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Consumer economy (view source)

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The consumer economy began to expand exponentially in the early- to mid-20th century. Around the early 20th century, the growth of consumer rights and activist movements also commenced, with the creation of organizations such as the National Consumers League.<ref>[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/ccpres05.html Introduction to ''Prosperity and Thrift''], from ''Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929'', Library of Congress.</ref>It has been said that two-thirds of jobs in the [[Directory:United States|United States]] are now tied either directly or indirectly to the consumer economy.<ref>''[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670887366?ie=UTF8&tag=mywikibizcom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0670887366 The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and The Next Episode of Capitalism]'', Shoshana Zuboff & James Maxmin, [http://books.google.com/books?id=pn-7AAAAIAAJ&q=%22in+the+US+economy+were+directly+or+indirectly+dependent+upon+consumer+expenditures+making+consumers+responsible%22&dq=%22in+the+US+economy+were+directly+or+indirectly+dependent+upon+consumer+expenditures+making+consumers+responsible%22&lr=&ei=jtQCS6ubM5zGNfqnzNoO pg. 8].</ref> Such a reliance on one aspect of the overall economy has its own set of risks.

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Herman van der Wee argues that the dramatic growth in the consumer market that grew exponentially in the latter half of the 20th century has its origins in the changing socio-economic objectives of US, Western European countries and Japan in the afternmath of World War II when economic prosperity became central to government coordination. He argues that these governments constructed the modern consumer economy by powerfully facilitating a growth in demand.<ref name="HVW">{{cite web|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4lVbyi89NVUC&pg=PA243&dq=consumer+economy&hl=en&ei=4rTqTLSbMoWAhAe5l4XADA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=consumer%20economy&f=false|author=Herman van der Wee|title=Prosperity and upheaval: the world economy, 1945-1980|publisher=[[University of California Press]]|year=1986|page=243|isbn=0520058194}}</ref> This was directly achieved with increasing wages and giving employees a surplus beyond the basic costs of living which gave people a growing capacity to indulge in leisure, tourism, fashion and personal transport.<ref name="HVW"/> As a result, the demand for consumer goods grew, and investment in the private sector thus increased, generating new jobs to meet the growing consumer demand. This in turn had the knock-on effect of increasing the size of the consumer market by employing new people who in turn would have enough money to spend on goods and the economy would continue to grow at an exponential rate.<ref name="HVW"/>

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Herman van der Wee argues that the dramatic growth in the consumer market that grew exponentially in the latter half of the 20th century has its origins in the changing socio-economic objectives of US, Western European countries and Japan in the afternmath of World War II when economic prosperity became central to government coordination. He argues that these governments constructed the modern consumer economy by powerfully facilitating a growth in demand.<ref name="HVW">{{cite web|author=Herman van der Wee|title=Prosperity and upheaval: the world economy, 1945-1980|publisher=University of California Press|year=1986|page=243|isbn=0520058194}}</ref> This was directly achieved with increasing wages and giving employees a surplus beyond the basic costs of living which gave people a growing capacity to indulge in leisure, tourism, fashion and personal transport.<ref name="HVW"/> As a result, the demand for consumer goods grew, and investment in the private sector thus increased, generating new jobs to meet the growing consumer demand. This in turn had the knock-on effect of increasing the size of the consumer market by employing new people who in turn would have enough money to spend on goods and the economy would continue to grow at an exponential rate.<ref name="HVW"/>

In the 1980s, an easy-money system contributed to a marked boom in the consumer economy, which continued throughout the 1990s and early 2000s until the on-going financial crisis of the latter part of the 2000s.<ref name="sox">{{cite web|url=http://www.soxfirst.com/50226711/the_us_consumer_economy_is_dead.php|title=The US consumer economy is dead|publisher=Sox First Management and Compliance|accessdate=November 2, 2010}}

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