Pandemic Reveals Vulnerable Consumer Economy: Time To Shift How We Live, What We Invest In
Last edited Sat Aug 15, 2020, 10:40 PM - Edit history (5)
This pandemic revealed a vulnerable economy dependent on consumption and calls for a shift to public spending. Written by The Conversation Aug. 14, 2020. By Halina Szejnwald Brown, Clark University. Alternet. Excerpts, Edited.
The COVID-19 pandemic has radically affected the U.S. economy, reducing spending by households on materials goods, air travel, leisure activities as well as the use of automobiles. Greenhouse gas emissions have temporarily fallen dramatically, maybe a positive for the environment, but the social price is high. The U.S. economy depends heavily on consumer spending, yet the country is experiencing the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, homelessness is a threat for tens of thousands of people & businesses, large and small are failing.
- How did the U.S. arrive at the point whereby mass consumption & the greenhouse gas emissions associated with it – is necessary for economic and social well-being? And are greenhouse gas reductions and a thriving economy incompatible?
- A book bag is handed to a customer at the Ramstein AF Base, Germany library, June, 2020. The curbside window aids physical distancing during COVID-19. Library technician Monika Janzen is with the 86th Air Force Support Squadron.
The American Dream has come to mean buying goods & distorted its original meaning. Today, U.S. households spending habits make up 70% of U.S. gross domestic product. Consumer society began at the end of WWI with the modern advertising industry & consumer credit. Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud invented marketing in the 1920s- tap into people’s desires to feel good, powerful & sexy instead of emphasizing a product's usefulness. Mass consumption grew until the Great Depression halt. After WWII, consumer society took off in the late 1940s & 1950s; industry leaders moved production from the military to the civilian sector. President Truman was concerned about veteran unemployment & saw mass production of consumer goods as the solution. The 1944 GI Bill helped vets buy houses with down payments & govt.-guaranteed loans. Local utilities, roads & a national highway system supported by govt. made suburban homeownership possible; Social Security est. 1935 provided relief from saving for old age. Increased wages through labor unions enabled families to purchase houses, cars & household goods.
Business, government & labor were united in consumption as the foundation of economic prosperity & social harmony.
It was an era of post-war euphoria over the uncontested power of the U.S., the post-Depression desire for a better life, advances in cheap mass production & a demographic 'baby boom.'
Consumerism also became a symbol of the superiority of the capitalist system over Soviet-style communism. National output of goods & services doubled between 1946-1956, and doubled again by 1970. Mass-produced cheap & comfortable single-family homes, distant from city centers, became affordable. The suburban model dependent on cars was connected to shopping malls, uniform & racially segregated, which became gathering spaces that replaced city streets, cafes & local businesses. Consumerism & the suburban lifestyle represented basic values of solid families, safety, democratic freedom & the American Dream. But what represents basic comfort has grown to mean larger & more – automobiles like SUVs, increased conveniences & technologies, bigger houses filled with furniture, more bathrooms & bedrooms, larger kitchens, special areas for media, fitness & outdoor living.
But a high ecological cost comes with consumption. In my view, America would be better off if we directed the economy – our collective wealth – to more public spending on, and investment in, education, health care, public transit, housing, parks and better infrastructure, and renewable energy...
Read More, https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/this-revealed-a-vulnerable-economy-dependent-on-consumption-and-calls-for-a-shift-to-public-spending/
- 'The Kitchen Debate' Nixon & Kruschev, July 24, 1959, American Exhibition, Moscow. Consumerism became a symbol of the superiority of the capitalist system over Soviet-style communism. The exhibit featured sleek, new American made household appliances. Vice President Richard Nixon was to emphasize to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev the higher quality of life of U.S. working people. This historic film shows a portion of the Kitchen Debate. The event was a series of impromptu exchanges (through interpreters) between the two leaders.
*For the exhibition, an entire house was built that the American exhibitors claimed anyone in America could afford. It was filled with labor-saving and recreational devices meant to represent the fruits of the capitalist American consumer market. The debate was recorded on color videotape and Nixon made reference to this fact; it was subsequently rebroadcast in both countries.
In the US, 3 major television networks broadcast the kitchen debate on July 25. The Soviets subsequently protested, as Nixon and Khrushchev had agreed that the debate should be broadcast simultaneously in America and the Soviet Union, with the Soviets threatening to withhold the tape until they were ready to broadcast. The U.S. networks had felt that delay would cause the news to lose its immediacy. On July 27, two days later the debate was broadcast on Moscow television, albeit late at night and with Nixon's remarks only partially translated.
