “a steep rise in acquisitive tendencies and pre-occupation with money in work attitudes.” There was far less difference between middle class and working class purchase of consumer durables (cars, white goods, electrical appliances) than previously and class self-identification had come to depend more on factors such as house ownership than type of work. In fact Zweig found workers impatient with questions about class. They were more interested in status as a way of organising the social spectrum.51

Increased consumerism led to an increased emphasis on the importance of pay. Many people work so as to earn the money to buy consumer goods and some measure of status that accompanies them. A European study by the Henley Centre in 1991 found “better pay” was the priority for new jobs for 70 percent of those surveyed, compared with enjoyable work, which was a priority for 58 percent.52

A U.S. study found those who believed “having lots of money” was “extremely important” had gone up to almost two thirds in 1986 from less than half in 1977. It ranked higher than any other of goal in life.53 Americans born since 1963, those referred to as generation X, are more likely to agree that: “The only really meaningful measure of success is money” than any previous generation. They spend more money on stereos, mobile phones, beepers and cars than older people and are more likely to take a less interesting job if it pays well.54

Jimmy Carter, as President of the US noted: “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.”55 Consumption has become a more important source of self-identity and status than work for many people. Compton Advertising undertook a survey of public attitudes to the economic system in 1974 and found two thirds of those surveyed identified their role in the economic system as that of “consumers and spenders of money” rather than workers or producers. This included one half of those in the labour force. 56

More recent opinion surveys show that in countries like the US and Japan, “people increasingly measure success by the amount they consume.”57 In a society where people don’t know each other very well, appearances are important and social status, though more securely attained through occupation, can be attained with strangers through consumption. When people are uprooted and move to the cities they are strangers to each other. Previously everyone knew one another’s business and the status that should be accorded to each person. In an anonymous city a person can adopt a certain lifestyle, clothes, car that is higher up the status ladder than their occupation would indicate, particularly if they are willing to go into debt to do it. Consumption then becomes an indicator of achievement.58

The desire to consume is often portrayed as a natural human characteristic that cannot be changed. However it is clear populations have been manipulated into being avaricious consumers. What people really want, more than the multitude of goods on offer, is status. History has shown the determinants of status can change. If we want to live in an ecologically sustainable society, then we need to award status to those who are happy with a basic level of comfort rather than those who accumulate possessions. If, as a community, we admired wisdom above wealth and compassion and cooperation above competition, we would be well on the way to undermining the motivation to consume.

This article was first adapted for publication in Pacific Ecologist from chapter 12 of the book Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR, by Sharon Beder, Publisher Scribe, Melbourne 2000. Professor Sharon Beder is head of the Science, Technology and Society Programme at the University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia. She writes a regular column for Engineers Australia and has written several books including Power Play Toxic Fish and Sewer Surfing; The Nature of Sustainable Development. Professor Beder was awarded the 2001 World Technology Award in Ethics.

The Pacific Ecologist, whence this article came, provided this editorial note: Sharon Beder explores the history of consumer societies from the 1920s when over-production of goods exceeded demand. Instead of stabilising the economy, reducing working hours, and sharing work around, which would have brought more leisure time for all, industrialists decided to expand markets by promoting consumerism to the working classes. The social decision to produce unlimited quantities of goods rather than leisure, nurtured wastefulness, obsolescence, and inefficiency and created the foundation for our modern consumer culture. People were trained to be both workers and consumers in a culture of work and spend. -Posted by thomaspainescorner on April 26, 2009

References

[1] Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making way for modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p, 158.

[2] Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture( New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), pp. 70, 108.

[3] David J. Cherrington, The Work Ethic: Working Values and Values that Work (New York: AMACON, 1980), p. 37.

[4] Gary Cross, Time and Money (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 38; Rodney Clapp, ‘Why the Devil Takes Visa’, Christianity Today, Vol. 40, No. 11 (1996).

[5] Cross, note 7, pp. 7-8, 28.

[6] Ibid., pp. 7,9,39; Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), pp. 42, 67.

[7] Ibid., pp. 62-3.

[8] Paul Bernstein, American Work Values: Their Origin and Development (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 157.

[9] Cross, note 7, p. 16.

[10] Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline in Leisure (USA: BasicBooks, 1991), p. 74.

[11] Quoted in Hunnicutt, note 9, p. 41.

[12] Hunnicutt, note 9, p.; 42.

[13] Quoted in Cross, note 7, p. 41.

[14] Quoted in Ibid., p. 38.

[15] Clapp, note 7.

[16] Ewen, note 5, p. 19.

[17] Ibid., p. 29.

[18] Cross, note 7, p. 7.

[19] Hunnicutt, note 9, p. 43.

[20] Ibid., p. 45.

[21] Ibid., pp. 46-7.

[22] Robert Eisenberger, Blue Monday: The Loss of the Work Ethic in America (New York: Paragon House, 1989), p. 11.

[23] Hunnicutt, note 9, p. 79.

[24] Cross, note 7, p. 85.

[25] Schor, note 15, p. 78; Daniel Yankelovich and John Immerwahr, ‘Putting the Work Ethic to Work’, Society, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1984), p. 59.

[26] Cross, note 7, p. 155.

[27] Ibid., p. 153.

[28] Schor, note 15, p. 2.

[29] Cross, note 7, pp. 5, 9.

[30] Ewen, note 5, pp. 43-5.

[31] Ibid., pp. 54, 109.

[32] Robert E. Lane, Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What he Does (New York: The Free Press, 1962), p. 80.

[33] Ewen, note 5, pp. 77-8, 85-6.

[34] Ibid., p. 54.

[35] L. Macdonald and A. Myers, ‘Malign Design’, New Internationalist (November 1998), p. 21.

[36] Marchand, note 4, pp. 162, 222.

[37] Ibid., pp. 209-10.

[38] Ibid., p. 218.

