Will today’s challenges make us better consumers?

Or simply different consumers?

With all the price pressures we are experiencing, the inevitable question is “Will we become more intelligent consumers?” 

Of course, this presumes that we were not making good buying decisions before.  Is that the case?  You decide.  During periods when we were enjoying our highest income levels, we viewed time as our most valuable asset.  When the things we bought broke, we disposed of them.  It wasn’t worth our time to fix them.  Similarly, we didn’t “waste” our time carpooling, we were already losing huge chunks of time to the commute.  We chose suburbia, in lieu of city dwelling.

With the outsourcing of work, both nationally and internationally, many of us (including the best educated among us) have experienced a diminution in income levels.  The result is that we’re taking a harder look at how we spend money.  Does this make us more intelligent consumers?  Not really.  It’s simply a reflection of changing conditions.

Our failure as consumers comes from our inability to recognize and adapt to trends before they become crises.  It’s easy to point to Washington - to our elected officials, the lobbyists, the big money contributors - and say it’s their fault that we’re in this mess.  The reality is that they are merely reflecting our wishes.  If you are looking for evidence that proves my point, we need simply look at Hillary Clinton’s and John McCain’s earlier willingness to temporarily lower gas taxes for the summer travel months.  

I’m not willing to let politicians skate on their contribution to the problems we face.  They should have the personal strength to tell us that we’re misinformed when we ask for things that aren’t in our best interests.  Having said that I am not willing to lay these problems solely at their feet.  We, as consumers, need to put more pressure on our elected officials to make wise choices, even though it may cost us more in the short run. 

My Dad was an automotive mechanic.  He impressed upon me that maintenance is always less expensive than repair.  If we had pressured our elected officials to be more aggressive in establishing fuel efficiency standards, in setting and enforcing lower speed limits, in using fuel taxes to increase the price of gasoline for the express purpose of making alternative sources more attractive, we wouldn’t be experiencing gasoline prices as high as they are today.  Our roads wouldn’t be in such a constant state of disrepair.  We wouldn’t be suffering the commute times we do today.

We can see similar results from the subprime mortgage fiasco.  The American dream of owning our own homes prompted our elected officials to embark upon a program designed to make homeownership more affordable.  The Fed jumped on board with some of the lowest interest rates in 40 years.  The result has been devastating for millions of us. 

Health care is another arena in which our poor consumerism has resulted in many people not being able to afford health insurance.  I know that I contributed to this problem, more so in the past than I do today.  When my wife and I had healthcare coverage through her employer, we never questioned the tests the doctor suggested.  When she left that employment and we replaced that coverage with our own, we suddenly began to question the doctor.  The first time I explained to the doctor that I had a high deductible and would be paying for these tests myself, he eliminated half the tests without batting an eye.  I could have helped keep healthcare costs lower by being a more intelligent consumer earlier.

It’s counter-intuitive, but it’s our short-term view that makes us poor consumers.  If we want to become more intelligent consumers we need to take a longer-term view of how are our actions today contributing to the potential for higher prices in the future. 

We need to act on that view by putting pressure on our elected officials to make better decisions.  Our lack of activism contributes to our lack of intelligent choices. We live in the one country in the world that is established to allow its people to control their own destinies, yet we do nothing with this power.  Let’s become more intelligent consumers, let’s pay attention the long-term trends and put pressure on our elected officials to act wisely on those trends.

If there are topics you’d like me to address, send me an email at dale@furtwengler.com.