Consumer Nation

A blooming industry among pundits, journalists, historians, and others celebrates, although more often deplores, America as “a consumer society.” One prize-winning historian has described the country as “A Consumer’s Republic,” suggesting that consumers own the place. Another argues how consumers “shaped” American politics even from the very beginning of the nation in the eighteenth century. Still another argues that it was consumer interests that “fueled liberal politics” from at least the beginning of the twentieth century.See, Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic (2003); Timothy Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (2005); Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics (2005). Just to mention a few others: Richard Wightman Fox & T.J. Jackson, eds., The Culture of Consumption (1983); Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream (1985) ; Lawrence Glickman, ed., Consumer Society in American History (1999). Not everyone agrees on what is meant by the term. But the elements of the idea include the importance of consumer goods for recreation, for creature comforts, for self-esteem, for social standing, for the country’s prosperity, and in general for Americans’ access to affluence.

But can “consumer society” also accurately describe the American polity? I think not.

To characterize the United States as “a consumer society” at any time in its history misdirects attention from its most important and persistent trait. Whether the economy is fueled by Americans’ avid shopping for consumer goods or by industry’s consumption of capital goods, the focus of the economy and of public policy in America has remained on production. For a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a surge of national legislation designed by and for consumer interests. Except for that brief window, American politics has turned almost exclusively on the competition for government favor among rival claims for the rewards of production. For businesses and employers, that meant tax exemptions, depletion allowances, infrastructure development, legal and police restraints on labor agitation and unions, protective tariffs to insure profits, direct subsidies to selected industries, assistance in promoting exports, tort reform, and various other profit-generating incentives. For labor, it meant support for improving wages and working conditions, social insurance, immigration restrictions, protective tariffs to ensure jobs, and collective bargaining rights. For farmers it also meant (different) tariff walls, special access to foreign workers during harvest season, government protection against the spread of agricultural pests and disease, subsidies for crop-improvement research, as well as direct subsidies to boost commodity prices and, indeed, to pad the incomes of certain farmers and agribusinesses.

The Food and Drugs...