47 pages • 1 hour read
John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas NaylorAffluenza
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 21-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Cures”
Part 3, Chapter 21 Summary: “Back to Work”
This chapter examines innovative economic strategies and systems designed to counteract affluenza. The authors begin by juxtaposing two books published in 1776 that have had an enormous impact on our society: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (185). Paine’s call to democracy was a key catalyst for the American Revolution, while Smith’s work is probably the most important and influential defense of capitalism and the free market in the history of economics. According to the authors, the radically democratic vision of Paine’s text has been eclipsed by Smith’s emphasis on the pursuit of profit and accumulation. New economic relationships are required to avoid environmental catastrophe and democratize the fruits of human ingenuity and development.
Examples of such economic breaks with affluenza are provided by Marjorie Kelly’s book Owning the Future. Kelly argues that economic systems produce results consistent with their designs. Local banks and credit unions that prioritize the financial stability and growth of their customers achieve these results, while large, multinational banks focused on maximizing profits produce the kind of reckless, short-sighted behavior that annihilated entities like Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial crisis. To create economic systems that contribute to human flourishing therefore requires new models of production and consumption. Kelly lists ventures such as cooperative farming and fishing firms, as well as local energy utilities, as laudable examples of organizations that close the gap between ownership and operation in order to ensure that business is for people and not just for profits.
The authors provide further instances of economic models and possibilities that are friendlier to both the environment and consumers. The rise of a “sharing economy,” in which access to goods is more important than outright ownership, allows consumers to use resources like cars (Zipcar), bicycles (bike share programs), homes (Airbnb), and even solar energy (SolarCity), with lower financial and ecological costs (189-91). Similarly, many companies are working on responsible designs that allow products to be recycled at the end of their use cycle, or “net zero” office spaces that run solely on sustainable resources (191-92). Though much work remains to be done, the authors believe that these experiments provide promising avenues of change for an economic future in which work, consumption, and waste can be vastly reduced.
Part 3, Chapter 22 Summary: “Building Immunity”
Chapter 22 offers the reader a few tips that serve as “powerful antiviruses […] that can help us vaccinate against affluenza and […] some equally effective vitamins that can help keep us from harm’s way” (194).
The first example is the group led by Vancouver resident Kalle Lasn, founder of Adbusters magazine and international “Buy Nothing Day” (194-7). Adbusters became famous for its satirical facsimiles of corporate advertisements, such as cigarette mascot Joe Chemo (for Joe Camel). According to Lasn, the effect of the parodies is to have the readers of Adbusters question the methods and messaging of the advertising industry. This anti-affluenza spirit has carried over into Buy Nothing Day, which falls on Black Friday, the single biggest day for shopping in the United States. Lasn and company encourage demonstrations like cutting up credit cards and wandering malls in large groups with empty shopping carts in order to mock consumer frenzy.
The authors point out that the most important period for developing immunity to affluenza is childhood. They cite websites like Consumer Jungle and Share Save Spend as instances of resources for parents and educators designed to teach children the value of giving, saving, and good spending habits (198). Moreover, school districts are increasingly interested in providing young students with “media literary,” understood as a capacity to critical analyze and interpret advertising materials (198-99). One particularly successful example of this approach is the short documentary The Story of Stuff, by former Greenpeace activist Annie Leonard. The video has millions of views online and has been shown in hundreds of schools around the world. Further tools include the “ecological handprint” website run by Harvard professor Greg Norris, which asks its users a series of lifestyle questions in order to gauge whether they are having a net positive or negative impact on the planet (200-01).
Though these educational materials may not eradicate affluenza outright, the authors argue that they represent an important step in increasing awareness about the harmful effects of consumer habits, and provide helpful suggestions for how to change them.
Part 3, Chapter 23 Summary: “Policy Prescriptions”
This chapter offers some potential government policy ideas to help the United States kick the affluenza bug; “our social ills”, the authors write, “won’t be cured by personal action alone”, and therefore require the intervention of the government in order to be solved (202). The authors discuss eight broad policy initiatives that, while hardly a “silver bullet” for affluenza, will gradually ameliorate its destructive effects: (1) a reduction in working hours, (2) a restructuring of taxes and income, (3) corporate reform, with a particular emphasis on product recycling, (4) investment in sustainable resources, (5) redirection of government subsidies to green energy, (6) a new concept of “child protection,” especially against advertising, (7) campaign finance reform, and (8) new ideas about the balance between economic growth and quality of life (202-03).
Though many of these policies may sound utopian, or even economically irresponsible, the authors point out that versions of each of these ideas have either been successfully implemented on a small scale or are already features of other developed nations (e.g., single-payer healthcare in Canada, or higher productivity alongside lower working hours in the Netherlands).
One interesting example provided from the United States is the case of public employees in Amador County, California, a staunchly Republican county (205-07). In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the county was forced to reduce its budget expenditures. To avoid layoffs, the public service union of nearly 200 workers reluctantly accepted a two-year deal in which salaries were cut by 10% but working hours correspondingly decreased from 40 per week to 36, including a three-day weekend. Although the union voted to reverse this arrangement after its expiration, which resulted in the loss of 17 jobs, they quickly changed their minds and returned to the shortened work schedule. As the authors have argued throughout Affluenza, while the Amador County employees initially prioritized more money over more free time, they grew to appreciate the benefits of a reduced work week, including more time for chores, family, hobbies, vacations, and outdoor activities. For the authors, the Amador County case represents a positive model of how to reconfigure the relationship between work, money, consumption and leisure time in a manner that provides greater individual health, personal fulfillment, and environmental sustainability than our current economic system.
