CHEW on this. Americans choose from 27,300 supermarket items, 216 kinds of cereals and 11,092 magazines. An average American spends six hours every week shopping, one whole
year of his life watching TV commercials, and drinks more soft-drinks (212 litres) than tap water (169 litres) a year. By the time an American baby born today reaches the age of 75, he/she will have used up 3,375 barrels of oil, 43 million gallons of water and produced 52 tons of garbage. And the waste generated each year would fill a convoy of 10-ton trucks 230,050 kilometres long—over half the way to the moon.
Say what you will: if there is anything bigger than the passion of "Tricky Dick", it's the all-consuming passion of his citizens. "What impressed me most about America was the size of the garbage cans," recalls Bhaichand Patel, a former UN information officer. "Americans throw away more food than is eaten in most Third World countries. Restaurants serve 16-ounce steaks most of which will be left untouched. Cars, clothes and major appliances are discarded every few years to make way for newer models and designs and to keep cash registers ringing. Welcome to America, the land of conspicuous consumption."
Why, is an easy query. Americans consume more because they work more, produce more, earn more, and spend more. Employed Americans spend 163 hours more per year on the job than they did in 1969. Result: per capita income has shot up 45 per cent in the last 20 years; people are on an average four-and-a-half times richer than their great grandparents at the turn of the century. So, a country that laps up everything money can buy—peace, products, progress, prosperity—is salivating over the Clinton-Lewinsky episodes on "Starr TV" like just any other soap. "Flytrap": a primetime, must-see "event" story for the bored and bountiful. From the market-savvy makers of the gripping sagas of OJ, Di and MJ. As The New Yorker said: "People must keep up with what's happening or risk becoming social outcasts, unable to talk about what everyone is talking about." Bill's ills have spawned six movies. In a teledemocracy of consumers and TRPs, there's no biz like showbiz.
What such mindless consumption is doing to them is only overshadowed by what it is doing to us. As the UNDP Human Development Report says: "The 20th century's growth in consumption has been badly distributed. The dominant consumers are overwhelmingly concentrated among the well-off—but the environmental damage falls most severely on the poor."
Forget us, hapless Third World-ers. Even developed Europe cannot hold a candle. Americans use 250 gallons of oil equivalents per person per year; the Europeans half that. Compared to their parents in 1950, Americans today own twice as many cars and drive two-and-a-half times as far, and on an average spend nine hours per week behind the wheel.
But nothing illustrates obscene American consumption—and wastage—better than those triple-decker hamburgers, cheese dripping all over the place. "There is something obscenely gluttonous in the way Americans buy and eat food," says Ratna Rao Shekar, editor of Housecalls and a former American resident. "Here we just pick up a couple of items when we go shopping. There it is always six-packs of beer and gallons of milk. They shop as if there were no tomorrow." In fact, 93 per cent of American teenage girls cite storehopping as their favourite activity; 53 per cent of grocery and 47 per cent of hardware-store purchases are spur of the moment.
While the Americans lecture the rest of the world on CFCs and ozone holes—and the likes of Ralph Nader and Ted Turner do their two-bit—the concept of such basic things as recycling has been lost on a whole generation brought up on a flaunt-it-if-you-have-it culture. Furniture is abandoned at street corners, used cars dumped. Still, money can't buy happiness. The percentage of Americans calling themselves happy hasn't peaked since 1957 though consumption has more than doubled. And fewer Americans feel the American dream is very much alive (1986: 32 per cent; 1990: 23 per cent). On the other hand, a 1993 study showed that Kerala had achieved a quality of life equal to that of America and Canada at just a tenth of the money spent. Eat your heart out, America.
