Are We Feeling the Class Differences?

I would not be the first to say that the distance between the rich and the poor is widening. Executives of companies are making over seven digit figures. They can afford things that we could not begin to imagine having: multiple vacation homes, private jets, you name it. Meanwhile, low wages earners had not gotten a rise and the price of goods had been rising. As I was thinking about the riches, I came to wonder how companies can afford to pay their executives high salaries. The high salary must came from profit. Profit, in turn, came from selling of goods and services. Selling of goods and services, in turn, came from us, the consumers. Then the idea hit me. It must be because we were collectively spending millions. We, the consumers, were the one deciding how much these executives were making. In short, we were the boss. Our spending power was the deciding factor of our economy. Of course, low wages makers had little choices. For those of us who can afford it, if you were uncomfortable about the widening of the class differences, you should start changing your spending habits to reverse the trend. Go to the mom and pap stores. Try out difference brands regardless of advertisements and commercials. Be the trend setters.

The Power of Individuals

Our spending habits are affected by big cooperations. We come across hundreds of ads everyday. All of them ask us to spend our money. Unfortuneatly, things these ads sell are often not essential to our life. While we spend our money on non-essential commondities (CDs, latest cell phones, etc.), we are feeding the money back to the ads. The ads are working. We will see more. Then, we will spend even more money on these non-essential commodities. Our economy allocates money according to our spending habits. If we continue, there will be insufficient fund allocated to essential needs of your society (e.g. an independent news organization).

So let us take a moment and stop responing to ads. Think for yourself what is really important to you. What do you plan to have by the time you retire? Do you want to own a place to live? Do you want to have your own business? After you decided, give an estimate on how much it will cost to reach those goals. Then calculate how much you need to save everyday for it.

I also encourage everyone to think about what's important to our society. After that, spend your money based on your decisions. For example, if you think preserving our environment is important, try to support orgianization like greenpeace by donating. If you think independent news media is important, donate money to your flavor choice. It could even be a personal website that you go to frequently.

The important point is, by spending $20 on what's important, that $20 will not be spend on a DVD that you will watch once (a non-essential commodity in my opinion). Media companies have less revenue. The money is, in effect, allocated to a needed area of our society.

We have to start spending money based on our needs in life, not what we want at the moment.