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suming things and owning things, no matter how shoddy<br />
or trivial, is the mass religion. The real world of desperate<br />
toil, the world of the proletarians who own nothing but<br />
their labor power, is looked down upon with contempt and<br />
fear by the Euro-Amerikans.<br />
Euro-Amerikans know how privileged they have it<br />
on a world scale, how exceptional they are. Interviews by<br />
one reporter in an Iowa industrial city found: "...the<br />
prevailing attitude expressed here was capsuled in this<br />
comment from Don Schatzberg, the 46-year-old foreman<br />
of a concrete-pipe plant:<br />
" 'If you had a chance to pick your country, where<br />
else would you go? Where else can a working man own his<br />
own house and two cars and take a vacation every year?<br />
I'd say I'm a happy man, not a bit unhappy with my<br />
lifestyle,. . .'<br />
"Like Mr. Schatzberg and many other Americans<br />
elsewhere, workers here often seemed to equate success<br />
with ownership of homes, cars, campers, boats and the<br />
like.<br />
" ' I work a lot of hours,' said James Dirkes,<br />
Teamster union shop steward at Zeidler, 'but I've got a<br />
car, a truck, a boat and a camper to show for it.'<br />
"And LaVone Feldpouch, a 36-year-old wife and<br />
mother who works as a clerk for Deere, where her husband<br />
is also employed, said: 'I feel my life is an upward curve,'<br />
She noted that she and her husband had accumulated three<br />
houses and added: 'We're not going to stop there.' They<br />
also own two cars, a truck, a boat and a motorcycle and<br />
take two vacation trips a year, one with their children and<br />
one without." (6)<br />
All statistics show that the amount of consumption<br />
in Euro-Amerikan society is staggering. Enough so<br />
that it establishes for the mass a certain culture. In the settler<br />
tradition today's Euro-Amerikan culture is one of<br />
homeowning, with 68.4% of all settler households in 1979<br />
owning their own home (up 50% from 1940). These<br />
households share a cornucopia of private electric appliances:<br />
89.8% of all U.S. homes in 1979 had color TVs<br />
(watched an average of over 6 hours per day), 55% had airconditioning,<br />
77.3% had washing machines and 61% had<br />
clothes dryers, 43% had dishwashers, 52% had blenders<br />
and food processors, and so on. (7) Much of the world's<br />
health products are hoarded in the U.S., with, for example,<br />
one out of every three pairs of prescription eyeglasses<br />
in the world sold here.<br />
In terms of the "basics," the rhost characteristic<br />
for Euro-Amerikans is the automobile. In 1980 there were<br />
a total of 104.6 million cars on the road. 84.1% of all U.S.<br />
households had cars, with 36.6% having two or more. (8)<br />
Everyone says that owning automobiles is a "necessity,"<br />
without which transportation to work, (83% drive to<br />
work) shopping and childcare cannot be done.<br />
A Bureau of Labor Statistics study shows how the<br />
"average wage owner" in Boston of 1875 had to spend<br />
94% of the family income on "necessrtres: food, clothrng<br />
and housing." A "Century of Progress to 'the Good<br />
Life"' later, the study found that the "average wage<br />
earner" in 1972-73 in Boston spent only 62% on these<br />
necessities, meaning they "could afford to spend 38 percent<br />
... on nonessentials."(9) We should note that few<br />
Euro-Amerikans would agree with this elemental definition<br />
- since in their society such things as automobiles,<br />
sleeping pills, college education, drycleaning, telephones,<br />
etc. are viewed as "necessities."<br />
These by no means exhaust the list of Euro-<br />
Amerikan private possessions. Stocks - one of every<br />
seven Euro-Amerikans owns at least some corporate stocks<br />
- vacation homes, land, hair dryers, motorcycles, exercise<br />
equipment, guns, boats, annual changes of clothing styles,<br />
and on and on. We have brought up these boring, almost<br />
mind-numbing lists of possessions to drive home the point<br />
that consuming is a disease among settlers, an lnfectlon<br />
that is dominant in that culture. Euro-Amerikan life is no<br />
longer centered around production but around consurnption.<br />
This is the near-final stage of decadence.<br />
All this is only made possible by the generalized<br />
high income that characterizes Euro-Amerikan mass life.<br />
The median Euro-Amerikan family income in 1981 was<br />
$23,517.(10) This is not equally distributed, quite obviously,<br />
but the extent to which many Euro-Amerikans in all<br />
classes - an absolute majority - shared this generalized<br />
high income is striking. Between 1960 and 1979 the percenmms<br />
m m than $40,000 a year as an oiler on an electric shovel. 148 tage of settler families earning over $25,000 per year (in