I found the article insightful: confirming some of the ideas I already had, and giving words for other ideas that are still taking shape. Here are some choice quotes:

> “After 9/11, and again after the 2008 recession, there was the idea that consumers should somehow patriotically spend to revive the economy,” she said. “And who benefited disproportionately? Billionaires. This time, the billionaires can do the heavy lifting, not me.”

> The “economy” is technically all of the resources of a given area: all of its production, all of its consumption. But many people — including a whole lot of politicians — use the word “economy” in situations when they really mean “the stock market.” The economy is built on consumer spending; the stock market is built on projections. Or, as I like to think about it, a bunch of guys (and they’re almost entirely guys) sitting around, making periodically educated yet often irrational and emotional bets about the future. The economy and the stock market are not disarticulated from each other, but they are also far from the same thing; it’s no coincidence, after all, that the highest levels of income inequality have coincided with record-breaking numbers on the stock market.

> According to Visa, credit card spending collapsed in all categories except food and drugstores, while savings rates grew from 8% in February to 13.1% in March — the highest since 1981.

> “You don’t need to buy anything,” she said. “You just post to the listserv what you need, and someone will give it to you. I’ve also seen an amazing trade economy emerge: trading yeast for flour, toys for sourdough bread, passing clothes from one family to the next.”

> I’ve seen a similar activity in my local “Buy Nothing Sell Nothing” Facebook Groups here in Montana: people making and giving away masks, using 3D printers to manufacture dupe N95 masks, giving away children’s toys and electronics in a “contactless exchange.” Just because you’re not buying anything (or buying less) doesn’t mean you’re not experiencing new things, doing new things, figuring out new things.

> This might, of course, be a misguided proclamation coming from the inside of a pandemic. But in addition to the actual risk (to oneself, to others) of buying things, the pandemic has afforded many Americans, whether in isolation or out of work, with something they haven’t had in years: time and mental space to actually think about the way we spend and its effects on others.

> “The thing that’s staying with me is how many of these bad shit purchases are attempts to create control and satisfaction from circumstances where I (seem to) have little,” he continued. “I’m incredibly lucky that my isolation has brought me less stress and more time for myself. And it’s amazing how, in that state, I am better able to act on good ethics and self-care and just spend less. If our jobs and commutes weren’t wringing us emotionally dry on a daily basis, we’d be much more ethical consumers, maybe?”

> This is where pandemic-induced reductions in spending, decadelong resentment over income inequality, the resurgent progressive and labor movements, sustained millennial/Gen X burnout and precarity, and burgeoning Gen Z idealism collide. What if we decided that things didn’t have to be the way they were before all of this happened? Part of that shift would involve taxing the rich and disarticulating healthcare from employment; it would involve forming and protecting unions and focusing on reimplementing regulatory systems, decentralizing production, and restoring the supply chain. And it could also mean disabusing ourselves of the idea that buying things is a solution to our problems.

> “I don’t want to return to a choice of unemployment versus burnout,” Natalie, who’s 36 and has been searching for a job since January, told me. “I want just enough of an income and just enough health insurance that I don’t have to check my bank account on a daily basis. I just want to be comfortable and content.

“I don’t know that there are any answers to this,” she said. “I just don’t want to return to the world as it was.” ●