.
I wrapped the last two Christmas presents this afternoon. For some years now, I’ve found it hard to muster up any Christmas spirit, but this year I did manage to buy something for the five great-nephews and great-nieces at least. They’re all under 10, which is still young enough to be excited about opening presents.
I know people who give presents at the drop of a hat. My sister, Sharon, is like that. She loves buying things for other people, especially other people’s children. If you go shopping with her (an activity I avoid like the plague), you have to stop every time she sees something she thinks would be “perfect” for someone she knows. Of course, given that I live 180 miles away, the someones she knows are hardly ever someone I know, so all I can do is nod and smile when she says “Don’t you think . . . would just love that?”
The truth is, most of what she picks up to admire is something I wouldn’t be caught dead buying for myself, let alone for someone else. I have ‘way too much stuff and don’t want any more.
I’ve thought for a long time that Americans in general have too many things. Too many of us have too many clothes we never wear, too many specialty appliances we never use, too many things that do nothing but sit on tables and counters and shelves.
That’s what keeps our economy going, however, and the experts all say this is no time to be cutting back. They say we should keep shopping, not only to save the jobs of the clerks who sell things to us or the truck drivers who transport them or the people who make them, but also to keep our jobs as those people buy our goods and services.
There’s something wrong with that picture. Oh, not that we are dependent on one another. Of course, we are. No, the part that’s wrong is that we’re dependent on so much that is so meaningless.
My father took a great deal of pride in being a letter carrier. He made sure that he knew the names of all the people who lived in every house on his block. He could recognize most of them when he saw them on the street, and they all could recognize him. When he talked about his work, he talked about delivering paychecks and family letters and important documents. As the years went by and he delivered more and more junk mail, he grew disillusioned.
How much pride, I wonder, is taken by the people who make chotchkis we don’t need? I know that little pride is taken by the people who stand behind the counter at fast food restaurants selling us burgers that makes us obese. When I think of the dumbing down of America, the first image that comes to mind is the icons instead of numbers on the cash registers at McDonald’s.
If we are heading into another Great Depression, I’m hopeful it will have a silver lining. As we learn to adjust to having less money to spend, we’ll also have to take stock of what we think is important.
And that could be the greatest gift of all.
.
2 comments:
I recently came across a YouTube video in which Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard University was discussing "middle class squeeze". She noted that in the average middle-class American family of the 1920s, the husband had just six changes of clothes, the wife just nine dresses. I know people who own nine or ten pairs of jeans.
I've also been reading up online about streetcar suburbs--the first wave of suburban development that happened between about 1890 and 1930 in the US. Compared to modern suburbs, streetcar suburbs (so named because they actually were designed with the streetcar in mind) had narrower lots and higher density. In a streetcar suburb, an acre of land had an average of 10 units; in a modern, auto-based suburb, an acre has only 4.
In many streetcar suburbs (areas like West Philadelphia), empty lots have opened up as houses have been torn down or burned down over the years, but the lots don't get filled in. Why? Because the lots are now considered "too small" by local ordinances, so the only way to redevelop is to buy up several lots together and reapportion.
This is nonsense. These areas are not filthy tenements; they were not so considered when they were built, and they are not so considered now. We are not talking about building airless, lightless homes for the poor but modest, perfectly adequate row houses, duplexes, and houses that share a driveway and rear garage with their neighbor. The only reason we don't allow new construction in them is that they don't fit more modern ideas of a middle-class standard of living. But these areas were originally developed with middle-class people in mind.
I have been in some of the rowhouses in Trenton that were once considered adequate working-class housing. The rooms were quite small. Although there were three bedrooms, I don't see how more than one child could sleep in the smaller ones, at least not after they grew out of bunk beds.
We are seeing townhouses being built all over the country, but they are often in areas where the prices are too high for them to be truly middle-class. Instead, they are gentrification clusters that push out lower-income people.
A proper mass-transit system that allowed people in cities to live without private automobiles is a goal most Democrats could support. But it would have to be more than buses, so creating it will displace many people and cause enormous short-term pain. It will take tremendous political courage. I'm hopeful that Obama will include such plans in his "economic recovery plan."
Post a Comment