Table of Contents
Consumption Definitions
Some goods and services are exhausted at consumption, such as food, while others are only misshapen, for example, a plane trip.
In the current capitalist system, feeding represents a cyclical activity since man products to consume, and this consumption generates more production. Therefore, consumption seeks to satisfy present needs and future needs.
Quoting the American sociologist Jeremy Rifkin, the exponential increase in consumption occurred in the 1920s to “alleviate overproduction in the United States, motivate by increasing productivity and lower demand due to a high number of jobless due to the technological changes that were taking home.”
The period of the ’20s then resulted in a remarkable conjuncture of the capitalist system. Thus, from then on, the massive circulation of capital (money) occurs precisely through the buying and selling of products, that is, through consumption. Consequently, consumption is also one of the central meters of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Economy of Consumption
In the economy, consumption is the final stage of the economic course, mainly the production process, which is when a good cause some utility to the consumer. Some goods and services are directly destroyed through the action while in other cases, what happens to them is that their only consists of a partial transformation.
In short, what is understood as consumption is the acquisition of goods and services by an economic subject. This can be a particular person, organization, company, or agent that can interconnect in the market.
The satisfaction of needs can refer to present-day or future needs; this is the ultimate goal of consuming a good or service. Consumers generate demand concerning the production of merchandise that desires.
According to macroeconomics, can divide into two large groups:
- Private consumption is the value of all the purchases of goods and services made by the different families, private institutions or private companies. This is a calculation that accounts for remuneration received by employees and the production of self- goods.
- Public consumption: Unlike the previous one, this comprises the value of all the expenses made by the national government through its different ministries and public administrations in the performance of its functions and objectives. Infrastructure planning projects represent a large part of public spending and spending invested in hospitals, schools, and other public institutions.
Drugs of Consumption
On the other hand, the idea of practising talking about drugs. The problem of high heights of illegal drug use and the story of legal drug use such as alcohol or tobacco are some of the concerns that the Nation-States must be aware of.
Through awareness and health plans, society must be kept informed to combat substances that threaten personal health. The quality of life improves as long as information plans are found, mainly aimed at young adolescents, about the damage caused by drug use, whether these are socially accepted, legal or not
Other Types of Consumption
- Fixed capital consumption: The value of that part of fixed capital designated in the production process, which would be necessary to replace to keep its productive capacity constant over time, is different from depreciation.
- Government consumption: It includes the total current expenditure of the government at all its institutional levels, that is, the purchase of goods and services for intermediate use plus the remuneration of its employees; Insignificant amounts of fixed capital and indirect taxes that some dependencies record in their accounting records include.
- Durable consumption: Utilization of goods and services to our satisfaction and that of others each year; goods that last several years.
- Fixed consumption: Value at the current replacement cost of reproducible and consume fixed assets during an accounting period due to normal deterioration.
- Final consumption: Quantity of a good or service that, due to use or destruction, intend for the immediate satisfaction of lower economic agents without contributing to production growth.
- Intermediate consumption: Full use of a good or service in production.
Private Consumption
It encompasses the value of all purchases on the internal market, their duration, and the services provided by family units and private non-profit institutions. In addition, it includes the remuneration of employees receive in kind, the production of articles for self-consumption and the imputed value of dwellings occupied by their owners. Purchases of land and residential buildings exclude.
Public Consumption
Total expenditure on personal services and commercial operations of the public sector. Purchases are made by the national government, municipalities, and departments to perform their functions and objectives. Set of current general expenses destine to acquire consumer goods and services or constitute transfers on account of income.
- Reasons for State intervention in matters of Consumption
- Assure consumers of a sufficient quantity of products.
- Protect consumers from counterfeit products.
- Protect consumers from the excessive increase in the prices of necessities.
The State must not only intervene to protect the consumer but at the same time require behaviour that is beneficial in the protection of flora and fauna and the what is related to them, such as the ban on hunting, the prohibition of excessive logging of trees etc
Monitor the appropriate means for the of goods, avoiding scarcity.
Discourage luxury consumption and prohibit harmful activities to the consumer, such as the ingestion of drugs or alcohol.
Classification of Consumption
For Herrera and Alvear (p.90), there are two basic classes of consumption:
Unproductive consumption: The one that destroys the usefulness of a product. If without giving rise to another product, such as the use of clothing or groceries.
Productive consumption: The one that destroys the usefulness of a product gives rise. Its other products, such as raw cotton by a manufacturer of stockings. In turn, there are three classes of productive consumption:
The wages of the workers, because they are the reward for the work they employ in the formation of other products;
The use of instruments and machines, although slow, is finally verified after having helped reproduction;
The purchase of the raw material converts through labour manufacture products.
In productivity nothing is lost; instead, the mass of public wealth increases since the raw material never transforms. On a manufactured product without increasing value. In unproductive, there can be nothing but loss. The product perishes when consumed, and the importance of labour and capital is a consumer deficit. Everything that consumes productively becomes capital.
Conclusion
The term consumption originates from the Latin language consumer, which means to devote. It is the act by which certain products, goods and services use. Abstract things can also consume, such as vigour.
We understand by “consuming” the detail of using these crops or services to satisfy some need of man. We can say that mass consumption then produced some social pathologies. Such as the compulsive tendency to consume goods of various kinds in society.
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