Is the party of American consumerism over?

Only for people who are being forced in the poorhouse. You have to have money to spend it. That’s why I’m joining the communist party.

I hope so, but highly doubt it!

I think we’re kind of on a timeout, but it isn’t over. Not only is it a very hard habit to break but we’ve built ourselves an economy whose health depends on it. Changing (back) to a national value of frugality and saving would take longer, meaning more generations, than it took us to get here because an ideal of perceived self-sacrifice is never as popular as a standard of self-indulgence. An enforced restraint for a short time is likely not to cause a permanent shift in attitude and behavior but rather to be more like, say, giving up sweets for Lent and just waiting until it’s over.

It will never be over. Not until America ceases to exist.

Not until we are no longer inundated with vast amounts of advertising daily. Not until we stop making “heroes” of stars and starlets who are gods of consumerism.

Maybe after Christmas.

@steelmarket: Which I posit will never happen, unless America ceases to be.

Death to the proletariat!

I think it is over, and we are entering an age of Frugality. In this new age that we are entering, wealth will not be created by creating worthless paper instruments. Wealth will be created by building value, creating and building things, and most definitely growing and bringing to market food. The idea that consumerism is sustainable beyond this point is absurd. But then again, we are a nation of overfed, thugish, absurd clowns (credit to Kunstler). We cannot sustain economic growth serving burgers to each other, cutting each other’s hair, and selling each other soon to be foreclosed upon houses. Shall we open more Starbucks, or Nail Salons? Super Centers of cheap Chinese crap?

Natural resources will continue to diminish. Oil will become scarce in the near term, and there will not be an infrastructure to grow and deliver food cheaply like today. Food will be grown locally. The future is for the austere, and those who have the skills to produce. We will go to the strip malls, and the Walmarts—not to shop but to scavenge for bits of metal scraps and glass to melt down and sell fro scrap. Suburbia will cease to exist with the exception of those dead-enders stuck and unable to leave. Many of the Talking Heads talk about this economic down turn being like the Depression and how we will get out of it—I think they are nuts, because in 1929 USA was an exporter of oil, now we are an importer. We were a nation of highly disciplined highly regimented worker bees if you will, not a nation of beer guts and sedentary cellulite thunder thighs. My point is this: we are entering a period the likes of which we cannot now even imagine—and we do not realize that we cannot/will not continue to live as we have regardless of how much we delude ourselves…..now go plant a garden!

That’s the thing. I don’t think people will change, despite all of that. I don’t have much faith in humanity. All good points though.

Change is not voluntary—that is the funny thing. People are blind to their fate just several months off….

I just read that the current TV reality shows that deal with celebrities are foundering, while the reality shows that deal with average folks are doing OK.

We need some Frugal Heroes to lead us into any Age of Frugality.

Viva miserliness!

i find it hard to believe that america will ever find the cure to affluenza, even in an economic breakdown.