We talked about the economy at knitting group this week. We talked about stores closing and retirement funds disappearing. We talked about cutting our own spending. We talked about the empty spaces at the new shopping center in our area, the one built to cater to the affluent, with a day spa, expensive lingerie store and two stores devoted exclusively to olive oil. Already a kitchen store and a stationery shop have closed. I don’t think either had been open a full year.
The shopping center was designed to look like a quaint French village, with a bell tower pealing church music, while the Mercedes dealership next door looked remarkably like a new church when it was under construction.
Today our airwaves and newspapers are filled with stories of low consumer confidence and a consequent drop in consumer spending. Economists debate what should be done while the government seems frantic to convince us to spend again.
I’m not an economist and I’m sure there is a lot about the situation I don’t understand. But what I know and what the women in my knitting group all understand is that we have created this problem ourselves and we aren’t going to fix it by doing more of what got us into the problem in the first place. We have to find economic fixes other than those intended to stimulate more over consumption.
Americans have proved ourselves quite able to spend more than we have but we can’t consume more than we have. Our planet simply won’t allow it. What we have is limited, limited by our natural resources, limited by the size of the planet. I’ve heard that if the whole world consumed at the rate of American consumption, it would take seven planets to fill our demands. I’m not sure the figure is precisely accurate but my common sense, my own looking at the world, tells me it’s not far off.
So why are we trying to get Americans to consume more? Yes, we know businesses close when spending is down. A lot of jobs are lost when Circuit City goes bankrupt. But at best, keeping these stores open, doing business as they have always done, is only a temporary fix, contributing to our trade imbalance and national debt.
As I said, I don’t pretend to be an economist. But I don’t think the economists understand this much either. My eldest daughter majored in economics in college. She tells me that when she entered the business world she quickly learned that most of what she had been taught didn’t hold up.
And, despite whatever holes there may be in my analysis, I’m quite sure my conclusion is true: There has to be a better way. We have to find a way to run our economy not dependent on over consumption and debt. I’m quite sure the future of our country and our planet depends on it.
My intuition tells me knitting is part of the answer. No instant gratification here! Instead the purchase of $50 to $100 of wool, a very renewable resource, yields hours and hours of pleasure in the disciplined creation of a unique hand knit item, perhaps a gift to be enjoyed for many years, rather than something to be tossed out at the end of the season.
And so I continue my current program of sweater knitting. The body of the February Lady is just about done, the lace before blocking is the usual heap of undisciplined yarn. I'll finish the edging and begin work on the sleeves today.
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