Rich vs Poor / Desire vs Need

It is almost obvious that the most affluent countries of the modern world are made of a variety of consumers. The heart of a nation’s wealth is its ability to produce and accommodate an adequate amount of consumerism. What we are forgetting is that at the same time, the citizens of that nation must also produce a good or service in order to have money to consume. Our nation is beginning to slip away from the exporting side of the market and we are becoming a community of strict consumerism. We are slowly starting to rely on outside sources as our providers and we are beginning to lose control of the amount of money we need to spend to supply such an extreme amount of consumption. It is interesting to take the construction of malls as a case study for this market shift in which I am referring to. Countries such as Japan and China have become super powers in the global market. They have managed to take many jobs away from American citizens and they have become leaders in exportation while maintaining very little importation. So we could agree that countries such as these have primarily shifted towards producer side of the market. However, through our research of Asian shopping malls, we have found that cities such as Beijing and Hong Kong are one of the leading locations for mega malls and very large networks of consumer based real estate. By some means, they have managed to not only increase their production power, but they have also dramatically increased they consumption power and there fore have launched their economies into a new level of success. How is this possible? Why does the US seem to struggle in this aspect of economic balance? As Bauman speaks about in the later half of his essay, it all boils down to social classes and jobs. Many of the Asian countries we have mentions have a very large population base to work with. And more importantly, they have a very large gap between the upper class (consumers) and lower class (producers), allowing for this balance to remain intact.