WHY

Everyone agrees we are in the greatest economic mess since the great depression but there is no such agreement on how we get ourselves out of it. President Obama says that the federal government can and should play a major role. Most Americans would agree but not on which roles government should play. The president also says that each person must play a role, do our part. Again, we all seem to agree but where do we start?

Several years ago my wife and I were visiting friends in southwest Florida and they took us for a ride in their small boat past hundreds of million dollar plus waterside homes. There was no one home at virtually all these seaside mansions and it was during the winter tourist season. Our friends told us that these were “trophy homes” whose owners only visited for a few weeks of the year. Their real homes were elsewhere or perhaps in more than one other place. We were amazed but we should not have been. These McMansions are what economists call “positional goods”. That means that they are not essential to the person’s life but are purchased primarily to establish or enhance position or status with peers and business associates. Of course, they are rewarded with a generous tax credit that essentially comes as a subsidy from your tax dollars and mine. This one percent of super wealthy CEOs and “stars” have amassed almost half of America’s wealth and bought trillions of dollars of goods they did not need.

Anyone with any common sense or knowledge of history knows that a society that has such a large disparity of wealth and is based so heavily on the financial sector rather than the sectors that produce real products and services and is doomed for failure. What we should have seen behind those closed doors of unoccupied mansions and corporate boardrooms was a hollow unproductive destructive greed that was strangling the very soul of America. What happened instead is that too many of us fell for the lure of these “positional goods” that kept us up with the Jones. We bought houses that were half again as big as those built 30 years ago and bigger SUVs even though we have smaller families. We bought more clothes and household goods than we could possibly need from China and elsewhere while our countrymen and women were losing living wage jobs that were being shipped overseas so a few corporate giants could make more profits. We stopped shopping at small family owned local businesses and saved a few hundred dollars a year at the super stores until they were the only ones left in town. We worked longer hours, took shorter vacations and spent less time with our families to buy more stuff that we often did not really need. We watched as our schools gradually slipped in quality and our healthcare costs skyrocketed. We have played our small part in creating the Monster Economy that has swallowed up so many of our jobs, homes, pensions and small businesses.

How do we change direction for this great country that we love and which has such a richness of diversity and talent? We can start with those words “positional goods” again. Do we really need that bigger car or house or another one, or all those clothes, the newest electronic gadgets and other useless stuff that is inhabiting our closets, attics and basements that we did not have to buy from necessity but because someone else or what seemed like “everyone has it”? Do we have to buy all that expensive highly processed empty calorie food that is making us and our children obese and sick?

You might be thinking “How will this revive our economy?” Shouldn’t we be spending more rather than less? How about a different kind of spending, a true investment that can transform our lives and society, like buying more fresh local healthier food, taking vacations that are longer, less expensive and more frequent and truly revive and renew body, mind and spirit? How about using less energy at home, on the road and on the job? How about participating in the arts, athletics and nature, buying local well made items from craftspeople and small businesses rather than mass market, supporting community spaces and resources like, beaches, forests, schools, libraries, local markets and the tens of thousands of struggling community based organizations that provide healthcare, education, culture, counseling, recreation, mentors and healing of all sorts?

Yes, we need an economy that is properly regulated and at times like these stimulated by government but we all must look to ourselves and ask how we have been part of the problem, how we have given over our power to less noble values and leaders and how we can begin to reconnect to what is best in our spirit and true values.