America is the land of plenty. Unfortunately these days, that often means plenty of foreclosures, bankruptcies, childhood obesity, greenhouse gases, stress, and even plenty of debt. We have so much debt that on January 6, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that Congress needs to raise the federal debt level beyond the existing $14.29 trillion ceiling during the first quarter of 2011 or risk defaulting on U.S. debt and losing access to global credit markets.
Whether the solution is for the government to cut spending or raise taxes, the nation has a problem: Americans' eyes are bigger than their stomachs. Given an obesity rate of 34 percent, that's saying a lot. As any Econ 101 student knows, it's not that debt in itself is bad. Credit can be a good thing if used carefully to increase purchasing power for such useful things as home mortgages or new factories. The problem is that we have too much. That question of scale applies across the board to everything from food to education to technology to just plain stuff. Too much of anything is bad for us, as individuals and as a society. From a nation of self-sufficient farmers and thrifty merchants we have evolved into a country where we not only want more than we have but too often want more than is good for us.
Our lack of restraint as individuals has contributed to some serious economic, ecological, and social challenges. Compulsive shoppers, for example (the U.S. has an estimated 19 million to 28 million of them, reported stltoday.com), agonize over credit card debt. In 2007 household debt reached nearly 100 percent of gross domestic product, according to Credit Suisse. About one-third of America's adult population qualifies as obese, yet maintains unhealthy eating and exercise practices; only about four percent have much chance of losing enough weight to achieve mere "overweight," status, say Harvard researchers.
As natural and economic limits have expanded—a process fostered by technology—many things that were beneficial in moderation have become problematic in excess.
It's not just a matter of greed. "It is a time of extreme affluence and technological empowerment. This empowers all of our desires, including those we don't prefer," Daniel Akst, author of We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess (January 2011, Penguin Press), tells Businessweek.com. "It's not that we have less willpower than we used to, but rather that modern life immerses us daily in a set of temptations far more evolved than we are," he writes in his book.
These temptations drive our economy: Real GDP nearly doubled in the 25 years from 1984 to 2009, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That boom followed broad awareness of conspicuous consumption in the U.S. In 1955, economist Victor Lebow wrote a seminal article in the Journal of Retailing. "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption," he wrote.
Some economists that include 2001 Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz have been trying to identify the limits of GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress while developing an alternative way to measure social well-being.
Indeed, greater economic growth does not lead to a happier, healthier, or more successful populace, according to research by the Equality Trust, a London nonprofit that has found no relationship between income per head and social well-being in rich countries. Trends such as increasing stress and declining levels of happiness over the last 30 years suggest that abundance has not contributed to our sense of well-being.
Post a comment about this story in Reader Discussion…
RSS Feed: Most Read Stories
RSS Feed: Most E-mailed Stories
RSS Feed: Most Discussed Stories
Buy a link now!
About Advertising EDGE Programs Reprints Terms of Use Disclaimer Privacy Notice Ethics Code Contact Us Site Map
©2011 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.
Read Full Article »