How Much Is Enough?

The law of supply and demand says roughly that the two forces will equalize. If there is a greater demand than supply, prices will go up until an equilibrium is reached. If there is a greater supply than demand, prices will go down until an equilibrium is reached. The changing price alters the demand for a product. Lower prices increase demand and higher prices decrease it.

Perhaps a hundred years ago, neither demand nor supply was particularly great. People mostly lived in a rural setting, not in cities, and there weren't any mass-produced goods. People saved their money until they had enough for a purchase, and then they went and bought what they were after.

One of the first notables of mass production was the Model T automobile, which was targetted specifically for the common man. It sold initially at a third and later a tenth of the price of the competitors. The price of a car dropped hugely, so demand increased hugely. That's how Henry Ford made his money. By applying the simple law of supply and demand. By the way, when you bought a Model T, you paid cash.

Demand is a funny thing, however. If a family doubles its income it wins greatly. It can buy twice the goods that it could before. And it can buy more expensive luxury items that weren't within reach before. All the other families are ensuring that prices on regular items remain low because they won't pay more. They don't have more money, so they won't pay more.

But what happens when more and more families see what that first family did? They figure out how to double their income too. They want those luxury items too. Pretty soon, lots and lots of people have doubled their income and are buying luxury items right and left. Interestingly, they're also willing to pay a little more for the basics. Vendors sell milk for a penny or two more per carton. Families aren't thrilled about it, but they pay it because they have the extra money. They might cut back on some of the luxuries, but that's not a great sacrifice.

So prices are going up. What about the families that didn't double their income? They have to pay the higher prices too. Their budgets get tighter. Any luxuries that they might have enjoyed are quickly being eaten up by those higher prices. There is pressure to find more income.

Meanwhile, the double-income families are busy enjoying luxuries. In fact, so many people are enjoying certain luxuries that those luxuries are becoming ubiquitous. They're everywhere. People are starting to assume that other people have those luxuries. The Model T is the perfect example of this. What started out as a luxury, permitting enjoyable day trips to see new places eventually became a mandatory part of American life. The vast majority of Americans assume that they are going to own a car. That's because all of American society has adapted to the existence of that luxury. It is a necessity.

A college education is becoming a necessity. Advanced health care is becoming a necessity. These are not things that we get for free, and they make demands on our incomes.

Families with double incomes are the norm now. Two working adults is typical, though there are still plenty of families with just one working adult. They are frequently challenged to provide all the necessities for their family - both the traditional necessities of food, shelter and clothing as well as the more recent 'necessities' of cars, advanced education, insurance, health care and so much more.

Automation and mass production have certainly done their part to drive down prices. Some necessities and even luxuries are available in greater abundance than ever before. But with the advent of new necessities and the trend in society to get ahead of the pack by having more available cash, the pressure remains on the income laggards.

Note that the laggards are the ones that are unwilling or unable to have two adults working. Or are unwilling or unable to take other steps to bring in more income. One such step is the use of credit cards.

A credit card is a means of buying things on credit. That is, taking out a loan. The buyer borrows money from a lender and pays it back over time, plus interest. The statistics on credit cards are astonishing.

• 80% of households have at least one credit card
• 60% of credit card holders carry a balance from month to month
• $10,000 is the average debt for households that carry balances from month to month

Credit cards enter the discussion at this point because it is another means of adding to the available income of a household. Take a loan, buy things, then pay the minimum payment each month.

But not everyone is using credit cards to add to their purchasing power. Twenty percent of the population doesn't use credit cards, and a further 32% of the population doesn't carry a balance. That still means that nearly half the population carries a credit card balance. They are willing to pay for things with money that they don't even have! Given the laws of supply and demand, they are artificially increasing demand, which is going to result in higher prices. If not higher prices, then a continued shift of luxuries to necessities.

All of this is applying constant pressure on American families to find income so that they can operate in the resulting society. The lower income a family is, the more they rely on credit cards to permit them to make purchases. What they're buying is up for debate, but remember that yesterday's luxuries are today's necessities. Can a family operate today without cell phones, computers and cable television? Having them provides a competitive advantage in our society. Lacking them means more work for that family to be contacted by their employer, prepare information for school or work, etc.

Now set the clock back again to the days of people paying cash for everything, including cars. If the only way that people could buy a car was if they had the cash in hand, do you think that automobile manufacturers could charge the prices that they do? Would all cars be equipped with so many bells and whistles, or would cars be available that were stripped down to the necessities?

