In cyberspace, everybody can hear you whine. Todd Henderson, a professor of law and a man with less money in the bank than he would like, found this out the hard way. The Chicago academic recently complained in a blog post that he and his wife, a surgeon, struggled to get by on US$250,000 (Dh918,225) a year. As a result, Professor Henderson was especially peeved that US president Barak Obama intended to hike taxes for the rich, a category into which he and his wife reluctantly fitted.
His complaint went viral, inspiring derision and contempt, including a stinging rebuke from the economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, who called him "Chicago professor of whining". Professor Henderson has since pulled his blog post and apologised. Professor Henderson may well have a justifiable grievance. After all, nobody likes giving the government money. But his experience, and the anger it generated from the vast majority of Americans who must do with considerably less, may have brought home to him the importance living within your means. This is a concept that many of us are having to learn all over again following the credit binge of the past decade.
The rich have always lived well. Henry VIII collected castles, wives, and occasionally, pieces of France. The de Medicis grew fat on banking. The Romanovs kept little baskets of diamonds to show off to guests, before the Bolsheviks had them dragged off to be shot. So the wealthy have always been with us and as long as they have, they've bought things. What has changed, however, is mass consumerism.
Since the Second World War, it has been possible for the hoi palloi to live in a way their ancestors could only dream about. Goods once affordable to only a small privileged elite became everyday items. This happened because our great-great grandparents gave up the pleasures of trudging behind an ox-drawn plough all day for a place on a production line. Industrialisation made goods plentiful and cheap. And these same workers would spill out of their factories at the end of the shift and use their wages to buy the very goods they helped to put together.
And, like a fungus on a particularly fecund patch of damp bread, advertising men arose to help convince us that we should indeed be spending our money on these items. For our pre-consumer ancestors, a pair of new trousers every couple of years was the best to be hoped for; now it's Gap sweaters and Manolo Blahnik shoes bought on a weekend shopping expedition. Today, we think we need a car, flat-screen TV and an expensive frothy cup of coffee to get us through the day. A laptop marked with a piece of half-chewed fruit is more desirable than one made in Korea. And for that symbol, we are prepared to pay a premium for no discernable added value whatsoever.
This is not to say consumerism is a bad thing. Shopping is a pleasurable activity, a reward for many hours of toil each week. Voluntary poverty may have worked for Gandhi, but most of us would prefer a posturepedic mattress to a grass mat at the end of the day. The Gloria Jean coffee sipped on the fume-tinged commute to work really does make the day seem a little better. What is missing though, is affordability.
Most of us got over this hurdle with relative ease, using credit. Our Visa and Mastercards were the bridge between what we could pay for, and what we desired. We spend today what we earn tomorrow - or next year. If anything good comes out of this recession, it may be to temper consumerism with a bit of reason. Spend less time at the mall, and more at the beach. Buy what we can afford, not what we want. Spend time with friends and family, and less of it queuing in front of the ATM.
I, personally, am finding this a challenge. The ease of reaching for plastic to satisfy the urgent need to purchase a new car or Chelsea boots is hard to supress. Luckily, I don't need to worry too much. The pleasure of saving money is priceless. For everything else, there is Mastercard. pf@thenational.ae
