If you look at what you have in life, you'll always have more. If you look at what you don't have in life, you'll never have enough.
OPRAH WINFREY
I am not a fan of Oprah Winfrey, but I find myself agreeing with her in the quotation above. I recently came across these two items that have been on my mind the last couple of days:
18 Statistics That Reveal How Consumeristic Our Culture Has Become
Something Is Happening in America… The Cost of Living Is Pushing People Too Far
The first comes from Joshua Becker and is a condemnation of our consumerist society and its excesses with telling stats to back up what he's saying. According to Becker, we have too much stuff. The second is a video that is a collection of people whining that they don't have enough. Which is the true story? Are we drowning in abundance and excess? Or, are we barely getting by?
The reality is that our society works too little and consumes too much. Most of the whining in the video amounts to lamenting the need to work more hours and take on second jobs while tightening the belt on expenses. Implied in that whining is that older generations never had to do this sort of thing, but this isn't true.
My greatest generation grandfather worked two jobs in his day to support his family of five children. Additionally, all five of those kids had to work even before they left high school. I don't recall my grandparents living lavish lifestyles. I can't say the same for the Boomers that came later. There was a real contrast between Great Depression survivors and Baby Boomers. The Great Depression generation looked at what they had. The Baby Boomers looked at what they didn't have and went after it. Since people adjust more readily to luxury than adversity, this has set up an expectation in our society of living a Boomer lifestyle instead of a Great Depression lifestyle. Since the economics can no longer support this insanity, our present culture lives larger and more indebted than the preceding generations.
My wife points out that despite the inflation, sky high rents and mortgage payments, student loan debts, and whatnot that nobody is actually hurting. We see people going on cruises and vacationing at Disneyworld while driving brand new cars that cost a fortune along with various toys like boats, motorcycles, and campers parked outside their McMansions. We had a time like this once before in American history. It was called the Roaring 20s. People lived large until the bottom fell out. This led to the Great Depression. This country needs a second Great Depression to relearn the lessons.
The first and most basic lesson is that people need to reject the 40 hour work week. This was based on the flawed idea that a man needs 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, and 8 hours of leisure and recreation each day. 8 hours of goof off time each day can only lead to poverty as this leads to less income and greater consumption. Much of this consumption comes in the form of drinking alcoholic beverages. The simple fact is that idleness leads to consumption and vice as people try to alleviate their boredom.
It's hard to be bored if you're working all the time. This is why I believe in the biblical pattern of 12/6 in opposition to 8/5 and 24/7. Basically, if you are able bodied, you should aim for a maximum of working 12 hours a day for 6 days per week. The seventh day is a day for rest and worship. As for leisure, you still get 4 hours per day and can still sleep eight hours per night. The idea of working 72 hours per week is outrageous and extreme to many people, but I believe this was the historic norm for farmers and laborers going back for centuries.
Our culture has become conditioned to having both the time and the money for a life of leisure. This has become unsustainable, so people have resorted to credit to keep buying things they can't afford and don't need. This drives up the prices on everything. This is why private equity firms charge so much because our self-indulgent society has sent the signal to them that it can and will pay for these excesses.
The second most basic lesson is that people need to get back to a balanced and more common sense view of the purpose of leisure. Leisure and days of rest are when we take our break from our labors to reconnect with the Lord through prayer and worship and spending time with our families. Under the 12/6 program, the working man has a total of 40 hours each week not devoted to work or sleep. That is plenty of time to go to church, eat a family meal, go for a walk, read a book, watch a TV program, and on and on.
Leisure becomes unbalanced when people think that free time requires expensive toys and past times. The most notorious of these would be the game of golf which seems designed for no greater purpose than to separate men from their families and their faith and the cash from their wallets. That is one of the things that separated Great Depression survivors from the Boomers. I don't recall my grandfather ever playing golf or even desiring to play the game.
Excessive leisure is the genesis of our consumerist culture. Most leisure is nearly free. It costs so little to have so much pleasure and fun. But people reject playing catch with their kids in favor of paying for golf. They reject a day in the park for the week at Disney. They reject the book from the library in favor of the various subscription streaming services and the $1000+ flagship smartphone. The irony is that all of these costly forms of leisure leave people more dissatisfied than ever. Yet, to suggest that these people go back to simpler forms of leisure and entertainment is to be met with howls of indignation over the "suffering" that would entail.
The antidote for our times is a return to hard work and simple living. This sounds quaint and even unbelievable to people who are "struggling" today. You have to remember how we got to this place. If people saw the lifestyles of the Great Depression survivors instead of the Boomers as the historical norm, they wouldn't have any problems getting by today. The lie is that this present generation has it tougher than our forebears. The reality is that it is self-inflicted. As Oprah put it, people look at what they don't have in life and feel that it is never enough.
I can make a lot of points about high taxes and the Federal Reserve debasing our currency with money printing. Yet, all of this becomes a moot point when you consider how people borrow that money for their consumerism and repay it with double digit interest. People risk homelessness because they insist on living in a McMansion. For every economic malady, there is a personal dimension that comes with it. Often, the malady gets cured when people decide they are not going to play the game anymore. You can call it minimalism, voluntary poverty, or simple living. The consumerist game ends when you stop playing it.
Most people don't and won't stop playing the game until they are forced out of it. I know people who lost homes in the 2007 housing collapse who are back in the same situation again. That is the saddest tale which is the simple fact that people don't learn the lessons of hard work and simple living.