Generous News

Time - While the bankruptcy filing rate for those under 55 has fallen, it has soared for older Americans, according to a new analysis from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, which examined a sampling of noncommercial bankruptcies filed between 1991 and 2007.

http://tinyurl.com/6gcsfy

Seattle Times – In a land where people are implored to shop as an expression of patriotism, where little girls can attend summer camp cruising the stores of a mall and where the average credit-card holder is $1,673 behind in payments, buying things in the United States is more than a hunt for daily provisions. It’s a national pastime, a form of therapy, a means of self-expression.  But for more than 1 in 20 Americans, shopping is something darker. A study published in the October 2006 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry found that at some point in the lives of an estimated 5.8 percent of the U.S. population, shopping will become a source of shame, a cry for help, the cause of job losses and broken relationships, a road to financial ruin.

http://tinyurl.com/68gwtj

US News and World Report - Today America finds itself at a once-or-twice-a-century economic tipping point. A sharp slowdown, record-high gas prices, high consumer debt levels, a plunging real estate market, and the growing green movement all seem to be conspiring to dethrone King Consumer and transform the economy and the American way of life for years to come. “The process of bringing our wants and our needs into realignment,” says Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg, “is going to involve years of savings and frugality.” Or, to put more it more simply, “there is an anti-bling thing going on,” says Marian Salzman, chief marketing officer of Porter Novelli.\

http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/economy/2008/08/08/the-end-of-credit-card-consumerism.html

International News from Pakistan - Today, it is difficult to escape the advertising that assails us everywhere, urging, indeed insisting, we borrow money from a bank. Whether it is to buy a new car, to refurbish a room, to go on holiday or to buy jewellery, the billboards, the television ads and the newspaper spreads insist a loan will lead the way to a better, more up-market life. Debt is glamorous, we are told.  Patrick’s 2 cents – short article that highlights the impact of advertising in creating debt-fueled consumption in Pakistan.  I support a missionary in Pakistan that serves the poor there….hardly think about the impact of the advertising industry there.  

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=126618

The photo is huge – five feet tall, ten feet across. The image is a soft, pleasing pattern in blacks and grays. But get up close and you suddenly recognize it’s a jumbled pile of cell phones. 426,000, in fact. That’s the number of cell phones Americans get rid of each day. Photographer Chris Jordan manipulates images of mundane objects — made abstract by their sheer volume — to illustrate the impacts of American consumerism.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

New York Times - America once had a culture of thrift. But over the past decades, that unspoken code has been silently eroded.  Some of the toxins were economic. Rising house prices gave people the impression that they could take on more risk. Some were cultural. We entered a period of mass luxury, in which people down the income scale expect to own designer goods. Some were moral. Schools and other institutions used to talk the language of sin and temptation to alert people to the seductions that could ruin their lives. They no longer do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/opinion/22brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

The American – Will plunging profits soon spell the end of Sears, Roebuck and Company? The 122-year-old retail giant virtually created modern American consumerism.  The company helped launch America’s credit card culture by offering the first charge card in 1953.  Patrick’s 2 cents – Fascinating and quick read on how Sears helped bring an end to “mom and pop” merchants through mail order and how other companies are now bringing an end to Sears through niche focus.  Now that I think about it, I haven’t shopped at Sears in forever.

http://www.american.com/archive/2008/july-07-08/tears-for-sears

Boston.com - The Villages, in Florida, is the largest gated retirement development in the world – or, put another way, a giant playpen for people 55 and older.  It consists of 75,000 people who have freed themselves from the obligations of citizenship in order to exercise the privilege of absolute consumerism.  ”For me it was love at first sight….. I can only equate it to the movie The Stepford Wives. Everyone has a smile on their face like it’s too good to be true. But it really is.”

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/06/29/i_spend_therefore_i_am/