to discuss consumer society i'm joined by jules back in london he is the co-founder of abundance the partners in chicago we cross to david armano he is senior vice president at edelman digital and in auburn we go to lou rockwell he's a founder and chairman of the libby gun muse's institute and another member of our crosstalk team yellin the hunger all right gentlemen crosstalk rules are in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want gentlemen we live in a new age apparently we were all told that we need a structural change to our economy because of the great recession that we're still going through but will attitudes change as well because it seems to me they have to match and i'm course talking about consumption jewels if i can go to you we have we were talking about structural changes all through the eurozone in the united states but what about lifestyle choices in attitudes about consumption that they have to

change as well. well i think they do and i think there's plenty of evidence that they are already changing plenty of evidence that societies in general shifting away from the hyper consumerism zeit geist to a more citizen centric zajac guys so i think this was already starting to happen pre recession i think the was already a need for an updating of capitalism of capitalism to point in order a new kind of economics which focuses more on the richer flourishing of the well being of citizens and the communities in which they live rather than the short termism of the financial markets and wealth and how big my company car might be so i think the shifts are already going on i think there are there are two main reasons that we need them to happen and to speed up the first is that we're eating up the planet forty fast and hard to consumerism is what's doing it and the second reason is that all that hyper consumerism isn't making us any happier anyway and there's massive evidence to suggest that. i could go on but that's the sort of

headline message for me ok what about you. i think there's there is evidence that there are people at least in the west are looking at different lifestyles and whatnot but how much is it being forced upon us as well i mean your paycheck is inches big maybe you're unemployed maybe you're in a job search or that doesn't have a lot of security i mean going small that in theory might be a good idea but in practice it may have to be something that people are going to have to accept and we've seen in the western world people are not happy about accepting it and i'm thinking of greece portugal i'm thing of ireland i'm thinking of britain and the united states as well lou what do you think. well it has to happen of course first of all we had crazed consumerism stimulated by the federal reserve under alan greenspan and by the constituent central banks of the us empire whether it's the bank of england or or the european central bank over stimulated consumption massively so we have too many houses too many cars too much spending

when prosperity is based on saving and investment so yes we're taking a turn back towards not consuming not spending saving and investment that's what we have to do of course we have as enemies against us the governments of the west the central banks of the west which are holding interest rates so low we need dramatically higher interest rates stimulate saving and investment to reward the savers and investors and we need to get away from what mr bernanke and all the rest are doing to us david what do you think about all this is i mean again is this a choice or is it just something that we have to accept we have to accept living smaller we have to accept living more modestly because we still have the demonstration effect out there we do remember the top one percent top three percent of society particularly in the united states will just continue to live lavishly and actually benefit from this crisis here this recession i mean can there be a social consensus and we should just be more modest i find that hard to believe.

well i think i'm going to the first one to cite actual data which will be interesting so in two thousand and nine. that are reported and one of the things that. stuck out to me was they talked about this creed of thrift you know i think that's really interesting because i think that spending is still happening but the mindset is different you know when you when you make purchases that are more thrifty or more economical that you're still purchasing things you're still consuming them but you're doing them differently and i think there's a number of reasons behind that you know in the survey it said that eight in ten adults have taken specific steps of one kind or another economize during these bad times so i do think that the consumer mentality is shifting and it's and it's actually due to a few different things not just the economy as well one of things that i talked about was i kind of wrote a hypothesis on my side a couple years back that was a response to to an article in the economist about this and i talk about sort of

the preconceived her the consumer and the post consumer or which i feel that we are in now and how marketers how actually have to approach consumers differently and not just make it about having an abundance of items but attaching them to greater purposes or causes and making them more meaningful you know we're seeing that especially with the millennial generation i forgot which study i saw but in the money generation is not all that different money still matters to them it's related to happiness but when they make their decisions there have to be other factors involved aside from just the thing or their brand of the product they make their purchases a little bit differently based on how they feel about it. and how good it makes them feel about the company ok jools i mean that's an interesting point that we hear is this just the capital repackaging capitalism recapped. repackaging consumerism because i think that's what david is saying so it's going to stay with

so ok with this repackage you to do for way. well i think i've written a book about this is a wiki book on law and the your view is can go to we don't we don't we don't citizenry nice olds don't call me. my co-author interesting that he is the c.e.o. of edelman u.k. . works for edelman in the u.s. . but. i don't think i think i think this new form of capitalism causes no. we are six degrees or five years or whatever it is and i think this new form of capitalism that i write about in citizen when i saw capitalism two point knowledge if you like it's not a repackaging it's a pretty radical updating it's a capitalism that puts people on planet before short term profits and interestingly bizarrely i'm sitting on a boat here being filmed on the bank of the thames two minutes away up on the on the thames is the head office of unilever global corporation and i've just left

