Who among us really understands economics? At the best of times, even so-called experts seem to be muddling around in the dark. Predictions are as much crystal-ball readings as they are objective analysis of data.
Last week, the new federal government issued its first budget prompting typical knee-jerk reactions. To conservative pundits, it is uncontrolled spending, to progressive ones, it’s a good first step to growing the economy.
The fact of the matter is, we won’t know for years to come, what, if any, impact this budget will have had on our collective well-being. Even then, it will be virtually impossible to untangle what Canadian polices accomplished and what international realities dictated.
The only certain thing is politicians of the ruling party will claim credit for the good and lay blame elsewhere for the bad. Vice versa for the Opposition, obviously. And they will both have experts to back up their claims.
For the rest of us, you don’t have to be an expert to recognize increasing debt is unsustainable, but how did we get here?
According to political campaign rhetoric, it is because the middle class is in crisis. And if anybody knows increasing debt is unsustainable, it is the middle class. That’s why we turfed a government that was promising austerity for one promising to fix our debt crisis.
Now, we hear a lot of talk about millennials being the first generation (since World War II) that will worse off than their parents. Really? Trying to wrap your mind around that is like trying to grasp water in your hand. Trying to research it grinds you into a spiral of “median incomes,” “consumer price indexes” and other financial mumbo jumbo.
Some things, such as houses and cars are modestly more expensive as a percentage of income, than they were in the 1950s. Adjusting for quality—people think things were built better back then but that’s just nostalgia talking and is not backed up by evidence—there is a negligible difference.
Some things, such as the cost of education, have increased significantly, but others, such as consumer goods are drastically cheaper.
What has really changed is our expectations. It is time for us to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. If that sounds familiar, it is because it is step four of the 12-step addiction recovery program made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous. Referencing it is intentional because, as a society, we have become consumeraholics.
Yes, the “silent generation,” those who were born between 1925 and 1942, had it really good, and if we lived today like they did then, we would be swimming in money.
But it’s not good enough any more to have a modest home, we have to have a palatial one. It’s not good enough to have a family car, we have to two or three plus a boat, ATVs and snowmobiles—and they need to be replaced with much greater regularity.
It’s not good enough to go to a nearby beach in the summer, we have to go to a tropical beach in the middle of winter or a constructed theme destination where a soda costs $8.
It’s not good enough to have a monthly family outing to Dairy Queen or the movie theatre, we have to have everything on demand. It’s not good enough to have a library card, every member of the family has to have a TV, a computer, a game console and a smartphone.
In short, we are spoiled beyond rotten. Unfortunately, the massive Catch-22 is we cannot, en masse, extricate ourselves from the problem by scaling back because the economy we have built—one that increasingly does not grow or build anything that provides for the necessities of life itself—would collapse.
We are trapped in a vicious cycle of consumerism and on-demand entertainment that requires unavailable and unsustainable increases in income. And all of that is all on top of the things we really need such as proper nutrition, health care and education.
Yes, there are problems of income inequality that need to be addressed, but much of our economic insecurity, both as a nation and individually, we have brought on ourselves through our insatiable desire for more of everything.
