I don't often venture into the realm of economics, but after hearing Gus Speth, Dean of Forestry & Environmental Studies at Yale University, I had to reconsider my aversion to the Dismal Science.
I heard Dean Speth in an interview with Kai Ryssdal on NPR's Marketplace today while I was driving home from an early dinner out with my husband, Tom.
The interview blew me away! Speth was talking about how perhaps the current economic crisis might just prompt a reordering of priorities in our "shop til you drop" society. One of the tenets of modern economic theory is that the only way to grow an economy is to consume. So how would our economy grow without all the consumption of stuff it depended upon until the crash?
To quote Speth: "Depends on what you consume, doesn't it? There are lots of things in our society that we need to grow. We need to grow health care, we need to grow education, we need to grow infrastructure, we need to grow an entirely new energy system. But what we probably don't need to grow is the volume of our stuff. We now have . . . the square-footage of the self-storage industry in the United States would now cover all of San Francisco and the entire island of Manhattan combined."
Think about that - it isn't that we stop all consumption*, it's a matter of changing where those consumer dollars are spent. We don't need to build & buy more stuff - we need to build better stuff and better systems that serve the needs of all our residents in the long run.
Speth cited studies about personal happiness that have found -- consistently -- that more stuff does not make us more happy - in fact, the more materialistic people are, the LESS happy they become. Quoting Speth: "In our country, in the United Kingdom, in Japan, GDP per capita has gone up and up and up but the level of life satisfaction has been stable. And what really makes people happy is warm, close, personal relationships. And giving, rather than getting."
Think about the things that make you happy. Quality, not quantity. Not more friends, but closer friends. Deciding to help someone else, not waiting to see what he can do for you.
But won't we be in trouble if we don't get back to the way things were a couple of years ago? Speth's answer, with my highlights:
"Well, we might not grow as fast. And I personally think that there are diminishing returns to growth. There are diminishing returns to affluence. And when you get a country that's as rich as ours, it really becomes a matter of spending what we have wisely. And all of my adult life I've heard people say, "You know, we need to keep growing or we'll face the distribution issue in our society. And we kept growing and distribution of income and resources and assets got worse. So, I think it's time to worry about some of these other things, and not so much about just growing the aggregate economy. And gives us the time to do things in life that really matter. We're rich enough for that now."
I heard that and I wanted to cry. I believe him - it isn't like we are a poor country -- even during a deep recession, many people are still driving alone in their SUVs, paying nearly $3 a gallon for gas.
Perhaps the reason the interview struck me so profoundly, is because Tom & I had just attended a brief Rally in front of State Rep Jack Franks' office, trying to raise awareness of the need to figure out how to fund services for our society's most vulnerable - people with mental illness and developmental disabilities.
That is the target group today -- yesterday it was natural resources -- tomorrow it might be health care, or clean air... Everything is up for grabs.
*For a primer on the deadend of our "build, buy, toss" consumerism, take a gander at Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff. It's a 20 minute animation that walks you through American consumerism. And the bottom line is this: we have had an unsustainable system that values style over substance and quantity over quality. Where obsolescence is built into consumer products --meaning that things are DESIGNED to break, and to cost more to repair than to replace, SO there is a built in incentive to throw things away and buy new things.
I heard Dean Speth in an interview with Kai Ryssdal on NPR's Marketplace today while I was driving home from an early dinner out with my husband, Tom.
The interview blew me away! Speth was talking about how perhaps the current economic crisis might just prompt a reordering of priorities in our "shop til you drop" society. One of the tenets of modern economic theory is that the only way to grow an economy is to consume. So how would our economy grow without all the consumption of stuff it depended upon until the crash?
To quote Speth: "Depends on what you consume, doesn't it? There are lots of things in our society that we need to grow. We need to grow health care, we need to grow education, we need to grow infrastructure, we need to grow an entirely new energy system. But what we probably don't need to grow is the volume of our stuff. We now have . . . the square-footage of the self-storage industry in the United States would now cover all of San Francisco and the entire island of Manhattan combined."
Think about that - it isn't that we stop all consumption*, it's a matter of changing where those consumer dollars are spent. We don't need to build & buy more stuff - we need to build better stuff and better systems that serve the needs of all our residents in the long run.
Speth cited studies about personal happiness that have found -- consistently -- that more stuff does not make us more happy - in fact, the more materialistic people are, the LESS happy they become. Quoting Speth: "In our country, in the United Kingdom, in Japan, GDP per capita has gone up and up and up but the level of life satisfaction has been stable. And what really makes people happy is warm, close, personal relationships. And giving, rather than getting."
Think about the things that make you happy. Quality, not quantity. Not more friends, but closer friends. Deciding to help someone else, not waiting to see what he can do for you.
But won't we be in trouble if we don't get back to the way things were a couple of years ago? Speth's answer, with my highlights:
"Well, we might not grow as fast. And I personally think that there are diminishing returns to growth. There are diminishing returns to affluence. And when you get a country that's as rich as ours, it really becomes a matter of spending what we have wisely. And all of my adult life I've heard people say, "You know, we need to keep growing or we'll face the distribution issue in our society. And we kept growing and distribution of income and resources and assets got worse. So, I think it's time to worry about some of these other things, and not so much about just growing the aggregate economy. And gives us the time to do things in life that really matter. We're rich enough for that now."
I heard that and I wanted to cry. I believe him - it isn't like we are a poor country -- even during a deep recession, many people are still driving alone in their SUVs, paying nearly $3 a gallon for gas.
Perhaps the reason the interview struck me so profoundly, is because Tom & I had just attended a brief Rally in front of State Rep Jack Franks' office, trying to raise awareness of the need to figure out how to fund services for our society's most vulnerable - people with mental illness and developmental disabilities.
That is the target group today -- yesterday it was natural resources -- tomorrow it might be health care, or clean air... Everything is up for grabs.
*For a primer on the deadend of our "build, buy, toss" consumerism, take a gander at Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff. It's a 20 minute animation that walks you through American consumerism. And the bottom line is this: we have had an unsustainable system that values style over substance and quantity over quality. Where obsolescence is built into consumer products --meaning that things are DESIGNED to break, and to cost more to repair than to replace, SO there is a built in incentive to throw things away and buy new things.
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