In spite of the economy "Being in the Best Shape That it's Been in For Thirty Years",tm most people find life less secure, more disjointed and it's harder to make connections with those around them. The future, for both you and the Earth, seems more of a threat than a promise. Your expectation of a career, the future vision you had of working life, the Sunny Golden Tomorrow, it's now gone, like last nights furtive dream.
Do you, or your parents, who grew up and prospered in a totally different world and economy, blame these shortcomings on you? Perhaps you didn't make all the right decisions, (notice how the regret is usually expressed in financial terms)...it is, however, the basic circumstances of our lives and livlihoods and society that have changed and it's confronting this change that's addressed in this site.
Whether the economy has turned against you and made your skills and knowledge redundant or you are doing very well financially, but intuit that the pace of change and its direction cannot go on without disaster, something needs to change. The best way to build an economy that values the individual while helping your community and environment is to is to turn your back on consumerism. By doing this you are actively helping to destroy those forces that are ruining our world and in some cases our livlihood.
If, for example, you are an older person that has played by the rules and who has become redundant in the new global economy, you have several choices. You can seek out a minimum wage job, or two or three of them as some must, and if you are lucky enough to find one, wear the corporate clown uniform and slowly starve to death as you perhaps die for lack of affordable medical care. Or, you could learn about economic self-sufficiency in your community and get out there and become part of it, thus helping not only yourself and your neighbors but taking away money and power from those that have turned on you.
Consider this alternate vision. You belong to a growing circle of
neighbors and friends that have the time and inclination to work
together and create a better community. Your economic and personal
choices have meaning and make things better for yourself and others.
You raise your own vegetables. They're fresh, delicious and cost you
little. You have the time to do the things that you want. The Gross
National Product goes down because you're not spending as much money
to buy food and more things. This is a small example of the kind of
change that overcoming consumerism can bring.The Ponzi Scheme economy.
The key weakness of the really big players who profit from consumerism is the oversupply of goods produced and their need to generate more demand financed by more credit that pays the current debt on past purchases. They are locked in a death spiral of having to seek ever more markets, ever cheaper labor, ever more capital to facilitate ever more efficient production with fewer and fewer workers. Meanwhile there is less and less money in the hands of their potential customers. The bubble is bulging and will soon explode.
This is why they spend billions of dollars on advertising that begs you to buy their products, which were they so necessary and of quality, you would just go out and buy, the same way that you buy basic foodstuffs. This is why they facilitate credit at every step along the way, no matter what the consequences to debt encumbered people.
Personal bankruptcies in 1998:
If you are one of the economically dispossessed, one that is redundant in society, one that is scared to death for your future, than you should help to destroy the very system that has created these conditions and replace it with something better. Let's help push the system over the ever-nearer edge, out of desperation, revenge or the hopes for a better and more sustainable future. You control what you buy and how you spend your money. Computers may have replaced your job, but computers don't buy things. The system needs things to be made and bought and people to go into debt anything that interrupts that can help bring it to an end.
The system's great Achilles Heel of oversupply is nicely illustrated by some quotes from William Greider's masterful One World, Ready or Not: the Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. Simon & Schuster, 1997. If you are going to take the trouble to read one book about the economy, make this it.
Here's a 10-3-97 article by Greider discussing deflation and declining demand.
General Motors, Ford move to lower the price of buying a new car
The necessity to maintain a constant increase in the supply of money lent into existance is one of the hidden motivators behind the promotion of Consumerism by those who profit most from our economy. If there isn't a constant expansion of the money supply created in large part by consumer credit, there isn't enough money to pay back the previous debts and their interest payments. How can you borrow $1,000 at 21% annual interest from a credit card and pay it back if there isn't an extra $210 created in the economy by other people's, or your own, further borrowing? So you pay back the principle and interest and thus even more money is then available to be lent out at interest to purchase more energy containing products and services drawing more from the environment.
Where does the bank or credit card company get the money to lend you? It's basically created out of thin air, with a small percentage, (10%), required to be on deposit with the banks in the form of real assets such as your savings deposits.
Where does the real money to pay back the credit card or bank plus the compounding interest come from? Your hard work, time taken away from your life, that's where. Is a lot of money being made off this scheme? Enough, for example, to influence legislators? Is there anything wrong with this? If you want to explore this issue we recommend Billions for the Bankers, Debts for the People. these are good sites although we do not endorse all their views.
A concise article about this: Things Prudent People Should Know About Their Money and Their Future
If you want the most scholarly,in-depth and readable book on the subject, William Greider is the author most recommended. His Secrets of the Temple; The Federal Reserve and How It Runs America, is a bible on the creation of money, past and present and how banking works.
For a short online version of what this means to you the taxpayer and consumer see: have found ways to take it out of the patient population turning health care providers into "gate keepers" and second-guessing medical judgment whenever it leads to a higher degree of care that means lower bottom-line profits. It is not possible to pay annual compensation packages of $500,000,000 to CEOs, dividends to ever more demanding investors, mostly large financial institutions, and to close local hospitals without someone suffering:that someone is whomever belongs to the HMO, either through increased premiums or decreased services.
Why should one go through 80 pairs or more of shoes by the time they
are an adult? Consider obtaining a pair of super-durable,
car-tire sole Huarache sandals. These are hand -made by people living
in rugged rural areas of Mexico that would quickly wear out the
manufactured shoes that they can't afford anyway. You will be wearing
footwear made of scrap leather and tires ordinarily dumped in a
ravine or burned. This will obviate the manufacture and disposal of
at least 25 to 30 pairs of athletic type shoes or many pairs
of even good quality resoleable shoes. Consider using pieces of car
tire instead of factory replacement soles or heels on shoes that need
resoling. If you want to work with this material yourself, find a
tire that has been dumped in some green area or obtain one from a
tire store's scrap pile and carefully use a sharp knife to cut the
tread away from the sidewalls. (Tires must be cord, or "bias ply",
NOT steel belted). Shoe repair shops with skilled workers and good
equipment can use this material to resole or re-heel shoes.