On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Doug Henwood <[email protected]> wrote: > Just posted to the LBO website - how the boom in U.S. consumption is mostly > about medical inflation: > > http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Consumption.html
"American consumers aren’t the profligates of legend.." Isn't this overstating the case a bit? Certainly, you (and others) have made a convincing case that the profligacy of the American consumer is *dwarfed* by the wastefulness of the health-care system. But that doesn't disprove the thesis of American overconsumption. In fact your own data shows this. The "ex-medical" consumption graph is flat as a fraction of GDP since 1960, but that GDP has since increased by something like a factor of 4, inflation adjusted. This, at a time when wages were stagnant. The fact is someone was buying all those big-screen TVs and SUVs until recently. And it wasn't just the super-rich. We have had this discussion on PEN-L before. And I haven't seen anyone refute it convincingly. The average American does, in fact, over-consume. Perhaps less so than rapacious corporations, but still.. -raghu. -- "I bought some batteries, but they weren't included." - Steven Wright _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
