05This article is in today’s Salt Lake Tribune:
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LOGAN – Despite its aches and shakes and its sneezing and wheezing, the flu may not be the worst ailment to afflict Americans this winter.
That distinction instead could go to the so-called VISA virus or the buyer’s bacteria or the spender’s bender.
Taken together, Juliet Schor calls these maladies competitive consumptionism – and warns that it’s breaking us.
This desire to amass more and more trappings of the American dream is a full-blown epidemic with global consequences, says Schor, a Harvard professor and author of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need.
“The vast majority of Americans don’t know where their money goes,” Schor says in a DVD, “Get off the Consumer Escalator.” “If all this were making us deliriously happy, that would be one thing. But, in fact, what we find is that after intense desire to acquire goods, American are discarding them at record rates. Americans are literally drowning in stuff.”
Jean Lown, a professor in USU’s Family, Consumer and Human Development program, says the topic is timely because the holidays tempt consumers to buy even more.
Lown says the school’s program targets women because “they so desperately need
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Women generally live longer than men, she explains. They work outside the home more sporadically and often at jobs that offer no retirement benefits. And they are socialized to expect that a man is going to care for them financially. Yet statistics show most women are likely to be single at some time.
“They need to take responsibility for their financial stability,” Lown says, noting that achieving that goal is growing dicier as savings dwindle, mortgages swell and credit-card-debts balloon.
The past 30 years have brought a rise in the thirst for material goods across all income levels, Schor says. Keeping up with the Joneses is becoming keeping up with the Gateses.
“The small house with a white picket fence will no longer suffice. Comfort is no longer enough. People want luxury,” she says in the DVD. “Americans across the spectrum have started to emulate the affluent.”
To satisfy those yearnings, Americans average nine more work weeks a year than their Western counterparts and their lives are out of balance, says Schor, who also wrote The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure.
Smithfield resident Sabrina Peterson says the work-and-spend cycle ripples throughout the overall economy, affecting individual choices. “You can’t get the job if you’re not willing to work 45 hours a week,” Peterson laments.
In many cases, Schor notes, the pressure to work more and spend more leads to less – less time with family, less time with friends, less time for community.
Private consumption is even crowding out public amenities.
“We’ve had a tax revolt in which people are increasingly unwilling to fund schools, parks, arts and culture and other public goods,” Schor says in her presentation.
The Harvard professor adds that workaholic parents often compensate for time missed with their children by buying them toys, videos and luxury items.
“Consumerism becomes a substitute for human connection,” she says. “In today’s world, we work more hours and take on more debt in order to keep up with today’s consumption standard, and we’re really not getting anywhere.”
So what’s the antidote to the consumer craze?
Lown recommends a dose of common sense.
“I sound like a broken record,” she says, urging consumers to avoid malls, toss catalogs and fashion magazines, and click off Internet shopping sites. Most important, she adds, turn off the tube.
“TV is an advertising-conveyance mechanism,” Lown says. “The programs are secondary to advertising.”
And her advice to counter the holiday hoopla?
“I encourage people, before they start planning for the holidays and gift giving, to really think about their values. Set a very specific dollar limit for how much you’re willing to spend and use cash. If they’re already not paying off their credit cards at the end of each month, they better set a very, very low limit.”
Seminar attendee Kay Hansen, who has worked as a financial counselor, concedes the pressure to work and spend is overwhelming.
“The only solution is for people to make the decision on their own,” Hansen says. “The answer is pretty simple, but nobody wants to deal with it.”
abrunson@sltrib.com
Stepping off the consumer escalator
Tips from participants at “Financial Planning for Women” events hosted at Utah State University. For more information, go to http://www.usu.edu./fpw.
* If you decide to buy something, sleep on it first.
* Discuss consumer-spending values with family and friends.
* Use cash, not credit cards and checks.
* Turn off the TV.
* Avoid the mall.
* Toss out the catalogs and fashion magazines.
* Avoid Web shopping sites.
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 
