Gospel Of Consumption Summary

Black Friday shopping is a controversial issue in the United States; while many believe the day after Thanksgiving is a part of holiday festivities, others view it as destructive. Throughout “Black Friday: Consumerism Minus Civilization,” Andrew Leonard argues that the chaos of Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in which crowds of Americans shop all night for extremely low prices, lessens the sophistication of Americans and the true meaning of the holidays. People become so consumed in the idea of endless sale prices that they forget to embrace what they already have, such as family, food, and shelter. He believes that Black Friday shopping has become out of control and describes the negative effects of excessive consumerism. he explains how most consumers act completely insane while Black Friday shopping and how society encourages this behavior by creating commercials and advertisements. Furthermore, Leonard states that it hurts the economy and damages one’s mental health. While Leonard is probably wrong when he claims that Black Friday shopping is completely troublesome to America’s well-being, he is right that consumerism overpowers the true significance of Thanksgiving.

The United States department of commerce found out that the nation is becoming weaker. Economy had increased how consumers blow their paychecks on unnecessary items. For example, many Americans are not able to pay their rent, yet still buy play stations 4 and a 52 inch plasma TV. Most Americans spend money when going to a gas station, in game purchase or paying full price for clothes. People who pay for items in full price should be more responsible with their money. However, Alyssa Battistoni

Gospel of Wealth is an article written by Andrew Carnegie back in 1889. Carnegie was the second richest man in America. By dominating the steel industry. Carnegie believed that people like him had a responsibility, to use their wealth (money) to benefit the good. So, people like him should promote the welfare of others or charity to close the gap between rich and the poor. This belief became known as the Gospel of Wealth. Carnegie believed that leaving all your money to one person was unacceptable. While you are alive they should use their money to benefit society. Carnegie gave about 90% of his wealth during his lifetime (Ame3).

This spillover was observed by Hamper of his Grandfather. “Straight home from work, dinner, the evening news and immediately into bed at 7:00 p.m. He arose each weekday at 3:30 a.m., fixed himself some black coffee, turned on the kitchen radio, smoked a handful of Lucky Strikes and waited to leave for work at a quarter to five. This regimen never varied one iota in the forty years he worked for GM” (Hamper pg.6). It is fairly clear that the monotony of the assembly line has a way of setting personal routines for it’s workers that eventually work their way out of the factory and into the home.

Because advertisements are purposely placed to be seen, it has become a part of our lives. Even when watching television there are constantly commercials trying to convince us to buy items that are often of a lower price. I’ve noticed that in these commercials they use tactics in order to try to engage the viewer. Not only do they show a low price but they often include multiple copies of the same item. For example, if there was a commercial about pillows, they would often include more than one of them for the same price. This makes people think they are getting an extremely good deal because more quantity for the same price. However, these items tend to be of low quality. As a result they may need to be constantly replaced and thrown away. This leads to a cycle of a company to sell, the consumer to buy, and to replace. In the process, these unwanted items are being thrown in landfills and polluting the Earth. As it mentions in, Bookmarks, Possessed by Our Possessions, “Passively buying into production practices that contribute to poisonous waste every time we go shopping depletes the earth in the process” (Cole 4). This statement is extremely accurate, especially in America. Although we have only 5% of the world’s population, we consume 30 percent of the world’s resources. And because of this, we also produce 30

Therefore, the work schedule of the majority of Americans is greatly time-consuming and restrictive in how their life is like. Employment is restrictive in the sense that it doesn’t allow for much free time for Americans to do things in their life how they would like. Hochschild states, “But without overstating the case, it seems true that capitalism is a cultural as well as an economic system and that the symbols and rituals of this cultural system compete with, however much they seem to serve, the symbols and rituals of community and family.” (Hochschild 187) Most Americans are employed around capitalistic ideas of efficiency. Employers require employees to commit long hours, days, and years of their life to working for them. Employers also seek maximum efficiency in the time that employees are working. This commitment that employees make to their employment takes away from things that they value as mentioned by Hochschild. Unfortunately, Americans are forced to deal with this because they want to establish economic stability for themselves. Furthermore, the work life of

The rapper Kanye West stated “She don`t believe in shooting stars but she believes in shoes and cars.” Malls, Outlets and online resources are the most common sources for shopping experiences for many people today. There are also the many food outlets and sales that encourage people to purchase items that may or may not be necessary. In her essay, “American Consumerism,” Jamie Bentley reflecting on Simon Benlow’s essay “An Apology to Future Generations” that expresses concern about consumers’ negative impact on the environment reveals this generation’s obsession with materialism, with the hope that people will learn to do more with less. The many options available to purchase items create a problem for individuals who desire to have what they

On my travels around America in the 1800s one man that stands out the most among the crowd would have to be Samuel Gompers, Writer of “What does the working man want?”. Mr. Gompers wrote this piece to help people understand the importance of the working man and how implementing the 8 hour work day would