[39] Ibid., pp. 220, 222.

[40] Quoted in Ewen, note 5, p. 92.

[41] Ibid., pp. 89, 91.

[42] Daniel Bell, ‘Work and Its Discontents (1956)’, in A. R. Gini and T. J. Sullivan (eds), It Comes with the Territory: An Inquiry Concerning Work and the Person (New York: Random House, 1989), pp. 122-123.

[43] Vance Packard, The Status Seekers: An Exploration of Class Behaviour in America (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1961), pp. 269-70.

[44] Andrew Hornery, ‘Family Pack aims for the children’, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 September 1998, p. 45.

[45] Packard, note 84, p. 271.

[46] Ibid., pp. 273-4.

[47] Ibid., p. 274.

[48] Ely Chinoy, Automobile Workers and the American Dream, 2nd ed (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinios Press, 1992), p. 126.

[49] Stewart Lansley, After the Gold Rush: The Trouble with Affluence: ‘Consumer Capitalism’ and the Way Forward (London: Century Business Books, 1994), p. 85.

[50] Greg Whitwell, Making the Market: The Rise of Consumer Society (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble Publishers, 1989), p. 7.

[51] Ferdynand Zweig, The New Acquisitive Society (Chichester: Barry Rose, 1976), pp. 15, 21-2, 26-7.

[52] Cited in Lansley, note 90, p. 136.

[53] Alan Thein Durning, How Much is Enough: The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth, ed. Linda Starke, Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series (London: Earthscan, 1992), p. 34.

[54] Dan Zevin and Carolyn Edy, ‘Boom Time for Gen X’, US News and World Report (20 October 1997)

[55] Quoted in Thomas H. Naylor, William H. Willimon and Rolf Osterberg, The Search for Meaning in the Workplace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), p. 69.

[56] Compton Advertising, ‘National Survey on the American Economic System’, (New York: The Advertising Council, 1974), p. 17

[57] Durning, note 94, p. 22.

[58] Bell, note 71, p. 68.

Ireland should be leading; not following the herd

Ireland has been following the US over the cliff of economic collapse for way too long. It's time the Irish considered a new role model for economic development and growth. Ummmm...the word 'China' comes to mind - but I am sure this strategy has not yet reached the halls of Irish academia or government. What a shame! Ireland should be leading now with innovative thinking rather than following the savage capitalist herd over the economic cliff. Ahem....time to wake up the Irish people and demand a better way to prosperity for all.

Depressionary bust in Ireland is echoed in California

Posted by Edward Harrison on 18 July 2009 at 9:16 pm

For quite some time now I have been of the view that there are a number of striking similarities between the goings on in Ireland and those in California, none of them good. Both locations have seen extraordinary rises in home prices turn to massive busts. As a result, both locales have seen depression-like collapses in consumer demand and the local economy. Unemployment and government deficits are surging in both California and Ireland. But, both California and Ireland have zero control over monetary policy and this is the crucial connection.

Ireland

Let’s rewind a bit to 1999 when the Euro came into being. Ireland was a founding member of Euroland. So, on January 1st of that year, the Irish fixed their currency the Punt to the Euro for good at a rate of 0.7876. From that time forward, Ireland effectively had no control of the monetary spigot. By 2002, Punts ceased to exist as money in Ireland and the Euro was ushered in.

What this change meant for Ireland is that it had the many benefits that go with being part of a large single currency market. Among the many advantages of a single currency are reduced foreign exchange costs, less currency volatility, less chance of a run on the currency, and a greater certainty in business planning that results from those benefits. And these benefits can be huge in times of crisis – just ask Iceland.

There is a problem though which I mentioned before, namely the Irish have no control over their own money. To be sure, hard money types probably see this as a good thing as it prevents countries inflating to get out of an economic pickle. But, the alternative for the Irish has been depression.

Back in February, I mentioned this problem in a post called “The European Problem.”

The Eurozone members have decided to forgo independent monetary policies. Individual member nations have free capital movement and a fixed exchange rate but zero control over monetary policy. That rests with the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt.

The problems mount in recession. Some members are getting devastated. Spain, for instance, is in depression already with unemployment at 14%. Ireland’s national budget is imploding with estimates for deficit reaching 10-12% of GDP. If you are Spain or Greece, you would like to print money– a lot of it. But that’s not happening in the Eurozone yet.

The result is a potential national bankruptcy for the likes of Ireland, one reason their credit rating is suffering. Will Ireland go bankrupt? Perhaps. It is unclear how willing other Eurozone members would be to support the country were it to run into that kind of difficulty. The Germans are furious for having abandoned the Deutsche Mark for the Euro, which they see as a ‘weak’ currency. Bailing out a Eurozone member would come with many strings attached.

Then, there is the case of Austria. They too are in the Eurozone. They have a weak banking system because of excessive lending to Eastern Europe — reaching a full 85% of Austrian GDP. (Whether the Austrians were mentally re-creating their lost Empire, stripped after World War I, is a case for the Austrian psychologist Freud). If the Eastern Europeans run into problems, Austrian banks will fail en masse, requiring help from other Eurozone members (read France and Germany).

So, Ireland, having no other choice, must cut spending…drastically. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports.

Events have already forced Premier Brian Cowen to carry out the harshest assault yet seen on the public services of a modern Western state. He has passed two emergency budgets to stop the deficit soaring to 15pc of GDP. They have not been enough. The expert An Bord Snip report said last week that Dublin must cut deeper, or risk a disastrous debt compound trap.

A further 17,000 state jobs must go (equal to 1.25m in the US), though unemployment is already 12pc and heading for 16pc next year.

Education must be cut 8pc. Scores of rural schools must close, and 6,900 teachers must go. “The attacks outlined in this report would represent an education disaster and light a short fuse on a social timebomb”, said the Teachers Union of Ireland.

