American Purchases Of "Stuff They Don"t Need" Hits 17 Year High

Anyone who has been paying attention to the New York Fed’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit is probably aware that Americans are drowning in debt...

...Aggregate household debt climbed $116 billion during the third quarter to $12.96 trillion, edging past its previous peak from Q3 2008. But even as millennials struggle to pay down an insurmountable pile of student debt...

...CNBC is reporting that holiday spending this season is on track to hit a 12-year high, according to an annual survey of consumer spending habits. Keep in mind, that survey was taken before Comcast, Boeing, Fifth-Third Bank and AT&T announced they would be handing out last-minute holiday bonuses to rank-and-file employees...

But as both debt and holiday-related spending rise in tandem (suggesting that the former is being utilized to finance the latter), one Bloomberg columnist has estimated that, instead of paying down debt, one-fifth of consumer spending in Q3 went to items that people don’t really need...

Back in the 1950s, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith made a bleak argument about modern capitalism: Advertising can create artificial wants -- say, for the latest gadget or skin cream -- that spur ever-greater consumption without actually making people better off. As a result, economies can grow without improving the lot of humanity.

 

Whether or not he’s right -- it remains a matter of debate -- the idea raises an interesting empirical question: How much of what we consume is related to wants rather than needs?

 

This isn’t easy to answer using even the most detailed data on consumer spending, because many categories could go either way. A car, for example, could be pure transportation or a Ferrari. That said, a number of categories -- such as gambling, hairdressers and recreational vehicles -- are pretty clearly nonessential. Following them consistently over time can give at least a sense of trend.

 

So how are we doing? In the third quarter of this year, nonessential items (of my own subjective selection 1) accounted for almost 18.5 percent of total U.S. consumer spending. That’s the highest share since June 2000.

According to the column’s author, Mark Whitehouse, this nonessential spending has reached its highest level in 17 years...

Whitehouse does list one interesting caveat: Because he calculates the value of nonessential goods in nominal dollars, the overall spending on nonessential items may have been constant in real terms...

...Of course, anyone who has sat through one of the Federal Reserve’s press conferences this year understands that inflation has been receding - not advancing - this year. Which means, if anything, 17% is a lowball figure.

To be sure, spending on life’s little luxuries is still far below its post-WWII peak (according to Whitehouse, conspircuous consumption in the US peaked in 1959)...

...But the fact that this subset of discretionary household spending is still growing, even as household debt rockets to all-time highs, is indicative of how consumers are burning the fiscal candle at both ends...
 

Study: Sustainably-Sourced Goods are KEY for Protecting Endangered Species’

Have you ever teared up at a news story about giraffes heading towards extinction? Perhaps you symbolically adopted an elephant to save it from poaching. Your heart is in the right place. But a study released earlier this year highlights the very real damage human consumption does to threatened species and the environment.

The couch you’re sitting on, the smartphone you used to donate money to the African elephant rescue effort – both of these have a negative impact on biodiversity. Even the coffee you brew in the morning takes a toll.

I hate to say it, but unless it is sustainably-sourced, every time you buy something, you’re wrecking the damn planet. Thanks a lot, you … and me.

UN Report: Small Scale Organic is the Only Way to Feed the World

Research published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution illuminates the global hotspots most impacted by goods exported to the United States, China, Japan, and the European Union. The findings show that U.S. consumption is particularly harmful to land species from parts of Southeast Asia and Madagascar, in addition to southern Europe, the Sahel region of Africa, coastal Mexico, Central America, and Central Asia. [1]

Source: Time – Darker purple and green regions indicate the regions where exports to the U.S. most damage biodiversity.

Goods in nearly every store you visit in the U.S. originate in places where monkeys, toads, sea cows, and big cats call home. Elements like coffee and palm oil are elements that animals in shrinking habits need to survive. These resources are used in products made by 15,000 industries globally and consumed in some 187 countries, and an inordinate amount of it is consumed in the U.S. and Europe.

This results in the suffering of more than 6,500 species of wildlife. [2]

Sea cow

Tracking Consumption’s Impact

For the study, researchers evaluated the supply chains of a multitude of different products to trace the effects of goods on 6,800 species listed as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Supply chains were found to threaten species in a variety of ways, including forestry-destroying habitats, pollution, and urban development. [1]

The researchers laid fairly new global supply-chain databases over the habitats of endangered species listed by the IUCN and BirdLife International. This allowed the team to identify the world’s “threatened biodiversity hot spots,” as they refer to them. [2]

For example, logging in Brazil to make products eventually sold in the U.S. cuts down trees used by red-face spider monkeys. Mangroves off Papua New Guinea – home to diverse plant species and an endangered sea cow – are impacted by the fishery trade and gold mined and destined for Japan.

