How many of you feel some guilt over not shopping enough? How many of you feel anxiety every time a large business shrinks or folds?

It's common to hear jounralists and economists state that things are improving (we are growing healthier) because consumer spending has increased. The logic here is simple: to be healthy and happy, people need jobs; when the economy shrinks, there aren't enough jobs, and so people are unhappy. "Job" in this equation means a usually unpleasent activity that consumes the a large chunk of an adult's waking life.

The other piece of this equation is manufactured wealth, or money making money. If the economy doesn't grow, the pile of money we have invested doesn't grow either. This is bad because we aren't as rich as we should be, but more direly, because we're relying on the growth of this magic pile to sustain us in our old age, when nobody cares about us.

This is the state of America, as is commonly reported. Rarely does anyone put the question of happiness in the following basic terms: What is our supply of tangible resources (food, oil, metal, etc.)? How many nicesseties (cars, ipods, spare houses, etc.) do we actually need, and how many are routinely wasted? If we need fewer nicesseties, where could we redirect our labor to reduce tangible resources consumed and hardships suffered (public transportation, safe and efficient food production, more healthcare workers, etc.)?

Primarily, two beliefs preclude our asksing these questions: People need to work hard to earn their survival or they will be lazy. Asking these questions undermines the efforts of a select few to remain absurdly wealthy.

As for the first belief, my inner pop psychologist finds the view that people need to be "kept in line" not only flawed, but insulting. For the most part, people would use their increased free time to do the sort of work that needs doing: raising children, maintaining property, staying healthy, staying sane. Also, consider how many people avoid entering into financially risky professions or risking potentially helpful innovation for fear that they will not earn enough to make ends meet? Just look at all the brilliant minds in banking and imagine all of the talents they are hiding. 

As for the second, social servies don't make anyone rich. Put simply, the less we have to buy (cars when we can take a train, insurance when healthcare is free), the fewer oppurtunities there are for entrepreneurship. On the surface this seems bad -- who will innovate? First, and again, I don't believe people are motivated primarily by financial reward, but rather by social factors and, simply, the internal desire to create and live a rich existence. But more importantly, I'm not suggesting that compensation be removed as a motivating factor, or that all services become public. As I see it, the biggest inefficiency of pure capitalism is that goods are created for creation's sake. Piles of plastic garbage pile up everywhere to keep the gears of capitalism turning. These are resources squandered, and no tax is paid on this fact or the harm this production does to the environment. What's more, many make money simply by investing in the growth of the system itself, which is like heaping tinder on a roaring flame.

There's so much more that could be said, but I want to end with a simple request: Stop equating economic growth with true prosperity. We work longer hours than it would appear subsistence livers ever did. We are plagued by health problems, physical and psychological, many of which are born of the long hours we toil. Lastly, innovation may not be occurring at a rate that it can overcome our apparent lack of tangible resources, and in many cases innovation mixed with bad policy has greatly increased the rate of resources lost (soil depletion, deforestation, etc.). Slowing consumption may be absolutely necessary. So long as there is a basic welfare net in place, reduced consumption isn't a problem.