My latest in the American News:
“Listen all you rounders/You ought to be like me/Don't worry about consumption/Even if they call it TB.”
So wrote Jimmie Rodgers, the father of country music, about 80 years ago. Rodgers knew of which he sang, as tuberculosis, “TB,” also called consumption, would kill him in 1933 at age 35.
We are interested in consumption these days, but consumption of shoppers. Congress and our incoming president are keen on a series of economic stimulus measures designed to spur consumption. This, they claim, will help stave off a serious recession and save jobs.
Around the time Rodgers was singing of trains and his own illness, British economist John Maynard Keynes was theorizing that economies slow down because of lack of consumer spending. This he called the “demand deficit” as consumers were not demanding enough goods and services.
The goal of government policy, then, is to make up for this deficit by “priming the pump” of the economy through government spending. Government spending on public works and similar projects would put people to work, giving them disposable income and stimulating the economy. Keynesian economics is based on the promotion of consumption.
Like good Keynesians, President-elect Obama and Congress urge us to go out and consume even more. They are unwilling to take the tougher road of actually asking us to consume less and live within our means.
“TB, oh TB/Some say tonic is fine/Take all the medicine you want/I'll take good liquor for mine.”
The tonic prescribed in Washington these days will add trillions to our national debt to save some jobs in the short term. This perpetuates the very behavior that got us in this dire economic situation: funding a lifestyle beyond our means and paying for it by accumulating debt that we expect others to pay off.
Consumption also means to use something up. We are quickly using up our patrimony because we refuse to admit that our government does too much while we ask too little of ourselves. The anodyne remedies of bailouts, tax giveaways and “stimulus packages” attempt to relieve symptoms without addressing the disease. The disease is not that Americans don't spend enough money, that we don't consume enough. The disease is that we consume more than we can afford. We are dying of consumption.
We have done this personally, taking on debt for that which we don't need. We have done this as a people, asking the government to ease every burden, lulling us to sleep with the belief that all life's hits can and should be softened by an omnipresent government.
Political scientist Patrick Deneen, who has also noted the multiple meanings of consumption, argues that our leaders should treat us not as consumers but as citizens, which according to Aristotle means “ruling and being ruled in return.” That means we must rule our own appetites, learning to place limits on ourselves rather than having the government impose them from the outside. We gain the right to govern by being able to govern ourselves.
Rodgers sang, “I've been fighting like a lion/Looks like I'm going to lose/Cause ain't nobody/Ever licked these TB blues.”
Acting like free citizens rather than coddled subjects is one way to lick the ole consumption blues.
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