My first book for 2009 will be this one. I really like it! Of course that may be partly because I agree with the anti-consumerist message behind it.My struggle with all the discourse about how to solve the current economic difficulty in which we find ourselves has been that it only works if one buys the consumerist message that undergirds our system.
All we are being told is that we need to free up credit and put more cash into people's pockets so that they will spend more and thereby "fix" the problem. OF course this hopes you forget that a great many North Americans are excessively in debt already and the last thing they need is more credit. It also hopes nobody points out that many of the things out there are things that we don't really need, or need to replace.
If the only cure for what ails us is to do more of what got us here. Then maybe we need a new cure. Maybe an economic model that isn't based on us all needing to buy the latest toy at the lowest price and who cares if you can't afford it--just get another credit card!
HArdly a week goes by that we don't get at least one "you have been pre-approved" mailing. I remember once when one of us was gently telling a telemarketer we had no desire for a new credit card because we wouldn't have extra cash to pay it off the response was "but you don't have to pay it all at once, and the interest rate is really low". The system as it stands is broken. It is up to the church to help find a new way of defining what the system could be. Books like this are a good place to start. I encourage y'all to read it.
