Solution-Focused Change in Organizations ->
This fascinating book describes how a new virus, the luxury fever has
Americans seemingly inescapably in its grip: people spend a larger and
larger proportion of our money on luxury goods. And, because for most
people incomes have remained static or have even declined (in the US and
the UK), this extra spending was financed by lower savings and higher
debts, making the economy weaker and more vulnerable. Further, most people
work longer and tend to spend less time on important activities such as
vacations, being with family, sleeping exercising, etc. To make things
worse: Americans spend less on vital public services which leads to a
deteriorating infrastructure, to higher crime, to dirty streets and parks,
to water pollution, to a deteriorating education system, etc. And what
about health? 40 million Americans currently lack health insurance....
This book explains how there is a competition 1) between different forms
of private spending (do we buy luxury or do we spend our money differently?)
and 2) between private and public spending. To expand on the latter point:
a growing share of the US national income is spent on consumption and
spending on vital publics services is increasingly threatened. Frank
explains (on the basis of well-being research and the adaptation-level
theory) that the main reason we buy luxury goods is to demonstrate to
others that we can afford to thereby trying to distinguish ourselves from
them. In doing so we try to achieve happiness by improving our relative
status. The irony is, however, this absolutely doesn't work! The
satisfaction we get from luxury spending, which Frank calls conspicuous
spending, depends largely on context. The satisfaction we get from luxury
spending lasts only shortly. Two examples: 1) If we buy an expensive car,
this distinguishes us from our neighbour and we feel happy. If, however,
next month our neighbour buys an even fancier one, our satisfaction will
be largely gone. You can see how this leads to an escalation, an arms
race, with no winners. 2) The satisfaction we get from luxury goods tends
to decline steeply over time. We tend to get used quickly to what we have
and the favourable features of the luxury good tend to fade into the
background rapidly: we no longer notice the fancy features of our
expensive car and our satisfaction diminishes. Bottom line: this
increasing conspicuous spending does more harm than good. We have to
discourage conspicuous consumption in favour of inconspicuous consumption.
Frank explains that no individual or family alone can solve this problem.
It has to be solved at a higher level. He proposes a simple but effective
measure to discourage conspicuous consumption, a progressive consumption
tax levied on consumption rather than income. Frank claims this tax can
stimulate radical changes in the ways we lead our lives. Contrary to the
believe of many, he convincingly argues, this progressive consumption tax
would not cripple the economy but invigorate it. A fascinating book also
highly relevant for European countries I think.
Coert Visser
Coert Visser (coert.visser@planet.nl) is a consultant,
coach and trainer using a positive change approach. This approach is focused on
simply helping individuals, teams and organizations to make progress in
the direction of their own choice. Coert wrote many articles and a few
books. More
information:
www.m-cc.nl
/
www.m-cc.nl/solutionfocusedchange.htm /
Dutch
network / Dutch
blog,
http://solutionfocusedchange.blogspot.com