Nobody is spared. Social welfare payments must be cut 5pc, child benefit by 20pc. The Garda (police), already smarting from a 7pc pay cut, may have to buy their own uniforms. Hospital visits could cost £107 a day, etc, etc.

California

I hope this sounds familiar to American readers because this is exactly the scenario faced by California. The state does not have the option of going out to the California Federal Reserve Board’s backyard to pick a few ten billion dollar notes off the money tree. This is a privilege reserved for the U.S. Federal Government, one I would add that has the Chinese worried. Effectively, California is to Ireland as the United States is to the Eurozone. And that spells depression for California. Here are a few headlines:

• California prepares to shut 220 state parks to make up budget shortfall
• California’s Crisis Hits Its Prized Universities
• California closes state offices to save cash

Welcome to Reykjavik on the Pacific. Don’t think this train wreck happened overnight. It has been building for months. I first asked in October of 2008 is the State of California bankrupt. Technically, they are not. But, when a state refuses to honor its bills by handing out IOUs, that’s bankruptcy to me.

It is going to get worse for California. That is for sure. The problem here again is the depressionary bust that is likely to take hold as California starts firing workers and cutting spending. Remember, people with no jobs have little income. And having little income means foreclosure, which also means a surge in housing inventory and falling prices. That’s a recipe for still more foreclosures, continued house prices declines and a deflationary spiral. I imagine Wells Fargo and Bank of America would be rendered insolvent by such a scenario. So why is Obama balking at lending a helping hand?

I anticipated a bust in California and a helping hand from the Obama Administration, because I figured they wanted to mitigate worst-case outcomes. As far back as January 2nd, I was already saying this was the likely scenario. I asked “Will federal largesse be countered by state and local cutbacks?”

There has been a general outcry for economic stimulus on the part of the North American, U.K. and Eurozone federal governments to counteract the fall in private sector consumption. In the U.S. and the U.K. in particular, this message is being heard and largesse will be delivered in spades.

But, in the United States, there is a bit of a problem: state and local governments. They will not, and often cannot, spend. In fact some will be cutting. Will local government budget cuts undercut federal fiscal stimulus?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Doesn’t the Obama administration see this? I would argue they did not understand this in January or the stimulus bill would have been larger and more front-loaded. But, perhaps they do now, but have chosen not to act because every state and municipality in America would be looking for a handout if they did try to act in California. So, we’re in bit of a pickle here.

Conclusion

The foregoing analysis can’t leave you feeling like recovery is imminent in Europe or in America. Certainly, it is not in Ireland or California. The problem is the Impossible Trinity of a fixed exchange rate, independent monetary policy and free movement of capital. You cannot have all three. And California and Ireland both lack the monetary escape hatch. Depression will set in.

I see only three choices to solve this problem.

1. Bailouts: Of course, we are going to see requests for transfer payments here. Will Obama bite? Will the Germans block this, afraid that the Austrians and Spanish would be next? Obviously, transfer payments are part and parcel of a monetary union in order to achieve economic harmonization. In the U.S., California gets less in federal largesse than it pays in taxes. This is a fact. However, it is looking ever less likely that this fact will help Schwarzenegger receive the help he wants.
2. Backdoor currency: Marshall Auerback has argued that the IOUs in California are a backdoor currency system. No, they are not legal tender. But, in a note to me, he said “California can turn its warrants into sovereign currency by agreeing to accept them in payments to the state. Note that I AM NOT arguing that California should make them “legal tender, payable for all debts public and private”—this is something it cannot do. But you could basically reduce the cost of CA’s borrowing substantially via this device and essentially reduce the need for muni bond issuance. In fact, the implication that flows from my analysis is that you’d want to buy every single muni bond in sight as the IOU, by giving it an intrinsic value to pay state tax, effectively eliminates the need for muni bond issuance.” Could Ireland do the same?
3. Immigration: People are just going to have to move. As jobs disappear in Ireland and California, the Irish and Californians will need to emigrate elsewhere. They have a huge market to chose from in both cases.

None of these are great options. I wish I had something more uplifting to say here. But, that is the situation we face.

Related Reading:

The Return of Depression EconomicsI

Frommer's Ireland 2009 (Frommer's Complete)

The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008

Confronting Southern Poverty in the Great Depression: The Report on Economic Conditions of the South with Related Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)

The Economics of the Great Depression: A Twenty-First Century Look Back at the Economics of the Interwar Era

"Starve The Beast" - July 4th, 2009

I do alot of reading, chatting and checking forums on the net: mostly I hear whining, anger, criticism and fear - noone really has a plan to do anything about a future which seems bleaker and bleaker.

But I have always had a plan: I know exactly how to bring corporate and government corruption to a screeching halt. All it would take is 30% of the population (of any country) to stop spending money. Shut down the country. And make unified demands. This has to be done while there are still some consumers left with disposable income.

Sure, you might say, this will only make things worse. But only in the short run. The power of the people to control their own government will not be reinstated without some pain. Better make a potent effort now, or the consequences of allowing the Big Dogs to control our destiny will bring much more suffering than a week or two of shutting down government and corporate profits. There can be short term sacrifice now - or all will suffer long term. And better money than blood.

Here is the first article I have found that has a decent plan: keep your money in your pocket until government decides to serve those it is meant to serve - the people. Give the article a read and if you agree, please pass it on. WE ARE THE BOSS - TIME TO LET THE BIG DOGS KNOW IT!

I would add to the list below to include many other 'people before profit' demands not mentioned here. And my agenda would be a bit more radical; but, Mr. Denninger has the right idea.

"Starve The Beast" - July 4th, 2009

Karl Denninger
Source

Perhaps its time.

There have been a number of people on the forum talking about this, with one of the most recent converts being "iflyjetzzz".

