(The Nationalist, 30 July 2004)
About thirty years ago, when credit cards began, Barclaycard had an advert that said: ‘Barclays takes the waiting out of wanting’. It was clever; it collaborated with greed and impatience. From a business point of view, it worked – and it still does. Taking into account mortgages, hire purchase payments on cars, as well as personal spending, every man, woman and child in the Irish Republic owes an average of €42,000.
It’s not uncommon for families to have Christmas spending debts over their heads until April, or for people to borrow money to pay for holidays.
People of an earlier generation were content with less. The word “content” is important. I know an elderly couple who, after their honeymoon, did not have a holiday together for 22 years. They couldn’t afford it, so they did without it, and they accepted that. They learned to live simply and to enjoy simple things. They’re still together after 67 years.
By contrast, young couples seem, from day one, to want to have all that their parents gathered over twenty years or more. The price they pay is a heavy burden of debt, much of it in interest payments, and a lot of tension between them about money. The ‘higher standard of living’ trap means having more things at the cost of relationships in family life. It often means a lower standard of human living.
Do we know the difference between needs (which must be met, e.g. for a roof over our heads), and wants (which need not be met)? Just ask the question, ‘How often have I sat down and listened to the expensive music centre that seemed so important to have?’
Just as advertisers know how to target children, relying on what they call their “pester power”, they also target adults. They suggest, for instance, that if we don’t spend, the economy will go into recession – so you should feel guilty if you’re not spending!
None of that would work if there wasn’t in you and I the element of greed. For instance, it is the common thread running through most of the tribunals. It’s in you and I, in keeping up with the Joneses, in retail therapy. Let’s acknowledge that hard fact.
Jesus said, ‘People’s lives are not made secure by what they own, even when they have more than they need’. (Luke 12.15) Saint Paul, characteristically, hit harder, ‘Greed… is the same thing as worshipping a false god’. (Colossians 3.5) It’s not what we have but what we are that counts. That not a message we want to hear, but maybe it’s one we need to hear.