There’s been so much “values” talk since the economy started tanking. Our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents who never had debt are getting a lot of accolades for their frugal lifestyles and living within their means. My own father came to this country with $7 in his pocket. My Austrian grandmother ate one teaspoon of flour a day throughout her childhood during World War II after the Nazis overtook her home country. Whenever I went to visit her at her home growing up, she would let me have it if I wasted so much as a crumb of food on my plate.
But I get frustrated by all of this talk — about how over the past several decades materialism has invaded the human mindset and is responsible for the erosion of common sense and responsibility. Because something tells me that underneath it all, this isn’t the whole truth.
Andrew Sullivan linked to these charts. His conclusion, I suppose, is that Americans, as well as American government, began a love affair with debt and credit, which is partially responsible for the mess we’re in.
I need some more evidence before I believe that this is the case for the majority of Americans. I have plenty of friends and relatives who are classic overspenders, who binge on things they think they deserve just for breathing. Their entire lives are on credit. They get new cars every few years and go out to eat for dinner several times as week as if they are executives at Microsoft. They go on cruises, buy clothes all the time, etc. But most people I know don’t do these things.
The evidence I draw from people I know is largely anecdotal. It’s not taken from a large sampling. But I’m looking for the following answers, and I can’t find any:
How do the experts know that it’s increased materialism and a deterioration of values that account for the discrepancy in the amount of debt people had decades ago, verses the amount of debt that people have today? We know that today, minimum wage is a total joke, and is not, in any way, a living wage. We know that the cost of living has increased over the past several years, as well as inflation, but wages have not kept up. So when we see a chart that indicates the increase of mortgage debt, isn’t it possible that some of this increase is due, not to greed, but to the fact that employees are not getting enough wages to allow them to live a decent life? Or that debt has increased because health care costs have sky-rocketted, yet health insurance is either not available or completely inadequate, causing people to take out a bigger mortgage?
Have these economists and business reporters analyzed what makes up this increasing credit card debt? Is it a family that bought a motorcycle on credit just for the hell of it, or is it a person with a chronic health condition who has to charge medical expenses, car repairs, or groceries? I’m tired of the media slamming “the consumer” for getting out of hand, when they can’t offer some sort of percentage of who is really overspending, versus who is just trying to survive.
I’m still not convinced that the majority of people who are swimming in mortgages are people who got greedy and felt entitled to a certain type of lifestyle. I’m sure many are. But how many people saw subprime mortgages as a way to get their kids into a decent school district? Or one with less drugs? Or a neighborhood that was safer? Or how many people were paying more rent than what they’d have to pay in an interest-only mortgage, and saw the opportunity to build equity as a means to pay off their other debt, save for their kids’ college, or put toward retirement?
Perhaps I’m wrong on all accounts. Perhaps there has been somewhat of a deterioration of values in the past hundred years. But even generations ago, there were plenty of alcoholics and gamblers, and people who had credit lines at stores they couldn’t pay. The difference is that back then, having a job meant you had a greater chance of actually making a living. Earlier generations could afford more basic necessities with the money they had. This generation just can’t.
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I can’t help but get tears in my eyes hearing this 17-year old speak about why same-sex marriage should be allowed in Vermont. If my children turn out to be half the person that this boy is, I will deem myself a kick-ass parent.
I feel the same way. We are by no means debt free, but we don’t live an extravagant lifestyle. It might look like it to some–as we do love our gadgets–but we sacrifice in other areas like not buying expensive cars or clothes. And wages are stagnant, have been for a while, and are probably getting worse. I heard a report on NPR yesterday about those payday loan places, which are apparently doing a booming business–and have been for a while. The reporter’s point was that you have to have a job and a bank account in order to get one of these loans, so that means a lot of people who have steady income are not making ends meet fairly regularly.
Not that I’m some sort of prescient economic genius, but I remember back in 2002, when Bush was announcing the budget, that the deficit didn’t matter and ohbytheway the war will not be included in the budget because that’s not a normal expense. I looked at my husband and said, “Right here is the trouble with ‘hiring’ a lifelong millionaire to be president. He has never had to budget. There has never been anything that couldn’t be covered. And unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t work like that.” That didn’t get any better.
