According to the BLS's American TIme Use Survey <ftp://ftp.bls.gov/ pub/news.release/atus.txt>, we USers spend .80 hours a day shopping (which includes things like haircuts and pedicures too) - .63 for me, .96 for women. But on any day, only 46% of us - 40% of men and 51% of women - shop.
But that's only about 15% of the time that people spend on "leisure and sports." Half of that is watching TV.
Doug
^^^^^^ CB: Would watching telelvision commercials be considered shopping ?
Maybe the problem is time spent fetishizing commodities. Sure we should appreciate goods and services , use-values. But with the pressure that capitalists have to sell, sell, sell in order to realize surplus-value, they create or manufacture uses and desires for commodities at a pace that is anarchic in relation to people's ability to fulfill those desires. We want a system that creates a closer fit between demand and demand, between ability to pay and desire to have.
And now, in addition to lack of fit between desire and ability to fulfill that desire, with climate change in a technological regime with fossil fuels so critical, the whole evergrowing GDP as "good" has hit an objective limit, objective in terms of human species-being.
Where's Jim H. with needs and desires ?
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=94&It emid=2#cont