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The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need, by Juliet B. Schor
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The Overspent American explores why so many of us feel materially dissatisfied, why we work staggeringly long hours and yet walk around with ever-present mental "wish lists" of things to buy or get, and why Americans save less than virtually anyone in the world. Unlike many experts, Harvard economist Juliet B. Schor does not blame consumers' lack of self-discipline. Nor does she blame advertisers. Instead she analyzes the crisis of the American consumer in a culture where spending has become the ultimate social art.
- Sales Rank: #119311 in Books
- Brand: Harper Perennial
- Published on: 1999-04-07
- Released on: 1999-04-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .61" w x 5.31" l, .50 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 253 pages
Features
Amazon.com Review
If getting and spending define our lives, then Juliet Schor now has us covered. Six years ago, her book The Overworked American scrutinized the getting part. It focused public attention on the disappearance of leisure and the harmful effects thereof on families and society. It sparked a debate over whether Americans really work as much as we proudly claim. (If so, how to explain the audience for Monday Night Football?) Nevertheless, Schor can take credit for helping push Congress into passing the Family Leave Act in 1993.
Now she is back with a critique of our spending. Schor notes that, despite rising wealth and incomes, Americans do not feel any better off. In fact, we tell pollsters we do not have enough money to buy everything we need. And we are almost as likely to say so if we make $85,000 a year as we are if we make $35,000. Schor believes that "keeping up with the Joneses" is no longer enough for today's media-savvy office workers. We set our sights on the lifestyles of those higher up the organizational chart. We seek to emulate characters on TV. For teenagers, "enough" is the idle splendor that hardly exists outside of what MTV un-ironically calls The Real World. Schor offers an original and provocative analysis of why many Americans feel driven and unhappy despite our success. As an alternative, she profiles several "downshifters" who've taken up voluntary simplicity in search of a more satisfying way of life. No policy solutions suggest themselves this time, only a change of heart. --Barry Mitzman
From Publishers Weekly
Whereas Schor's 1992 bestseller, The Overworked American, touched a nerve among all classes of American society, her latest study is geared to middle- and upper-middle-class consumers who, in her diagnosis, are participating in a national orgy of overspending and living beyond their means. She traces this competitive, status-conscious consumption to the diverging income distribution and growing inequality beginning in the 1980s, as increasingly overworked, insecure, dissatisfied consumers, pressured by advertising and television imagery, sought to emulate the upscale lifestyle of the most affluent. An economist and director of women's studies at Harvard, Schor presents her arguable conclusion that the more TV a person watches, the more he or she is likely to spend. In counterbalance, she also reports on her nationwide survey of "downshifters," people who deliberately reduce their hours on the job in exchange for more leisure, time with family or other pursuits. In self-help fashion, she outlines nine steps individuals can take to break free of the cycle of compulsive spending. Although Schor's jeremiad lacks the impact of her earlier book, it offers trenchant commentary on Americans' overspending lifestyle and lack of savings.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The dual purpose of this slim volume is to describe how spending, as a process, affects the quality of life for the middle and upper classes and to show how to develop a life that puts materialism and consumerism in proper perspective. Economist Schor states that in the 1950s "keeping up with the Joneses" held sway; today, however, purchases convey status and identity with our reference groups, e.g., co-workers, media stars on television, and those with similar values, not necessarily our neighbors. Schor argues that rampant advertising and consumerism is driving an unsatisfying materialist life. She also describes "downshifters," those who reduce their income and expenditures to get off the spiral of more work to acquire increasingly expensive stuff. Unfortunately, her book's strong academic foundation is undercut by weak conclusions. Schor's The Overworked American (LJ 1/92) covered much of the same ground, and libraries that found an audience for that title will be well served by this one. Otherwise, the subject matter, strong research, and clear writing make this an acceptable purchase for academic and larger public libraries.APatrick J. Brunet, Western Wisconsin Technical Coll. Lib., LaCrosse
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Consumerism Explained!
By O. Halabieh
Below are key lessons in the form of excerpts that I found particularly insightful from this book in which Juliet "analyzes the crisis of the American consumer in a culture where spending has become the ultimate social act":
1- "While I believe all Americans are deeply affected by consumerism, this book is directed to people...whose income afford comfortable lifestyle. I focus on more affluent consumers not because I believe that inequalities of consuming power are unimportant. Far from it. They are at the heart of the problem. But I believe that achieving an equitable standard of living for all Americans will require that those of us with more comfortable material lives transform our relationship to spending. I offer this book as a step in that direction."
2- "This book is about why: About why so many middle-class Americans feel materially dissatisfied...How even a six-figure income can seem inadequate, and why this country saves less than virtually any other nation in the world. It is about the ways in which, for America's middle classes, "spending becomes you," about how it flatters, enhances, and defines people in often wonderful ways, but also how it takes over their lives...IT analyzes how standards of belonging socially have changes in recent decades, and how this change has introduced American to highly intensified spending pressures. And finally, it is about a growing backlash to the consumption culture, a movement of people who are downshifting - by working less, and living their consumer lives much more deliberately."
