What about the Coffee Farmers?
The May 19, 2010 Between Friends comic expresses a question I’ve had for a while:
The sensible financial advice has been to put your many into things you need and savings. But a huge part of our economy is based on things people don’t really need. Even if everyone did allow themselves to buy frivolous things with cash only after paying for necessities and making proper contributions to their IRAs, the market for things people don’t need would still be much smaller than our economy is accustomed to.
This is a paradox I can’t resolve. The number of working people required to meet people’s legitimate needs is much smaller than the number of people who need jobs. Since Tea Party values say you can’t pay people who aren’t working, how can you employ everyone if no one buys things they don’t need with money they don’t have?
The sensible financial advice has been to put your many into things you need and savings. But a huge part of our economy is based on things people don’t really need. Even if everyone did allow themselves to buy frivolous things with cash only after paying for necessities and making proper contributions to their IRAs, the market for things people don’t need would still be much smaller than our economy is accustomed to.
This is a paradox I can’t resolve. The number of working people required to meet people’s legitimate needs is much smaller than the number of people who need jobs. Since Tea Party values say you can’t pay people who aren’t working, how can you employ everyone if no one buys things they don’t need with money they don’t have?
posted by Dancar | 11:51 AM
1 Comments:
Interesting Post! It's especially thought-provoking in the aftermath of a recession that was largely brought on by irresponsible consumption (which was, of course, incentivized by irresponsible lenders and financiers). Our economy, and probably the world economy, is run on wants-satisfaction much more than needs-satisfaction. One important contributing factor is that the difference between the two is blurry. Relative wealth and position has real psychological and material effects on people.
I think one of the most pressing problems of this century will be to alter our culture and economy such that our consumption will approach sustainability and equality of access. Now if only someone could figure out how to do that...
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