What's wrong with consumer capitalism?The joyless economyafter twenty years

Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 10 (4):495-508 (1996)
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Abstract

Abstract The Joyless Economy seeks to explain the paradox of rising consumption and pervasive dissatifaction, and is thus often cited as a critique of consumer society. Yet it is rather ambivalent as critique. A less ambivalent critique would be predicated on the existence of biases toward private consumption as against public consumption, savings, free time, and the environment. These biases result from two sources: the importance of social comparison and the non?existence of a market in working hours. Because positional competitions occur far more readily around visible private consumer goods, these take a privileged place in expenditures. This process is compounded by the fact that employers systematically deny opportunities to trade income for leisure.

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Consuming goods and the good of consuming.Colin Campbell - 1994 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 8 (4):503-520.
Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion.Michael Schudson - 1985 - Journal of Business Ethics 4 (4):226-238.

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