Cake, Some Cake, or No Cake?

In their most recent blog post, "Let Them Eat a Little Bit of Cake," David Brooks and Gail Collins ask the oft-posed question, "as our economy tanks, is spending on luxury goods acceptable?"  Their answer:  kinda, sorta — maybe a little bit.

Says Brooks:

As for the culture more broadly, again, I think the code of understated luxury applies. Companies should feel free to throw retreats and meetings at golf resorts, even in these tough times, so long as they serve superb chicken or extremely tasty pizza at every meal. The great thing about sumptuary codes is they force people to show their wealth in subtler forms. If we’re going to impose plain living standards on each other during this recession, at least we should allow for that.

So yes to the Canyon Ranch retreats, but just make sure the execs are limited to free-range chicken and gourmet pizza?  

Collins does no better than Brooks.  She wavers between finger-pointing at real estate magnates who hide their Rolls Royces and fear that spending cutbacks amongst the wealthy will send the economy into a further downturn.

This is pretzel-thinking.  Brooks's and Collins's shilly-shallying marks the deceptive difficulty of this question.  As the Economaggedon deepens and conspicuous consumption moves from seriously un-hip to downright taboo, we Americans are experiencing a collective identity crisis of staggering proportions.  

For what are we, if we are not all conspicuous consumers to some degree or another?  We laugh at the Maries; their tone-deafness over the past months has deserved mockery, but the soul-searching has begun for the rest of us as well. (See Megan McArdle's post answering blogger Laura McKenna's question at 11D: "What Will Make You Feel Poor?"; and see Vanity Fair's recent - and excellent - David Kamp article, "Rethinking the American Dream.")

After 9/11, Bush declared that the best way to help our country recover, the optimum way to assert America's freedom and democracy, was to go shopping.  It sounded ridiculous, but the truth is, it illuminated exactly what we were – and are — about.  In 2001, the idea was that spending kept the economy going and a strong US economy kept the ideals and power of the United States in its dominant place.  

We spend, therefore we are.

This cuts two ways.  As a country, we spend to maintain supremacy, and as individuals, we spend to define ourselves.  It is as conventional wisdom dictates.  With the growth and sophistication of marketing techniques over the past fifty years, this meme has been put on steroids.  Two generations (going on three) have been bombarded, everywhere we turn, with messages of what we should want rather than what we really need.  In the modern age, material consumption is the faith we all follow, no matter what our spiritual beliefs.  

Spending and overspending contributes directly to the mess we are now in.  This American Life's recent (and also terrific) podcast explaining the banking crisis speaks to this.  If you don't have the hour to listen, skip to minute 38:00.  Here, Columbia University economist David Beim points out that since 2000, our national debt-to-GDP ratio (what we owe to what we earn) has been 100%.  In other words, for the last eight years, we've been borrowing (and spending) more than we've earned.  The last time this has happened in history?  1929.  

So now what?  How to undo habits so entrenched as to be almost unconscious?  How does any democracy impose true "sumptuary codes" — codes of luxury spending — or even, lessons of prudent personal spending?  How do we define "responsible spending" across our broad (and now drastically changing) class lines?  While overwhelming, I suppose it's healthy that such questions are coming up.

In fairness to Brooks and Collins, I doubt anyone could come up with a satisfactory answer to the question of "Cake, Some Cake or No Cake?"  But it is key to point out that it is much more than a question of etiquette, and not just a question for the Marie Antoinettes of the world. 

Like it or not, we are all tied together in this mess — nationally, and even globally.  Taking responsibility for personal checkbook and spending habits is obviously a concrete and positive way to do one's part in this confusing climate.

But perhaps a deeper responsibility we owe to ourselves and each other is to take the opportunity to challenge the conventional wisdom of spending, of the acquisition of things as symbols of status, success and power.  If we can let this go, then a freedom beyond economics (and the material) might be ours.

(Image from Cakelove: Vanilla / LCD Poundcake)