Always beware of simple explanations
Sep. 29th, 2009 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzilla, especially if they feed into unexamined moralisms and half-cocked accusations.
Amanda Marcotte pointed to a Matt Yglesias postabout "the orgy of consumption", the narrative that tells us that people in the 2000s are living beyond their means because they spend too much on electronic gizmos like iPods and giant TVs. Matt examines numbers from someone named William Galston, who fulminates over the fact that "personal consumption", which had been stable as a portion of the USA GDP at 62% for the thirty years leading up to 1980, rose to 69.8% of GDP by 2008. Matt points out that almost all of that increase occurred in the 1980s--up 4%--and relatively little in the 2000s--up less than 1%.
Amanda pointed out that Galston's characterization of the "orgy of consumption"* is a sharply moralistic, and stupid, narrative.
*Let me just say, if I do ever go to an orgy, I don't want it to be with TB sufferers. No offense.
As she says, this is a narrative that comes up again and again. Poor people shouldn't have televisions or cell phones because... well, they just shouldn't. Never mind that a television is a great investment--a one-time expense that delivers free (if frequently crappy) entertainment and (usually crappy) news into one's house. Of course, a computer can be even better, but in most places, a really useful computer requires an ongoing expense--network connectivity. (It shouldn't surprise anyone that I favor the various free wireless networking for all proposals.)
Anyway. One of the things people love to do is pathologize other people. People who have spent themselves into bankruptcy over medical bills, or house payments, aren't by that fact undeserving of some of the luxuries that people lucky enough to still be solvent enjoy.
ETA, 30 Sept: Professor Krugman makes some of the same points in a post today. He rags on David Brooks for taking precisely the moralizing tone I described. He says:
Amanda Marcotte pointed to a Matt Yglesias postabout "the orgy of consumption", the narrative that tells us that people in the 2000s are living beyond their means because they spend too much on electronic gizmos like iPods and giant TVs. Matt examines numbers from someone named William Galston, who fulminates over the fact that "personal consumption", which had been stable as a portion of the USA GDP at 62% for the thirty years leading up to 1980, rose to 69.8% of GDP by 2008. Matt points out that almost all of that increase occurred in the 1980s--up 4%--and relatively little in the 2000s--up less than 1%.
Amanda pointed out that Galston's characterization of the "orgy of consumption"* is a sharply moralistic, and stupid, narrative.
It's interesting to me, because a lot of the discourse about who is "deserving" and not that always pops up when something like health care becomes a national issue focuses on resenting lower income people for having small luxuries like iPods, cable TV, or good shoes. But dwelling on consumer electronics is an increasingly stupid tool to stir up this sort of resentment, because these electronics are really cheap in the scheme of things, and give people a lot of return on their money. Really, if people have a TV and video game system that keeps them in with their friends, that's a lot cheaper in the long run that hitting the bars. Hell, it's cheaper even if they're still drinking the same amount while they play video games. Buying this sort of at-home entertainment is exactly the long term economic thinking that lower income folks are often accused of not displaying. The ugly truth is that an iPod is rarely going to be the difference between whether you can keep paying rent or not, and it has no impact on your ability to pay outrageous medical bills, if you get sick.
*Let me just say, if I do ever go to an orgy, I don't want it to be with TB sufferers. No offense.
As she says, this is a narrative that comes up again and again. Poor people shouldn't have televisions or cell phones because... well, they just shouldn't. Never mind that a television is a great investment--a one-time expense that delivers free (if frequently crappy) entertainment and (usually crappy) news into one's house. Of course, a computer can be even better, but in most places, a really useful computer requires an ongoing expense--network connectivity. (It shouldn't surprise anyone that I favor the various free wireless networking for all proposals.)
Anyway. One of the things people love to do is pathologize other people. People who have spent themselves into bankruptcy over medical bills, or house payments, aren't by that fact undeserving of some of the luxuries that people lucky enough to still be solvent enjoy.
ETA, 30 Sept: Professor Krugman makes some of the same points in a post today. He rags on David Brooks for taking precisely the moralizing tone I described. He says:
David points out, correctly, that something changed around 1980 -- that consumers started spending a larger share of national income and that debt began increasing. ...
Reagan did it... the surge in household debt can largely be attributed to financial deregulation. So what happened? Did we lose our economic morality? No, we were the victims of politics.
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Date: 2009-09-30 03:27 am (UTC)Wolverines!
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Date: 2009-09-30 03:49 am (UTC)