Look, we can rant and rave about market manipulation and government-sponsored games. We can petition the SEC, the FBI and Congress. We can demand that they stop it all we want.

But they haven't and likely won't until and unless America gets pissed off enough to force them to act.

So how do we make that happen, yet remain within the law?

Its not that hard, and in the intermediate and longer-term it would be incredibly positive for our economy and nation.

We go on a consumption strike until and unless our demands are met.

What are our demands? Here's the list:

1. * All the financial fraudsters are investigated, indicted, and prosecuted. This includes the con artists in CONgress who got "special deals" from Mozilo and his "Friends of Angelo" program (and who are blocking a subpoena to BofA as it would implicate them), it includes those past and current members of Government Sachs, and it includes all those other financial "professionals" who deceived Americans and others with their sale of toxic exploding mortgage products along with the securities supposedly backed by them.
2. * Glass-Steagall is restored, in full, and all the firms that can't exist under it are broken up. Period.
3. * The insider-trading that has become blatant and outrageous is prosecuted where illegal and where not, is made illegal and then prosecuted, with the focus being on the size of the scam. This includes obvious circumstances such as August 2007 (Bernanke's phone logs were FOIA'd) where trading patterns made clear that "certain someones" had foreknowledge of the discount rate cut along with Congresspeople who were briefed on the TARP and within hours or days made significant stock trades. Today if you're Martha Stewart you're prosecuted where if you make millions in an hour by exploiting government information "leaks" the SEC and FBI look the other way.
4. * The Government withdraws all of its backstopping of financial firms who created this mess. All of it. If you're a bank or other firm and did something imprudent, you fail. Period. This is true whether you're a small regional bank (as is happening now; 5 in the last week) or a big behemoth like Citibank or Bank Of America. No "special deals", no "special guarantees", nothing of the kind. If the government wishes to avoid "systemic risk" then the government regulators can do their damn job.
5. * The Fed disgorges all of its improperly-acquired MBS and other related securities. If it doesn't have a full-faith-and-credit guarantee and was bought, it is disgorged - period.
6. * The Fed agrees to full annual audits without exception.
7. * Those people inside government who conspired with certain bankers to cook the books, along with those in the banks who did so, go to jail. Our own Office of The Inspector General in the government has confirmed that there was an active conspiracy to break the law within the OTS, but not one indictment has been issued.
8. * Those who committed fraud in the creation of this economic mess, whether they be mortgage lenders, those who packaged up securities while intentionally omitting credit information, those in the real estate industry to pressed for appraisal fraud and others are investigated, prosecuted and if convicted jailed. All of them.
9. * Losses are born by those who made bad decisions, not the taxpayer generally. Those who made good decisions get to reap the benefits, while those who made bad decisions eat the losses. No exceptions.
10. * Government cuts the annual budget deficit to zero. If government wants to blow the money it has to have the money. If they can't raise the money they don't spend it. It is time to live within our means and hold government to account for its profligate spending along with promises of "benefits" they know they cannot actually deliver down the road such as Medicare Part D.

Until then the position of those who wish to join is simple: No non-essential purchases of anything are made. Period.

What's an essential purchase? Here's the list:

• * Enough food to eat at home. No more eating out.
• * Rent and utilities.
• * Essential medical services.
• * Enough fuel to get to and from work.

In addition any "excess withholding" is stopped; if you are getting a big fat refund from the IRS every year you are loaning the government your money at zero interest until April. Stop that; its stupid. Change your W4 so you get exactly nothing back or owe a tiny amount; if you pay estimates pay only that which you must and not one dime more.

Note that it is unlawful to use your W4 to intentionally under-withhold, but you are in fact not obligated to pay one more dime in tax than you actually owe. There is nothing wrong with adjusting withholding to match (as close as you reasonably can) your actual tax obligation.

Put the money you save (it will be a lot!) into a non-TARP Credit Union if you have one available to you, or a non-TARP local bank if you do not. Spend none of it.

If we pledge to do this and not resume normal spending habits on wants as opposed to needs until and unless the budget is balanced, the bailouts are rolled back and those who committed fraud go to prison the government will be forced to act as they will simply run out of money.
They cannot force you to buy that new iPOD or flatscreen TV, or to take an expensive vacation.

Consumer spending is 70% of the economy.
This is a consumer weapon that is more powerful than any other means of peaceful protest. Strangling the government and private business' ability to steal from us all by cutting off their revenue will force reform, and has the additional benefit of being exactly what this nation needs to provide a strong capital formation base when that reform is complete.

If businesses want my money they can join in the chorus of voices demanding that government stop the looting and start prosecuting.

Will any of us be perfect in this endeavor? No. There will be the occasional indulgence I'm sure no matter who we are. But I'm willing to bet we can shrink consumption - each and every one of us - by at least 10% without any real personal pain at all, and if we do so it will send an indelible message to those in government and business: cut that crap out!

To consume: the definition

1.to destroy or expend by use; use up.

2.to eat or drink up; devour.
3.to destroy, as by decomposition or burning: Fire consumed the forest.
4.to spend (money, time, etc.) wastefully.
5.to absorb; engross: consumed with curiosity.
–verb (used without object)
6.to undergo destruction; waste away.
7.to use or use up consumer goods.

Source

This is definition well worth comtemplating in our days of consumer 'affluence', ending though they are. The article below examines the modern day urge to 'consume' and from whence it came. What does it really mean to be a 'consumer' today?

Another excellent history of consumerism, and how we came to measure ourselves by it can be found in the BBC documentary Century of the Self.

"We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." - Edward Bernays To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

To hear a free audio recording of E.F. Schumacher's lecture on the solution, click here.

