With the holidays around the corner, I am sure you will be hearing some condemnations of "American Consumerism".
While I am rather agnostic on the actual magnitude of how bad consumerism is, I do know one thing, It is NOT "American" consumerism it is American women consumerism that is the issue, if there even is one.
I am not trying to pick on women, however if we want to be fair, men are responsible for only a small part of the potential consumerism problem. The above numbers would somewhat normalize due to shared expenses, however shared expenses are typically necessities and not considered consumerism. Normalization would also go both ways leaving women still holding (or wearing) a significant majority of the consumerism. Furthermore, if women "control the purse strings" (household spending) then they are ultimately responsible for any consumerism issues. Maybe we would still have the issue if men controlled spending, but they don't, and therefore this one is not on men.
Whenever men are primarily responsible for social and/or political issues, they are blamed for it (how many times have we been told that men are responsible for war?). However, when there is an social issue in which women are primarily responsible for, it all of a sudden becomes an gender neutral problem and pinned on society in general. Well I think it is time for men to step away from this issue, and whenever we hear people prattling about "American Consumerism", we politely call it what it is: American Women Consumerism.