American Consumers and the Economy's Future

The Times has a pretty interesting round table of academics talking about what the world economy is going to do with American consumers not spending. It's not pretty. Of course, it was all a chimera anyway because this spending was fueled by unsustainable debt and an absurd housing bubble. I do want to focus on a couple of the individual participants in the round table though. A few of them blame China for not spending or for keeping the yuan so devalued. I say, whatever. It's not as if the U.S. hasn't gamed the situation in the past for their advantage. I have a hard time buying this line of reasoning; moreover, it doesn't get us anywhere.

Lawrence Glickman, a historian, rightfully suggests that America's relationship with thrift is pretty tenuous at best. We start buying as soon as we can and we pretty much always have. I think this is true. If American history tells us anything about this crisis, it's that we will start shopping the second we feel stable in our jobs.

However, I'm not sure this isn't a different kind of crisis than any before in American history. I think Glickman is correct, but I'm not sure we will see the same result. That's not because of any change in Americans' attitude, quite the contrary. Rather, let me quote the sociologist Juliet Schor:

But relying on a consumer boom is foolhardly for a much deeper reason. Our problem is not a shortage of walk-in closets, cell phones or calories. We’re up against climate de-stabilization, and we can no longer deny that business-as-usual growth has brought us to the brink of catastrophe. We have about five years to get serious about a low-carbon economy, and start expeditiously transforming our dirty energy, food and transport systems. In standard economic terms, what this means is that we need to ramp up investment, rather than consumption.

Right, and on top of the environmental catastrophe we face are peak resource issues. Even if the economy does make a full recovery, the fact that we are running out of oil and any number of important minerals means that commodity prices will rise right along with the recovery. It seems pretty self-evident that scarcity is going to undermine any recovery. Perhaps not immediately, but within a few years. I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that most economists and financiers have not come up with useful answers to this crisis. Certainly in this round table (a limited sample size if there ever was one) the historian and the sociologist make a heck of a lot more sense than the economists do.

What we do about this intractable problem, I have no idea.

Watch this Movie

Some of you have porobably already seen this, but I was recently reminded of how great this short movie is: http://storyofstuff.com/
This is something I think about a lot: where stuff comes from. I think this video does a really great job of showing the whole system of production and consumption, especially how we are tricked into buying new things all the time. Annie Leonard divides the "story of stuff" into a few categories: extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. In class we did a small activity to see what specific examples we could add to each different stage of the story. Not surprisingly, we had a much harder time finding personal examples to extraction, production, and distribution. However, consumption was not hard for us to talk about at all. It's obvious where we are most involved along this process, and it's exactly where the producers want us to be. The reason it is hard to think about everything that happens before we see the products is because advertising and the media works so that we only see what we want to see and we can ignore everything that went into making our favorite stuff. Thank you. I would like to think that if the extraction and production processes were more visible to us that people would make different consumer choices, but I don't think that would actually happen. Most people only want to see their favorite things in the stores and they don't care how they got there.

Açaí, or, the Latest Fad for Get-Rich Companies to Rip Off Americans, While Brazilians Know Better

Without having to think too hard about it, I can safely say that açaí is my favorite of all Brazilian food items. Made from the açaí berry, açaí is a delicious, thick, purple, smoothie-like drink that has a really rich flavor, and mixes wonderfully with strawberries, bananas, and/or granola. It is especially excellent in the Brazilian heat, when it's too hot to eat a big meal - it's nice and cool, and the relatively high (for fruit) calorie count keeps you going for quite awhile without leaving you wishing you were dead with a full stomach in the heat. It's apparently also full of anti-oxidants, which is great, but I don't eat it because of the health benefits. I eat it because it is unbelievably good.

That said, Randy is right about overstated (or simply false) claims of what açaí can do. He touches upon this, but the one thing I would add is that this seems to me a strictly American phenomenon. Not once have I heard anybody in Brazil, doctors, producers, nutritionists, anybody, extolling the virtues of açaí that I've heard people make about it in the U.S. In Brazil, it's a good energy-drink that, like any fruit, has some health benefits. Beyond that, Brazilians across the board extol the drink for its taste and refreshing qualities, and not much more. There are no claims that açaí helps your joints, makes you look younger, or helps you lose weight.

These claims being made by American companies producing açaí-based products are, simply put, borderline bullshit. They are simply trying to capitalize on a particular cultural mentality in the U.S. that is always trying to find the next no-effort, quick-result way to look younger/feel better/be healthier, all without having to actually do the work required to achieve those results (save for the quixotic and stupid quest to "look younger" - sorry, America, you simply cannot reverse the aging process). These companies know that we will spend almost limitless amounts of money to achieve vanity projects with no work whatsoever. The fact that American companies are pushing products with açaí in them for $86 dollars and upwards is just more reason to believe that the only way these products actually help you "lose weight" is by taking even more money out of your wallet. The fact that these products don't even exist in Brazil should cement the case against them.

So Americans, do what Brazilians - who grow açaí and kind of know a lot about what it can do and can't - do: enjoy açaí for its great taste and refreshing qualities, and don't expect any more.