Consumerism: an Historical Perspective

by Sharon Beder
21 February 2009
Source

Consumption was promoted through advertising as a “democracy of goods” and used to pacify political unrest among workers. With the help of marketers and advertisers exploiting the idea of consumer goods as status symbols, workers were manipulated into being avaricious consumers who could be trusted “to spend more rather than work less.” But if we admired wisdom above wealth, and compassion and cooperation above competition, we could undermine the motivation to consume.

The development of consumer societies meant the erosion of traditional values and attitudes of thrift and prudence. Expanding consumption was necessary to create markets for the fruits of rising production. Ironically this “required the nurture of qualities like wastefulness, self-indulgence, and artificial obsolescence, which directly negated or undermined the values of efficiency” and the Protestant Ethic that had originally nurtured capitalism.1 Advertisers sought to redefine people’s needs, encourage their wants and offer solutions to them via goods produced by corporations rather than allowing people to identify and solve their own problems, or to look to each other for solutions. 2

Consumerism also played a major role in legitimising a social system which rewards businessmen and top corporate executives with incomes many times those of ordinary workers. The consumer society gives ordinary workers some access to the good life. Surrounded by the bounty of their work — the television set, stereo, car, computer, white goods — they are less likely to question conditions of their work, the way it dominates their life, and the lack of power they have as workers. Advertisers constantly tell them these are the fruits of success, that this is what life is all about. To question a system that delivers such plenty would seem perverse.

Over-production and the shorter working week

The growth in production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries required growing markets. This meant expanding the consuming class beyond the middle and upper classes to include the working classes. Production between 1860 and 1920 increased by 12 to 14 times in the US while the population only increased three times.3 Supply outstripped demand and problems of scarcity were replaced by problems of how to create more demand.

By the early 1920s, when American markets were reaching saturation, “over-production” and lack of consumer demand were blamed for recession. More goods were being produced than a population with “set habits and means” could consume.4 There were two schools of thought about how this problem should be solved. One was that work hours should be decreased and the economy stabilised so production met current needs and work was shared around. This view was held by intellectuals, labour leaders, reformers, educators and religious leaders. In America and in Europe, it was commonly believed consumer desires had limits that could be reached and production beyond those limits would result in increased leisure time for all. 5

The opposing view, mainly held by business people and economists, was over-production could and should be solved by increasing consumption so economic growth could continue. Manufacturers needed to continually expand production so as to increase their profits. Employers were also afraid of such a future because of its potential to undermine the work ethic and encourage degeneracy amongst workers who were unable to make proper use of their time. Increasing production and consumption guaranteed the ongoing centrality of work. 6

Keen to maintain the importance of work in the face of the push for more leisure, businessmen extolled the virtues and pleasures of work and its necessity in building character, providing dignity and inspiring greatness. Economists too argued that the creation of work was the goal of production. John M. Clark, in a review of economic developments, stated: “Consumption is no longer the sole end nor production solely the means to that end. Work is an end in itself…” Creating work, and the right to work, he argued, had a higher moral imperative than meeting basic needs. 7

Manufacturer, H. C. Atkins, along with president of the National Association of Manufacturers, John E. Edgerton, warned a five-day week would undermine the work ethic by giving more time for leisure.8 If work took up less of the day it would be less important in people’s lives. Edgerton, observed: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance…. the emphasis should be put on work – more work and better work, instead of upon leisure.” 9

Most businessmen believed shorter hours meant less production, which would limit the growth of America’s business enterprise. They argued they could not afford shorter work weeks, that they would become uncompetitive and go bankrupt. They also feared that given extra free time, people would spend it in unsociable ways, turning to crime, vice, corruption and degeneracy and perhaps even radicalism. “The common people had to be kept at their desks and machines, lest they rise up against their betters.” 10 And Edgerton, argued “nothing breeds radicalism more quickly than unhappiness unless it is leisure. As long as the people are kept profitably and happily employed there is little danger from radicalism.” 11 In the US consumption rates were increasing in the mid-1920s and the “new economic gospel of consumption” gained many adherents. 12 The idea there were limits on consumer wants began to be eclipsed by the idea such wants could be endlessly created. In 1929 the President’s Committee on Recent Economic Changes stated: “wants are almost insatiable; one want satisfied makes way for another… by advertising and other promotional devices, by scientific fact- finding, and by carefully pre-developed consumption, a measurable pull on production… has been created.” 13

The public was urged by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) to “end the buyers’ strike.” 14 However the desire to consume did not come naturally, it had to be learned: “People had to move away from habits of strict thrift toward habits of ready spending.”15 From the 1920s corporations began advertising to the working classes in an effort to break down these old habits of thrift and encourage new consumerist desires. At the same time they sought to counter anti-corporate feelings generated by the conditions of work in their factories. 16

Hooking work and leisure to consumption

Higher wages helped in this shift from the Protestant ethic of asceticism to one of consumerism that fitted with the required markets for mass production.17 In boom times, workers were given increased wages rather than increased leisure. Between 1910 and 1929 the average purchasing power of workers in the US increased by 40%. 18 With these rising wages they bought more and the upward spiral of production and consumption was maintained. In earlier times higher wages might have encouraged workers to work shorter hours, but once workers had been coached into becoming consumers there was little danger of this. With the help of marketers and advertisers, workers could be trusted “to spend more rather than work less.” 19

In this context it was important leisure was not an alternative to work and an opportunity to reflect on life but rather a time for consumption. In this way the forty-hour week, rather than threatening economic growth would foster it. Leisure goods such as radios, phonographs, movies, clothes, books and recreational facilities all benefited from increased leisure time.20 At the same time leisure had to be subordinate to work and importantly, a reason to work.