The rise in advertisement played a key role in the rise of consumption. Thanks to well-developed advertisement campaigns, America redefined what a necessity is. Advertisers encouraged Americans to actively work towards maintaining a high social standing. “Advertisers made no secret of their intention to promote novelty for its own sake, in the hope that consumers would exchange perfectly serviceable goods for goods that conformed to the latest fashions” (Lasch, 2000). Consumers devoured this advertisement scheme and began to rapidly increase their spending. Many advertisements for common, household products made claim that they could make the normal appear comparable to the high end. For example, Lux, a soap company, ran an ad in 1920 that depicted two women talking - one of the women complemented on the other on the quantity of sweaters she owned, only to find out that it is not a new sweater, but rather her old sweater that Lux soap made it look brand new (Lux)! Men and women alike began to believe

For generations, Americans has been brainwashed by the media to believe that what is displayed on television is the ideal perception of what real beauty have manipulated American citizens of what style looks like. Furthermore, with their many brainwashing strategies, that means more and more consumers spending beyond their budget. Our perspectives have been heavily influenced by what they believe is nice, but can we afford it all? With unrealistic combination of goods in store, plazas, and mall, consuming has become a bad behavior of some. In support of my argument of the “Overspending”, author Gladwell’s article “The Science of Shopping” also argues that stores adjust to fit the needs and wants of the shopper are evidently presented. With that being said, we have no idea when we are being manipulated into unrealistic shopping behavior that is influenced by the way the advertisement is presented in visual sight. Author Gladwell gets a “retail anthropologist” and “urban geographer” named Paco Underhill to give breakdown points of how he helps brand name stores influence consumers into persuasion of buying more. However, most of us fall short of that discipline, while being persuaded to overspend during our store visits.

Over the last two decades, American workers have been clocking more and more hours on the job, and they now work more hours than workers in any other industrialized country. Annual work hours are 4% higher than they were in 1980, amounting to an extra 1 hour and 30 minutes at work per week, on average (ILO 1999). Workers are also clocking more overtime hours. Almost one-third of the workforce regularly works more than the standard 40-hour week; one-fifth work more than 50 hours. The growth in overtime work, while helping to drive the healthy growth in output in the U.S., has unhealthy social costs. It is taking its toll not only on workers, but on their families, communities, and, ultimately in many cases, patients, customers, and

The American lifestyle improved with the new homes, and new technology. Consumer goods played an important role in middle-class life during the postwar era. Adults participated eagerly in the consumer economy, using new-fangled credit cards and charge accounts to buy things like televisions, hi-fi systems and new cars. Items such as refrigerators, washing machines, and black-and-white televisions became common appliances. The availability of TVs in homes increased the opportunities for marketing through commercials, which added to Americans’ desire to have the best and latest technology. Marketing through commercials is how manufacturers and marketers caught the eyes on another group of shoppers as well: the millions of relatively affluent boomer children, many of whom could be persuaded to participate in all kinds of consumer

I think Clapp’s assessment of American consumer culture are accurate and insightful. An examination of history and our modern cultural trends reveals the validity of Clapp’s assessment. For example, in the nineteenth century pictographic and flashy advertising taught the consumerism lifestyle to Americans and transformed America into a society of consumerism. “Consumers, in short, were made, not born” (Clapp, 1996, p. 366). From the 1800s to the present day advertisers continue to actively and aggressively sell a lifestyle with their product. [Modern consumerism is] a fun-house world of ever-proliferating wants and exquisitely unsatisfied desire, consumption entails most profoundly the cultivation of pleasure, the pursuit of novelty, and the

In the beginning of her essay, she declares that consumerism is a “pernicious problem, an addiction to consumption so out of control that it qualifies as a sickness” (Quindlen 159). The author’s statement could easily offend anyone who is a part of America’s consumer culture and seems very vague in her statement. What qualifies as out of control consumption; buying toys or clothes or is there a limit where it becomes out of control? Quindlen also states that “now much of the country is made up of people with the acquisition habits of a 7-year-old, desire untethered from need, or the ability to pay” (160). This is a very generalized statement that cannot be effectively given because, again, she does not verify exactly what she means. Are the acquisitions of a 7-year-old the desire to buy everything you see? Maybe they are the desires to own every fun new gadget, regardless of need. She also says “much of the country” but leaves her remark at that; how much is “much”? Without any sources, it can easily be assumed she is using her own personal relationships to come to this conclusions which is a biased group and does not represent the country as a whole. Shopping and consumer consumption is a necessary part of the American economy, and Quindlen’s arguments regarding a majority of the country and their reckless spending may only be extreme in a few cases, and reasonable in

Unfortunately there are consequences that arise when a consumer has been greenwashed. These consequences are that consumers ultimately spend more money on products that they believe stand true, and when purchasing these products the consumer is supporting companies that are harming the environment. Downing et al. states that, “learning how to read advertising critically thus provides individuals with important tools for interpreting contemporary American culture and avoiding manipulation. Ads are complex texts, the images, words, framing devices, and