Some of the best advice I ever received regarding marriage came at a religious convention that I attended where the audience was encouraged to lead a simple life, being content with the necessities of life: food, shelter, and clothing. They interviewed a young married couple who was working hard to acquire all of the things that their parents had: a nice home, big TV, new vehicles, etc. To them, these material things would secure and define their newly formed family unit. But after feeling the burden of these pursuits and going into heavy debt, they realized that it had taken their parents 40 years to accumulate all of those things. It really is unreasonable to think that in 6 months to a year, you could accomplish the same feat. My husband and I took this to heart and have lived with the same 13" color television set for 13 years before upgrading to the 27" flat screen—which we paid for in cash. Taking the focus off of things has allowed us to focus on our relationship. We attribute the whole success of our marriage to this lesson. I can’t recall a single argument about money.
Our society in general bombards us with the message that more is more, and more is never enough. The whole world is chasing after what they can never secure. Lesson learned: Less is more. Living simply means living happily.
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Corporatism depends heavily on consumption.
ReplyDeleteConsumption depends heavily on people with wealth or credit.
We've gone through a period in time when people were enticed to buy goods on credit if they didn't have disposable cash. A wise person would simply not make the purchase.
Our current economic problems have made people wise. Reckless consumption is down which results in people being layed off.
The ship started to take on water following the exportation of good paying middle-class jobs. To feed Wall Street, goods would be made in Mexico but the price to the consumer would remain unchanged.
Jobs went away, prices stayed the same, profits went to brokers, traders, investors, marketers, and media companies.
Runaway fraud took control of the housing market and prices shot up. Easy credit fueled greater consumption but without good paying jobs or many people who'd amassed wealth the economy would eventually crash.
Anyhow, I'm beginning to ramble on but I know the value of having people comment on our blogs. At times I think I'm writing to myself until I see my hosting server stats.
Steven Thompson, editor
Freedom From The Press