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Curing Affluenza

We live in one of the richest countries but even the 'rich' feel poor. That's what Richard Denniss calls affluenza. Here are some of my highlights from his book.


"Just as a fish can't taste the water it swims in", it is hard for us to notice how weird our culture has become. "We have built a culture where buying things is increasingly unrelated to using things." Each year we "throw away mountains of perfectly edible food, perfectly wearable clothes and fitness equipment that has never been used."

Advertising is a big infector

He points out that advertising's aim is to make us feel insecure. While there are truth-in-advertising laws, they don't stop the big lie that "a new car, a new soft drink or a new credit card will make you relaxed, popular or sexy."

We cure it by changing culture

Culture decides the desirable options. This is why we pay through the nose ($14 billion in the USA in 2015) for bottled water (which is free from the tap) but complain about petrol prices which are far less.

By curing affluenza the author says we can reduce waste, create more and better jobs and more time for the things and people we love.

Is materialism a cure?

Materialism is different from consumerism. Consumerism is the love of buying things. It disappears almost as soon as the things are bought. Materialism is the opposite as it's the love of the things themselves. Materialism makes it harder to flippantly ditch our stuff for a new one - each time advertising tells us to.

What about the economy?

People will say we have to keep spending money 'for the economy' - whatever that means. Richard Denniss is an economist and he finds this idea nonsensical. To suggest that "borrowing money from overseas to buy things that were made overseas - things that are quickly thrown out and buried in local landfill - plays an important role in making a national economy strong is simply absurd".

He uses the example of our fridge. Should we dispose of it each year and buy a brand new one? Obviously fridge sales would increase but it's quite plainly a bad idea. "A strong economy values material things rather than waste them."

What about jobs

When we don't waste so much money we can buy ourselves more time. How does that work? We can choose to work fewer hours. Employers could offer extra holidays as an alternative to a modest pay rise.

Some teachers already work for 80% pay and get every fifth year off. Aside from the obvious advantage, they also pay less tax - and for every 5 teachers that do this another job is created (for a person to fill the gaps).

Similarly if 1 million people moved to 4-day work weeks that would create 200,000 extra jobs immediately. We get stuck on the idea that a job must be for 5 days a week but that's only a recent idea. The word weekend was first printed in 1879 and Henry Ford only implemented the 5-day work week in 1926.

In 1900 the average US worker worked 59 hours per week. In 1970 it was 41 hours. A long time ago economist Keynes predicted that by now we'd have a 15 hour work week. His maths was fine, but his mistake was thinking that we would prefer free time rather than buying a mountain of junk. In fairness, he made that prediction before we even had television.

In short

My summary of the book would be that Richard Denniss advocates spending less on junk we'll only throw away, valuing the things we do have, working fewer hours, spending more time doing the things we love and are passionate about, and creating more jobs. Sounds good to me.

"Just as your stomach should tell you when you have eaten enough, your cupboards and your garage should tell you when you have consumed enough. And when you have enough stuff stop buying it. If your last batch of stuff managed to fill a hole in your cupboard but not in your life it's pretty likely that the next batch of stuff won't help either.

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