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| Home Front: Economy |
| Americans no longer the biggest consumers: Chinese are. |
| 2005-03-09 |
| EFL SUMMARY: It's getting harder to decry consumerism as example of capitalistic excess. Some of our more earnest environmentalist friends and zealous social-justice crusader pals are going to have to think up a new complaint. Their old lament about the United States' hogging all the world's resources is due for a little revision. As it turns out, the United States isn't exactly the world's biggest consumer, according to the Earth Policy Institute, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. China consumes more steel, coal, meat and grain than America does. And the Chinese buy more televisions and refrigerators than Americans do. The United States consumes more oil, but China's oil consumption is increasing far more rapidly. The number of computers the Chinese buy doubles every 28 months. China also produces tremendous amounts of pollution and, according to Inc. magazine, it also hogs more foreign capital than any other country, including the United States. Another Washington think-tank, Worldwatch Institute, issued a report in 2004 that bemoaned the fact that growing prosperity in the developing world has created a rapidly growing "consumer class" throughout the world. Some 1.7 billion people worldwide now qualify as "consumers," according to the Institute, including 240 million in China alone. Nearly half of the world's "consumers" now live in developing countries. Anyway, there's something almost humorous about having the country whose consumerism and resource consumption supposedly proves the evils of capitalism and greed out-consumed by a communist country. What's this world coming to? For what it's worth, the United States still consumes more than any other country on a per-person basis. For now, that is. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |