20 min video on American Consumerism and Capitalism - interesting
 

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12212007/watch.html


Would love you guys' opinion on it...


Just curious what you have to say...


GFY has some of the best minds in the World...as well as some of the most fucked up:)

...anyone... anyone...?


Beuller...? Beuller?

we're bred into a consumer lifestyle , it's unavoidable to not be sucked into the trap as a child. marketers do not market to adults, they market to children. an informed adult can choose to not desire unnecessary things, but the parent is no longer in control. television is a major perpetrator in this. roughly 30-40 years ago a drastic change in consumer patterns took place and the parent was taken out of the decision making roll. remember your beloved saturday morning cartoons? you can thank them for conditioning you to be a good little consumer. they were put in place by television networks specifically for the purpose of putting together a bunch of impressionable children to be advertised to. when the strategy was revealed to be a huge success they a step forward and created what in the business world is refered to as a 'program length advertisement' or what make up MOST of the cartoons you see today. the cartoon itself becomes nothing more than a massive marketing campaign for a product line. transformers, strawberry shortcake, ninja turtles, pokemon, you name it. multi-million dollar marketing projects and nothing more. the parent was taken out of the decision making position and the child was the one making the shots. any parent who didn't buy these toys for their kids was looked at as the enemy, and the cycle began. from the time you're a young child you want overpriced shit that you don't need, and then it just carries on from there.

advertising towards kids is the major problem. they just don't understand the difference between leisures and necessity.

kids have an unrealistic view of what is necessary to lead a comfortable life from an early age, and for the vast majority it doesn't go away. parents who collapse to every wish their children make don't help the situation any either. but at this point most people having kids were consumer kids when they were that age and have it in their head that it is their sole duty to bust their ass to provide the lavish lifestyle they believe they need to provide for their children and themselves. if you've ever met a kid who was raised without television you'll notice the huge difference they have in their personality...

(bump for an interesting video)

imsokeblunts: good points there, I see a *lot* of truth in all that...

I see that difference You're mentioning between myself and many people around me... all the time.
Many people being constantly & almost obsessively materialistic, whilst I'm "chasing" a LOT less material but rather more genuine "food for the soul".

if you really wanna be blown away, then check out http://zeitgeistmovie.com/

consume, procreate and sleep. All part of the master plan...

This is a fantastic video

And I hope u guys all watch it.

Love,
Lil Tommy

GFY is full of consumerism..........

Our total economy is built on people buying shit they don't need. If everyone stopped buying stuff they don't needs we would be in major trouble. You need look no further than our leaders to find this out. Right after 9/11 this country was in the throws of a recession. The Enron and Worldcom bankruptcies plus the dot com bubble bursting and 9/11 all hurt us bad. What did our president tell us to do? go shopping. He wanted us to go to new york and spend money. we are heading into another recession. how do they fix it? Send everyone a $600 check so you can go get the TV or Xbox or whatever it is you wanted and it will jump start the economy. there was a report on CNN the other day that said consumer spending now makes up an all time high of just under 80% of our economy. It kind of scares me to think that 80's of the power of our economy is based on people buying shit they don't need.

Yeah kinda sucks, but in the meantime it's better than to be living in Darfur and not buy stuff.

This is very true. 12 year olds think is their right to have an Ipod and a cell phone and parents too often just give in and get them for them. And it goes beyond that. Nobody ever loses anymore. My brother's wife's son ( he is from a previous relationship before she married my brother) flunked 80% of his classes in 7th and 8th grade and the school never held him back. They don't graduate 8th graders anymore, they give them a "promotion of excellence" and he moved on. When I was that age the school would have held me back. Now he is in high school and is in on a program where he actually gets extra time to turn in assignments and get credit for them. If a report is due on the 10th and he doesn't have it done they tell him it is okay and give him until the 25th to turn it in and he still gets full credit for it. He is being set up to fail by his mother for not holding him back when she should have and not grinding his ass into the ground when he got bad grades and by the system that teaches him he can pretty much do things when he wants and they are okay with that. It pisses me of.

I do have to say, though, the look on his face (and his mom's) when I didn't get him a graduation gift and told him in front of everyone that I didn't get him one because he didn't deserve it. He should have failed and if our system wasn't so screwed up he would have failed and in many of the classes he didn't even try so I wasn't going to reward that kind of behavior. They both were stunned and couldn't believe what they were hearing. It was nice.

I'm very materialistic. That's not all social conditioning and it is not all American. I saw mercedes benz' all over Europe. BMW and Mercedes are German companies. Armani, Versace and Prada are Italian companies.

Pretty sure there is some genetic desire to be a "have" rather than a "have not". YMMV.

I haven't watched the video yet so admittedly I might have missed the point.

With the real standard of living increasing about 2% per year for the past few hundred years the western world is moving from needs to wants. All of this because of changes in productivity and technology (industrial revolution, digital revolution and so on). It's ok to "want".

I am very non-materialistic. I have a house and a car, nothing fancy, and some average furniture. I have a decent TV and a computer for work, but nothing over the top. I hate spending money and would rather save it. to me going on a cool trip somewhere is much better than owning something. That said, I see some of my friends falling into middle class consumerism. They are buying bigger houses that they can barely afford and new cars and $300 purses and wallets all for what? I launched into a monologue about it a few weeks back and many of them actually agreed with me and told me they were going to curb their spending on things they don't really need. I wonder if it will really happen.

