• American Public Radio’s “Marketplace,” “NewsHour” with Jim Lehrer , Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:43 AM

If you're just biding your time waiting for the good old days of consumers' unrestrained spending -- or affluenza, as Yale's James Gustave "Gus" Speth puts it -- to return, you better figure out a way to market and monetize all the years you'll have on hand because things aren't going to be what they used to be anytime soon, according to two recent interviews.

Speth, Yale's dean of environmental studies, tells Kai Ryssdal that our old habits of buying what we what whenever we want aren't sustainable. But, he claims, there are diminishing returns to affluence anyway and we ought to think about "reinventing" what we consume. Fewer widgets, more education, healthcare and infrastructure, for one. We also ought to pay attention to what really makes us happy, such as more leisure time.

Shopping guru Paco Underhill, meanwhile, tells "NewsHour"'s Paul Solmon that "our houses are too big. Our cars are too big. Our debts are too big. Our bellies are too big. Now it's time to go on a diet."

Underhill's overarching message, says Solomon, is that we can't really blame anybody but ourselves for ignoring the warning we've been hearing for decades that we're living beyond our means. The problem is, he says, "If we Americans stop living beyond our means, what will happen to all the workers of the world whose jobs depended on our continuing to do so?" ;

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