The pandemic has afforded many Americans, whether in isolation or out of work, with something they haven’t had in years: time and mental space to actually think about the way we spend and its effects on others.
Shopping still creates a momentary feeling of control — something all of us are lacking right now. But so, too, does making something, growing something, mastering something, or weeding something.
A whole lot of things we thought of as needs have revealed themselves to be pretty deeply unnecessary.
That kind of spending is what our current economic model is based on: Americans of all class levels buying things and always wanting to buy more, regardless of their actual means. But when a society-throttling, economy-decimating pandemic comes along, what happens when that ability — and, just importantly, that desire — goes away?
After 9/11, and again after the 2008 recession, there was the idea that consumers should somehow patriotically spend to revive the economy. And who benefited disproportionately? Billionaires.
Not wanting to buy things feels as bizarre as not wanting to sleep or not wanting to eat. It’s been ingrained in us, as Americans, as an unspoken component of residency.
We buy because we’re bored, or because planned obsolescence forces us to replace items we can’t fix. We buy to accumulate objects meant to communicate our class and what sort of person we are. We buy because we want to feel something or change something, and purchasing something is the quickest way to do so. When that doesn’t work, we buy “an experience,” whether it’s a night at Color Me Mine or a weekend bachelorette trip to Nashville. We buy because, from the Great Depression onward, how we consume has become deeply intertwined with how we think of ourselves as citizens.
The pandemic has afforded many Americans, whether in isolation or out of work, with something they haven’t had in years: time and mental space to actually think about the way we spend and its effects on others.