Japan To America: Thrift Is A Vice
Every time you darn your socks, a child goes hungry.
Not only did your overspending cause the recession, your underspending - Nielsen's Feburary Economic Current predicts consumer saving rates will rise from 1.7% in 2008 to 5.1% in 2009 - is going to deepen it. America's new thrift ain't a fad, and will destroy it, like Japan, says NYT. Over there, having gone through a decade-long recession, well-off families do horrible things like use bath water to wash the laundry, hold back on flat-panel TV purchases when they know the prices are going down, and there's an overall disinterest in new cars and luxury goods. What bastards.
When Consumers Cut Back: A Lesson From Japan [NYT]
Nielsen Economic Current Debuts [Nielsen] (Photo: Ryan McFarland)
Post a comment
Comments:
All it's for is delivering the detergent and carrying away most of the filth. I presume they are still rinsing with clean water.
Reuse bath water? Yeah right, everyone knows that the Japanese simply banish food particles to the land of wind and ghosts.
@pecan 3.14159265: It's sensationalizing something by omission.
It's not the water you clean yourself in but rather the hot water that you soak in after cleaning yourself that they're talking about here.
If you have to wash your clothes with bath water you must be in serious financial shit let me tell you. I'd have a hell of a time running buckets downstairs and tossing them in my front loader.
Ricardo Montalban. That's all I'm saying. If he was still around he could fix this.
@I_have_something_to_say: You wouldn't have a front loader either, you'd be doing your laundry by hand... which is the exactly the point. Less water waste, less electricity used, more physical labor... less time on the couch with a bag of chips watching G4...
@I_have_something_to_say: Japanese baths are quite different from American style baths. Think more like hottub, and/or look up "Furo" on wikipedia.
Consumer savings rates should be closer to %10 for people who plan on retiring at a reasonable time. This is a readjustment period and while it is rough during this time, things will improve and hopefully we'll have learned some lessons from this period. I think things will get better toward the later half of this year, not a lot better but a little. Next year might be a boom year though.
I read this and have to say that although I did not believe I was participating in the economic crisis, I have found myself saving more so I guess I am.
The consumerist also taught me that I am a vulture for buying my new home at a steal. I mean, I feel bad when you think about how cheap I got this house.
I am sensing a pattern here:
Wall Street eats investments and real estate, collapses the housing market and generally works only to enrich itself.
Some financial jackass from NYT writes an article decrying that Americans actually acting in their own self interest out of self-preservation, after witnessing what Wall St has done to them, is somehow bad.
Methinks he doth protest too much. Methinks the crooks can't get their hands on our money if we save it and spend frugally.
You have it wrong. Japanese people have a different way of taking baths. You only soak in the bath, you scrub and use soap outside of the bath with a shower.
I would gladly wash clothes with japanese-style bathtub water if it meant I could get some of that sweet sweet 1% private loan action. Sure beats the pants of my mortgage.
@sonneillon:I wonder if the stats take retirement savings into account. My guess is that they don't. I have a hard time believing that if 401k contributions are included, that Americans only saved 1.7% of their incomes. My guess is that only shorter term savings are being considered.
Exactly. Having a bath in Japan is more akin to soaking in a Spa here, except it's considered rude to enter the bath if you haven't already washed. So the water is no more dirty than if you dipped your finger in your teacup to tell the waterlevel (a technique used by blind people).
So my new laptop is saving America. Cool.
@HIV 2 Elway Resurrected: considering how many people work paycheck to paycheck at minimum wage jobs with no 401K, I totally believe it. It's sad, but I believe it.
I have always wondered why we dont use shower water to flush toilets... why are we wasting clean water to get rid of waste?
If you *define* economic health as "high spending", then of course a cut in spending is never going to lead to a healthy economy. But where's the real evidence that high consumer spending on luxuries actually leads to a more prosperous country overall?
We need to get out of this mode of thinking of economics. Bigger is not always better. More is not always better. Growth is not always better. This model made sense as long as the population was always increasing by leaps and bounds, and there was always more space for those people to occupy, more resources to be consumed.
