FROM: The NY Daily News
Americans must give up the junk to get in better shape
Sunday, February 8th 2009, 8:05 PM
Last week, Democratic congressman Gary Ackerman vociferously attacked the Securities and Exchange Commission for being asleep at the wheel while Bernard Madoff continued a hustle that had been discovered a decade ago by a single investigator. From the other end, Wall Street bankers were chafed by the President's suggestion that companies getting bailout billions should have $500,000 salary caps for those at the top.
Well now, that takes a lot of gall. The fat cats seem to ask beneath outraged shock: Does the President realize what has happened to our money culture over the last couple of decades? Everybody aspires to being overpaid. It's now the American way.
We all know that some people hate professional sports because of the gargantuan salaries paid to grown men for playing the games of boys. But that is one of the basic rules of capitalism: Charge whatever the market will bear.
That is what those poor banking executives want the President to understand. Well, guess what? Obama understands quite well that the bear running wild on Wall Street was created by what has been called "casino capitalism." Bet all you want; just make sure you don't use your own money.
After all, few things are inexpensive any longer. A small box of popcorn can cost about $6 in a New York City movie theater. But people still buy the popcorn because they have been convinced by marketing that going to see a movie means having popcorn. It defines the experience.
Many thousands were put out of work in a Chinese province last year because Americans did not have the money to spend on ornamental Christmas trivia now made in China for the U.S. market. It seems that China and its Marxist capitalists are as caught up in the world economy as the regular capitalists.
A little greed and growing markets for easily produced insubstantial goods will lead to pictures of Karl Marx being printed on toilet paper and used more than a little gleefully.
It was also proof of the international monetary significance had by all of the junk thought absolutely necessary until times become so hard that the public only buys what it actually needs.
Look out! A public weaned from junk is a public dangerous to the junk business, which lucratively spans everything from Wall Street deals to French fries that can clog the arteries for a stroke.
The creation of mass taste for affordable things of high quality may well be the way of the future, but that is much more than a notion. As those wailing on Wall Street vulgarly prove with their anger at the President, the obstacles are finally ourselves and we, my fellow Americans, are the market forces where the changes must be made.
Those changes, if we make them, will not only reshape our nation but the world at large. Many goods and businesses cannot survive without the consumer support of Americans addicted to junk. On the way to actual economic health, many things will have to go. That is how cold it has gotten out here.
But if we cease compulsively overspending or supporting every means by which people are made to feel entitled to excessive salaries, will we, with the world falling down, recognize the new place created by an intimidating and enlightened frugality? With shopaholic anxiety no longer controlling our emotions, will we feel comfortable, finally, in ourselves?
When on the verge of a new way of living, it is never clear what the destination will turn out to be. The only thing that can be done is to pay attention as you move away from a culture of acceptably bad decisions.
Stop, look and listen very closely. But keep going.
