Affluenza

This book was published in 2005. The general concept is still quite apt even today. GFC and Pandemic may change the economic landscape, but the gist of it is still very much relevant.

Deprivation

The unspoken role of marketing is to keep consumers in the richest societies in human history feeling deprived. Their daily consciousness and their political attitudes are driven by their sense of lack rather than a realistic appreciation of what they actually need or, indeed, what they actually have. Australians today feel materially deprived, even though they are richer than ever before; a pervasive discontent is continually reinforced by consumer culture. This cultivation of a sense of deprivation in the mist of plenty is essential to the reproduction of consumerism. For people infected with affluenza, more is never enough, yet they fail to understand that consumption will not allay the feeling of discontent.

If adults who are sexually attracted to your children are called paedophiles, what do we call adults who set out to make children sexually attractive? 

Advertising executives…

We are beyond satisfying basic demands and we have moved to a tertiary level where consumption becomes leisure. Even the stores that appear to be for basic needs are really about leisure. Shopping today is often done for mood enhancement even though retail therapy has short-lived benefits and is more costly than Prozac. This means that waste is not a troublesome byproduct of what we consume but have consequences of the strategies we adopt to find meaning in our lives to shopping.

Breaking the link is a vital stage in the therapeutic process, although in order to do it the therapist must dissolve a deeper association – between the acquisition of goods and a sense of self-worth, which is precisely the association advertises labour to create. 

Expectation

Australian households -especially middle income and wealthy households– have an inflated, perhaps grossly inflated, understanding of how much money they need to maintain a decent standard of living. It also confirms the view that as people become wealthier and perceptions of the necessary consumption levels rise. Newspapers, commentators and political leaders speak as though the emerging financial difficulties of the wealthy are the result of hard times rather than inflated expectations. The problem then becomes a matter of public concern. The real concerns of yesterday’s poor have become the imagined concerns of today's rich. Struggle street, it seems, has become crowded; the trouble is the new residents want to build McMansion there.

Debt

Contrary to popular belief, the accumulation of consumer debt is not the result of poorer households being forced to borrow to cover living expenses: It is the result of wealthier households splashing out on luxuries. The ballooning of consumer debt has had far-reaching cultural and social impact. Australians are increasingly seduced by the argument that they deserve to be rewarded at every turn and that they deserve their rewards now. As more individuals accept such a view of the world, the pressure on people who resist increases. While new cars, new clothes and expensive watches are highly visible large credit card debts, long work hours and relationship stresses are more concealed. 

Money and happiness

In general, people in rich countries are clearly happier than those in poor countries. But, for the rich countries, it does not seem that higher per capita income has any marked effect on happiness. When we plot measures of life satisfaction against income levels, life satisfaction increases with GDP per person up to about $10,000 and then flattens out. 

Involvement in community activities is a low cost, or no cost, way to spend leisure time. As people retreat from these activities they are likely to spend more money on eating out, renting movies and going away for the weekend – episodes that cost much more than doing some volunteer work with friends or attending a post match sausage sizzle.

The broader an individual’s social circle or network the less likely it is that they will see themselves at the bottom of the pecking order, because the definition of success will differ wildly across different organisations.

Science on the value of materialism yields clear and consistent findings. People who are highly focused on materialistic values have lower personal well-being and psychological health than those who believe that materialistic pursuits are unimportant. 

Doctors and advertisement 

A randomly selected group of practising doctors said that scientific sources are much more important in influencing their prescribing than are commercial sources. However, when questioned about the usefulness of two classes of drugs where the message from the scientific literature was the opposite that in the commercial literature the majority of doctors in this group held commercial beliefs about these two classes. Therefore, it appears that physician can be influenced by promotional literature without being aware of it. 

Medicine and business

Medicalisation of the human condition has been described as a process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illnesses and disorders. The process of medicalisation turns attention away from the social environment to the behaviour and flaws of the individuals. The market will come up with a solution for every human problem, and the process of disease-mongering reinforces the belief that happiness is just another purchase away. 

Swedish study found that women with breast implants are three times more likely than the general population to commit suicide.

The traditional role of doctors is to consider the patients symptoms, make a diagnosis and recommended a treatment, but in the case of most cosmetic surgery the media manufacture the symptoms and make the diagnosis and the ‘patient’ then tells the doctor what treatment should be.

Compelling argument on becoming a parent

Bearing and raising a child is one of the most profoundly human experiences, that parenthood unlocked emotions that otherwise remain intact, and that most parents come to realise that they themselves grow up only when they become mothers or fathers. Watching your children grow and step out into the world-stumbling, suffering, achieving and flourishing that gives the parents’ lives a depth of interest and richness that cannot be bought for any price; that becoming a parent extends the tree of family stretching back generations; that children and grandchildren can provide a sense of belonging in the world and a commitment to building a better society that can be had no other way.

Downshifters

They are people who have made a conscious decision to accept a lower income and a lower level of consumption in order to pursue other life goals. They are motivated by a desire for more balance in their lives, more personal fulfilment and more time with their families. Some qualify as real estate refugees, driven out of their cities by rising house prices and the pressure to work longer and harder to repay onerous mortgages.