As if you don’t already have enough to feel guilty about, the Finns have found a way to measure your own personal contribution to the world’s financial crisis.
It’s the “recession calculator“, a rather ingenious device created by Finnish advertising firm Bob Helsinki, which allows Finns to calculate precisely how much damage to the Finnish economy would be inflicted if people stopped spending and tightened their belt. It functions in much the same way as the now-ubiquitous carbon footprint calculators.
Let’s say, for instance, that in a bid to pinch a few pennies, I decide to forgo my weekly 450g tin of Milo at $5.34 a pop. If everyone did as I did, according to the site, the Finnish economy would be down around 316,800,000 Euros a year. Now we need to do a little extrapolating, here, but given that there are around 5.3 million Finns, and 21.8 million Aussies, in an Australian context that works out to be around 1,303,064,150 Euros — or a whopping $2,276,456,539. How selfish do I feel, right?
But the kind folks at Bob Helsinki don’t stop there. They also have some tips for people who want to do their bit for their country in these trying times. Here, then, are Bob’s tips for “a recession nääntyisi of hunger” (courtesy of Google Translate):
Osta kuin ennenkin. 1. Buy as ever.
Älä vaihda halvempaan. 2. Do not replace lower.
Suosi kotimaisia palveluita ja tuotteita. 3. Encouraging domestic services and products.
Älä anna yleisen kauhistelun pelotella. 4. Do not let the public kauhistelun intimidated.
Jos se on vallassasi, älä jaa potkuja. 5. If it is in your power, do not share your kicks.
Muista, että on niitä lamoja ollut ennenkin. 6. Remember that there are those lamoja been before.
Although I often wish I could share my kicks, until my lamoja is properly integrated with my kauhistelun the whole naantyisi is doomed
It’s a *global* economy, stupid!
All these exhortations to buy local don’t mean a thing in terms of a *global* financial crisis because capital crosses borders a whole lot faster and less predictably than consumer items. If the Finns were to boycott imported Chinese goods, China’s economy would suffer accordingly and import less in turn from Australia, which would translate into fewer purchases by Australians of Finnish phones. So on, multiplied thousands of times over for every triplet of countries you can think of.
Any such changes in consumption are of course dwarfed by sudden capricious changes in the regular movement of money according to the whims of governments, CEOs, bankers, boards and ratings agencies.
It isn’t consumer behaviour which needs to be re-thought. We consumers buy what we need and what takes our fancy, according to our capacity to spend, which is in turn determined by governments, bankers and employers.
What needs to be changed and reformed is the system as a whole. Credit markets, derivatives, bonds, insurance, mortgages — these, not “buy Australian” campaigns, are what really determines consumer spending patterns.