How We Can Live with Less and Still Feel Rich

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



How We Can Live with Less and Still Feel Rich

By David Villano, Miller-McCune.com. Posted December 24, 2008.

Here's how government can help curb America's seemingly endless appetite for "more."



On a sunny weekday morning late last spring at the Mall at 163 St. in North Miami Beach, Fla., in the parking lot outside The Home Depot, Hector Portillo is loading an LG Electronics window air conditioner into his Ford F-150 pickup. Portillo, a 34-year-old who emigrated from Cuba 12 years ago, says the $279 unit (on sale) will replace a smaller one in his family's two-bedroom apartment.

The rest of the tax rebate check he just received -- a tiny part of the $152 billion economic stimulus Congress approved this year -- will soften the blow of high gasoline prices and other day-to-day expenses, including new clothes for his two children and, perhaps, a necklace for his wife. "We're supposed to spend it, right?" he says, smiling.

Inside the mall at the discount clothing retailer Steve & Barry's, Janice Jenkins is shopping for a new outfit. She used part of her $600 tax rebate to pay down credit card debt, but now she's holding two pairs of backless shoes and a blouse; three flower-print sundresses designed by Sarah Jessica Parker are draped over her shoulder. Each item -- like nearly everything in the store -- is just $8.98. "I needed a new dress," says Jenkins, a 26-year-old nursing assistant. "For that price, why not three?"

A good deal, indeed, and perhaps a short-term boost to the economy. But as designer sundresses fill our closets, the world drifts deeper into what environmental economists are calling "ecological deficit." Simply put, too much of the Earth's biosphere is engaged in production and not enough is set aside to regenerate and to accommodate the resultant waste. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/114966/how_we_can_live_with_less_and_still_feel_rich_

[Mari333]

1. my dad taught me years ago that money has nothing to do with wealth

he would take us out into the woods and show us the trees and say 'they are free'..show us the sunset and say 'its free', help us collect rocks and leaves, play tag with us, pull us in the sleigh, help us skate on ice, roll down grassy hills with us, tickle us, chase the dog with us, build tree forts with us, watch thunderstorms roll in from the front porch with us, and tell us..
its all free. he said "thats the wealth."
and it still is.
thanks dad.

[pitohui]

3. your dad must have lived in a pre health care type world

i was taught that the greatest wealth is your health

and the reality is that health is something you buy, without modern tech life expectancy is in yr forties

i have struggled really hard to live so long and i am under no illusion that my life and what health i have were purchased with money that buys technology

i can't buy my medicine w. a tree, when a relative is sick and calls me to drum up money for an operation, i don't feel rich when i can't help her even tho i can still stroll in a few (very few, thanks to ronald reagan) public parks for free

[pitohui]

2. the complete piece is broken up into too many irritating clicks to read

that said, if you want to curb america's desire to spend, spend, spend, here's my suggestion -- universal health care

why? well, stop and think about it, in the world as it is, once i get sick i will lose everything i have, my house, my ability to help others, my car, everything, because health care costs more than i can earn in a lifetime of work

so...i might as well buy the $300 versace jeans, i might as well buy the $300 bottle of wine, there is no incentive to conserve and save because the minute i'm in a serious accident or the minute i'm dx'd w. cancer the party stops and i lose everything -- as an uninsurable person i have no SANE choice as a consumer except to spend, spend, spend, use it all, get it all now

maybe the chick wouldn't be buying the sjp sundresses if she thought it made SENSE to conserve and save for the future, but it doesn't

what do i get out of saving and conserving for the future other than a kick in the head and another kick in the ass?

the money i saved and donated to charity was thrown away by madoff and the hedge funds, the money i blew at least gave me a few memories

that's our problem

if we had a SOCIETY, if we took care of our own, if we had universal health care, then fine tell me how to live with less and be happy

right now living with less means i'm dx'd w. a tumor and can't afford treatment other than witchcraft (which actually happened to me years ago), living w. less means my buddy is dx'd w. a brain tumor and can't afford the surgery, living w. less means well...it means we die so we gots to live for today and spend while we have it and we'd be a lot more invested in saving the world if we thought the world gave one little tiny damn about us

just my humble opinion but i hope you will consider it

i think many of society's so-called spendthrifts and irresponsibles have a reason for what they do...if you are going down on the titanic, go first class, as paul erhlich himself once said

there are 40 something million americans w.out health care, they are not all homeless bums, give them a reason and an incentive to be part of society instead of the kick in the head and you might be surprised

[enlightenment]

4. Interesting article, though more

ivory tower academic than real life. Some good ideas, but not sense of how they might actually be accomplished. Suggesting that we need to reroute evolutionary drives, for example, and citing 'cheating on your spouse and enslaving your enemies' is almost laughable since we haven't managed to accomplish rewiring humans to stop either one of the cited behaviours.

A bit of built-in hypocrisy doesn't help either; I have to admit that my first thought on reading this:

Maniates, 50, a joint professor of political science and environmental science at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, may be the nation's leading authority on the politics of consumption. On funded leave this past year, Maniates spent much of his time writing and speaking to academic audiences around the country, making the case that the battle against climate change (and the related challenges of resource depletion and environmental degradation) will be won or lost not through government edict but when people choose lifestyles that lead to real reductions in how much they spend, acquire, drive and, in general, consume. And those reductions, he insists, must be substantive, not superficial symbols like recycling newspapers or switching to low-watt light bulbs. He's trying to shift the public discourse away from these baby steps of conservation and toward what is, to many, the unthinkable: steep, absolute declines in per-capita consumption of oil, food, minerals, timber products, fresh water and other finite resources.

was, 'I wonder how he gets to all those academic audiences'? I doubt it's on mule-back . . . probably business class in a series of airplanes. Jetting all over the country so he can tell people that they need to make 'steep, absolute declines' in their consumption of fossil fuels.

[Hannah Bell]

5. Tell it to the top 1% who consumes 25% of income & owns 40-50% of total wealth.

Otherwise, it's just "shut up & be grateful while we take more from you."