3- "...Even though products carry well-recognized levels of prestige, are associated with particular kinds of people, or convey widely accepted messages, we cannot automatically infer the motivations of the consumers who buy them...There are other sources of meaning (beyond social inequalities). Gender, ethnicity, personal predisposition, and many other factors help structure the meanings and motivation attached to consuming."
4- "First, for a significant number of branded and highly advertised products, there are no quality differences discernible to consumers when the labels are removed; and second, variation in prices typically exceeds variation in quality, with the difference being in part a status premium...The extra money we spend could arguably be better used in other ways - improving our public schools, boosting retirement savings, or providing drug treatment for the millions of people the country is locking up in an effort to protect commodities others have acquired. But unless we find a way to dissociate what we buy from who we think we are, redirecting those dollars will prove difficult indeed."
5- "Today, in a world where being middle-class is not good enough for many people and indeed that social category seems like an endangered species, securing a place means going upscale. But when everyone is doing it, upscaling can mean simply keeping up. Even when we are aiming high, there's a strong defensive component to our comparisons. We don't want to fall behind or lose the place we've carved out for ourselves."
6- "To maintain psychological comfort, most of us must transcend the strictures of the current consumption map...The first step is to decouple spending from our sense of worth, a connection basic to all hierarchical consumption maps. The second is to find a reference group for whom a low-cost lifestyle is socially acceptable."
7- "I outline nine principles to help individuals, and the nation, get off the consumer escalator...1) Controlling desire...2) Creating a new consumer symbolism: making exclusivity uncool...3) Controlling ourselves: voluntary restraints on competitive consumption...4) Learning to share: both as a borrower and a lender be...5) Deconstruct the Commercial system: Becoming an Educated Consumer...6) Avoid "Retail Therapy": Spending is Addictive...7) Decommercialize the Rituals...8) Making Time: Is work-and-spend working?...9) The need for a coordinate intervention."
8- "It can hardly be possible that the dumbing-down of America has proceeded so far that it's either consumerism or nothing. We remain a creative, resourceful, and caring nation. There's still time left to find our way out of the mall."
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent research, and beautifully written
By Neurasthenic
Other reviewers have complained about the section of the book that advises the reader to 'down-shift' and join what amount to anti-consumerist clubs. I agree that these passages are not particularly interesting. However, the research that preceeds it is first rate, and amply rewards the reader for taking the time to read this book.
Schor's goal is to define the variables that predict overspeading among Americans, and thereby to illuminate why the trend to live beyond our means has increased so rapidly in recent years. Her examinations also suggest a variety of steps we can take to make ourselves happier (since, make no mistake, people who make more money and buy more things are no happier than people of more modest desires). She illustrates the patterns revealed by her studies with a number of anecdotal discussions with Americans of different backgrounds.
Though some of her conclusions may seem like common sense, they represent a great deal of scholarly labor. Schor catalogs research by her colleagues and her students, as well as studies she has completed herself.
Almost any reader would benefit from the time spent with this book.
53 of 54 people found the following review helpful.
Tops! Deals With the Heart of Overspending & Materialism
By Edward J. Vasicek
...
Harvard professor Juliet Schor has written a timely and convincing work. Schor's argument is that people are actually happier when they are not obsessed with craving material luxuries.
Schor's perspective is balanced, realistic, and moderate. Unlike books that offer advice on money management, Schor cuts to the quick and goes to the heart of the problem: we buy not because we need but because we attempt to find identity, status, or security through our purchases.
The volume is divided into seven chapters. The first is titled, "Introduction," but is not really merely an introduction. It is a chapter in the fullest sense and might better be titled, "overview." Let me share one of numerous quotables from this section: "American consumers are often not conscious of being motivated by social status and are far more likely to attribute such motives to others than to themselves. We live with high levels of psychological denial about the connection between our buying habits and the social statements they make."
The second chapter, "Communicating With Commodities" discusses how people crave the standard of living portrayed by television sitcoms. The American majority is frustrated (and sometimes desperate to attain such a standard) because they compare themselves to these fictious upper middle classed lifestyles. Shcor illustrates where this can lead by referring to the "sneaker murders" where people were actually killed for their shoes (of the "proper" brand, of course).
The third chapter, "The Visible Lifestyle" emphasizes the sub-conscious quest for status. In her typically well-balanced perspective, she distinguishes between, "the desire [for] social status [and]...trying to avoid social humiliation." This is a GREAT chapter.
The fourth chapter, "When Spending Becomes You" is also superb. She quotes one statistic that 61 per cent of the population ALWAYS has something in mind they look forward to buying. She also discusses how religion used to curtail obsessive materialism and spending, but no longer does. As a professional clergymen, I'll second that. She is right.
The last two chapters, "The Downshifter Next Door" and "Learning Diderot's Lesson" offer practical ways to attack this problem. We must change our attitudes and view frugality as a virtue, not a vice. She offers several case studies of "downshifters," those who have decided that, once past a modest financial threshold, family, time, and the deeper things of life are worthy of financial sacrifice.
This volume exposes how shallow, foolish, and silly our society has become in our uncontrollable culture of reckless spending. It is a gem of a book, worth your time for sure!
See all 83 customer reviews...
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