Read This: So, how is the new morality working out so far?

It’s bad enough - if you don’t talk about or breathe the economy or have it at the top of your agenda you already feel like you’re from some other planet.

(Granted, men are from Mars and women are from Venus or some planet even farther away than that. However, that’s another issue entirely).

But now, with Christmas approaching, there will be many loud voices that proclaim citizens must keep spending in order to stimulate the economy, maybe even save the world. (Get ready for the Holiday Gift Guilt Complex).


Where does this thinking come from?

If you’d asked me yesterday morning I would have said it was the result of the economic stimulus brought on by two world wars. More trained workers, more factories, more goods, more money, yada yada yada.

But no. Yesterday evening I learned it goes back farther than that.

This from The Sacred Balance (see Read This, right hand margin):

The rise in our collective and individual demand for consumer goods began in earnest in the twentieth century.

As early as 1907, economist Simon Nelson Patten espoused an idea that was to consume the modern world: The new morality does not consist in saving but in expanding consumption.


[Stop and Think: Courtesy photo link]

For just over a century the new morality has consumed our thinking.

And how is it working out for us so far?

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