Now we know that we've got only one planet, one supply of fossil fuels, that most of us don't want six kids even if it was a good idea. And if we stop physically expanding, we cannot continue economically expanding indefinitely.
That means we need to find a model of stability that doesn't require a constantly expanding economy. And so, evidently, does Japan. That doesn't mean that frugality is bad.
@Repique: Amen. I think economists view the world as a game, where GDP is the score. Whichever country has the most points "wins," regardless of what it does to the well-being of its population in the process. Partly this is because well-being is hard to measure, and economists only care about stuff they can easily put into numbers.
So the article ends with The family has not gone on vacation in two years and still watches a cathode-ray tube TV. Oh the horror, sounds like my life, which if you ask me is not that bad.
I hate articles like this where important cultural differences are omitted leaving little or no context for the comparisons being made.
Perhaps I missed the explanation in the article but--as others have already pointed out--the Japanese thoroughly clean themselves OUTSIDE the bathtub before soaking in the water. This important fact logically explains why it would be much easier for them to re-use their bath water as it would be significantly cleaner.
@I_have_something_to_say: You can divert runoff from showers and baths to holding tanks to reuse for non-drinking uses like laundry, toilet flushing, or watering the garden. You just have to be more cautious about the type of soaps you use; in other words you'd want environmentally friendly shampoos and soaps.
I can totally believe it, if it is an average. I know people (like my mom for instance) that has saved nothing at all and are counting on social security for their income.
@menty666: The technical term for this is "gray water". Shower and bath water is probably OK, but you do not want to use kitchen sink water this way. It will contain food particles, and if you store water like that for long it will quickly start to smell like something died in it. Any RVer who has stored an RV for the winter without putting something that won't evaporate in the sink traps is pretty familiar with that smell...
I never understood the bath, myself. Soak in your own filth then get out and think you are clean?
At the very least, you should shower before or after the bath..but then...why not just take the shower?
I bet the only kids in America who know what darning means are the ones studying for the spelling bee, or possibly pint-size Civil War reenactors.
@spoco: I'm something of an idiot, which explains most of my posts. The rest can be explained by the large chip on my shoulder, but that's neither here nore there.
The point is, I'm an idiot, and yet it occured to me that maybe, just maybe, my newfound paranoia-borne inclination to hoard money would probably do more harm than good in the long-run. It just seems to me that while saving is not a bad thing, the last thing our economy needs right now is for everybody to stuff all their cash into a mattress or whatever.
It seems like a vicious cycle, but I live most days in a haze, so I could be wrong.
@shepd: Anyone I know who has a hottub considers it rude to use it without at least a rinse in the shower beforehand too. No one wants to scrub people flakings outta their tub and filter.
@JGKojak: Methinks it makes a modicum of sense. It might be overstating the issue just a bit, but I think it's definitely something to think about.
"you must be in serious financial shit" : many ARE in serious financial shit !!
@HIV 2 Elway Resurrected: If you consider CC and other debt, savings rates in the US have been negative at points in the past decade.
@I_have_something_to_say: Having been to Japan, and by being married to a Japanese woman, I can tell you that carrying the water would not be an issue.
In a Japanese house, the bathroom and laundry are either in the same area, or in the same room.
Also, the bathtub and shower area are in their own annex of the bathroom, separated from the sink and mirror.
As for getting the water to the clothes washer, all you do is put a hose in the bathtub. Using the mighty power of suction, the water is pumped out of the bathtub, and into the washer.
As for the water itself, many have commented on how relatively clean it is. I can tell you that japanese bathing habits are very different from ours.
Old Europeans habits are that the oldest person washes first, or the breadwinner/man of the house, while the water is clean and warm. Next is usually the mans dad or wife, and further down the pecking order. After a while, the water is not only cold, but quite dirty, because they do all their washing in this one bath.
This is where the phrase "dont throw the baby out with the bathwater" came from, the water would be so dirty, that you didnt see the baby!
Japaneses style is different. Typically, the guest is first to bathe. You disrobe in the bathroom area (sink and mirror [the toilet is in a separate room all together, and I'm sure you've heard about how awesome japanese toilets are...they have heated seats!] ) and go to the bathing area.
