In the United States, scarcity often manifests itself as excess. For example, Mississippi has both the highest rate of food insecurity and the third highest rate of obesity nationwide. In a food system that privileges products that are convenient, marketable and, ultimately, cheap, many can only afford to eat against their physical needs. When a burger costs one dollar but a salad costs seven dollars, calories are cheap, but nutrition is expensive.
We can apply the logic of the American obesity epidemic to wealth disparities in modern society. You may be familiar with the TV show “Hoarders.” According to the show’s description on Google, each episode “profiles two people on the verge of a personal crisis, all caused by the fact that they are unable to part with even the tiniest possessions.” The show tends to feature “average-looking” Americans, and claim that these people are afflicted by psychological conditions that constitute “hoarding,” the accumulation of excess stuff.
Bill Gates and Donald Trump have never been featured on “Hoarders.” The billions of dollars that these men possess are different from the old books, food or animals that the people on “Hoarders” cling to. Like junk food, the stuff we consider trash is readily available in America. People can accumulate piles of useless goods because it’s relatively easy to buy things. Hoarding, like obesity, demonstrates the extreme of a logic of consumption based on accessibility over quality, on what you can get over what’s good for you.
When I was in elementary school, my mother bought me a new backpack each fall. And with all the other expenses relating to a new school year, the end of August and beginning of September can be a tough time, financially. Because of this, my mom never wanted to spend more than $20 on a backpack. Inevitably, these inexpensive bags would fail before the end of the year, with broken straps or gaping holes that made these bags a hassle during spring rain. By fifth grade, I envied those kids who’d had their significantly-more-than-$20 monogrammed L.L. Bean backpacks since kindergarten. Those bags were sturdy, practical, and (most importantly) signified the longevity of an early investment. The monogrammed initials were icing on the cake, the symbol of ownership and permanence on a quality consumer good.
If you’ve read many of my columns, you know that I like to use anecdotes from elementary school. Often, childhood memories contain our most distilled—and often unarticulated—feelings of shame and exclusion. I was recently talking to my friend Julia, who mentioned having a similar experience with L.L. Bean bags, until she, like me, invested in a quality backpack that she carries to this day. Another friend, Will, mentioned his frustration with having the same sturdy but unhip bag for fifteen years of his childhood. Even small indicators of social position can have effects far into the future.
We see the paradox of consumerism far beyond elementary schools. Many low-income people in America have smart phones, expensive sneakers and other products that symbolize modern comfort or excess but are fairly easy to attain. If we expand the backpack analogy, all consumer goods are cheap throwaways compared with long-term wealth as found in mutual funds or property ownership.
Towards the end of last summer, I helped a family friend move some books out of her home. She, her partner, and her daughter were moving out of the apartment they had rented for years into a co-op that they would own. This friend shared that she was trying to make her teenage daughter understand why they were moving, why it mattered to build equity.
“This is what it all comes down to, you know?” she said while driving to the thrift store. “Economic inequality: when your parents are aging, will you inherit money or have to pay to care for them?” Two weeks ago I remembered this stark summary of systemic inequality, when reading a fellow student's insightful analysis of intersectional discrimination. He pointed out that discrimination manifests itself in ways beyond race, such as “where I live, what my parents do, what school I attend, what I study and what kind of cars my parents drive.” Though the cultural significance of these factors can vary, home location, education and car ownership are directly tied to someone’s wealth.
It can be impossible to determine a person’s wealth by how they look. Like food insecurity, there is no one way that economic disempowerment appears. Hoarding, like obesity, represents an unjust system rebelling against itself. If consumer goods are empty calories, health is wealth. However, wealth is never individualized, but constituted within a social order. And when a few people reserve economic power for themselves, the rest of us inevitably suffer. So, to quote a phrase, property is theft.