Red face spider monkey

Daniel Moran, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said:

“Biodiversity hot spots is a well studied topic, and it is known that the last reserves of biodiversity are harbored in a small number of places. Economic pressure, even at the margin and in small increments, exerts pressure at these places. Almost any human pressure at the places, unless very well managed, will have a big impact on species there.”

The researchers wrote that product demand in the U.S. also affects “marine hot spots off the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and Nicaragua at the mouth of the Orinoco around Trinidad and Tobago.” They went on to say:

“The European Union drives threats [in] hot spots outside Southeast Asia in the islands around Madagascar: Réunion, Mauritius, Seychelles.

Despite much attention on the Amazon rain forest, the U.S. footprint in Brazil is actually greater in southern Brazil, the Brazilian Highlands, where agriculture and grazing are extensive, than inside the Amazon basin, although impacts along the Amazon river itself are high.”

Source: World Wildlife Fund

Humans have moved into animal habitats and now live among them so closely that even the smallest environmental impact can reverberate widely.

The study states:

“For threats driven by U.S. consumption, the 5 percent most intensively affected land area covers 23.6 percent of its total impact on species, and at sea the 5 percent most intensively impacted marine area affects 60.7 percent of threatened species habitats.”

Read: 4 Ways to Heal and Replenish our Damaged Soil and Food Supply

About $66 billion is spent on conservation efforts annually, with 90% of that going to use in developed countries far away from the most endangered locations, the researchers found.

The findings could help conservationists better direct resources to address both the source of harmful goods and the markets where they are sold, the team said. [1]

Sources:

[1] Time

[2] The Washington Post

World Wildlife Fund

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About Mike Barrett:
	Mike is the co-founder, editor, and researcher behind Natural Society. Studying the work of top natural health activists, and writing special reports for top 10 alternative health websites, Mike has written hundreds of articles and pages on how to obtain optimum wellness through natural health.

Study: Moderate Drinking Linked with Fewer Heart Problems

An ice cold beer can be refreshing, and a glass of wine can be relaxing, but is alcohol safe for your heart? Alcohol consumption in moderation has a reputation for being heart-healthy, and a new study of nearly 2 million people seems to confirm that, but only to a certain degree.

For the study, published in the BMJ, researchers analyzed the link between alcohol consumption and 12 different heart problems, including heart attack, heart failure, and chest pain linked with heart disease, within a large group of U.K. adults. None of the participants had cardiovascular disease at the beginning of the study, and all were 30 years of age or older. The researchers zeroed in on the first heart problem that each participant developed. [1], [2]

They also looked at other information in the records, including how much alcohol the subjects reported drinking. Based on their drinking habits, each participant was placed in one of five groups: nondrinkers, former drinkers, occasional drinkers, moderate drinkers, and heavy drinkers.

Moderate alcohol intake is considered up to 1 drink a day for women, and up to 2 drinks a day for men. [3]

One drink contains 0.6 fluid ounces of alcohol and is defined as:

• 12 fl. oz. of regular beer (5% alcohol)

• 4-5 fl. oz. of wine (12% alcohol)

• 1.5 fl. oz. of 80-proof distilled spirits (40% alcohol)

• 1 fl. oz. of 100-proof distilled spirits (50% alcohol)

Source: CNN

The Findings

According to the study, there were no heart conditions for which the nondrinkers had the lowest risk. In other words, they found that drinking was not necessarily bad for the heart. [2]

Compared with those who never drank, moderate drinkers were actually less likely to be diagnosed with chest pain, heart failure, stroke, peripheral artery disease, and several other conditions. No statistically significant differences were found between the groups for other conditions.

The heavy drinkers, on the other hand, were found to be more likely to be diagnosed with conditions like heart failure, cardiac arrest, peripheral artery disease, and stroke compared with moderate drinkers, which supports earlier findings that heavy drinking is not good for heart health.