Beign able to afford "the thing" is a social cue. It signals to others in society your status and confers the advantage that such status brings. Same with an expensive house and car. All other things equal Mercedes Benz = more pussy than Mistubishi Mirage (and I've driven both). Read "dating opportunities" for you more family-minded folk.

It's envy, you rarely need a product that doesn't exist yet (unless you are an inventor) :-)

Sure, wanting is normal and if you have the means to provide it for yourself I don't see a big problem with it. If you work hard to earn your money and want something nice from it, fine. What bugs me is when you see people who get obsessed with owning things and they make sure everyone knows they own that stuff. It is when your possessions define you that trouble sets in. A friend of mine has about $250 in her savings account, otherwise she lives paycheck to paycheck yet she owns over 300 pair of shoes and has spent around 30K getting them. Many of them have never been worn and never will be. Others got worn once or twice. But she has them and loves talking about them. To me there were much better ways to spend that 30K.

I do agree with you that a lot of people are falling into a trap. While i believe the social signalling is important in society (women might want more resources for their children, for example) there is a real danger too. here too people will make good and bad decisions. As with anything, some sort of balance is ideal. Know your limits.

Women and shoes is a whole discussion in and of itself. They hoard shoes like squirrels hoard nuts.

Very true. One thing I see in our industry (which is the ultimate luxury item :) ) is that you get people who start making some money, then they run out and buy a house and a car and big screen and run up a ton of debt then their income drops off and they lose it all. to them having those things is the most important thing they can think of. Something I have noticed is that the people that can least afford it are often the ones that are the most materialistic.

LOL yeah she got pissed at me when we were talking about them. She just got into a nursing school and now has to take about about 25K in student loans to cover the first two years of the program. She was bummed about having that debt, then another 30-40K more when she chooses a second school to finish up the program at. I told her to go home and look in her closet at all her shoes and know that they represent her first two years of school. She got a little pissed and started defending them like they were her kids. Now I make fun of her and ask how the threehundredlets are doing.

Only 4 short years ago I used to drive people to the airport for a living. I worked in the Disney Area.

One day I picked up 2 families. This was about 6 years ago. A time before Starbucks on every block. The families were from Oklahoma and Nebraska. They were looking out the van window and eeewing and ahhhing... I asked them what the bub-bub was and they both said things like:

Wow, you guys ALL drive fancy cars... I asked them what a fancy car is and they said things like:

Anything from this year + the usual... BMW, Infinity, etc...

Plus you guys all have such big houses! And places to eat and get gas on every block!

And I told them that we are actually all less than poor. Most people in California owe someone $20,000 and I am not including cars loans or home loans... They were in shock. I told them about getting 10 credit card offers a month and they said they never got offers...

I picked up one family for the return trip. They were shocked by our commercials. They said they get commercials for things like transmissions but we get commercials for things like cell phones, computers, etc.. things you don't absolutely need. They were like, "Well, no shit you are all in debt! You guys are being sold everything in the world! Things we don't even have in our stores."

Of course now with Walmart they too can have all of those things too...

I'll admit I made this same mistake for many years when I first started in business. I thought in terms of building income instead of building wealth. You should have continually increasing wealth. this is a good goal and will provide an increasing standard living and more importantly security. Think of what is truly affordable to you and only buy that.

That being said I really like stuff. i own a lot of status-enhancing goods. it's just that I can afford them.

A lot of us in this industry who have done well grew up poor. The internet gave us an opportunity we would never have had. We had parents that didn't teach us about money. In short, we are really poorly educated about it.

You deserve an award for that finishing line.

I've kept a budget with projections out a number of years in an excel sheet for over 5 years now. Probably the best thing someone can do to get an idea of where their wealth is and is going. You can instantly see the long-term impact of say a new car payment or buying a more expensive house. I think it's important to be conservative with your numbers. Don't put that record month's income down for the next 5 years.

The Ex-CEO of CountryWide left with $115,000,000.

If you or I fucked up something to the tune of even $500,000 total and not billions like he did we would have to pay it back or do jail time... and then have to pay it back.

It's this whole self-esteem movement. A kid's self-esteem is now more important than his or her education. Ugh. We're all gonna end up fucked anyway.no one gets out alive. Let's at least accomplish something on our way out.

if you grew up poor, shouldn't your main goal be to never be poor again?

I mean, there's no "shouldn't" but I know lots of people who grew poor and they aren't used to spending. And you look like one of the types who were poor and then became rich and wanted to make up for the times when they were poor.

But there're also people who were poor and when they start making good money, they save/invest it, to make sure they'll never be poor again.

Then again, you're probably on a different level than most people, so it would be hard for you not to spend the money on yourself.

That was absolutely true at first (1997-98) and it was a huge mistake. I worshipped income more than wealth. In 2001 or so my income slipped really bad and I had to take a job working for another adult company. Then once I started to succeed again I reinvented myself and put savings and security ahead of "having things". I paid off all my debts, saved before spending and eventually I had enough to increase my standard of living but still that standard is well below what I could actually have. Now I have the both of both worlds.

Some of my neighbors have so much debt they are barely getting by. There are mutli-million dollar homes in foreclosure. They were playing too close to the fire.

Interresting Video clip.:thumbsup