Dr. Juliet Schor on NOT spending our way to an improved economy

The Center for a New American Dream recently featured Dr. Juliet Schor as a guest blogger in an essay entitled, "Forget commercialism! The new realities of consumption and the economy."

Here's the opener, but please click on the link below to read the full article. It's well worth 5 minutes of your time.

Spending our way to prosperity? Not this time around.

As a “New Dream” economist, I am asked all the time: won’t consuming less hurt the economy? When there’s less spending, people get laid off, their incomes fall and businesses, especially small ones, go bankrupt. This question is especially urgent today, given that the recession is deepening and spreading. George Bush was widely (and rightly) criticized for suggesting shopping as the patriotic response to 9/11. Would Barack Obama be wrong if he suggested the same?

Short answer: Yes. But with this topic, there’s rarely a short answer. So here’s the longer one

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