The other policy prescriptions discussed in Chapter 23 are designed to reach the same outcome: a fairer, greener, less stressful and less unequal economy that gives every American the same reasonable expectation of the pursuit of happiness.
Part 3, Chapter 24 Summary: “Vital Signs”
This chapter looks at different “checkups”; that is, various tests or measures by which groups and individuals can determine their current state of affluenza (215). As the authors note, the usual standard of the economic health of a nation, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), provides a strictly quantitative evaluation of how many goods and services a nation is producing and consuming (216). Even the inventor of GDP, Simon Kuznets, warned that focusing on the quantity of economic growth in a country ignores a number of important qualitative factors, including the health, happiness, and well-being of its citizens (218-19). Accordingly, the authors discuss several new models for determining the true wealth of a nation.
The first example is the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) (218-21). In contrast to GDP, GPI accounts for not just pure economic growth, but also its expenses or subtractions. Relevant figures include the cost of various forms of pollution, underemployment, commuting, and crime. Though the GDP of the United States has been steadily increasing since the mid-1970s, GPI has remained relatively flat.
A similar metric is the Gross National Happiness Index pioneered by the small nation of Bhutan and now used by the United Nations (221-5). While the subjective standard of personal happiness is notoriously difficult to measure, the Happiness Index pairs data concerning the former with objective determinations of well-being. Unlike happiness, which may vary from person to person, the notion of well-being is grounded in concrete factors like income levels, life expectancy, leisure hours, and rates of depression. Other innovations, such as GPI Plus and the Happiness Initiative, further expand upon this more qualitative, well-rounded approach to evaluating human fulfillment. According to the authors, these and similar “checkups” can help us to better understand and combat the influence of affluenza across the globe.
Part 3, Chapter 25 Summary: “The Glow of Health”
The concluding chapter of Affluenza recapitulates many of the central themes of the book. Although the authors emphasize that reductions in personal consumption are a pressing climatological imperative, they reiterate that eliminating affluenza once and for all will require a kind of “paradigm shift” in our culture (230). Not just consuming less, but “wanting less and needing less” will be necessary to transforming our collective way of life in order to overcome affluenza and its destructive symptoms (235). This will involve a number of economic, political, environmental, and even spiritual changes, from broadening and decentralizing governmental authority to constricting and regulating product advertising. Many of these points have of course been established in the preceding chapters of the book.
While the authors recognize that these major shifts in our lives will not be easy to accomplish, they also offer optimistic signs of progress. Energy efficiency is becoming a higher priority in the construction of new homes, healthy activities like yoga and exercising are increasing in popularity, and the success of services like Zip Car and Netflix suggest that we are moving away from an ownership model of consumption to a leasing model (229). Even multi-billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates have pledged to donate over half of their personal fortunes to charity (235).
According to psychologist Dacher Keltner, we are ultimately an altruistic, cooperative, and highly adaptive species (234). We have, in other words, the capacity to defeat affluenza together and create a cleaner, fairer, safer, and kinder world. Our survival depends upon it.
Part 3, Chapters 21-25 Analysis
This closing segment of Affluenza, Chapters 21 through 25, looks at potential economic and political solutions to the crisis of overconsumption. This is probably the most constructive portion of the book; that is, the place where the authors make most of their concrete demands about what it will take to counteract the virus of affluenza. Individual lifestyle choices, they insist, are an important aspect of disrupting affluenza, but ultimately insufficient without deep structural and organizational reforms.
In terms of economic proposals, the authors present several examples of alternative business and consumption models that limit the negative effects of affluenza. The guiding thread in these discussions is the claim that consumption must be both reduced and transformed. We need to buy less, as the authors have argued throughout Affluenza, which requires moving from less of an ownership or possession economy to one of sharing and renting. But corporations and manufacturers also need to take greater responsibility for their products in terms of extending their lifecycles and ensuring that they can later be recycled or reused. In other words, as a society, we need to not only make, sell, and buy fewer things, but also make them better, so as to reduce waste.
The political dimension of these chapters is wide-ranging and far-reaching. Taken together, the numerous policy ideas outlined in Chapter 23 amount to a systematic reconfiguration of our political landscape. Again, perhaps the central point behind these proposals is a reduction of working hours, and perhaps even income, in favor of more free time and a higher quality of life. This will allow us to address the fractures in our personal lives, families, and communities detailed in Part 1 of the book.
The economic and political reforms offered in these chapters reflect the moral and spiritual argument of Affluenza. Current work conditions, combined with conspicuous consumption, do not give most of us a happy, flourishing life. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that affluenza does immense harm both to human beings and the planet as a whole. We need to transform not only our governments, workplaces, relationships, and use of the natural environment, but, moreover, ourselves. Without a kind of internal revolution by which each of us turns away from a culture of mere things and towards a life of more meaningful, non-materialistic values, the necessary changes required to overcome affluenza will not come to fruition.
