The Great Recession and the bulimia of US consumers: deep causes and possible ways out

Inequality, Debt Servicing and the Sustainability of Steady State Growth

“…In equation 13, workers attempt to emulate rentier consumption. 7 The influence of rentier consumption on that of working households may be direct, working through representations of rentier lifestyles in the mass media (Cynamon and Fazzari, 2008;Bartolini et al, 2014). 8 Alternatively it may be an indirect consequence of the "expenditure cascades" outlined by Frank et al (2014), according to whom the consumption patterns of the most affluent households influence the consumption patterns of their (geographically and economically) near neighbors, who influence the consumption patterns of their near neighbors, and so on.…”

“…Note that increases in C T may involve distinctly defensive or restorative behaviors by households. For example, as an expression of private consumption norms, C n may increase because the erosion of public services such as health care requires private provision of these services if household welfare is to remain unchanged, or because acquisition of market goods (such as alarm systems) is required to redress the erosion of social capital (such as trust) (Bartolini et al, 2014). Increases in C T and the household borrowing and indebtedness to which they give rise may, therefore, reflect efforts by households to merely maintain (rather than increase) overall consumption and/or welfare.…”

“…Bartolini et al (2014 Bartolini et al ( , pp.1030 Bartolini et al ( -1031 argue that "powerful industries (advertising, media culture, etc.) present in contemporary market economies have successfully pushed people into substituting short-term materialistic wants, which can be satisfied on the marketplace, for long-term happiness, which can be pursued by investing time and effort to develop deep interpersonal relations."…”

Inequality, Debt Servicing, and the Sustainability of Steady State Growth

“…The simplification in equation (13), however, focuses attention exclusively on outcomes experienced by others as a "driver" of C T , and hence on the process of emulation in consumption behavior that is central to this paper. 8 Bartolini et al (2014Bartolini et al ( , pp.1030Bartolini et al ( -1031 argue that "powerful industries (advertising, media culture, etc.) present in contemporary market economies have successfully pushed people into substituting short-term materialistic wants, which can be satisfied on the marketplace, for long-term happiness, which can be pursued by investing time and effort to develop deep interpersonal relations."…”

Varieties of capitalism, increasing income inequality and the sustainability of long-run growth

“…A number of these contributions -conceived and written before 2008 -anticipate the Great Recession as a consequence of the exhaustion of an unsustainable debt-financed, consumption-led growth regime (see also Godley and Izurieta (2002)). Since the crisis, much attention has been paid to the inequality-debt-crisis nexus in a varied and still-growing literature (Kumhof and Rancière, 2010;Rajan, 2010;van Treeck, 2014;Kirschenmann et al, 2014; Bartolini et al, 2014).…”