SO it's spend, spend, spend, and boom, boom, boom in Ireland. Europe's tiger economy. We've never had it so good. The statistics of our conspicuous spending are well known total retail floor space rises in Dublin by a quarter house prices soar faster than ever; a dozen Dublin houses sell for £1 million or more; the State's net car population rises by 250.000 in two years; and a hundred people wait to buy a Mercedes SLK, a snip at £39,500. Good times, big time.
Against this backdrop of unprecedented consumerist frenzy, we learned, for example, that Charles "Chuck" Feeney, the reclusive Irish American businessman, anonymously gave away an estimated $600 million to needy causes, including substantial donations to Irish universities and charities. Asked why he did it be said: "I simply decided I bad enough money. It doesn't drive my life."
The Taoist notion that "he who knows he has enough is rich" is gaining ground in consumerist America. It's estimated that so far in the 1990s as many as five per cent of US workers have chosen to earn less. Dubbed "downshifters", downwardly mobile professionals get off career ladders to live simpler, more balanced lifestyles. Despite reduced income, they tend to gain control over their own finances, get out of debt, avoid clutter and waste, take time for relationships and live healthier, ecofriendly lives. Last spring Daniel Yankelovich, a public opinion analyst, told Esquire magazine that downshifting was set to become "the political issue of the future", while in 1995 the Wall Street Journal warned that the frugal lifestyles of downshifters could undermine the US economy. In their excellent US bestseller Your Money Or Your Lee described by the Los Angles Times in 1992 as one of the 10 best business books of the year and the "seminal guide to the new morality of personal money management" - authors Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin say that 31 per cent of Americans worry that they don't spend enough time with their family and friends; 38 per cent cut back on sleep to earn more money; the average 50 year old US citizen has only $2.300 in life savings; most people work 20 per cent more today than in 1973 and have 32 per cent less free time; and 48 per cent of 4,126 male executives surveyed saw their lives as "empty and meaningless" despite years of professional striving.
Meanwhile in Ireland, despite Ruairi Quinn's "giveback" budget - criticised by the Conference of Religious of Ireland as a triumph of "greed over need" - Sean Mac Carthaigh asked in The Irish Times if we were really any better off than 30 years ago? In 1967 an excellent house in a desirable location cost less than three times a professional's annual salary. Today, a similar house costs as much as nine times his or her annual income (in both cases before you've paid a penny's interest).
Are we, like Alice In Wonderland running faster just to keep up? With our new found material wealth, many of us lead hectic lifestyles, work too hard, are mortgaged to the hilt, pay for two cars and have become slaves to credit cards and mounting debt. Too many of us have insufficient time to enjoy life, explore our creativity and we can be emotionally and spiritually starved.
Dominguez and Robin ask why so many successful professionals end up with exhausted bodies and empty spirits, mentally and physically deflated from job related depression, anxiety and inordinate stress? They suggest it's because often we aren't so much making a living as making a dying. We feel we've no option but to be part of the rat race. And we've uncritically accepted that "more is better".
They suggest: "If you live for having it all what you have is never enough. In an environment of more is better, enough is like the horizon, always receding."
Americans saved only 4.5 per cent of disposable income in 1990 compared to 15 per cent saved by workers in Japan. As consumer debt rises, the notion that "more is better" is being questioned. From survival through comforts to luxuries, the secret of fulfilment, suggest Dominguez and Robin, is knowing when we've had enough, beyond which point more leads to less fulfilment and being swamped with clutter. (Your Money Or Your Life also contains detailed and practical exercises to work out your real hourly wage - as distinct from the inflated amount you think you're, earning - and comprehensive steps towards getting out of debt, gaining control of your money and possibly even achieving financial independence.)
Downshifters recognise a sustained interplay between health, wealth and, the environment. Ernest Callenbach, author of Living Cheaply With Style, writes: "Anytime you do something beneficial for one of them you will almost inevitably do something beneficial for the other two whether you're aiming to or not."
Riding a bike rather than driving is good for your pocket, your health and the environment.
Downshifting is fast spreading across the Atlantic. Recently the Daily Telegraph ran a two page "Downshifting Special" publishing extracts from a new (regrettably disappointing) book on the theme (Getting A Life by Polly Ghazi and Judy Jones) while the Guardian ran a highly critical piece by Maureen Freely advising women tempted to downshift to take off their "rosy gender blind glasses and watch your back".
Pat Duggan and Ann Currie are Irish downshifters. He worked as a design draughtsman in the ESB but took voluntary redundancy in 1986. She describes the position she had in the accounts department of the ICTU a very, cushy, very comfortable". They lived a typical middle class professional lifestyle, including extended holidays in the US and Carribbean. Money was coming easy and going easy," says Pat.
He became demoralised at work. Involved in the trade union, he didn't like the greed and materialistic outlook he perceived around him, where buying a bigger car or second house seemed to be people's major concerns. Out of kilter with consumerism, he opted for voluntary redundancy which helped them to buy the terraced house in Harold's Cross.
ANN left her job three years later when the first of their three children was born, all delivered at home by natural childbirth. They haven't had a holiday since then. "But it's not a hardship," says Pat. "The whole thing was getting into a more healthy lifestyle." They make their own wholefood bread - tofu, tempeh and seitan - and grow organic vegetables in their back garden.
"We're not looking for more," says Pat. They drive a 1988 car, a trade up made last July from a 1982 model. They enjoy living on the edge. He says: "We're not in the league that we worry. There are bigger forces out there and bigger influences. It's the way we want to live."
Pat wouldn't dream of going back to a nine to five permanent, pensionable job of "work, work, work, work, work". He just does essential work to cover bare essentials. Ann agrees. She says she wouldn't swap what they're doing now even though she reckons they work harder and longer hours than before.
They have no pension provision - they don't even have a GP. Pat says: "Our diet is our insurance policy, our kitchen is our medicine cabinet. If we get sick we fast or eat something appropriate. We recommend compresses and remedies. We don't eat sugar."
The children haven't been vaccinated or immunised but they would never tell anyone not to immunise their children. Their confidence lies in what they believe to be their healthy diet: "We feel confident that we could go and thrive on the Aran Islands or wherever.
Ann says: "Obviously you're living like on a clothes line. You can't plan and take on any high budget like an extension to the house - that would be a gamble."
So how do they survive? Like most downshifters, they didn't leap entirely into the dark. Pat and Ann trained in London, Switzerland and the US in Shiatsu (a finger tip massage based on acupuncture) and wholefood diets, which they offer by appointment. Also, Pat is a Feng Shui consultant, a 3,000 year old Chinese philosophy for optimising one's health, wealth and relationships through an analysis of one's home or office environment. He finds it appropriate to downshitting because it involves getting rid of clutter and living with a lot of bare space. "The less you have in your home the more energy you have. Our home is bare. We can't afford more but it's also a choice. Irish homes used to be bare and simply laid out with no excess." Pat and Ann have fold up chairs that they take from one room to another.
Their income is nowhere near what it used to be. "Barely half," says Pat. "But it's not an issue. We get by. The more you get the more your spend."