American reaction was initially mixed, with The New York Times calling it "an exchange that emphasized the gulf between east and west but had little bearing on the substantive issue." The newspaper also declared that public opinion seemed divided after the debates. On the other hand, Time magazine, also covering the exhibition, praised Nixon, saying he "managed in a unique way to personify a national character proud of peaceful accomplishment, sure of its way of life, confident of its power under threat."
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Last edited Sat Aug 15, 2020, 10:44 PM - Edit history (3)
- 'Three Years After "We Will Bury You," Nikita Khrushchev Tours America,' Smithsonian Magazine, 2010.
This is a well done video report; other interesting clips of the Soviet Premier's tour are available on YouTube.
In Sept. 1959, as part of a diplomatic mission, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev traveled across the United States, meeting Americans from New York to Iowa to California during the Eisenhower administration.
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- Kruschchev at 20th Century Fox Studio watched filming of the musical 'Can-Can' from a balcony above the set. He would call it exploitive and pornographic.
- "Nikita Khrushchev Goes to Hollywood: Lunch with the Soviet leader was Tinseltown’s hottest ticket, with famous celebrities including Marilyn Monroe & Dean Martin." By Peter Carlson, Smithsonian Magazine, July, 2009. - Excerpts, Ed.:
President Dwight Eisenhower, hoping to resolve a mounting crisis over the fate of Berlin, invited Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to a summit meeting at Camp David. Ike had no idea of what he was about to unleash on the land whose Constitution he had sworn to defend. It was the height of the cold war, a frightening age of fallout shelters & "duck-&-cover" drills. No Soviet premier had visited the U.S. before, & most Americans knew little about Khrushchev except that he had jousted with VP Richard Nixon in the famous "kitchen debate" in Moscow that July & had uttered, three years before, the ominous-sounding prediction, "We will bury you."
Khrushchev accepted Ike's invitation- & added that he'd also like to travel around the country for a few weeks. Ike, suspicious of the wily dictator, reluctantly agreed.
Reaction to the invitation was mixed, to say the least. Hundreds of Americans bombarded Congress with angry letters and telegrams of protest. But hundreds of other Americans bombarded the Soviet Embassy with friendly pleas that Khrushchev visit their home or their town or their county fair..
A few days before the premier's scheduled arrival, the Soviets launched a missile that landed on the moon. It was the first successful moonshot, and it caused a massive outbreak of UFO sightings in Southern California.. After weeks of hype- "Khrushchev: Man or Monster?" (New York Daily News), "Official Nerves to Jangle in Salute to Khrushchev" (Washington Post) - Khrushchev landed at Andrews Air Force base on September 15, 1959. Bald as an egg, he stood only a few inches over five feet but weighed nearly 200 pounds. He had a round face, bright blue eyes..When he stepped off the plane and shook Ike's hand, a woman in the crowd exclaimed, "What a funny little man!"
Things got funnier. As Ike read a welcoming speech, Khrushchev mugged shamelessly. He waved his hat. He winked at a little girl. He theatrically turned his head to watch a butterfly flutter by.
He stole the spotlight, one reporter wrote, "with the studied nonchalance of an old vaudeville trouper." The traveling Khrushchev roadshow had begun.
The next day, he toured a farm in Maryland, where he petted a pig and complained that it was too fat, then grabbed a turkey and griped that it was too small. He also visited the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and advised its members to get used to communism, drawing an analogy with one of his facial features: "The wart is there, and I can't do anything about it." The next day, the premier took his show to NYC, accompanied by his official tour guide, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the U.S. ambassador to the UN. In Manhattan, Khrushchev argued with capitalists, yelled at hecklers, shadowboxed with Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, got stuck in an elevator in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and toured the Empire State Building, which failed to impress him..
The lust for invitations to the Khrushchev lunch was so strong that it overpowered the fear of communism that had reigned in Hollywood since 1947, when the House Committee on Un-American Activities began investigating the movie industry.. A handful of stars—Bing Crosby, Ward Bond, Adolphe Menjou & Ronald Reagan—turned down their invitations as a protest against Khrushchev, but hordes demanded one..The only husband-and-wife teams invited were both stars—Tony Curtis & Janet Leigh; Dick Powell & June Allyson; Elizabeth Taylor & Eddie Fisher. Marilyn Monroe's husband, the playwright Arthur Miller was urged to stay home because he was a leftist who'd been investigated & therefore was considered too radical to dine with a communist dictator...
Read More, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nikita-khrushchev-goes-to-hollywood-30668979/