Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess [Paperback]

Jobs are going to China and a flood of imports are drowning our factories because our government and business leaders are practicing "smart for one" while our country slides toward the status of a 3rd world nation.

It is said that a nation's wealth is measured by what it can manufacture - not by what it consumes (who said that?)

Every CEO worth his or her salt these days is moving manufacturing operations overseas as fast as possile to get a piece of the short-term profits under "smart for one". If this continues, the 'dumb for all' effect will doom us to to poverty and China will (again?) rule the world of commerce.

Luxury Fever is a great book which should be read by every person who cares about the USA over the long haul - especially our elected officials. I'd like to see RH Franks (Luxury Fever) team up with Ravi Batra (The Myth of Free Trade) as lobbyists to return sanity to our country's business climate.

Adam Smith has been taken out of context. When he spoke about the "Invisible Hand" (of commerce) there was an ethic in the land that accepted pervasive empathy as a given. Today, our leaders push unbridled avarice and seem to think that empathy is only for the weak 'players'.

Some factual common trends are noted by Frank: in general, wages in the U.S. have been static and even in decline for most Americans in recent decades. Yet, proportional per capita spending on luxury goods has increased significantly. The results according to this author and others who've conducted numerous studies and research is a weaker economy, high personal debt, longer working hours, less sleep, and having to work until death, in debt of course.

We're all aware of the American "gotta have this or that" bug. Many have it, but many don't. Some don't want it. Why do certain luxury goods and "gadgets" become oh-so-popular in American society? Frank notes, and correctly, that the desire for many to purchase certain material things is by no-doubt influenced by what others are buying or want to buy.

The concept of "social status" is a concept where human beings in mass-consumption cultures judge each other in this context in RELATION to our peers. These "peers" may be the strangers we live next to in suburban anonymity, our co-workers, friends, or the strangers we see driving next to us in our daily suburban traffic jams. (Note my use of the word "stranger").

The commonly known terms such as "keeping up with the Joneses," the status treadmill" the "arms race of consumerism, Consumer Feticism," and Velben's "Conspicuous Consumption" are presented. But not from a moralistic standpoint but a behaviorist, biological, psychological, and an economic standpoint.

The first part of the book informs us about many things we already aware of but expands upon it through the various academic fields already noted above. The second part of the book is the "solution part." What the author thinks can be done to change the current pattern. Here's where it can get sticky for some. The solution Frank offers from his research is a thesis on Human Behaviour, and he proposes a "political-economic" solution: taxing consumption. The solution is the part of this work that leads to the economic analysis of the "hypothetical" once again, and there's nothing wrong with that. Although theoretical, the first part is interesting, and the second part may be for some.

Read this book if you are a student or teacher of the social or behavioral sciences. Whether you agree with Frank's prescription to correct societal consumerism or you don't believe America has a problem, this book entertains the reader and stimulates ideas for discussion. Well worth the read!