Judith Levine believes the recession is giving us excuses for “moral flagellation” and argues at Salon that thrift is the new abstinence:
From the 17th through the early 20th century, capitalism needed greed, and Christianity found ways to underwrite it. Late-20th-century consumer capitalism needed unending desire to keep the profits coming. Enter consumer credit and an ethos of gratification. Although that came mostly from secular sources, market-savvy evangelicals have proved enthusiastic boosters of consumerism, with their “gospels of wealth.” After Sept. 11, shopping became an act of patriotism, another religion. And now we are asked to keep the faith, spending to save the free market from free fall, and us with it.
The injunction to gratify our desires when we’re scared we can’t meet our needs is like telling a woman with advanced breast cancer to enjoy sex because it’s good for her marriage. In the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes coined an economic term for this recessionary quandary, in which the macro-economy needs consumers to spend confidently, even while self-interest might be better served by putting the pennies in the cookie jar. Keynes called it “the paradox of thrift.”
Add to this a moral paradox: We are damned morally if we don’t save and damned economically if we do.
So is thrift a countercultural message from a chorus of Christians, environmentalists and socialists—and bad for capitalism? Or is thrift, like the Protestant ethic, useful to the economy?
Read her full piece here.