A Call to Arms

Non-consumers are a threat to the Corporate States of America

by Glenn Reed

Attention K-Mart shoppers! Put down that Starbucks double-tall, fellow multi-taskers! Lace up your newest Nikes, my entrepreneurial friends and prepare to just do it!

America is now faced with a threat more subversive than Ingmar Bergman films, more insidious than Ed Asner as Lou Grant, potentially more devastating than the fall of the 8-cylinder family station wagon and the rise of sushi.

Yes, America is reeling today from a threat to its world-renowned market economy—a threat that makes communists, anarchists and international terrorists seem like mere sand fleas on the beaches of democracy! And who presents this danger, this irritating grain of sand in the bathing suit of our beloved beach babe, corporate America? Why it’s the wretched and un-American scum of the earth: the non-consumer!

The non-consumer is truly a devious creature. (S)he works his/her destruction in ways that are particularly effective in a system that, until the last six months or so, was cruising along providing bulging stock portfolios to anyone willing to invest a portion of their inheritance or dotcom virtual dollars in the wondrous new economy.

The non-consumer eschews such dedicated job-providers as The Gap, Niketown and Abercrombie and Fitch. Why (s)he may even avoid such pillars of the free market ideal as Cosco and Wal-Mart.

The non-consumer fiddles with his/her beater car engine rather than purchase a shiny new SUV or BMW. (S)he brings his/her disgusting, coffee-stained Far Side mug to his/her favorite cafe for refills in a deliberate slap at Weyerhauser and (s)he actually reuses paper bags! The non-consumer thumbs her/his nose at such venerable institutions as Exxon/Mobil, Chevron and Shell by riding one of those human-powered, two-wheeled hazards to the corner store, threatening the safety of responsible, combustion engine devotees on the road.

The non-consumer threatens the jobs of hard-working collection agency callers by refusing credit card offers and has the audacity to say “thanks, but no thanks” before hanging up on traumatized telemarketers!

The non-consumer is almost sub-American. (S)he is a parasite, a plague and an annoying boil all rolled into one. (S)he must be stopped in his/her tracks to prevent dragging the American consumerist ideal down to a pitiable level of existence.

But there are steps we can take to save our eternal shopping spree in the supermarket of life by stopping the wretched non-consumer. Following are some steps that I propose in order to accomplish this task. All will provide, in our beloved capitalist way, financial incentive to change the non-consumers’ ways and prevent further devastation of the profit margins of our esteemed transnationals, as well as protect the well-deserved bonuses of their patriotic and compassionate CEO’s.

1. Establish a broad-based non-consumer tax. Require consumer records be kept on every individual and, if that individual’s annual level of consumption is inadequate, tax him at a rate commensurate with the degree of pain that has resulted for corporate America. Regressive taxes are the foundation for every neo-liberal, market economy!

2. Create a special category of non-consumer tax to benefit the automakers, insurance companies and oil companies. Tax those individuals who, if they don’t purchase a new vehicle (at least) every five years, create undue hardship for these corporate foundations for consumer culture.

3. Likewise, tax drivers of anti-oil company, fuel-efficient vehicles. Establish a fund from the proceeds to provide research dollars for ways to adapt our inadequate highways, bridges and infrastructure to accommodate practical vehicles such as gargantuan pick-ups and SUV’s and allow for their continued growth in dimensions, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

4. Require the purchasers of generic pharmaceuticals to perform public service in support of the research efforts of those pharmaceutical companies that they’ve damaged through their non-consumerist, selfish, cost-cutting purchasing strategies.

5. Disqualify, from eligibility for federal scholarship funds, the children of those parents who choose to send them to public schools, thereby creating hardship for private educational institutions throughout the land. Require those children to receive special education to include (but not be limited to) the composition of advertising jingles for those heroic corporations that sponsor schools.

6. Owners of agricultural lands who insist on wasting acreage on the outmoded family farm concept will pay special property taxes based upon the value of that land were compassionate corporations such as Wal-Mart allowed to build facilities on the sites. If the land is not retail-compatible, then base the tax on the value of a hazardous waste dump site for an esteemed company such as Monsanto.

7. Increase fees for those non-consumers who choose to recycle and create hardship for the packaging industries and companies who seek to expand their aesthetic horizons through creative packaging.

8. Require those individuals who threaten the integrity of our health care system through blatant avoidance of various diseases, syndromes, injuries and other maladies, to perform duties in the realm of corporate service that will include (but not be limited to) collating the health care and insurance company’s inspiring mounds of paperwork without the benefit of rubber fingertips.

9. Begin charging special fees at all farmers’ markets to aid agribusinesses in their continued research into new and better, genetically-enhanced products for American families.

10. Establish a threshold in all of the preceding areas above which those non-consuming, law-breakers go to prison (one strike and you’re in forever), where they are required to consume minimal amounts of prison-sponsored products or risk loss of parole and prison privileges.

This is but a starting point to end the tide of granola and tofu-poisoned, politically correct, deluded, non-consumers who threaten to undermine all that we hold near and dear: the high-life for the privileged, liberty for those who tow the corporate line, and the pursuit of financial gain! This is a call to arms (the defense department and Smith and Wessen need more business too). Down with the accursed non-consumer and up with the regressive tax!