The bathing area has a shower head that is on a hose, and the bathtub is usually covered with a lid.
You stand or sit on a stool in the shower area, and wash yourself there. Essentially, you are taking a shower. Once you are completely clean and rinsed of all soap, THEN you remove the cover from the bath, and go sit and soak.
Another thing about Japanese bath tubs: They are not "lie down and soak" tubs like what you see in most western films. They are about half the size, but twice as deep. You sit down with your legs folded, and typically, the water will come up to your neck.
Finally, when yo are done (about 5 min of soaking in the tub), you get out, and indicate to the others that you are done. Once the guests have completed their washing, then the rest of the family goes in.
Additionally, the water is still warm. Unlike our style which is to turn on he hot water, and let it sit in the tub, they actually begin with cold water into the tub, and the tub itself warms the water up! That's right, there is a thermostat for the tub, just like a jacuzzi! So no matter when your turn is, the water is just as warm as when the first person got in.
All in all, 5-6 people are typically in the water, and compared to old european bathing habits, the water is still clean enough to not lose a baby.
And good enough to wash clothes.
...And seriously, why shouldn't we do that?! Use our bath water to wash our clothes. After the water has washed the clothes, it becomes grey water, and can also be used to irrigate plants. Make use of our available resources, and we wouldn't have some of the issues we do.
Stupid California and our droughts and water wasting ways...
Thrift is a vice? Well, Gluttony is a sin. So there.
I'm still working out the math on this one. If I darn a sock, a child goes hungry. How about if I staple it, is that okay? So how many children go hungry if Sally Struthers darns a sock? How many children go hungry if I sew my own Snuggie? Are kids going to be going around at Halloween selling clothing for UNICEF, instead of asking for donations? I'm so confused.
@Chris 'Sparky' Gordon: Jesus, I so bloody want a furo. But I live in an apartment. (Can't justify a house purchase right now.) Boo, hoo...
@Saboth: Because not every bath tub is equipped with a shower? I know the 1930s era house I grew up in had a shower and two separate bathtubs.
Paradox of thrift. The NYT spends a lot of time fluffing Keynes, so this should be unsurprising. Consumption means you need people to produce what you consume and that, my dear friends, is an economy.
In a larger sense, why are you darning socks? You've got an economic specialization in some other task. The ideal future state for economies (theoretically) is a world in which people only do the task they've got a comparative advantage in and trade for the rest.
Delaying consumption is another matter. Ideally, society should be constructed so there is no reason to save. That way, you consume as much as possible, maximizing output.
From the article: "Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills."
Why is this shocking? Apparently the people working here are to young to remember anyone who made it through the great depression. Those people continued acting frugally throughout their lives.
@Cyberxion101: Cyberxion, it does the economy good if you spend the money, period. It doesn't matter that much when you spend it. At least, that is, it matters more to you than to anyone else. Right now, I can get by on less than I make, so I'm saving. If I get laid off, or if I get sick or something, I will contribute my fair share to the economy then rather than now. Think of your own needs first.
Economists can suck it. 2 years ago they were shouting "EVERYONE NEEDS TO SAVE!" and "LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS". Now, they shout, "SPEND SPEND SPEND OR YOU HATE AMERICA". They change their mind more than my wife does and with less logic.
Guess I couldn't pee in the shower anymore if >.>
@pb5000: My chinese immigrant parents have gone on a total of 7 vacations in 28 years. Worn the same cloths for most of that period and lived and thrived off of a little more than minimum wage (but 60h a week). While I don't really want to live the same way; the sacrifice they made for me allows me not to have to. In a way the NYT is right; if everyone lived like that so many of the peripheral industries and institutions (professional sports, fashion, etc. . .) would cease to exist.
@speedwell, avatar of snark: I don't like taking baths because I don't like marinating in my own filth.
And I certainly wouldn't wash my clothes in my leftover marinade...
@Saboth: Oh, Saboth, as someone who is addicted to floating around blissfully in a tub of nice warm water, I would never think of asking that question.
Who uses bath water to wash laundry? Ew.