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In Tough Times, Americans Rediscover a Forgotten Virtue
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Friday, September 26, 2008
ARTICLE
St. Louis Post Dispatch
Publication Date: September 25, 2008
"Thrift," said the Roman philosopher Seneca, "comes too late when you find it at the bottom of your purse." The truth behind that age-old adage is painfully obvious to millions of Americans today.
Reeling from high gas prices, home foreclosures and plans for a taxpayer-financed $700-billion bailout of faltering financial institutions, many of us are chafing at the thrift that has been thrust upon us. The prospect of paying someone else's debts is particularly irksome for Americans who did nothing to contribute to the mortgage crisis that has convulsed our economy.
And although some voters feel reassured by the chicken-in-every-pot promises made by politicians trolling for votes during an economic downturn, many of us do not relish the prospect of watching Uncle Sam play Santa Claus with our hard-earned money.
Painful and exasperating as these belt-tightening times may be, there is a silver lining to our current economic anxiety: Conspicuous consumption may be one of its casualties. After years of embracing the bigger-is-better credo, consumers now seem to be leaning toward a less-is-more philosophy.
What's trendy has changed. Hummers and McMansions are out. Hybrids and home-cooked meals are in. Second-hand shops and discount stores across America are enjoying a surge in sales, while casinos in Las Vegas -- an American Mecca of materialistic excess -- are reporting a drop in gambling revenues.
It's become hip to be thrifty and cool to conserve. Consider the sea-change in our auto preferences, which I witnessed firsthand while car shopping with my husband over the weekend. After retiring his rusted-out, gas-guzzling Ford Explorer a few years ago and replacing it with a sober, sensible Toyota Camry, I had harbored hopes of buying a slightly splashier car next time around -- something with more horsepower, more legroom, more pizzazz.
Instead, we're looking at gawky hybrids and economy cars even smaller than my 14-year-old Toyota Corolla. We're dreaming about great gas mileage instead of leather seats and sunroofs. And we're finding, to our dismay, that car dealers are on to our kind. In a reversal from just a few years ago, SUVs and bulkier sedans now boast rock-bottom prices, and gas-sipping compacts that were a steal a few years ago now fetch big bucks.
America's new thriftiness trend extends beyond buying choices. A new U.S. Census Bureau report released this week found that the number of parents, siblings and other relatives who live with adult heads of households grew 42 percent from 2000 to 2007. The greatest growth -- 67 percent -- came in the number of parents living with adult children. That's surely not an ideal arrangement for some parents, but in tight economic times, you do what you have to do. You lean on family.
Today's trend toward conserving and pooling resources reflects not only financial pressures but also the uneasiness Americans have felt for years about our buy-now/pay-later lifestyle. In a 2004 poll commissioned by "In Character" magazine, 79 percent of respondents said Americans are less thrifty than they were 50 years ago, 80 percent agreed that "there is a real problem with our 'throw-away' society" and 77 percent said we spend too much.
If we had our druthers, most of us would choose never-ending upswings over economic slumps. But there is a certain satisfaction in making our dollars stretch further and sharing our resources with relatives, neighbors and friends. Lean times force us to recognize our dependence on family, faith and life's simpler joys in a way that salad days do not. And a life driven by the quest for meaning, rather than by a quest for more stuff, surely is a worthy goal, even if it takes financial straits to make us recognize that.
-- Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St. Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.
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| Religion and the Media |
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Faith Angle Conference -- May 2008
EPPC Vice President Michael Cromartie moderated a series of discussions in May at the semi-annual Faith Angle Conference sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and held in Key West, Florida. Transcripts of the informative talks are now available online.
 American Evangelicalism: New Leaders, New Faces, New Issues -- D. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, describes eight fallacies or misconceptions he held as he began his book.
Religious Voters in the 2008 Election: What It Means for Democrats, Republicans -- William A. Galston, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and an assistant for domestic policy in the Clinton administration, discusses the importance of the Catholic vote in 2008. How Our Brains are Wired for Belief -- What does brain science add to age-old debates about the existence of God and the value of religion? Can political parties and religious groups use scientific insights to influence the beliefs of others? Dr. Andrew Newberg and Mr. David Brooks raise these questions and share their insights with journalists.
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