Amazing Similarities of 1919 Americans and 2011 Indians

A study conducted in 1919 by Professor E. L. Thorndike, of Columbia University, indicates that the actual American expenditures for food, clothing and housing are considerably larger than the actual necessities to sustain life. He took from the United States census and similar reliable sources the total classified expenditures of the people of the United States. According to the press report he said, "By the aid of a consensus of psychologists, I have divided each item of our peoples' expenses among the wants to which it probably ministers, and then combined the results into a list of wants and the amounts paid for the satisfaction thereof. . . . The payments for sensory pleasures, security, approval of others, and the pleasures of companionship and sociability, including romance and courtship, are in each case close in magnitude to the amount paid for freedom from hunger. . . . We pay more for entertainment (including the intellectual pleasures and the sensory pleasures of sight, sound, taste and smell) than for protection against cold, heat, wet, animals, disease, criminals and other bad people, and pains." The fact that we spend annually seven hundred million dollars for cosmetics and beauty parlors, and in 1919 spent one billion dollars for candy; fifty million dollars for chewing gum; and two billion, one hundred and ten million dollars for cigars, cigarettes, tobacco and snuff adds pungency to Dr. Thorndike's observations. He continued, "Less than one-third of what we spent went for wants which must be satisfied to keep the human species alive and self-perpetuating. The rest went chiefly to keep us amused and comfortable, physically, intellectually, morally and especially socially." He analyzed our total expenditures for food thus:—"56 per cent to satisfy hunger; 15 per cent to gratify the pleasures of taste and smell; 10 per cent for the pleasures of companionship and social intercourse, including courtship; 3½ per cent for the approval of others, and smaller percentages for protection against disease and cold, enjoyment of the comfort of others and the pleasures of vision." Similarly in regard to expenditures for clothing, he believed that nearly half the total was for reasons other than mere bodily protection. The approval of others, self approval, pleasure of vision, courtship, and other elements are strong causes of expenditure for clothes.

   In view of all this, it is clear that in our expenditures of money, while elemental necessities must be met, nevertheless there is above that line a wide realm for the application of the principle of simplicity.