Business people still wanted to limit the reduction of work hours and believed that by ‘educating’ workers to become consumers, the demand from workers for reduced working hours would also be limited. 21 Manufacturers expanded markets by expanding the range of goods they produced, moving from the basic requirements of living such as food, clothing and building materials to items such as cars and radios that provided entertainment and recreation. 22 US unions fell in with the consumption solution to overproduction in the late 1920s and concentrated on fighting for higher wages. Union leaders promoted increased production and economic growth as a way of increasing wages. It was not till the Great Depression of the 1930s that they again fought for a shorter working week as a solution to unemployment. 23

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After the Second World War the idea of solving unemployment by reducing working hours disappeared from mainstream thinking. During the war a demand for consumer goods built up and following it workers tended to prefer wage rises to shorter hours.24 Unions no longer pressed for shorter working hours and workers themselves became wedded to a consumer lifestyle that required long hours to support. Many unions in fact gave up their fight for control of production in favour of a share of the fruits of production and “ever-increasing levels of material well-being for their workers.”25

The promise of full-employment assuaged fears that long work hours might create unemployment. Leisure became consumer-oriented, revolving round the home with its entertaining and convenience goods and the vacation where workers could enjoy living in luxury for a short time. 26 As Cross noted: “The identification of leisure with consumption won many to hard and steady work in disagreeable jobs.” 27

Juliet Schor noted in her book, The Overworked American that by 1991 productivity in the US had increased steadily from the 1940s: “we could now produce our 1948 standard of living (measured in terms of marketed goods and services) in less than half the time it took in that year. We could actually have chosen the four-hour day, or a working year of six months….” Instead, workers work more hours now than in 1948 and consume more than twice as much. 28 It was the “social decision to direct industrial innovation toward producing unlimited quantities of goods rather than leisure” that created the foundation for our modern consumer culture, “a culture of work and spend.” The movement for more free time for workers and leisure time free of market forces, was defeated by the middle of the 20th century when mass consumer culture took off. 29 The consumer culture, rather than eroding the work ethic, tied people even more closely to working long hours in order to earn the money for their consumer desires.

Consumerism as opiate of the masses

Stuart Ewen in his book Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture showed that advertising for mass consumerism was not only aimed at increasing markets for goods but also at shifting the locus of discontent from people’s work to arenas that advertisers could promise would be satisfied by consumption. Their frustrations and unhappiness could then be directed towards buying rather than political protest against working conditions or other elements of industrial society.30

Ewen claims that consumerism: “the mass participation in the values of the mass-induced market,” was not a natural historical development but an aggressive device of corporate survival.” Discontent in the workplace could lead to a challenge to corporate authority but discontent in the consumer sphere provided an incentive to work harder and reflected an acceptance of the values of the capitalist enterprise. 31 Similarly Robert Lane claims in his book on Political Ideology that: “The more emphasis a society places upon consumption-through advertising, development of new products, and easy installment buying-the more will social dissatisfaction be channeled into intraclass consumption rivalry instead of interclass resentment and conflict… the more will labor unions focus upon the ‘bread and butter’ aspects of unionism, as contrasted to its ideological elements.” 32

If people were dependent on the products of the factories they were less likely to be critical of the appalling working conditions within them. The good life attained through this consumption was also compensation for the unpleasantness of work and distracted attention from it. Advertisements were careful not to depict people working in factories. A leading copywriter in the 1920s, Helen Woodward, advised consumption could help sublimate and redirect urges that might otherwise be expressed politically or aggressively. “To those who cannot change their whole lives or occupations,” she argued, “even a new line in a dress is often a relief.” 33

Department store merchant Edward Filene, a spokesperson for industrialists in the 1920s and 30s, spoke frankly about the need for social planning in order to create a consumer culture where industry could “sell to the masses all that it employs the masses to create” and the need for education to train the masses to be consumers in a world of mass production. He argued that consumer culture could unify the nation and, through education, social change could be limited to changes in the commodities that industry produced.34

Consumption allows people at the bottom of the social hierarchy to feel they have some measure of access to the good life for all their troubles. The escape from real life provided by leisure activities allows people to continue what might otherwise be a dreary and downtrodden existence. Lisa Macdonald and Allen Myers from Green Left Weekly, claim workers attempt to gain ownership of what they produce and overcome their alienation through consumption: “it is only as purchasers, ’shoppers’, that we are treated with the courtesy worthy of a human being.”35 Employers encouraged workers to think of consumerism as the rationale for their work but measures of success were moved from the realm of production and work to the realm of consumption. Advertising messages affected people’s aspirations. They portrayed a bounty of consumer goods as the fruits of the American Dream. Rather than aspiring for their children to become leading businessmen or top executives or political leaders, advertisements offered messages such as “Some Day your Boy will own a Buick.”36

Advertisers also undermined the nineteenth century “culture of character” which was the basis of the myth of the self-made man, someone who succeeded as a result of hard work, morality and discipline. In its place a “culture of personality” evolved which promoted the importance of presentation and appearance, things that advertisers were so helpfully offering to assist with. What mattered in getting ahead and influencing people was the impression a person made on others. Things like their clothes, their home furnishings, their personal cleanliness were all used by others to judge their character.37 Also advertising and consumerism played a major role in the acceptance of the capitalist vision and its associated inequalities. Roland Marchand in his book Advertising the American Dream argued advertisers repeatedly used “the parable of the democracy of goods” to sell their products to the middle classes. In this parable, although there was a social hierarchy with wealth concentrated at the top, ordinary people could enjoy the same products and goods that the people at the top did. Joe Blo could drink the same brand of coffee as the wealthiest capitalist. Mary Jane could buy the same soap as the lady with the maid in waiting. The most humble of citizens (although not the poor who were not the targets of these advertisements) could afford to purchase the same quality products as a millionaire. 38

The social message of the parable of the Democracy of Goods was clear. Antagonistic envy of the rich was unseemly; programs to redistribute wealth were unnecessary. The best things in life were already available to all at reasonable prices. Incessantly and enticingly repeated, advertising visions of fellowship in a Democracy of Goods encouraged Americans to look to similarities in consumption styles rather than to political power or control of wealth for evidence of significant equality. 39

