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The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need, by Juliet B. Schor
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Review
'"Thick with survey data, less taxing than a saunter through Saks, Schor's study is a scornful indictment of consumerism--which, she argues, has created a nation of debtors but failed to fill a gaping cultural maw. This is the stuff from which revolutions are made." -- "Entertainment Weekly""[A] masterful take on the human folly of overspending."-- "Los Angeles Times Book Review""Engaging...[Schor's] case studies of families who have rejected consumerism and simplified their lifestyles are vivid and will resonate with many readers." -- "Fortune""Schor writes in a lively manner and offers fascinating information about consumer spending patterns. She has written an engaging book that will cause readers to look afresh not only at their society but also at themselves."-- "Philadelphia Inquirer""Offers trenchant commentary on Americans' overspending lifestyle and lack of savings." -- "Publishers Weekly""Consuming more now and enjoying it less? In this heavily researched but accessible work, Schor tells us how and why this is so and what we might do about it...This is an important analysis of who, or perhaps what, we are. It deserves and will surely gain a wide audience." -- "Kirkus Reviews"
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About the Author
Juliet B. Schor, bestselling author of The Overworked American and senior lecturer and Director of Studies, Women's Studies, at Harvard University, writes and lectures widely on issues of work and consumption. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children.
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Product details
Paperback: 253 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1st HarperPerennial Ed edition (April 7, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060977582
ISBN-13: 978-0060977580
Product Dimensions:
5.3 x 0.6 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.2 out of 5 stars
69 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#258,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
...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!
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."
Schorr is a fine writer with a good idea, but the lightweight and naive solutions she suggests to solve our overspending are clearly New York editor-think. Like a disjointed movie written by a committee that provides an inappropriate happy ending, Schorr's many editors (she bemoans losing the one who acquired her manuscript) wouldn't let her research speak for itself. Her suggestion that Americans share their riding lawnmowers is perhaps the single dumbest thing I've ever read in a serious book; she must have passively-aggressively written the concluding chapters under duress. Unless they're padding. This is a mighty short book as it is.
This is a very well researched book and has many interesting ideas on how to spend less and worry less about things we don't really "need" but really "want." My only concerns were in the section about "downshifters" - people who work less and make less, but are happier. The book notes that most people who "downshift" were only making $30,000 a year or so to start with - not a lot of room to maneuver downward. I was interested more in those who made much more but kept spending more, which she also alludes to. Still, a very interesting book, with some intriguing ideas about how to control expenditures.
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