"Modern consumer demand, at the margin, does not originate from within the individual, but is a consequence of production. It has two origins:
- Emulation: the desire to keep abreast of, or ahead of one's peer group — demand originating from this motivation is created indirectly by production. Every effort to increase production to satiate want brings with it a general raising of the level of consumption, which itself increases want.
- Advertising: the direct influence of advertising and salesmanship create new wants which the consumer did not previously possess. Any student of business has by now come to view marketing as fundamental a business activity as production. Any want that can be significantly moulded by advertising cannot possibly have been strongly felt in the absence of that advertising — advertising is powerless to persuade a man that he is or is not hungry."
(Special kudos to all my brilliant Facebook friends who helped me zero in on this quote. Note to self: having smart friends way beats sitting through 4-8 years of exhaustive university education...)
This is an easy year for me to write these thoughts, my income being approximately 60% of 2008's which was approximately 60% of 2007's, which was fortunately a very good year or we'd be standing on a street corner with cardboard signs. I went out and shopped a little today, was gratified that the mall didn't seem disgustingly crowded nor traffic intolerably bad. Some of this feeling on my part might be attributable to my more mellow disposition after more than 6 months of continuous sobriety and extensive therapy, but most I believe is due to the fact that we Americans have been well and truly whacked upside our collective head with a stout cudgel of economic reality, and are in an appropriately defensive posture. Good on us, and about time I say...
Galbraith published this book in 1958, the year my overly fertile mother birthed me as the fourth of what would eventually be five children. It was not uncommon for families to have only one car, while two was a status symbol. Dishwashers and clothes dryers were still tres chic, and women working outside the home were a rarity, at least in my suburban middle class childhood. Also rare were credit cards, charge accounts, frivolous bank loans, low-interest zero down mortgages, and a whole array of devices contrived jointly by marketers and financiers to encourage American consumers into colossal fiscal irresponsibility. And it is from that tree that the cudgel was formed with which we have been whacked and which leaves us woozy and somewhat unwilling to reach for our pocketbooks this festive season. Well, again, good on us I say!
I will have to come back at some other time after I've zeroed in on the source, to share another economic notion of the Eisenhower-Kennedy era, namely that virtually all our society's actual needs had been met, and all that remained to drive increased production, consumer spending, corporate profits, etc, were wants, either real or created by marketers. Hence, we had the advent heyday of Madison Avenue, the onset of the grotesque commercialization of Christmas (and now other holidays as well), and the current AMC hit, Mad Men (which I've never watched, but am considering as treadmill fare as I grow weary of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, Miranda, Big, the screaming baby, et al...)
At my Saturday morning AA meeting, one fellow was sharing his Christmas memories from his childhood spent with his mother and step-father, when times were rough enough that the family members all crafted presents for each other, wrapped them in butcher paper decorated with poster paints, and placed them under the tree. He was smiling when he told the story, and remembering the simple joys of family and sharing and having everything they needed. I remember Christmases like that myself - still regularly use the boot jack my brother made for me in the family workshop more than thirty years ago now...
I don't really have a problem with Christmas as a concept, but what it's become holds no appeal for me, and hasn't in some time. As my children are grown and soon to be on their own, I am glad that they've enjoyed some of the sparse Christmases our conditions have provided, and am pleased that they don't much associate spending and getting with love and sharing. I can't help but think that their attitudes toward Christmas are likely much nearer those that old Saint Nicholas had in mind when he purportedly started all this business a millennium ago.
Speaking of Saint Nicholas, who else out there finds Bill Bennett to be an insufferable pompous ass? Happy Holiday all!
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