Sociology 125 Lecture 8 Thursday, September 25, 2014 Consumerism

1. Sociology 125 Lecture 8 Thursday, September 25, 2014 Consumerism No Office Hours today

2. Definitions Consumerism: The belief that personal well-being, happiness and status depend largely on the level of personal consumption, particularly the acquisition of material goods. Hyper-consumerism: the frenetic pursuit of consumer goods

3. Growth in median size of new home construction in the U.S., 1963-2007

4. Construction of small and big houses, 1973-2012

5. What is wrong with consumerism?

6. What is wrong with consumerism? There are big negative externalities from consumerism Consumerism in fact does not make most people happy There are systematic biases in the system which generate consumerism. If these system-biases were eliminated, many – maybe most – people would adopt a less consumerist life style.

7. What is wrong with consumerism? There are big negative externalities from consumerism Consumerism in fact does not make most people happy There are systematic biases in the system which generate consumerism. If these system-biases were eliminated, many – maybe most – people would adopt a less consumerist life style.

8. What is wrong with consumerism? There are big negative externalities from consumerism Consumerism in fact does not make most people happy There are systematic biases in the system which generate consumerism. If these system-biases were eliminated, many – maybe most – people would adopt a less consumerist life style.

9. System bias #1: Market-failures in leisure

10. Number of hours more per year on average that Americans work than people in other countries, 2012 9.8 weeks 7.8 weeks 3.4 weeks 1.1 weeks

11. From Juliet Schor, The Overworked American, p. 130

13. Average actual weeks of paid vacation for full time workers

14. System bias #2: Profit maximizing strategies and consumerist culture

15. 2 weeks of time 1 week of time

16. Alternative views of the impact of advertising: Advertising mainly provides information about what is available: consumers are “free to choose;” their preferences remain autonomous (“consumer sovereignty”). Advertising creates shared desires and dissatisfactions: consumer preferences are not autonomous.

17. System bias #3: Changing reference group for consumption norms

18. System bias #4: Credit cards

19. Credit Cards & Consumer Debt • Consumer debt grew from $898 billion in 1980 to $2.4 trillion in 2011 • Average credit card balance for families with a balance grew from $3,312 in 1989 to $7,100 in 2010 (in 2013 inflation adjusted dollars) • U.S. households received a total of 7 billion credit card solicitations in 2006 (just before the Great Recession), falling to 2.6 billion in 2012.

20. System bias #5: Rising inequality increases consumerism: positional goods

21. System bias #6: Abandonment of public consumption by affluent