Ultimately, our society is pushing ever harder to get ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, that just pushes the curve farther and farther in the direction of luxuries. We call this "improving the standard of living", yet the means of accomplishing it involves having two adults per family working, buying necessities on credit, and now we're to the point where college students have credit card debt - and children are starting to carry credit cards.

Now go beyond the individual and look at government actions. Each time the government subsidizes an industry by giving money to citizens, the net result is going to be either price inflation or a shift of more luxuries into the perception of necessities. Once that happens, the government program becomes a necessity. To take it away would mean the loss of apparent necessities, and people will not stand for that.

The root of all of this is a demand for a better standard of life at any cost. Too few Americans have a sense of denying themselves any luxury. "Living within one's means" is a dying ethic, to be replaced by "Just Do It". Those who attempt to live within their means are finding that their necessities are creeping ever farther and farther afield, demanding that they pay more money, either for their original necessities, or for new ones.

Take some time to think about what you really need versus what you just want. Each time you indulge yourself with a want, you are making things just that much more costly. Should we stop all advances in medicine, electronics and other areas of progress? Certainly not. There is a question of appropriate pace, however, and if the pace is too great, families will be left behind, stretching the fabric of society, and ultimately producing a tear when the pressure becomes too great.

Revolutions are born of tears in the fabric of society. I'd rather have a peaceful evolution of society than be able to watch television on my cell phone. Assuming I could remember where I left it.

Train Wreck Television

There has long been a chicken and egg debate over entertainment. Does entertainment reflect a changing culture, or does culture reflect changing entertainment? Certainly the two are intertwined, which is why such a debate even exists, but when I look to movement in a society, I point clearly to the entertainment. Rather, to media in general.

Changes to a society take place for two reasons: fundamental flaws that impinge on the happiness of the mainstream, and changes that somebody thinks up and then advocates to others. There are any number of blendings of the two reasons, but those are the two primary motive forces.

At the time of the American Revolution, discontent about British rule was widespread. It was far from universal, but there were enough people unhappy about how the colonies were being treated to demand a radical change. Interestingly, it took visionaries to turn the colonies into a democratic society instead of a clone of the British empire. That is a case where fundamental flaws were a motive force for social change, and the change become something unexpected because of the imagination of a select few.

As suggested in Five Sigmas, as a population increases, the numbers of people who hold extreme views increases. When enough people who share an extreme view congregate, they form a community that feeds upon itself, reinforcing its views and encouraging exploration of even the fringes of those already extreme views. Such is the case with the entertainment industry.

Entertainment has long occupied itself, at least in part, with showing the unusual, the new, the different. Zoos and museums are assemblages of things that people rarely get a chance to see: animals from foreign lands, artwork, machines, clothing, weapons, and all manner of paraphernalia. As the world opened up routes of travel and trade, there was a constant and fascinating stream of apparent oddities and strangness.

The darker side of entertainment has been found in things such as freak shows, gladiatorial games, public executions and the like. These are things that call to us at a visceral level. People cannot take their eyes away from survival situations because there is something deep within us that insists that we learn what we can from them so that we can hope to survive them if they should happen to us. A train wrecks, and people want to watch the mayhem. Not because they like to see suffering, but because it is important to them at that deep level to know what happens in a train wreck. Who was hurt? Who survived? Were parents and children separated? Human drama.

Modern entertainment is predicated more on train wrecks and less on museums. This is because we've seen most everything that there is to see on our planet. We have video cameras by the millions, and still cameras by the billions. There is little that we have not seen that simply exists, unless we look very closely. Countless discoveries are taking place at the scale of the solar system and the molecule, but few are interested in such things because there is no direct tie to their own lives. Nothing calls to the mainstream of society at a visceral level when it comes to Mars rovers or nanotechnology. It takes a threat such as global warming to awaken our fascination.

This all leads back to entertainment. How is the mainstream of America entertained? The most effective means of drawing someone into your entertainment is to call to them at a visceral level. Train wrecks and dancing girls. Violence and sex. Unless we consciously turn away, we will remain fascinated by the crunching of metal and the sensuous show of skin. Those interested in grabbing our attention know this simple formula.

Note that reality shows, soap operas and the like are just calling to us at slightly higher than a visceral level. In Relationship PIES, relationships were presented as having four facets: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Entertainment may be viewed in the same way. The visceral is the most primitive way of being entertained; it relates to us at the physical level. Reality shows, soap operas and such as calling to us at the emotional level as well as the physical.

