by Economic stimulus is in the news a lot. A recent New York Times piece noted that: “Since the economy began to falter in 2007, Congress has passed what amounts to three stimulus bills — a bipartisan $158 billion package of tax cuts signed by President George W. Bush in early 2008, a $787 billion bill pushed by President Obama as he took office in 2009 in the wake of the financial system’s collapse, and a tax cut and unemployment fund extension agreement reached by Mr. Obama and Congressional Republicans in December 2010.” And we’re talking about the need for more.
It’s not working. We’retrying to stimulate a caffeine junkie on their twelfth cup of coffee with a thirteenth cup. It’s no longer having the intended effect. A previous ConsumerShift post observed that the Great Recession was enabled the postmodern values shift toward less emphasis on material goods consumption. In an upcoming post, we’ll talk about people’s growing sense of “enoughness,” that is, we are seeking ways to get off the treadmill — the constant pressure to keep consuming. They are stepping back, re-prioritizing, and looking for ways to do with less.
These messages and plans for stimulus are falling on deaf ears. The ultimate challenge is how to design an economy that does not depend on debt-fueled growth to work — “consumers” are telling us that a different approach is needed. Andy Hines
[…] Certainly the debt crisis is a factor, but is that it? I don’t think so. In a previous post, Changing Values and “Enoughness” Suggest Economic Stimulus Won’t Work, I suggested that US efforts to stimulate consumption were missing the trend toward consuming less. […]