And as to the consumer stuff…I saw a report (I wish I remembered where) that showed that the number of garments being sold in this country has quintupled in my lifetime. So that is part of it. Planned obsolescence is another. My dryer is 40 years old and the repair guy has made me promise to never get rid of it since new ones only last 10 years. So there’s another expense that was once a lifetime for our grandparents/parents that we will face over and over again.
So I have to agree with Memegrl on some of the planned destruction of things. My grandmother never had to replace a car or an appliance. Back then, things were built to last. I hear it spoken with nostalgia all the time but hell, my father retired from the company he started working in straight from college. The world is a different place.
I am reminded of the commercial for the gum where they hire people to beat someone up to get the gum out of their mouth because they have no reason to get a new piece and that’s what I feel our manufacturing practices have done. Of course companies want to make money and they do that by making items with a time bomb in them. Because turn over is key.
And I think the idea that you will have to replace an item helps in the I want mentality. And the fact that we are getting so much better at the newest and greatest that companies with hold their best products so they can launch better versions of older products first. It’s not criminal but it is wrong.
And that 17 year old boy made me cry.
Excellent points, everyone. I had not thought about products that don’t last as long as they once did. I’d say the same for homes, too. Once upon a time homes were built to last centuries, now they just aren’t. Hence, home repairs that literally eat you out of house and home.
Excellent post. I too hadn’t thought about products not lasting or launching a newer version of something just after the older version was launched a month ago.
As for increased materialism, if that is what is at fault for the current economic financial crisis, then the businesses that create these items and spend so much money getting us to purchase them need to be held accountable as well.
I am really enjoying your new blog. Keep the thoughtful posts coming!
I agree with you that the consumerism-has-increased arguments fail to take into account that the debt-to-income ratio fails may include things like home mortgages, student loan and car debt-all of which are basically required these days but were not in the future. This is not to say that argument is necessarily false but you have to be careful about what the debt-to-income ratio comprises of.
Another thing that makes me roll me eyes-and forgive me Anjali because it’s usually very liberal individuals who make this argument-is the nostalgic waxing on the good old days when people supposedly made a living wage, manufacturing jobs paid tons of money, we made things in THIS country blahblah-well all of those things were helped along by an entirely different type of workforce and world. It was a workforce that did not allow women and minorities any/many professional opportunities and it was a world in which the developing nations of today were extremely underdeveloped and closed off, politically and economically from the rest of the world. Is that the workforce makeup and economy we really want to go back to?
I am not saying that things are great right now but I can’t stand to listen to arguments about the Golden Age. It seems to me that social conservatives make Golden Age arguments about social mores and social liberals make them about the workplace economy. Both camps are retroactively whitewashing reality.
Dead centrist ranthat off!
I think your points are all very valid, Monkey. And I agree with all of them.
Thanks Anjali-and I’ll agree with everyone else that said this was an excellent post. It’s easy to repeat what we’re told without applying a critical eye. I read this post a couple times over before I realised that your point about manipulating the data and statistics is very valid.
Ah, Anjali. This is why I love reading you so – while I disagree with many things that you write, you always, always make me think them over and reconsider. Always. This is why you are such an excellent writer.
I have a tendency to be cynical, Andrew Sullivan and blame the consumer. But you have some very valid points. I think overall, there was a greedy core of folks who overspent and sadly, the honest groups of folks just trying to get by are getting caught up in this as well.
I will say this, I am seeing a certain group of folks who have consistently misspent their money and made irresponsible decisions along the way. Now that the economy has tanked, I am seeing these same folks (in real life and in blog life) blaming the economy for their situation, when in reality, it was in the making of their own accord for YEARS.
Full disclosure: I made HORRIBLE financial decisions in my 20s. Then, I took a job in my early 30s that sucked my soul and social life along with it. However, that job allowed me to make more money than I had ever made in my life and I was able to claw myself out of the financial sinkhole I had spent myself into. I will admit, I have little inclination to feel much sympathy for folks who has misspent.
Great post! That big things (like cars) are built to last a few years is one of the things that makes me so angry, not just from a personal frugality standpoint but because of the resources that go into producing them, ditching them in a landfill and then producing them again… It’s ridiculous and the reason why I’m literally embarrassed of my own car, but I will drive it until it is dead.