Thirty-thousand dollar per year millionnaires

When I lived in Canada rich people were rich, and poor people were poor. Those who found themselves somewhere in the middle generally were content to not be poor, and didn't, for the most part, pretend to be rich.

Phoenix is home to a huge number of gazillionaires. Scottsdale, Arizona is a tremendously affluent area, and rumour has it that Arrowhead (where I lived that first summer I was here) is home to the zip code with the most millionnaires per capita.

True rich people aside, I must bring to your attention the scads of Arizona residents who pretend to be rich people. Not only do they adopt the affect and tastes of the rich, but they live well beyond their means. Only in Phoenix can a yearly income of $30,000 afford a shiny new Hummer H2. Only here will a teacher's salary afford a $400,000 condo. Only in this city will a person not be able to afford health insurance, but somehow be able to afford new boobs.

How do so many people live on so much credit? Canadian lending practices are so conservative that students are practically never given credit limits in excess of $5000. My first Canadian student credit card had a $500 limit. Here such credit limits of thousands of dollars are the opening bid. I have personally met more than one person who incurred over $20,000 in credit card debt before finishing their undergraduate degrees. This on top of student loans incurred.

Who let them have so much money in the first place? Why are the credit card companies so content to dole out credit to people with low and no incomes? How can these credit card financers sleep at night knowing they are contributing to the financial ruin of young people who know no better?

And yet, the problem proliferates as the spending patterns of the status quo reflect an affluent society. In order to not appear poor, you gotta look rich. Fancy clothes, brand new cars, and nights on the town do a popular person make.

A finger is always kept on the pulse of the glitterati. Expect a flurry of activity over at Scottsdale HealthCare Shea Campus -- didn't you hear? It's the happening place to have a baby. Brittney's having hers there, you know.

Or how about Sedona, vacation getaway of the stars? A student rate for a studio apartment (bachelor pad) is $1000/month. I don't know a single Canadian student who could afford this. I don't know a single American student who could afford it either, but could think of a few who would anyway.

I guess the desire to spend money beyond ones means comes from the fact that Americans are trained from a very young age to believe in and contribute to the all-powerful and revered American Economy. Shopping, eating at restaurants, and purchasing entertainment are really just activities that constitute "doing your part".

The climate of consumption is reinforced in kids from the very begining. But not only children are the target. Take a look at the new! and improved! products hitting the market today: everything is disposable. Why buy a normal toilet brush when you can buy a new one every time you clean your toilet? Why buy washcloths when you could get a package of one-time-use wipes? The idea, I suppose, is that you don't get to contribute to the economy once, but over and over! What a privilege! Even non-disposable products are not built to last. Why, when the technology will be obsolete in a few minutes anyway?

But I have a question, America:
Where does all your garbage go?

No one here thinks about that while walking through their local Wal-Mart: every single one of those items will end up in the trash eventually. Some within days, some within years. Multiply this by the number of Wal-Marts in your city. Multiply this by the number of cities in the US. Add in the same math for Target, for JC Penney, for AutoZone, for Sears... and on, and on, and on.

Where does it all go?

When are you going to figure out that at the rate the population of America is expanding, there will be no room for landfills soon. You can continue to truck trash into Canada, to ship it out to sea, , to blast it into space, but perhaps at some point someone somewhere will realize that the responsible behaviour is to reduce consumption, and where it cannot be avoided, to purchase items that will last for as long as possible.

Unfortunately, it would be "anti-American" to compromise the economy in such a way. So we will continue to live beyond our personal economic means, to overtax our environment, and to leave too great a footprint. Our landfills will become our graffiti:

We were here.