Consumerism in the USA: a nation of junkies?

• Author: Evans, G.S.
• Position: Less of What We Don't Need

In the wake of the world economic crisis much has been made, both by economists and the American government, of the need for the rest of the world to take up the "burden" of consuming that the United States has been carrying until now. As Barack Obama stated shortly before the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh in September, "We can't go back to an era where the Chinese or the Germans or other countries just are selling everything to us, we're taking out a bunch of credit-card debt or home-equity loans, but we're not selling them anything." [1]

But such thoughts are wishful thinking, as there are unique cultural, economic, and physical reasons why the United States alone has been both willing and able to take this burden upon itself. The fact that it has exhausted itself to the point of ruin in this endeavor presents the world with a crisis that goes beyond the immediate economic recession (or depression), as it also highlights a structural crisis of capitalism in that an economy based on consumerism is, ultimately, a lie.

The importance of the American consumer--as well as his and her limitations--was underscored by the fact that the financial instrument that triggered the near collapse of the world economy in 2008 was the sub-prime home loan, an instrument designed to maximize consumer activity in the United States. These risky loans were named "sub-prime" because they supplied less credit-worthy clients, especially in the middle and lower classes, an opportunity to achieve a key part of the "American Dream," owning a house.

These loans were initially very popular because, at first glance, they seemed to offer very low interest rates; in reality, however, they had two interest rates, one that was quite low in the first couple of years and then a substantially higher one over the following 28 years. Over the long haul these poorer Americans didn't have the resources to keep up the payments on such loans--which in their form and structure resembled the kind of loans traditionally given out by loan sharks.

That such loans were allowed into the main-stream of the American financial sector, thereby allowing the lenders to draw in many borrowers who trusted that there were laws or regulations against such deceptive loans, says much about the debasement of consumer rights in the United States. That so many Americans, however, took out such loans at all, and thereby allowed the corrupt and rapacious American financial sector to expropriate their limited savings and meager assets, speaks both to the exuberance as well as the irrationality of the American consumer. It also, as we shall see, speaks to the opportunity that their physical environment gives them to consume on such a scale.

These qualities are perhaps best illustrated by the goal that motivated the Americans who took out the sub-prime mortgages, the goal of owning their own home. For most Americans, owning a home is not only synonymous with being a member of the middle-class--of being successful--but on a deeper level with being an adult. For, while the United States does indeed rank highly relative to other countries in terms of official homeowner-ship (69 % of Americans own their own home, far above France's 55 %, Germany's 42 %, and Switzerland's 36 %, but comparable with the UK and below Norway's 77 %), [2] when discussing homeownership in the United States, we are really talking about "house" ownership, and consistent with this the...