a meeting there with their global head of sustainability gavin nathan we've been talking about this very subject and paul polman the global c.e.o. of unilever has been very outspoken saying that he's not interested in the short term shareholder particularly he's interested in the long term interests of society and if his consumers or i would encourage him to think of them as citizens rather than consumers you know you've just announced a new strategy for the next ten years where they want to move out of producing stuff in inverted commas to improving the well being of every life they touch that's a that's a pretty ambitious new way of looking at things some people will be cynical but i can tell you there's some really interesting thinking and targets going on behind the scenes and it's not just you know lever there are a lot of company i work mainly with companies on these issues and there are a lot of very progressive sophisticated things going on in a lot of multinationals to rethink this space and to and to rethink how we can

encourage a shift from hyper consumerism values to citizen centric values which are the ones i talk about in this book well what do you think about that i mean it's interesting the joules is bringing up more of a corporate approach to this and of course the bottom line is important to them but if they make society a better place and i guess who can complain but what is it i think of in terms of election cycles to things like this and then and you know the economy is always at the very very center here and we have so many demands coming from like the tea party or. and things like that about what the government should do and what you shouldn't do and a lot of people blame just the government for wrecking their consumerism the you know the you and i i think the rest of the panel can agree is that the fed you know was very reckless in its policies but still people said you know i want those houses i want to keep those houses and i want to maintain the lifestyle that i had i i guess maybe i'm the only person here that doesn't think that people so willingly change their attitudes they're forced to change their attitudes well you

know what we have to look at we have to look at the state as you mentioned we only live in a semi capitalist society in the west that we have all our time preferences warped by the welfare state by the central banks by all the actions of government take us away from long term thinking and generate and promote short term thinking so that's a very bad thing we have to do something about dramatically cutting back the state the state is the enemy of the market it's the enemy of humankind on earth i would i would argue and it's growing it's metastasizing whether we see it at the airports in the u.s. or all the various interventions that are wrecking the american economy making us all poorer so we have to if we want to change people's attitude companies attitudes towards the long term i would argue towards that natural long term view in a free market have to do something about the government and the central bank there recognize ok david how do how do we look and more in the long term because again

you know if i look at the states here a lot of it over nine percent a lot of economists will tell you twenty percent unemployment it's very hard for a lot of people to think long term now i mean when things are good i guess it's a little we have the luxury of thinking the long term but a lot of people in western europe and united states can't think the long term because the then here and now is so desperate. you know i don't i think you have to look at you have to look at we're talking about consumerism which is tied to people consuming things and buying things. that they perceive that they need and certainly you know if you look at the data it does show changes you know it shows that people are switching brands for example levi's which disclaimer as a client is actually doing well in this economy because people are changing their they're changing their behavioral. choices you know but also i think that that trust is a factor as well so we put out and put out a report every year called the trust barometer and you know one of the sectors

that's to be increasingly well and earning a lot of trust in the process is technology and the data supports that you know technology purchase are high especially with gen y. so you know we have to ask ourselves a lot you know is there a correlation there you know does a does gen y. trust technology companies like google apple etc for a specific reason and now they're rewarding them with their behavior as well. you know i think a lot of the points that are being made are really interesting i believe that there is even a minute let me jump in here real quick we're going to tell you that we're going to go to a short break we'll go back to you after the break after the break we'll continue our discussion on post consumers stay with us.

dr swan's policeman swan's ministers were just pretty good if you didn't find me if i could live through the night that i would give my kids out of here because they knew that it was going to happen was that he was going to kill me i mean. victims don't understand that domestic violence includes verbal abuse psychological abuse physical abuse and sexual abuse at least four million women are affected by abuse every year those are only two options that i saw at that moment either i'm going to kill him or me in jail or he's going to killing me says . wealthy british style decide it's time to cut.

the. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our. six o'clock. to take you to see. the. welcome crossed on time here true mind you were speaking about the future of consumer. education. but before let's see what is important to russians when they are making a purchase. consumerism is often called the home market most the best economies

the concept stipulates purchasing new goods and services well little attention to their true neat and dura billet consumerism in fact is a common phenomenon in the west but in two thousand and eight and economic crisis hala over the world and now consumers the site is all learning to live differently recently the russian public opinion research center asks citizens what is most important to them while buying goods sixty percent opt for low prices while only twenty seven percent see a wide selection of goods as a priority now that people are learning to live with less money i wonder if there could be a return to pre-crisis levels. ok david before we went to the break you were talking about how different segments of society younger people they're making their choices about what kind of things they buy based on their conditions but i'd like to broaden this out a little bit here i live in russia and twenty years ago this was

a communist country ok china is still technically a communist country but it's the biggest consumer market or one of them in the in the world biggest in the world right now look at india look at brazil i can go on and on a lot of those folks there are not tired of consumerism at all they're just getting used to it ok in a country that where i live russia people embrace consumerism in a big way i mean they disrupt they got out of the cage twenty years ago and they're still enjoying the benefits of a market economy it's kind of reflecting upon what jewel said in the beginning of the program i mean can the world sustain western attitudes or changing western attitudes about consumerism because now a whole lot more people just sat at the table david. well you know well ok i mean i think that's a that's a really great point so for example in the u.s. there's a backlash against things like mansions obviously the housing market has collapsed

you know it's really interesting we haven't talked about this yet status and one of the things that's changing in the u.s. are for example if you have a hybrid vehicle or or a car you know or one of these one of these vehicles they're actually more expensive so in a way it's trendy and there's a status to to make you know purchase the sessions like that that's sort of where the culture has evolved now to your point yes other countries are different and in asia for example you know it's very common to have your your mobile phone or a number of mobile phones show your status or you know to actually bring them out you know that's a different mentality i think one common denominator in both those scenarios is how we are being influenced you know in our choices and i think that there is there's a there's a technology component to this as well based on the kinds of things you know this kind of goes back to marketing right where you know a mass message may tell you that you want or need something but we're looking to our peer groups and we're looking to what our friends do we can see our status updates online and facebook and things like that and see how our friends have x.

and we may either want that or maybe want to make that choice if it's if it's you know more of. you know you know. i conscious choice to scale back pull back or move forward in consumerism so there's a lot of different dynamics at play jules i mean it's interesting i don't even think it is truly much to do with marketing and i think i think david's on to something your peers and we all talk about the country i know best the one i live in russia and russia look at their western peers and they pick up on a lot of their attitudes in lifestyles now even though we know they're changing in the in the in the west because of necessity but that's not filtered through it least not yet they still see the cars the watches the jewelry the trips go on and on and on and people really embrace it but as you said there's just so many resources to go around. well i mean for a start. it's not everybody in these countries is getting the opportunity to drive s.u.v.s in russia or china it's actually very few and the vast inequalities in

those countries there are terrible inequalities in our own developed countries but there are terrible ones in these other countries as well i think you know noam chomsky talks about the manufactured consent right and the advertising and marketing world of course are very much part of this on the on the continuum that i describe of the perfect citizen at one end of the perfect consumer to another and there's a journey we all need to go on in that society needs to go on and i think it's beholden on us all to try and be responsible about not spreading hype or consumerist values to the developing world because they've reduced our well being and they they're actually killing our one and only planet at the same at the same time this is the end of the day is about values there's a difference between consuming and consumerism hyper consumerism reduces my wellbeing it reduces the well being of those around me and also if i'm a hyper consumerist have a higher environmental footprint if i'm if i have a if i have

a more citizen centric less hyper consumerist lifestyle i'm still going to be consuming stuff but i'm going to have higher levels of wellbeing those around me are going to have higher levels of wellbeing and i'm going to have an environmental footprint so that's a win win for everybody and it's a part about whether we spread the right kind of values around the world or we we encourage our advertising and marketing zite guys to in the west to spread around and what i would say is pollute the the brain print of the of the rest of the world in the way that it's polluted also locked us into they're going to say you have a table you bring up a very good point maybe i exaggerated my point is i see where you're going here but just having a basic middle class life let's stay away from the elites ok i agree i agree with you there and i do go to lou on that i mean if you look at however we define in this moment in time the average citizen consumer in the u.s. in the eurozone i mean still having the average chinese the average brazilian in russian to have that kind of lifestyle that's still enormous resources to sustain

that kind of lifestyle lou. well i hope they get this is standard after all we peoples of eastern europe and russia and china india only the nomenclature torah got to consume and everybody else was trapped in a socialist penury so that's changing it has changed one of the magnificent events of modern times but i think we also have to remember this is entirely a subjective concept i mean i may think the guy next door is a hyper consumer because i don't think he's got a car that's too big but that's his decision and my decision is what kind of car i get and whether it's possible to make sort of societal value judgments of the sort i i don't know i do know that the central bank the governments of the of the whole world are encouraging too much consumption by the way that they're intervening in the economy so if we want to balance between production and consumption and obviously we can't consume unless we produce and we only produce in order to

