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Parents, listen up. Here is yet another reason why you need to 1. Limit Your Kids TV and 2. Talk to them about personal finance.  If you don’t, Discover Card will.  I am referring here to their latest commercial, which I saw on TV and which you can check out on YouTube here.  The commercial opens with the Oh-So-Profound Line that ‘We Are a Nation of Consumers… And That’s OK.”

Initially, of course, I was astounded that Discover Card was telling us it is OK to consume (can you hear the sarcasm here).  After all, the general consensus seems to be that we are in a recession, or on the edge of a recession, or that the economy is just correcting itself… Well, ok, maybe there is no consensus but it really ought to be clear that economic times are not good.  With oil and food prices rising, and home and stock prices falling, is it really a good thing that we are a nation of consumers.

Well, the TV tells me so.  And, I suppose it’s a great thing.  The more we consume, the more we can whip out the magic pieces of plastic in our purses which allow us to buy and buy and buy forever.  Run out of paycheck before you have consumed your fill?  Well that’s no problem, you can borrow against your future. And hey, if we over-consume, well that’s even better.  We’ll just spend the next 20 years working for Discover.  Maybe we can even figure out a way to have our paychecks go directly to them (oh, wait, I think we did and its called auto-debit). 

 Anyway, if you can read past my sarcasm here, and take a brief moment to look with me at what it actually means to be a consumer.  

Dictionary.com tells us, in relevant part, that a consumer is: “a person or thing that consumes.”  Well, that’s not too helpful.  What does “consume” mean?  Well, I’ll tell you.  According to dictionary.com, consume means:

1. to destroy or expend by use; use up.
2. to eat or drink up; devour.
3. to destroy, as by decomposition or burning: Fire consumed the forest.
4. to spend (money, time, etc.) wastefully.
5. to absorb; engross: consumed with curiosity.

–verb (used without object)

1. to undergo destruction; waste away.
2. 7. to use or use up consumer goods.

Well, gee that sounds great.  I definitely think its ok to be a nation of people who destroy, use up, devour, spend wastefully, undergo destruction, and use up consumer goods.   Consumer goods are constantly being replenished, after all, at no cost to the environment or any limited natural resources.  As for devouring and destroying, well we are the most powerful nation in the world, so it seems only right that we show our power this way.  

In fact, maybe our government should even encourage us to do this by sending us checks designed to encourage us to become better consumers. And, if they decide not to send us more of these checks, well we’re right back to Discover again because thankfully they’re always there for me.