Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic Read online

  Vicki Robin

  Coauthor of Your Money or Your Life

  Whidbey Island, Washington

  March 1, 2005

  PREFACE

  As I write these words, a news story sits on my desk. It’s about a Czech supermodel named Petra Nemcova, who once graced the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. Not long ago, she lived the high life that beauty bought her—jet-setting everywhere, wearing the finest clothes. But then, she happened to be vacationing in Phuket, Thailand, when the great Southeast Asian tsunami struck. Her boyfriend was swept away and killed. Badly injured, she survived by clinging to a palm tree for eight hours till she was rescued.

  After leaving the hospital she announced that the tragedy had transformed her. She no longer wanted to model; she wanted to work on relief projects for the United Nations. She told reporters she no longer cared about her old life of fashion, fame, and fortune. “Believe me, it isn’t really important,” she said. “There are so many more important things in the world, like health and love and peace in your soul.”

  In the Age of Affluenza, it’s a lesson we all need to learn. I’ve also got an “invitation” on my desk, offering me free tickets to the Millionaire Conference with Reed West. The invitation says I’ll learn how to cut my tax bill by 31 percent and reduce all my capital gains taxes to zero. Sounds good. . . until I consider what would happen if we all did that. No taxes would mean no schools, parks, public amenities. It would mean even more reckless consumption. And every study I know of shows that getting rich won’t make me happy. Sharing with those in need, building for the common good, living rich in friendships, family, and community—that’s what will. I don’t wish a tsunami on Reed West, whoever he is. But he, and all the rest of us, need to understand what tragedy taught Petra Nemcova.

  So welcome to the second edition of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic. Most movies start with a book, but this book started with a movie. In 1996, together with Vivia Boe, a fellow public-television producer, I set out to craft a documentary about the subject of overconsumption and its many not-so-benign consequences for American society. Our research told us the subject was a huge one, touching our lives as Americans in more ways than any other social or environmental issue. But how to make sense of it? How to present the issue so that viewers could see that multiple problems were caused by our consuming passion and that they were connected to each other?

  After videotaping more than two-thirds of the program, we were still wondering how to weave together the wide range of material we had collected. Then, on a flight from Seattle to Washington, D.C., to do still more videotaping, I happened to see the word affluenza used in passing in an article I was reading. For me, it was like that moment in cartoons when the light bulb goes on over someone’s head. This was it: affluenza. A single word that not only would make a catchy (pun intended) TV title, but that also suggested a disease resulting from overconsumption.

  Vivia and I agreed that here was a way to make the impacts of overconsuming more clearly understandable —as symptoms of a virus that, in the United States at least, had reached epidemic proportions. We could then look at the history of this disease, trying to understand how and why it spread, what its carriers and hot zones were, and finally, how it could be treated.

  From that point on, we began to use the term, asking interviewees if the idea made sense to them. And indeed, real doctors told us they could see symptoms of affluenza in many of their patients, symptoms often manifesting themselves physically. A psychologist offered his observation that many of his clients “suffer from affluenza, but very few know that that’s what they’re suffering from.”

  To be certain that Affluenza would be carried by as many PBS affiliate stations as possible, Vivia and I borrowed a page from the marketers and promoted it shamelessly. At a Chicago meeting of PBS programmers, we wore lab coats and stethoscopes, with name pins labeling us Dr. John and Dr. Vivia, Affluenza Epidemiologists. We passed out medicine vials labeled Affluenza Vaccine (containing candy). We wanted the programmers to know that our show would be entertaining as well as informative. With a teaspoon of sugar to make the medicine go down.

  Our documentary, Affluenza, premiered on PBS on September 15, 1997, and was greeted with an outpouring of audience calls and letters from every part of the United States, making it clear to us that we had touched a deep nerve of concern. Viewers as old as ninety-three wrote to express their fears for their grandchildren, while twenty-year-olds recounted sad tales from the lower depths of credit card debt. A cover story in the Washington Post Sunday magazine about people trying to simplify their lives introduced them as they were watching the program. A teacher in rural North Carolina showed it to her class of sixth graders and said they wanted to talk about it for the next two weeks. On average, the kids thought they had three times as much “stuff” as they needed. One girl said she could no longer close her closet door. “I’ve just got too many things, clothes I never wear,” she explained. “I can’t get rid of them.”

  CROSSING POLITICAL LINES

  Though past criticisms of consumerism have come mostly from the liberal side of the American political spectrum, we were pleased to find that Affluenza spoke to the concerns of Americans of all political persuasions. The head of one statewide conservative family organization wrote to congratulate us, saying, “This issue is so important for families.” Ratings and audience response were as high in conservative cities like Salt Lake and Houston as they were in liberal San Francisco or Minneapolis. In colleges, the program has been more popular at Brigham Young than at Berkeley. At Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, students and faculty showed it to audiences in both poor mountain communities and upscale churches, recording audience comments and producing a video of their own called Escaping Affluenza in the Mountains.

  THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING

  In 1998, we followed Affluenza with a closer look at treating the disease, called Escape from Affluenza. Since that time, both television programs have been widely shown throughout the United States and abroad. The Affluenza videos have become best-sellers for their distributor, Bullfrog Films, and have now been released as DVDs, with extra interviews, Adbusters’ “uncommercials” (see chapter 27), teachers’ and viewers’ guides, and connections to Web resources. They continue to be popular.

  We’ve become convinced that this issue troubles people throughout the world. The “Great Malls of China” are now the largest on earth. We’ve heard from countries where we couldn’t imagine anyone would be concerned about affluenza—Thailand, Estonia, Russia, and Nigeria, for example —but where, indeed, citizens hoped to adopt what was good about the American lifestyle and avoid what was harmful.

  An Islamic business magazine in Sri Lanka asked us for a short article about the disease. Activists in rural northern Burma wanted to translate the TV program into a local dialect called Kachin. A sixteen-year-old Israeli girl sought permission to project it onto the wall of a Tel Aviv shopping center. Seeing overconsumption as a disease, they said, helped them understand it better and explain it to others.

  SOCIAL DISEASE

  Often, writers speak of “affluenza” with different emphases. Some have used the term primarily with reference to the spoiled children of the super-rich. Others, to what they call “sudden-wealth syndrome.” Defined as such, it loses the sociopolitical message we put forward and becomes a matter of purely personal behavior. In our view, the virus is not confined to the upper classes but has found its way throughout our society. Its symptoms affect the poor as well as the rich, and our two-tiered system (with the rich getting richer and the poor, poorer) punishes the poor twice. They are conditioned to want the good life but are given very little possibility of attaining it. Affluenza infects all of us, though in different ways.

  AFFLUENZA: THE BOOK

  After the TV broadcasts, calls from three individuals convinced me of the need to write a book on the subject. Thomas Naylor, an economist, and David Wann, an envi
ronmental scientist, both suggested a collaboration, while Todd Keithley, a New York literary agent, added his opinion that such a book would find an eager readership. I was immensely gratified by the reaction to the Affluenza television specials. But television, even at its most informative, is still a superficial medium; you simply can’t put that much material into an hour. And that’s the reason for this book: to explain “affluenza” in more depth, with more examples, more symptoms, more evidence, more-thorough exposition. If you’ve seen the video, you’ll recognize a few of the characters and stories. But the first edition of the book represented three more years of research, updated data, and additional stories. In the jargon of consumer culture, it was “new and improved!”

  The first edition arrived on the market just before the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Like the impact of the tsunami on Petra Nemcova, the World Trade Center attacks caused many Americans to reevaluate their priorities. Families and friends suddenly seemed more important than things and work. But then, the consumption propaganda machine kicked into high gear again. If you want to be patriotic, President Bush told Americans, go to the malls and shop. Buy to fight terror.

  From Democrats, the message was the same. Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown had a million shopping bags printed, with big flags on them and the bold words “AMERICA: OPEN FOR BUSINESS.” Washington senator Patty Murray proposed “Let’s go shopping” legislation that would have removed sales taxes on products during the 2001 holiday shopping season. Almost no one dared to mention that anger and envy over the profligate spending of Americans might encourage sympathy for terrorists in developing countries.

  Since the first edition of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic was published, it’s been used widely by book groups and in university classes. We’ve been thrilled by the response from readers, and at least six foreign translations of the book are now in print, showing that concern about the issue is worldwide. In Australia, another book called Affluenza, with similar content, has just been published

  We had hoped affluenza would become a household word. That actually seems to be happening. An Internet search before our PBS broadcast turned up about 200 cases of the word on the Web—all of them in Italian, where affluenza simply means affluence. Today, I checked the word on Google and found 232 thousand references to it(!), referring, in the vast majority of cases, to overconsumption. London’s Independent newspaper picked it as one of its most popular new words for the year 2003, and dictionaries are considering including it in the next few years.

  Moreover, use of the term continues to grow: a popular play called “Affluenza” is now touring the country. Recently, a National Hockey League official pointed out that only in 1918 (when the Spanish flu killed 20 million people) and in 2005 had the NHL season been canceled. The first time, he said, the season was canceled because of influenza, and the second time because of affluenza (presumably referring to players’ salary demands).

  THE SECOND EDITION

  Now, four years have passed since the first edition of Affluenza hit the bookstores. In some ways, the United States is a different place—the supercharged economy of the late ’90s has cooled appreciably, and many of the facts in the first edition of the book are outdated. So here is a new edition, fully updated, thanks to the research work of Pamela Rands. Again, it’s “new and improved.” With more pages! It also contains a little of the new thinking that David, Thomas, and I have been doing since the first edition came out, particularly where simplicity-friendly public policies are concerned. And we’ve prepared a Study Guide for high school and college curricula, available for downloading at www.bkconnection.com/affluenza.

  A COUPLE OF QUICK CAVEATS

  With apologies to other citizens of North, Central, and South America, we frequently use the terms America and Americans to refer to the United States and its citizens. We mean no disrespect to other Americans, but simply recognize the colloquial usage that the term has throughout the rest of the world. Further, we do not mean to imply in this book any generalized condemnation of wealthy Americans or of money itself. Used properly for the common good, money can contribute to the health of our society instead of encouraging affluenza. Indeed, this book would not have been written without the financial support of generous individuals.

  Happy reading!

  John de Graaf

  Seattle, Washington

  February 23, 2005

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The authors wish to extend their heartfelt thanks to the following people:

  To Vicki Robin, for all of her inspiration and support, for her tremendous work for simplicity, and for the foreword to this edition of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic.

  To Vivia Boe, John’s fellow producer on both the Affluenza and Escape from Affluenza television programs. Her insights and ideas strengthened those works immeasurably. To Scott Simon for his terrific work as the host of Affluenza, and for the foreword to the original edition of this book. To Chris De Boer, Francine Strick-werda, and Hope Marston, for their research and production interviews during the making of those programs. And to all the other people who worked on the programs, including all of John’s longtime colleagues at KCTS Television.

  To Susan Sechler, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Merck Family Fund, the Summit Foundation, KCTS Television, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the New Road Map Foundation, and ITVS, whose support helped make those programs possible. To John Hoskyns-Abrahall and Winnie Scherrer at Bullfrog Films, and Anne Robinson at PBS. To Peter Barnes, Leyna Bernstein, and Pam Carr, for their support at the Mesa Refuge writers’ retreat, and to Mesa Refuge co-writers Jonathan Rowe, Terry Tempest Williams, and Carl Anthony, who helped think some of this through.

  To all those people whose stories, words, and ideas are included in this book. To Arnie Anfinson, Monique Tilford, Wanda Urbanska (the host of Escape from Affluenza), Frank Levering, Cecile Andrews, and other friends in the voluntary simplicity movement. To those who read this manuscript and offered helpful input: Dawn Griffin, Trish Padian, Joseph Webb, Stuart Lanier, Scott Gassman, and Jennifer Liss. And to Robert Meier for research assistance.

  To Paula Wissel, David de Graaf, and Oliver and Vivian de Graaf for their love, support, and patience. To the memory of David Wann Sr., whose convictions drove his actions; to Marjorie Wann, a very wise and resourceful woman; and to Colin and Libby, who inspire Dave to keep working. To all of Dave’s friends at Harmony Village, who supported this project in many ways, but especially to Macon and Ginny Cowles, Matt and Linda Worswick, Wendy Hanophy, Claire Lanier, Bob Paulson, and Edee Gail. To our agent Todd Keithley.

  Special thanks to the Merck Family Fund, the True North Foundation, the Threshold Foundation, the Weeden Foundation, and the Fred Gellert Foundation, who supported the writing of this book.

  To Joanne Kliejunas and everyone at Redefining Progress, who helped and trusted in us, and to Steven Piersanti and all of our friends at Berrett-Koehler Publishers, who believed in this book. And to our friends in the Simplicity Forum and the Center for a New American Dream, and all the other wonderful people out there who are working to build a simpler, slower, and happier world.

  We owe a special debt of gratitude to Pamela Rands, who cheerfully and tirelessly re-researched all the time-sensitive facts (and a few others) contained in the first edition of this book and updated them for the second edition, meeting a tough deadline.

  Another such debt is owed to David Horsey, of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who provided his marvelous cartoons to both editions at a price far more reasonable than we should have expected. We are tremendously honored to have the gifts of so talented an artist (and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner) included in the book. His pictures are worth much more than a thousand of our words.

  Finally, for all those whose help we have failed to remember, we thank you and ask your forgiveness. It took a village to write this book, but all errors and omissions should be blamed only on the authors.

  Introduction

  I
n his office, a doctor offers his diagnosis to an attractive, expensively dressed female patient. “There’s nothing physically wrong with you,” he says. His patient is incredulous. “Then why do I feel so awful?” she asks. “So bloated and sluggish. I’ve got a big new house, a brand-new car, a new wardrobe. And I just got a big raise at work. Why am I so miserable, doctor? Isn’t there some pill you can give me?” The doctor shakes his head. “I’m afraid not,” he replies. “There’s no pill for what’s wrong with you.” “What is it, doctor?” she asks, alarmed. “Affluenza,” he answers gravely. “It’s the new epidemic. It’s extremely contagious. It can be cured, but not easily.”

  Of course, the scene is an imaginary one, but the epidemic is real. A powerful virus has infected American society, threatening our wallets, our friendships, our families, our communities, and our environment. We call the virus affluenza. And because the United States has become the economic model for most of the world, the virus is now loose on every continent.

  Affluenza’s costs and consequences are immense, though often concealed. Untreated, the disease can cause permanent discontent. Were you to find it in the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition might be something like the following:

  affluenza, n. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.

  EARTH IN THE BALANCE

  Quietly, like some sort of unseen mind-snatcher, the virus has consumed the American political dialogue. Consider Al Gore. In 1992, while still a senator, he wrote a popular book called Earth in the Balance. America, Gore noted then,