Consumerism continued

When I re-read my post below, I remembered something that I read the other day. In 1994, negotiations were held at the National Housing Forum to determine the new national housing policy in South Africa. One of the arguments put forward for the mass delivery of formal 'RDP' housing was that if more people had proper homes, the demand for 'white goods' (fridges, stoves, microwaves, etc) would go up, thereby stimulating the local economy (this policy was subsequently adopted and implemented).

What kind of logic is this?!! Get the poorest of the poor, who can't even afford to provide shelter for themselves, to buy appliances they can't afford so that mysterious entity "the local economy" can benefit! Meanwhile the poor get in to bottomless debt and have to sell their houses. I would guess that one of the most common sources of bad debt and garnishee orders amongst the poor is the hire-purchase of furniture and 'white goods'. It probably right up there with cellphones. But how do you stop people buying things they can't afford? Well, I suppose you could start by not deliberately designing national policy to get people to spend money they don't have.