According to Filene, the process of buying goods was a means by which people were supporting industry and thereby electing the manufacturers, who made the goods, to a government which would satisfy their needs. They were voting industry leaders into positions of leadership in society. In this way “the masses have elected Henry Ford. They have elected General Motors. They have elected the General Electric Company, and Woolworth’s and all the other great industrial and business leaders of the day.”40 Not only was the desire for social change displaced by a desire for changes in commodities, but political freedom was equated with consumer choice and political citizenship with participation in the market through consumption. Consumption was promoted as democratising at the very time it was being used to pacify the political unrest of workers.41 According to well-known sociologist Daniel Bell: “If the American worker has been ‘tamed’ it has not been through the discipline of the machine, but by the ‘consumption society,’ by the possibility of a better living which his wage, the second income from his working wife, and easy credit all allow.”42

Production, consumption and status

Vance Packard, in his book The Status Seekers argued the use of consumer goods as status symbols was a deliberate strategy of advertisers, or “merchants of discontent,” who took advantage of the “upgrading urge” people felt. The message that workers could improve their status through consumption was particularly aimed at people who had little chance of raising their status through their work because opportunities for promotion were slim.43 employers sought to divert the dissatisfaction of workers with the nature of their work into a more personal dissatisfaction that could be fed with consumer goods: “offering mass produced visions of individualism by which people could extricate themselves from the mass.”44

The advertiser offered workers the possibility of gaining social status through buying goods that were better than their neighbours. With the help of installment plans and credit, they could purchase the signifiers of success even if they weren’t achieving success in their workplace. This was not something that came naturally to working people who were, for the main part, resigned to their position in life. According to Packard “they need prodding and ‘educating’ to desire many of the traditionally higher-class products the mass merchandisers want to move in such vast numbers, such as the electric rotating spits or gourmet foods.”45

Car manufacturers, particularly, exploited people’s desire for status, spending “small fortunes exploring the status meaning of their product.” They found, for example that people in housing developments where all the houses looked similar, were most likely to leave their large new cars parked on the street in front of the house rather than in the garage where no-one would see them. Plymouth advertisements pictured a family in front of their car saying “We’re not wealthy… we just look it!” Dodge advertisements featured a man saying to a Dodge car owner “Boy, you must be rich to own a car as big as this!” And Ford advertisements showed the back of one of their cars and stated “let the people behind you know you are ahead of them!”46

Such advertising was so successful people began diverting funds from other purchases into the purchase of a car to enhance their status, and by the end of the 1950s Americans “were spending more of their total income on the family chariot than they were in financing their homestead, which housed the family and its car or cars.”47 Not to be outdone home builders and sellers ensured the home became a status symbol that rivalled the motor car.

Chinoy observed consumption provided automobile workers in the 1950s with a way of rationalising their failure to advance in their work: “Advancement has come to mean the progressive accumulation of things as well as the increasing capacity to consume… If one manages to buy a new car, if each year sees a major addition to the household-a washing machine, a refrigerator, a new living-room suite, now probably a television set-then one is also getting ahead.”48 Rather than question the American Dream, workers would either blame themselves for their failure to live up to it, or find other ways to interpret it.

Such trends were not confined to the US. The consumerism that proliferated in the US in the 1920s and 1930s, spread to other industrialised nations after the Second World War, particularly in the 1950s. 49 In his book on the rise of a consumer society in Australia, Greg Whitwell said: “The ownership of certain sorts of consumer goods, each ranked according to brand names, came to be seen as guides to an individual’s income which in turn, so it is believed, said something about his or her inner worth. Consumer goods became external signs, used to give a sense of hierarchy by members of a society characterized by an emphasis on change and on social and geographical mobility.”50

More pay needed to buy “goods”

In a British study of the working class in the 1950s Ferdynand Zweig found: “a steep rise in acquisitive tendencies and pre-occupation with money in work attitudes.” There was far less difference between middle class and working class purchase of consumer durables (cars, white goods, electrical appliances) than previously and class self-identification had come to depend more on factors such as house ownership than type of work. In fact Zweig found workers impatient with questions about class. They were more interested in status as a way of organising the social spectrum.51

Increased consumerism led to an increased emphasis on the importance of pay. Many people work so as to earn the money to buy consumer goods and some measure of status that accompanies them. A European study by the Henley Centre in 1991 found “better pay” was the priority for new jobs for 70 percent of those surveyed, compared with enjoyable work, which was a priority for 58 percent.52

A U.S. study found those who believed “having lots of money” was “extremely important” had gone up to almost two thirds in 1986 from less than half in 1977. It ranked higher than any other of goal in life.53 Americans born since 1963, those referred to as generation X, are more likely to agree that: “The only really meaningful measure of success is money” than any previous generation. They spend more money on stereos, mobile phones, beepers and cars than older people and are more likely to take a less interesting job if it pays well.54

Jimmy Carter, as President of the US noted: “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.”55 Consumption has become a more important source of self-identity and status than work for many people. Compton Advertising undertook a survey of public attitudes to the economic system in 1974 and found two thirds of those surveyed identified their role in the economic system as that of “consumers and spenders of money” rather than workers or producers. This included one half of those in the labour force. 56

More recent opinion surveys show that in countries like the US and Japan, “people increasingly measure success by the amount they consume.”57 In a society where people don’t know each other very well, appearances are important and social status, though more securely attained through occupation, can be attained with strangers through consumption. When people are uprooted and move to the cities they are strangers to each other. Previously everyone knew one another’s business and the status that should be accorded to each person. In an anonymous city a person can adopt a certain lifestyle, clothes, car that is higher up the status ladder than their occupation would indicate, particularly if they are willing to go into debt to do it. Consumption then becomes an indicator of achievement.58

The desire to consume is often portrayed as a natural human characteristic that cannot be changed. However it is clear populations have been manipulated into being avaricious consumers. What people really want, more than the multitude of goods on offer, is status. History has shown the determinants of status can change. If we want to live in an ecologically sustainable society, then we need to award status to those who are happy with a basic level of comfort rather than those who accumulate possessions. If, as a community, we admired wisdom above wealth and compassion and cooperation above competition, we would be well on the way to undermining the motivation to consume.

