go shopping

This mighty nation is enslaved by the collective imperative to shop or perish and as a result is dragging the whole globe to perdition. That's why the news this past week about the economic troubles of the nation's retailers has been, well, sorry to say so, good news overall.

Story after story about how retailers are slashing prices and taking losses to move inventory after a dismal holiday shopping season. I couldn't help but be glad when I heard a report on National Public Radio on how empty the stores are now. I didn't imagine that everyone was home sulking, but suddenly free to do something more fulfilling.

The NY Times summed it up this way:

Retailers have no choice but to find creative ways to clear their store shelves, because they have to make room for spring merchandise.

After 9/11, President Bush famously told America: go shopping! In anticipation of a coming snowstorm the week before Christmas, Mayor Bloomberg promised efficient snow removal and told New Yorkers: go shopping! Soon after his inauguration, President Obama will likely sign an economic stimulus bill into law that will authorize the government to print close to $1 trillion of new currency. Why? So that America can once again go shopping! as before.

Good grief.

Our $13 trillion economy is based essentially on shopping -- for cars and houses, clothes and televisions, gadgets and gifts -- a treadmill of consumption with no "off" switch. The Chinese economy, a juggernaut of production, and the American economy, its all-consuming counterpart, together account for half the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the global financial crisis and the global climate crisis, they are working in lock step to bring spring merchandise to a store near you. The retailers are making room on their shelves for it, the marketers are preparing the enticing come-ons, and we are all expected to show up and buy things we really don't need so that the economy can recover and grow without limit.