Hyperconsumption, global warming, and the fall of basic-goods buying power among the middle class

Hyperconsumption, global warming, and the fall of basic-goods buying power among the middle class

By Richard Clark


A growing percentage of the work most people do these days is necessary only to produce, market, sell, consume and dispose of products and services that are increasingly superfluous. Compare this to the ever lesser amount of work people do to produce those products and services that are of basic or fundamental importance and that meet basic needs.

Now ask yourself this: If (somehow), anyone who wanted to, could join with others of like mind, to work only as much as it took to efficiently and cooperatively produce basic goods and services, and take their fair share, then no one who wanted just these basic things -- housing, food staples, utilities, education, basic health care -- would have to work more than 20 hours a week, 8-9 months a year in order to get these basics.

Obviously most people would, to one extent or another, want more than these basics, and to the extent they did, they could of course work at other jobs to get the money to buy what they wanted. The point is that no one would any longer be forced to work full time, 11 months of the year, in the production of the environmentally damaging superfluous, in order to get all their basic needs met (including health care) in some adequate way.

As several surveys have shown, most people (Caucasians at least) were happier in the 50s and early 60s (when average consumption and incomes were much less) than they are today. So, has all this increased personal consumption benefitted us as much as we think it has? And at what cost to us and the environment has it been provided?


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is kind of a blueprint for my philosophy. If you have not read Walden you should give it a try.

We are working ourselves to death and for what? So we can buy more stuff and have to work more to pay for it.

It's chilling to see how much it parallels this report and how and possibly why the economy is being driven this way.

I live a pretty basic life but my work is interesting and creative. Of course, I'm very, very lucky and have worked long, hard years to get to this point. Still, I'm not sure I'd trade my self-employment in for this scenario.

The philosophy can be coined in one short observation:

"I work to live. But you live to work."

More and more, Americans are rearranging their lives around work instead of their lives on the simple notion of living and finding happiness with work merely as a means to that end.

We have been turned from a nation of active citizens to passive consumers in a nation where cash is king.