Toon: Give Me Convenience (and Give Me Debt)!

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This cartoon was inspired by a column my dad sent me about RFID emitters being developed for cellphones. Obviously there are security and privacy issues involved when your credit card or bank account number is being broadcast from your phone, but that's not the point of this piece.

The real thing that pissed me off is the idea that somehow BUYING USELESS OVERPRICED CRAP is so damn DIFFICULT that we need to make it even EASIER to part people from their hard-earned cash.

If anything, it's way too EASY to spend, spend, spend. The statistic I generally hear is that the average American has no savings at all and is $9,000 in credit card debt. We might as well have flying telepathic products that reach into our pockets and grab our credit cards, the way we're surrounded by advertising and flooded with deceptive and manipulative marketing and pitches and credit card offers.

Why do we want to make it so easy for retailers to take our money in exchange for useless crap that clogs up our lives? Features like "one-click shopping" and magical cell phones are not conveniences--they're tickets to a life as an overspent American.

Masheka and I keep our debit cards (and the one credit card that we haven't shredded) in a neat little "Wallet Buddy" sleeve that I downloaded as a PDF from the Center for a New American Dream. The sleeve has a list of things to stop and think about before you buy anything, and makes you pause before buying.

P.S. The cartoon title is a Dead Kennedys reference, for all you 80s political punk rock fans out there.

Affluenza Documentary on Youtube

While on the subject of consumption, the wonderful hard-to-find PBS documentary Affluenza is now available on Youtube in six parts:

Af-flu-en-za n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. 4. A television program that could change your life.

Affluenza is a one-hour television special that explores the high social and environmental costs of materialism and overconsumption.

Through revealing personal stories, expert commentary, hilarious old film clips, dramatized vignettes, and "anti-commercial" breaks, Affluenza examines the high cost of achieving the most extravagant lifestyle the world has ever seen.

Last year, Americans, who make up only five percent of the world's population, used nearly a third of its resources and produced almost half of its hazardous waste. Add overwork, personal stress, the erosion of family and community, skyrocketing debt, and the growing gap between rich and poor, and it's easy to understand why some people say that the American Dream is no bargain. Many are opting out of the consumer chase, redefining the Dream, and making "voluntary simplicity" one of the top 10 trends of the '90s.

One of the things I found most interesting in this documentary was the strange mix of hard-core Religious Right folks and left-wing environmental and social justice types. For example, one of the featured speakers in this movie is good old anti-gay evangelical superstar and "family man" Ted Haggard--before he got busted for, uh, consuming crystal meth and man-on-man "massages." Haggard extolls the virtue of spending time with your wife and working on your marriage instead of shopping and wasting money. Focus on the Family (shudder) also figures.

But the movie also features speakers who are more my flavor, such as one of my favorite left-wing economists, Juliet Schor. Prof. Schor was my freshman women's studies adviser at Harvard, and taught a wonderful class called "Shop Til You Drop: Gender and Class in Consumer Culture." She's the author of three books I highly recommend: The Overworked American, The Overspent American and Born to Buy.

Totally Safe American Toys!

Totally Safe American Toys!

See this Nation article for more on toxic toys...