Is there entertainment that call to us at the intellectual and spiritual level? Certainly. Any reputable documentary is calling to us at the intellectual level. Spiritual entertainment is that which we turn to in order to reinforce and affirm our ethics, morality and our faith.

What does all this have to do with the chicken and egg problem described above? Those outside of the mainstream possess views that fascinate the mainstream because they are different. Their views of reality are like seeing elephants from Africa for the first time. Or watching a Japanese kabuki dance for the first time. Non-mainstream views are like seeing a far-off land that a mainstream mind would never have imagined. They call to us at any number of levels. We call the originators of such shows geniuses and visionaries because they are showing us something that is new, different - and entertaining. Lucille Ball. The Beatles. Johnny Carson.

Unfortunately, we run into a problem. We've seen "I Love Lucy". We've seen "The Tonight Show". We want something that is new and different. How about some reality television? We've never seen that before. That's an entirely new genre of entertainment. Within existing genres, we can have things that we've never seen before as well. Television dramas can start to use cruder language. That's shockingly new. They can also start to address issues that were never considered tolerable before. Rape. Incest. Child abuse. Murder. Not to serve as an intellectual means of addressing issues, but purely for its value as shock entertainment. Writers and producers are interested in "pushing the envelope" ever farther. This has become our entertainment because it is about things that don't just call to us at a visceral level, but scream at us. It is Train Wreck Television. We cannot look away unless we will it.

We are a society that is being exposed to this ever more extreme form of entertainment, and it is dragging the mainstream around with it. This happens because the lives of the youth of America are dominated by their pursuit of entertainment. They don't work the farm. They don't even have chores to handle around the home. Free time in abundance and nothing to do with it. So they turn to entertainment to fill their time. Because entertainment is dominated by a desire to scream at the visceral side of each young person, our youth is being ever more strongly dragged into extremist positions.

In the challenge to understand the chicken and egg problem of which is pushing which, entertainment or society, the finger must be pointed firmly at our entertainment pushing our society around. That entertainment is affecting - perhaps even infecting - our youth with ever more extreme views, all in the name of bringing something new and different to the masses. Untrained minds are being drawn off into beliefs that are completely unwholesome to them and to the society that they belong to. Extremism is mainstream.

What should America do about such things? Should we simply pass laws stating that shows should never include murder as a point of entertainment? Should we call for legislation insisting that everyone in media be fully clothed at all times? An Ounce of Prevention suggests that such solutions are ill-considered. Invariably, reacting to problems by trying to push hard in an opposing direction leads to extremism in the other direction: a complete intolerance to departures from the mainstream (or extremism "on the other side of" the mainstream).

The solution is the ounce of prevention already described. Train the minds of our young to be discerning of ethics and morality so that when the time comes for them to make decisions about their own ethics and morality - or the ethics and morality of their children - that they are properly equipped to make a conscious decision. That, instead of following their gut instinct towards a dream of wealth and fame.

Nobility

C.S. Lewis wrote a series of books that describe events that take place in the mythical land of Narnia. In the movie adaptation of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", one of the final scenes shows the crowning of the four child heroes. As each is crowned, Aslan, the wise and powerful lion lord, declares their title.

To the glistening eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy the Valiant. To the great western woods, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant southern sun, Queen Susan the Gentle. And to the clear northern skies, I give you King Peter the Magnificent. May your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens.

Much of Opinion Dump is devoted to pushing, nudging and cajoling people into recognizing the potential for greatness within themselves, and to strive for ever greater happiness. This time, you are invited to look at yourself in a mirror, whether literally or simply in your mind's eye, and consider what it is that is best about you. What is your defining trait that has most developed towards kingship or queenship?

Everyone has their flaws, and the children of C.S. Lewis's tale were no different. The cynic might have proclaimed the children as "King Peter the Bossy", "Queen Susan the Nag", "King Edmund the Traitor" and "Queen Lucy the Smartypants". You are not invited to play the cynic here. You are invited to offer a toast to yourself, to embrace that which is the very best within you.

Whether "King Henry the Resourceful" or "Queen Ruth the Kind", turn a blind eye to your faults for once and underscore that kingly or queenly virtue that you have always held close to yourself, that no one has ever been able to sully. Perhaps your greatness has been in the very fact that you have never given up in your struggle with some flaw. That is nobility defined.

May your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens.