Consumer Spending: What If Americans Dont' Start Buying Again?

nytimes.com:

If Americans don't start buying a lot of stuff again, can the world economy be saved? What's the global Plan B? These are fundamental questions at the summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations in Pittsburgh.

In previous global downturns, Americans have come to the rescue, getting out their credit cards and buying up what the rest of the world produces. "Our spending is currently equal to the entire economies of China and India added together and then doubled," as Fareed Zakaria has pointed out, representing the single biggest chunk of the world economy.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[VivaZapata]

05:41 AM on 10/02/2009

Consumer Spending: What If Americans Dont' Start Buying Again?
Increased unemployment renders the question, whether rhetorical in nature or not, absurd. furthermore, credit cards are maxed out, so there's really no money to spend. The wealthy have done well in this depression, but most are not consumers in the sense that their expenditures proportionately match their intake of money. The only solution is to tax them to the max and get the money flowing again. Further borrowing means the end of the United States as we know it.

[chabnormal]

07:51 PM on 11/07/2009

EXACTLY!!! Let them pay 30+% of their income in taxes. I have to pay taxes on 100% of my income. EVERYONE should have to pay taxes on all of their income.

[SaneBull]

12:11 PM on 09/28/2009

Yay stocks surging on Wall Street. Lets forget about high unemployment, wall street greed & corruption, and heath care reform. Happy days are here again for the rich, while everyone else goes though the same $h1t everyday.

good articles; http://www.iamned.com

Ppl have no money, no heath care, no home, no job, no sanity.

[Scarborian]

04:36 PM on 09/27/2009

Americans can't buy stuff because their "discretionary" income is used up making payments on extortionate interest rates and a creative bank charges. The banks are sucking all the available money out of the system.

[FreedomCorpse]

07:40 AM on 09/27/2009

The G20 certainly don't seem to be the brightest bulbs in the room do they? Remind me a bunch of clones of American politicians who never see the lopsided trade deficit as an issue...just dumb, dumber and dumbest people on planet earth.

[zell]

01:05 AM on 09/27/2009

I read somewhere where John Podesta, formerly of the Clinton administration, recommends adding a Value-added Tax (VAT) to help raise revenue for healthcare reform. All I could think of after reading that was how empty the malls would be with a VAT. That would be a sure way for the economy to hit ground zero and put us in third world status. Even now, I go to the mall sometimes, before commuter time starts, and the stores are like funeral parlors in that they are so empty and quiet..............

[WonderingNThinking]

07:02 PM on 09/26/2009

This line in the article makes me nauseous...

"Meanwhile, why have consumers in other countries — like China and Germany, which produce far more than they spend — failed to step up to the plate?"

[kfdan]

06:45 PM on 09/26/2009

"If Americans don't start buying a lot of stuff again, can the world economy be saved?"
The retail market may very well fail come Xmas. I wonder if Obama will provide money to save it? The problem is really clear ... the US needs massive reform from Washington to Wall Street and there isn't a shinning white knight in sight. No money ... no honey!

[barnybilt]

12:35 AM on 09/26/2009

So You think consumer spending is bad now, wait till everyone has to spend all their disposible income on health insurance, and see how good it is then. See how many jobs are lost when businesses are forced to supply healthcare. See how great it is when people have to pay the tax on their so-called good healthcare plans, or when they are fined for not doing what the Government wants. Consumer spending is completely dependent on people having money to spend, take away their money they won't spend.

[olephart]

07:19 PM on 09/25/2009

Here’s the deal, all those fraudulent banks and Wall Street institutions that went belly up and were re-floated by lowly taxpayers have not been re-regulated. Now they’re paying out big bonuses again and are up to their old tricks of financial chicanery. About 80% of all home loans are backed the Federal Government and they are allowing low or no down payments. These are the schemes that just blew up. We’re setting up another failure just to bailout this one.

Nothing has been solved, we’ve backstopped $11.6 trillion in bad and fraudulent securities and we’re starting the whole mess over again. Bush may have gotten us into this hole but would someone please tell Obama to stop digging.

[pokethis]

07:11 PM on 09/25/2009

I think China and other Asian countries will be fulfilling the job of the US in the not so distant future. The US consumer is dead. The world economy will survive, it just won't be so dependent on the US. Ford is building a plant in China and India. Why? Because that is where the future demand is. It's not here.

[Chironomid]

04:35 PM on 09/25/2009

Ahhh ... the end of the junk economy, maybe? The inevitable closed-loop end of globalization? We can only hope!

Yeah, things may be tough for a few years, but if we actually learn to stop buying and filling our lives with all this junk, and the captains of industry finally realize you can't take everything away from the middle class and expect them to proceed as normal, it's all worth it.

[vippy]

10:31 PM on 09/25/2009

Well, I did not buy any junk but I upgraded my living standard just like European Family had been doing. To do less would have been a step backward. It would have been an eye opener much earlier that we, in the great USA, had been left behind. Why should I take second place and feel guilty, when the top is flaunting it, stealing from the little guy, certainly was not earned. Have to laugh about our training session about "team work!" Seems like team work is only when it comes to work but when it comes to bonuses and salaries, there is no team anything.

[spinns17]

02:32 PM on 09/25/2009

this is a great one .http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yroIIYwQwdI

[MeinNH]

02:19 PM on 09/25/2009

Who has anything to spend. People are cutting back on food, meds, utilities, there is no "disposable income" anymore.

[davidwayneosedach]

02:07 PM on 09/25/2009

Please do not blame Main Street's lack of spending for the lack of recovery. Wall St. got us into this mess!

[spinns17]

11:41 AM on 09/26/2009

greed did,by all.

[WonderingNThinking]

07:05 PM on 09/26/2009

Yep

[waverly]

01:56 PM on 09/25/2009

The American people have been shouldering the world far too long. We are depleted. Time for someone else to step up to the plate. Now that Americans are saving their hard earned money to catch up with the rest of the world it is time for the world to start spending their hard earned savings.

C'mon world, help us out.

[kappa08]

02:08 PM on 09/25/2009

...I think Americans realized they have nothing to show for their voracious obese appetites and are sobering up to what other great nations have found out centuries ago...

"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your f****ng khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world." ~Fight Club

...quality of life has NOTHING to do with a 3 ton vehicle and 2000 more sq. ft. than you actually need.

[mazaza]

07:20 PM on 09/25/2009

Your unregulated economy put us into this mess!