New Politics of Consumption

The reading was about the rise of consumption in America. According to Juliet Schor, the "good life" is attained by comfortable middle class standard of living and the income equals well being. But i becomes harder to achieve a good standard of living due to the longer hours of jobs, spending more because of pressure, and jobs becoming less secure.
The Economic Policy Institution focuses on distribution of wealth by giving more income to people to re-distrubtion wealth and growth. But more income leads to more consumption which worsens income in turn, because it creates social inequalities. It's all about the quality of life not the quantity of what you have.
The "new consumerism" is an upscale lifestyle norm that has people competing in consumerism to keep up with social norms. The idea of luxury is a widespread goal that people want to attain. For example, in the 50's and 60's there was the show "Keeping Up With The Joneses" was a show that showed the idea of luxury.
American's basically don't know how lucky they have it. The ideology of non interference applies to consumerism because it means that one should be able to buy what they like, where one likes, and as much as they want. This ties into the liberal view which is, consumers are rational, well-informed, consistent, independent from others, they have "no external effects" on consumption, and their consumption is complete and competitive.



This picture I found reminded me of the credit card passage in the reading because the saying "If the size of credit cards were in proportion to credit card debt" then maybe people would not be in denial about how much debt they have. If people have a credit card and see the logo they are more likely to spend it, according to psychologists.

Furthermore, American's live in a dream world where we consume any kind of commodity we can find.