Mom and Dad were raised during the Depression, my mother experiencing serious poverty after her dad died suddenly in 1940. They knew how to make a dollar go a long way, and indeed back then dollars did buy much more than now. My parents made only one overseas trip, which was a retirement gift paid for by the TV station where Dad worked for 30 years.
I was surprised when, sometime in the 1980s or ’90s, I saw Dad flash a credit card for the first time. However, I doubt he and Mom ever paid a cent of interest on that card. Their aversion to debt never dwindled.
All of this came to mind when the Bank of Canada announced a small decline in its trend-setting interest rate on June 5. Financial analysts lauded the cut as what they hoped would be the first of many. Lower interest rates will be a boon to people with mortgages and other forms of debt. But the analysts’ main hope was that lower rates, according to a Globe and Mail article, will create “room in family budgets for discretionary purchases that were shelved in recent years in favour of financial prudence.”
Financial prudence, it appears, is seen as a drag on the economy while “discretionary purchases” will lead to a better life. Per capita spending on goods has fallen for 10 consecutive quarters. I get it. Drops in consumer spending make life difficult for businesses, both large and small, and can boost unemployment.
Yet nowhere was there mention of how higher levels of production contribute, not only to climate change, but also to the idolatry of consumerism which drives our economic system. Pope Francis, in his landmark encyclical Laudato Si’,declared, “Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending.”
Average monthly credit card expenditures per cardholder in Canada at the end of 2023 were more than $2,300. The average credit card balance was $4,265. Forty per cent of Canadians carry credit card debt at exorbitant interest rates. Total credit card debt in Canada was $116.2 billion out of total consumer debt of $2.45 trillion.
Along with credit cards, mortgages, car loans and student loans make up the bulk of consumer debt.
For some financial analysts, these numbers are apparently not high enough. They would like us to spend more on vacations, recreational vehicles, boats, cars and trucks, other major consumer items, entertainment, eating out, etc., to keep the economy chugging away.
Is this just me? Or do other people see this situation as problematic? My dad taught me a way of managing money at odds with the foundation of our economic system. In fact, even Fairstone, a Canadian loan company, asks consumers to consider whether “lifestyle creep” is contributing to their growing debt. In a Jan. 15 press release, it urged consumers to prioritize savings and noted that 47 per cent of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque.
The issue is more than personal. We are hooped in a rising spiral of production and consumption leading to ever-higher levels of debt. If everyone lived like my parents, the economy would lose momentum, and people would have to live with less. Profits would dwindle, and the stock market would provide far less revenue for investors.
Further, this is a religious issue the Old Testament prophets addressed but which today we are inclined to ignore. The issue is this: the question is not “Do you believe in God?” but rather, “What god do you believe in?” Ours is a system built on idolatry. Whether to praise and honour God is a private consideration, but whether to consume more and more is an urgent public concern. Something is vaguely traitorous about reducing “discretionary spending.”
The economic system will not change of its own accord. Nor would protesters who demand companies reduce production have even a negligible effect. Change arises out of our personal decisions about what constitutes the good life. Do we experience the good life by shopping until we drop? Or is there another way, one which values the immaterial over the material?