Consumerism Causes Unhappiness Essay -- Cause and Effect Essays

Theresa H., a woman in Massachusetts was, inarguably, strapped. She had lost her $18,000-a-year job several months earlier, and her live-in boyfriend didn't earn much. Health insurance for her and her daughters was out of reach: "I just punt and hope we're healthy," she said. And yet, in her apartment, were the trappings of upper-middle-class comfort. The big-screen TV and VCR. The crush of name-brand toys. And outside, the fairly new Lincoln Town Car--for which she was several months behind on payments. The tableau was at once absurd and sad--but not altogether surprising. We are, after all, a nation of accomplished spenders, slaves to advertising and status symbolism. The conspicuous fruits of our consumption shout out our aspirations and insecurities. This is the phenomenon Juliet Schor explores in The Overspent American. Schor, a University economist, has delivered what amounts to a sequel to her breakthrough 1992 study, The Overworked American. That book, justifiably embraced as gospel by the human-resources intelligentsia, expertly documented the time squeeze faced by two-income families as hours on the job expanded. Americans' leisure time, Schor demonstrated, was vanishing. Why are we killing ourselves this way? In large part, Schor argues now, we work so that we might spend. Americans are engaged in an intensifying "national shopping spree" rooted in competitive emulation--keeping up with the Joneses on a manic scale. "We are impoverishing ourselves," she writes, "in pursuit of a consumption goal that is inherently unachievable." Corrosive consumerism, of course, has existed as long as envy and avarice. Look at the pharaohs' pyramids. And much of Schor's evidence of its current manifestation will seem bl... ...lator." Much of our spending clearly is unnecessary or wasteful, raising troubling moral questions. Moreover, the uphill pursuit of material nirvana is stressing us out. Amid widespread wealth, most Americans aren't content with their lives. Is that such a terrible thing? I'm ambivalent. Ambition, dissatisfaction with the status quo, a desire to improve our lots and those of our children--these are profoundly American, if not universal, traits. They have driven us to stunning accomplishments and global leadership, and few would want the alternative of complacency and stasis. Yet we spend more than we should on Armani and OshKosh B'gosh, and it's making us crazy. Schor would have us on a middle path, one that retains the ardor but loses the insanity. Perhaps it's worth a try. Source Cited Schor, Juliet B. The Overspent American. Boston College Press, 2002.