Quote:
Originally Posted by macker
It is a bad thing and not sustainable based on the laws of leverage it is not sustainable. Obviously not everything that is produced is consumed and a simple example was used to illustrate that point. Go look in a McDonalds dumpster if you don't believe me. People are using credit to buy junk food that they eat half of to deal with their stress that they are in debt.  Like the junk food credit doesn't fill you up and won't satisfy in the long term. The system needs a major overhaul as it is too leveraged to consumption. How many drive throughs did you go through in 1984? How many in 2012. Simple example but don't want to consume much more time....waste.... |
So are you saying we should consume more or less? If we consumed more wouldn't our economy become more weighted to consumption?
The statistic you used about 75% of the economy being consumption is from the US, and isn't important anyway. When a car company buys all it's parts, that gets counted in GDP as a "business" expense. Then it sells you a car and that's a "consumption" expense. If the car company made all it's own parts, the ratio would go to 100% consumption and 0% business, but it wouldn't make any difference to the actual economy.
Everything that's made is for the purpose of it being consumed. Whether things are getting wasted has nothing to do with what percent of the economy is consumption. All of mcdonald's sales are counted as "consumption" even what gets thrown out.