consume there's nothing wrong with consumption we have to consume to live. we can't have people like bernanke be stimulating over consumption and depressing production which is what's happening here i hope china and russia brazil eastern europe don't follow the american path guys i certainly hope that the guese if i go back to david here i mean chomsky was mentioning chomsky is one of my my favorite writers manufactured consent can we may somehow get a social can consensus about what quality of life can be which we can be respected on a global basis because that's a huge challenge as i mentioned the different trajectories are out there they'll be maturing consumers in the post communist world and i can see some signs of it but can we find a kind of a global equilibrium where everyone can look at this is a certain value that all of us should embrace and still be consumers we have to eat

and clothe ourselves eccentrics at it i think that's a good quite a queer way to tell kind of nails it on the head because that's what i think is becoming less well of. and you know when i when i talked about this sort of how you how to market to people in a post consumer of the point that i'm making is that you know prior to i believe that there is a link between you know mass advertising and mass consumerism and before that basically your peers through word of mouth told you what you should get and the people tended to be more frugal because at least looking at western culture because this was before the explosion of advertising and advertising was very successful and they used mass method messaging methodologies to say you know you need to buy this and there was a definitely a period where all of that happened you now have a number of things you've got the economic conditions as one factor you also have smarter more empowered you know don't forget consumers are in this a probably more so than in just the west they are smarter more empowered than ever before more connected than ever before so there's almost a barrier now to mass messaging saying you know i don't really believe that or i

don't need that because i know better but what are you know what i get what are my peers saying or what are you know someone who i trust you know what is that person saying so now that i can relate to we have direct access to these people now so you know i don't see it as black and white as sort of you know the consumerism goes away but i see it as a different you know more empowered you know. more connected type of consumers and i don't even call consumerism in some ways it's participating and you know in making the choices differently and again you do see some of these trends where people are you know they're making purchase but purchases but they're looking for more they are actually thinking about the way a company practice is and you know in order to want to buy from them you see did you seen that more than ever i think it's really it's very interesting when you go back to the jewels because we're kind of going full circle to what you started out with saying so i won't repeat your words go ahead. well i just want to make this distinction between consumerism and consuming because you know there are two

billion people. around you know at least two billion people on the planet depends who you listen to who are living in the most dire circumstances for whom the idea of consumerism is so far out there while their own says that it is a very basic needs of nutrition of health care of cleanliness and civil liberties and so forth so i'm not for a moment suggesting that that there isn't a vast need for a spreading of of equitable access to the earth was also is for most of the world's population it is the very few of us who have control of those resources right now but i think. it's a difference in values between these citizen centric bodies that i mean talk about consumerist values that i've been talking about and martin sorrell who in my book that is when i saw it's i called the hyper high priest of materialism. he's the head of the world is he's the world's head advertising man he's actually

given several speeches where he talks about the need to move away from hyper consumerism. i'm going to have to jump in here is a fascinating discussion we could do a lot more with it but we've run out of time many thanks to my guest today in london chicago in auburn and thanks to our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember crosstalk.

he's available in the. photo. the how it pulls her to be sure to tell it the hotel hotel will show his the groom her tone the show with her tone some will do misty type the hotel kuvasz photo photo slim hotel resort evergreens the old hotel to be victoria hotel the glory of prince hutto springs resort and spa tied to a hotel royal cheap and i'm closer to the tone. of the evergreen closer

in time to learn to tell an ambassador it's hard to be hoto points and how it prints her to the. entire truth wins or her telling touch your world the future of a good girl how would. she ever dream lol he told. former oil tycoon mikhail how the cost is found guilty of a meddling oil and cash at his second trial. russia's once former richest man will now spend an additional number of years behind bars and capturing those are the outside the courthouse with the details in just a few minutes. merry christmas you're fired no job and no joy for millions of americans this festive season while the bankers break in benefits and splash out on lavish parties. and why the tourists are the latest weapons being engaged

by israel in lebanon as a bitter rivals launch competing war zone theme parks together points across. and in business the global has hit a two and a half month high last december and continue to pro analysts predict found the strengthening of the currency in twenty minutes. what you actually live from moscow with me marina joshie until our breaking news first former tyco ski has been found guilty of stealing oil and laundering the proceeds and it's among the verdicts being deliver a jury in his second trial in moscow the former had of the oil giant you cos is already in prison for tax evasion and fraud pressuring the army is outside the courtroom for.