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Marketplace All-in-One

The origins of America’s consumer-driven economy

Marketplace All-in-One

Marketplace

News, Business

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The holiday shopping season kicks off this week with Black Friday, and American shoppers are expected to spend a record amount, particularly in online sales.

Consumer spending keeps the U.S. economy humming, making up 70% of the country’s gross domestic product. But it wasn’t always this way.

On the show today, Cornell economic historian Louis Hyman gives us a history lesson on how the American economy became dependent on the consumer, why that change has created serious environmental consequences, and whether there are alternatives to the consumer-driven economy we know today. Plus, what it all has to do with the Salem witch trials.

Then, a federal appeals court decision could significantly weaken the Voting Rights Act. We’ll get into the economic implications of the ruling and how it could play out in the Supreme Court. Plus: Oh, how the mighty crypto kings fall.

Later, we’ll hear listener suggestions for signature state cocktails. And food journalist Francis Lam was wrong about what was on the menu at the first Thanksgiving.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

    We want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question. You can reach us at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

    Transcript

    Click on a timestamp to play from that location

    0:00.0

    Hey everybody I'm

    0:06.6

    I'm Kyle Rizdall welcome back to make me smart where none of us is as smart as all of us.

    0:11.6

    And I'm Kimberly Adams. Thank you for joining us everyone. It is Tuesday,

    0:15.2

    November the 21st, I guess the question of the day, Kai, is have you actually started your

    0:21.2

    holiday shopping? Absolutely not. It's not even Thanksgiving. you actually doing this week or at

    0:23.1

    absolutely not it's not even Thanksgiving you kidding me me either

    0:26.5

    but it's what a lot of Americans are actually doing this week or at

    0:30.6

    least thinking about doing with great trepidation, I imagine.

    0:34.0

    So we thought it was a good time to do a deep dive on how it got to be this way that we are so

    0:41.8

    consumery.

    0:43.1

    So today we're talking about the rise of the American consumer economy.

    0:47.5

    You have heard me say more than once on marketplace

    0:49.5

    that spending by or on behalf of consumers accounts for something like 70% of this entire economy.

    0:56.1

    But how did it get to be this way and what was it like before it was this way?

    1:01.4

    This is a history question, which I just kind of love.

    1:04.0

    Louis Hyman is an economic historian at Cornell University.

    1:06.8

    Louis, welcome to the podcast. Good to have you on.

    1:09.1

    Thanks for having us on.

    1:10.8

    So I suppose it hasn't always been this way but hasn't always

    1:15.1

    been this way that consumers drive this economy? It is not always been this way

    1:19.0

    and we used to live in a world of utter scarcity so it's a little surprising that we live this way now.

    1:24.7

    Oh say more like when was the sort of pivotal turning point?

    ...

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