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I want to talk about the economy. Not "the economy" we hear about endlessly in the news each day and in politicians ' speeches. I want to talk about the real economy, the one we live in day by day.Most people aren't intereset in "the economy". Share prices are flyhing high, interest rates are soaring. The Dow Jone's indes closed sixty-three points down to 8472.35. We hear this and subconsciously switch off.Notice that "the economy" is not the same as the economy. "the economy" is what men in suits play with to make vast personal wealth. The economy is where the rest of us live on a daily basis, earning our living, paying our taxes, and purchasing the necessities of life.We are supposed to be benefiting from all the advantages of a properous society. So why do we feel drained and stressed? We have no time for anything other than work, which is ironic given the number of labour-saving devices in our lives. The kids are always hassling for the latest electronig gadgets. Our towns become more and more congested, we poison our air and seas, and our food is full of chemicals. Theres something wrong here. If times were truly good, thend you'd think we would all feel optimistic about the furure. Yet the majority of us are deeply worried. More than 90% of us think we are too conderned about the ourselves and not concerned enough about future generations.The term "economic expansion" suggest something desirable and benevolent, but expansion simply means spending more money.More spending doesn't mean that life is getting better. we all know it often means the opposite-greed, deprivation, crime. More spending merely feeds our whole economic system, which is based on production and consumption. Unless money keeps circulating, the economy collapses. Airlines go bust, taking plane manufacturers and travel agents with them. If we don't keep consuming, then manufacturers and retailers go out of business. People don't by houses, clothes, cars. The whole system goes into stalemate.As a leading economist put it, consumer societies are "in need of need". we don't need the things the economy produces as much as the economy needs our sense of need for these things. Why, in our supermarkets, do we have to choose from 60 different kinds of toilet paper and a 100 different breakfast cereals?Need is the miracle that keeps the engines of expanison turning relentlessly. In economics, there is no concept of enough, just a chronic yearning for more. It is a hunger that cannot be satiated.There is so much craziness in the world. There is an american company that manufactureres a range of food with a high fat content. This causes obesity and high blood pressure. By coincidence, the same company also makes products that help people who are trying to diet. Not only that, it even produces pills for those with high blood pressure.Nearly all of my mail consists of bills, banks trying to lend me money, catalogues trying to make me spend it, and charity appeals for the losers in this extasy of soncumption-the homeless, the refugees, the exploited.Why is it possible to buy strawberries from ecuador and green beans from kenya when these countries can hardly feed their own people? It is because thes are cash crops, and the countries need the money to service their debts. Notice that servicing a debt does not mean paying it off. It means just paying the interest. Western banks make vast profits from third world debt.How do we break this cycle? we need to become far more aware of the results of our actions. We buy clothes that are manufactured in sweat shops by virtual slaves in poor parts of the world. We create monutains of waste. we demand cheap food, mindless of the fact that it is totally devoid of taste and is produced using chemicals that poison the land. We insinst on our right to drive our own care wherever we want to go.The evil of the soncumption culture is the way it makes us oblivious to the impact of our own behaviour. Our main problem is not that we don't know what to do about it. It is mustering the sesire to do it.
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