Yet the heavy drinkers were less likely to be diagnosed with a heart attack than moderate drinkers. The researchers wrote that this doesn’t mean that heavy drinkers are not at risk for having a heart attack. It simply means a heart attack is less likely to be the first heart problem heavy drinkers have.

As for former drinkers, the researchers found that they were more likely than current drinkers to be diagnosed with certain heart conditions, including chest pain, heart attack, cardiac arrest, and aortic aneurysm. This doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t quit drinking. The finding suggests that some people quit in part because they are developing health problems from drinking.

Additionally, alcohol does not appear to protect against four less common heart problems: certain types of milder strokes caused by brief periods of blocked blood flow to the brain, and cases of bleeding in the brain. [1]

Overall, the study suggests that moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk for several heart conditions.

But if you don’t drink, or you drink rarely, the researchers advise against becoming a moderate drinker to protect your heart. It’s much safer to quit smoking, eat right, and get enough exercise.

The science behind the health effects of drinking have always been murky. Past studies showed that having two alcoholic drinks a day increased the risk for atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat, by 17%. This condition can lead to stroke and heart failure. And while moderate wine consumption has been linked with a lower risk for breast cancer, recent research suggests that the risk increases as alcohol intake increases.

So if you don’t drink, don’t start for the sake of your health. And if you drink a lot, you should consider cutting back for your health’s sake.

Sources:

[1] Time

[2] Live Science

[3] Atlanta Journal-Constitution

CNN

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Drink Alcohol? This Might Cut Your Risk of Alcohol-Related Early Death

If you’re a drinker, carving out 2 to 2.5 hours a week to exercise may reduce your risk of dying early from alcohol-related cancer and other health problems.

Not drinking would eliminate that risk, but let’s be realistic.

Drinking can be Fun, but…

Let’s face it; we live in an alcohol-rich society, and many of us like it that way. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore how it could affect our health.

Alcohol consumption is linked to higher rates of early death from any cause, including cancer. The more you drink, the higher your risk. Though, just to confuse things, past studies indicate that moderate drinking may have some heart health benefits. [1]

People’s drinking habits seem to go hand-in-hand with their lifestyle habits, in general. Drinking and smoking usually go together, for example. But not many studies exist where researchers looked at how alcohol consumption affects people who exercise compared to those who don’t.

So a Few Scientists Decided to Study It

Emmanuel Stamatakis, an associate professor at University of Sydney in Australia, and his colleagues looked at more than 36,000 middle-aged men and women for an average of nearly 10 years and tracked their death rates and causes of death.

The individuals tracked by the researchers were over the age of 40 and had provided data for 6 editions of the Health Survey for England up to 2006, and the 1998 and 2003 editions of the Scottish Health Survey.

The Findings

The team found that only those who weren’t physically active – defined as those who didn’t get the recommended 150 minutes of moderate-to-intense exercise each week – had a higher risk of early mortality.

Those who reported getting the recommended amount of exercise had slightly lower death rates, as long as they drank no more than 1 to 2 drinks per day. However, those who drank in excess, at levels considered dangerous for their health, showed higher rates of death regardless of how much they exercised.

For women, hazardous drinking means consuming 8 to 20 alcoholic beverages a week. For men, it means consuming 21 to 49 standard alcoholic drinks per week. [3]

Source: Medical Xpress

Stamatakis says:

“Among the physically active, there was no increase in cancer and all-cause mortality up to hazardous levels of alcohol consumption.” [2]

Furthermore, there didn’t appear to be a difference in mortality rates among physically active participants, whether they exercised at the minimum recommended amount or the maximum amount.

The authors concluded:

“Meeting the current physical activity public health recommendations offsets some of the cancer and all-cause mortality risk associated with alcohol drinking.”

The Study’s Limits

The study relied on self-reporting, so it doesn’t definitely prove cause and effect, says Michael Hyek, senior director of OhioHealth’s McConnell Heart Health Center. Even so, Stamatakis believes his study gives “yet another reason” to promote exercise.

He asks:

“How many more reasons do we need for physical activity to be taken seriously?”

Hyek agrees, saying:

“I know very few chronic medical conditions that exercise will not have a positive impact on. It’s a good thing regardless of what your circumstances are.”

So, if you drink, try not to overdo it (at least not too often, and don’t scrimp on exercise.

Actually, don’t scrimp on exercise, even if you don’t drink.

Sources:

[1] Time

[2] The Guardian

[3] CNN

Medical Xpress

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.