"If you all really think we don't know the importance of consuming to our society, and nobody has forced the point on us, tell us what you think the consequences would be if everyone no longer found mortgages, more clothes, cars, holidays, replacement kitchens, insurance, more food than for survival, drink, DIY, gardening stuff, the latest gadgets, if we no longer found them necessary for our happiness or satisfaction?"


If everyone did as you suggest, then shareholders of companies would have to accept a lower return on their investments, as they would not be able to switch their cash to more lucrative concerns.

Only if the reduction in consumption were partial, would the collapse that you hint at take place, as investors withdrew from the less lucrative investments.

Any economic system in the FREE world is , of necessity, a balancing act:-

Prices follow demand.
Wages follow prices.
Demand follows wages.

I see no reason why that would change when there was a downward trend.

If your putative consumers decided not to consume, they would presumably not need the wherewithal for that consumption, so the fall in wages caused by same would to some extent cushion the fall in profits, and one might expect a new, lower, balance point to be reached, which would in real terms approximate proportionately to the current status quo.

We are talking here about a medium of exchange....My Labour, for company's money....My wages, for company's goods......

Don T.