KJ and Fee doubt it...
SOURCE GUARDIAN: If having more no
longer satisfies us, perhaps we’ve reached ‘peak stuff’
The economy pumps out goods and services, all of which
create jobs and incomes. There is no value judgment in such a statement, no
view of what constitutes the good life. Even to invite such a question of an
economist is to risk ridicule. The task of economists – a value-free
quasi-science – is to make sure that as little as possible gets in the way of
turning inputs into more outputs. But around the developed world consumers seem
to be losing their appetite for more. Even goods for which there once seemed
insatiable demand seem to be losing their lustre. Last week, mighty Apple
reported that in the last three months of 2015 global sales of the iPhone
stagnated, while sales of iPads tumbled from 21m units in 2014 to 16m in the
same three months of 2015. In the more prosaic parts of the economy – from cars
to home furnishings – there are other warnings that demand is saturated. At a
Guardian Sustainable Business debate, Steve Howard, head of Ikea’s
sustainability unit, declared: “In the west, we have probably hit peak stuff.
We talk about peak oil. I’d say we’ve hit peak red meat, peak sugar, peak
stuff… peak home furnishings.” The average western consumers’ home is bulging
with all the materials and goods it needs, runs the line. Suddenly, whether
more is always the answer is being questioned, not by environmental thinktanks,
but by the market. Only in developing countries have consumers the capacity to
want more, but as Howard accepted, for that they need buying power, which in
turn rests on the global distribution of income and wealth being fairer.
