FOR AND AGAINST

It seems that it is the consumer, it is said, it is written, who is primarily responsible for the high cost of living. The consumer has become furiously gluttonous and extravagant. The consumer spends his time either devouring chickens or throwing his money out the window.
We should not go too far, however. There is certainly no doubt that there are consumers who do not deprive themselves. There is also no doubt that, since the war, money is spent quite easily. With troubled times, exchange rates out of whack, the whole world a little crazy, we hesitate to think about the future. We prefer to live from day to day and seize the joys of the moment. But it is humanity as a whole that thus consumes intensely in daily life, and it is not only the consumer strictly speaking. It is also the producer, the merchant, the industrialist, the writer, the deputy, the doctor, the farmer, the butcher, the pharmacist. It is also the wife of the rich industrialist, the girlfriend of the big merchant and the daughter of the good farmer.

Everyone is a consumer. When we attack the consumer in this way, we attack everyone, all men, all women, all humans. In other words, we attack no one. In other words, we say nothing.

For some, however, who would willingly charge the consumer with all sins and who would like to make people believe that it is the lamb that devours the wolf, the consumer is not everyone. The consumer is the citizen who, in the economic order, plays only and perpetually the role of consumer and who neither produces nor sells anything. It is the poor devil who is accused of feasting. It is the poor devil who would be the ogre and the glutton, the only ogre and the only glutton. In truth, it is a bit stiff!

The consumer who only consumes can defend himself without difficulty. He can prove, by a plus b, that the consumers who consume the most are consumers who are, at the same time, producers, traders, industrialists. In the palaces, in the great restaurants, in the luxury stores, in Deauville, in Biarritz, in Nice, in Aix, these are the consumers that we meet and that we see leading joyful and opulent lives. The other consumers, those who only consume, look very sad, next to these gentlemen and ladies. Moral: let's leave the poor consumer alone, consumed and stunned.

Maurice PRAX