Your hulking S.U.? Trade it. Your vacation home? Sell it, or at least turn it into income property. Those expensive designer boots? Leave them on the shelf.
These days, spending too much and having too much means you’re out of touch. The global economy is slowing and as people everywhere spend less, drive less and consume less, the common touch is replacing the Midas one.
Automakers have lost billions as the demand for fuel hogs evaporates. A related consequence is the gradual downward drift of oil prices . And in New York, with its Fashion Week about to begin, $2,000 Gucci boots no longer have instant appeal.
In parts of England or in Spain’s resort towns, stylish apartments can be found sitting empty.
How did this all happen?
The California city of Merced is an example of the spark that set off a global financial fire. As David Streitfeld wrote in The Times, while the real estate boom was at full throttle, the local government there approved the building of thousands of homes, some costing half a million dollars. Nobody asked if a town of Merced’s size, where the average family earned $24,000 a year, could absorb them.
“Owning a home is the American dream,” Jamie Schrole, a real estate agent, told Mr. Streitfeld.
The mantra of “no risk, no worry and no money down” was, in fact, just a dream, and today Merced has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the United States.
Countries that once thought they could escape fiscal upheavals that plagued the United States are now faltering, too. Mark Landler of The Times reported that Spain, Ireland and Denmark are either in recessions or on the brink.
As the contagion of contraction has set in from Britain to China, fantasies of fully gadgeted kitchens have given way to realism. Yet, amenities can still evoke emotions, especially when portrayed as excesses.
When Barack Obama criticized his presidential opponent, John McCain, for not knowing how many homes he owned (his wife Cindy owns 10, including rental properties), Mr. McCain retorted that Mr. Obama owned a “mansion” with four fireplaces and a wine cellar. From those attacks, it became clear that the sensitivities of voters who are learning to live with less will be at the center of the United States presidential campaign.
Politics is not the only realm where things are coming down to earth. In fashion , the hemlines are longer. “Fashion is always a mirror of society,” Suzy Menkes wrote from Paris. Even “young French women, who traditionally have always worn short, slim outfits,” are wearing the floor-sweeping dresses, she observed.
Prices, however, are not on a downward trend. “Too many things are expensive; it’s very difficult,” said Sher Bahader, a taxi driver who spoke with Landon Thomas Jr. of The Times in Riyadh. Inflation is at a 30-year high in Saudi Arabia.
So cut back, cover up and conserve. Over the top is out of line in an age of doing less with, well, less.
Or as Cindy Lashbrook of Merced put it: “We have to stop thinking that more growth is always the answer.”