'I'm duty bound to ask you if you want to open a store card with a preposterously uncompetitive interest rate,' announced the young male checkout assistant, who apart from his forthright views appeared for all the world a standard issue 19-year-old in unremarkable skater-boy dress. For my part, I felt duty bound to decline. 'Good,' he said. 'I never push them, sometimes I don't even mention them, because they just encourage people to get into debt. Personally,' he pauses to look up at the Sugarbabes gyrating on a large video screen, 'I'd ban store cards.'
Now I rather suspect that I come into this category, though I'm older than the normal profile and suspicious of nanny state.
Part of the New Puritan brief is to penalise those who make poor choices on behalf of the rest of society
This may be a misreading of what is being proposed. I suspect that we're actually talking 'polluter pays' extended into 'poor choices cost'. So for example we would want binge drinkers not to expect that the rest of society picks up the tab for their later health problems and present damage and policing, we think that their insurance and the costs to establishments that encourage binging should have a 'polluter' pays kind of thing going on. In the article the example is 'food companies should be made to pay a levy to the NHS for the cost of treating obesity'. or even as one interviewee said;
taxes 'on foods that have high percentages of sugar or fat, extra revenue which would then subsidise production, preferably local and organic, of healthier food'.
And I say Amen; tax McDonalds, hypothecate them for healthcare and environment. That'll change their marketting strategy and menus.
But what I'm also interested in is that despite the 'puritan' tag, these are largely not people with a Christian commitment. One issue this raises is how far such movements in the past have been Christian because Christian faith offered a suitable platform for an impulse that is not entirely specifically religious. Another is how we Christians can make contact with this for the sake of the Gospel. Clearly gospel values are in the frame and I find so much in this to make common cause with. Yes there are the dangers of legalism and self-righteousness as well as a gnostic-ascetic trajectory lurking. But hey, here are people looking to social health and the possibility of personal responsibility. Pharisaism is a danger but perhaps that's where Christian teaching on forgiveness, grace and compassion has something to offer.
The Observer | Magazine | Just Say 'No': On Del.icio.us: consumerism, new-puritans, ethics, social_trends, culture, downshifting
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