This article was first adapted for publication in Pacific Ecologist from chapter 12 of the book Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR, by Sharon Beder, Publisher Scribe, Melbourne 2000. Professor Sharon Beder is head of the Science, Technology and Society Programme at the University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia. She writes a regular column for Engineers Australia and has written several books including Power Play Toxic Fish and Sewer Surfing; The Nature of Sustainable Development. Professor Beder was awarded the 2001 World Technology Award in Ethics.

The Pacific Ecologist, whence this article came, provided this editorial note: Sharon Beder explores the history of consumer societies from the 1920s when over-production of goods exceeded demand. Instead of stabilising the economy, reducing working hours, and sharing work around, which would have brought more leisure time for all, industrialists decided to expand markets by promoting consumerism to the working classes. The social decision to produce unlimited quantities of goods rather than leisure, nurtured wastefulness, obsolescence, and inefficiency and created the foundation for our modern consumer culture. People were trained to be both workers and consumers in a culture of work and spend. -Posted by thomaspainescorner on April 26, 2009

References

[1] Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making way for modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p, 158.

[2] Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture( New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), pp. 70, 108.

[3] David J. Cherrington, The Work Ethic: Working Values and Values that Work (New York: AMACON, 1980), p. 37.

[4] Gary Cross, Time and Money (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 38; Rodney Clapp, ‘Why the Devil Takes Visa’, Christianity Today, Vol. 40, No. 11 (1996).

[5] Cross, note 7, pp. 7-8, 28.

[6] Ibid., pp. 7,9,39; Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), pp. 42, 67.

[7] Ibid., pp. 62-3.

[8] Paul Bernstein, American Work Values: Their Origin and Development (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 157.

[9] Cross, note 7, p. 16.

[10] Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline in Leisure (USA: BasicBooks, 1991), p. 74.

[11] Quoted in Hunnicutt, note 9, p. 41.

[12] Hunnicutt, note 9, p.; 42.

[13] Quoted in Cross, note 7, p. 41.

[14] Quoted in Ibid., p. 38.

[15] Clapp, note 7.

[16] Ewen, note 5, p. 19.

[17] Ibid., p. 29.

[18] Cross, note 7, p. 7.

[19] Hunnicutt, note 9, p. 43.

[20] Ibid., p. 45.

[21] Ibid., pp. 46-7.

[22] Robert Eisenberger, Blue Monday: The Loss of the Work Ethic in America (New York: Paragon House, 1989), p. 11.

[23] Hunnicutt, note 9, p. 79.

[24] Cross, note 7, p. 85.

[25] Schor, note 15, p. 78; Daniel Yankelovich and John Immerwahr, ‘Putting the Work Ethic to Work’, Society, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1984), p. 59.

[26] Cross, note 7, p. 155.

[27] Ibid., p. 153.

[28] Schor, note 15, p. 2.

[29] Cross, note 7, pp. 5, 9.

[30] Ewen, note 5, pp. 43-5.

[31] Ibid., pp. 54, 109.

[32] Robert E. Lane, Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What he Does (New York: The Free Press, 1962), p. 80.

[33] Ewen, note 5, pp. 77-8, 85-6.

[34] Ibid., p. 54.

[35] L. Macdonald and A. Myers, ‘Malign Design’, New Internationalist (November 1998), p. 21.

[36] Marchand, note 4, pp. 162, 222.

[37] Ibid., pp. 209-10.

[38] Ibid., p. 218.

[39] Ibid., pp. 220, 222.

[40] Quoted in Ewen, note 5, p. 92.

[41] Ibid., pp. 89, 91.

[42] Daniel Bell, ‘Work and Its Discontents (1956)’, in A. R. Gini and T. J. Sullivan (eds), It Comes with the Territory: An Inquiry Concerning Work and the Person (New York: Random House, 1989), pp. 122-123.

[43] Vance Packard, The Status Seekers: An Exploration of Class Behaviour in America (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1961), pp. 269-70.

[44] Andrew Hornery, ‘Family Pack aims for the children’, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 September 1998, p. 45.

[45] Packard, note 84, p. 271.

[46] Ibid., pp. 273-4.

[47] Ibid., p. 274.

[48] Ely Chinoy, Automobile Workers and the American Dream, 2nd ed (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinios Press, 1992), p. 126.

[49] Stewart Lansley, After the Gold Rush: The Trouble with Affluence: ‘Consumer Capitalism’ and the Way Forward (London: Century Business Books, 1994), p. 85.

[50] Greg Whitwell, Making the Market: The Rise of Consumer Society (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble Publishers, 1989), p. 7.

[51] Ferdynand Zweig, The New Acquisitive Society (Chichester: Barry Rose, 1976), pp. 15, 21-2, 26-7.

[52] Cited in Lansley, note 90, p. 136.

[53] Alan Thein Durning, How Much is Enough: The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth, ed. Linda Starke, Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series (London: Earthscan, 1992), p. 34.

[54] Dan Zevin and Carolyn Edy, ‘Boom Time for Gen X’, US News and World Report (20 October 1997)

[55] Quoted in Thomas H. Naylor, William H. Willimon and Rolf Osterberg, The Search for Meaning in the Workplace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), p. 69.

[56] Compton Advertising, ‘National Survey on the American Economic System’, (New York: The Advertising Council, 1974), p. 17

[57] Durning, note 94, p. 22.

[58] Bell, note 71, p. 68.