中外消费文化差异的英语作文

China needs traditional “old lady” spirit

--advocate living within our income

A Chinese old lady and an American old lady are going to heaven. Before them seeing the god, they chat. “It is so great that I can afford to purchase a house at the end of my life after hard working for a lifetime.” the Chinese old lady says happily. “Well, I feel happy for my loan of a house and it’s finally been paid.”the American lady responds. Many years later, similar scene replays except for the reply of the American lady--because of the break out of the subprime crisis, quantities of Americans are on the brink of bankruptcy and can not afford the loan, leaving more or less debt for their children. This is a famous story on the argument of which consumption is more worthwhile to advocate, over consuming or living within our income? People rarely reach an absolute consensus on such a controversial issue.

At present, some people think over consuming is reasonable and necessary; while others claim living within our income is better. Both sides have their merits. Undeniably, Chinese economy has rapidly developed in recent years. As the society advances amazingly, people’s demands have become increasingly diversified and outspread. In the process of modern urban development, we often find ourselves in a financial dilemma. Admittedly, advance consumptions bring many benefits and conveniences to our life. However, along with the positive effects, they have resulted in new social problems, such as financial crisis and credit crisis. After careful consideration of both sides, I am inclined to take sides with the latter. Carefully weighing in mind, we will find that the harm of over consumption in China outweighs its merits. The living way of proportion expenditure to our income is more rationalized and suitable to us as well as our Chinese basic national conditions.

Many people argue that “American people are shrewder because they make full use of their money and enjoy a higher quality life”.①They consider that Americans are brave to spend money of the future and enjoy their personal life—which benefits both civil life and country’s economic development, unlike Chinese people live a hard life for several tens of years but only can relax and enjoy life in old age. Therefore they draw a conclusion

that we should dispel apprehensions and act with courage to spend future money.

At first thought, this opinion seems to be sensible and sound. But on second thought, we will find that it is not often the case.

On the first place, although the pattern of over consumption offers people more short-term benefits and help the increase of GDP, this pattern of consumption is threaten by economic crises, which are especially caused by “bubble economy”. The United States sub-loan crisis is a good illustration of this point. With advance consuming becoming easier and more fashionable, more and more people tend to over measure their paying abilities and consume lots of things that they used not to dare to pay for their expensive. Growing material desires shared people’s eyes under the fashion of over consumption. As too many people were too eager and panic to buy houses, a large number of consuming demands were release in advance. It exacerbated the market supply and demand contradictions as well as the upward pressure on prices in recent years. The increasing of these blindly advance demands, finally, greatly threatened market balance and produce a large pressure on the market supply. Once market demands overrun supplies, economic crises were not far away! Therefore, over-consumption, supply us short-term benefit though, is not a scientific way of economic developing.

On the second place, “General speaking, the developments of economy is hard to predict, resulting in many economic policy mistakes.”②It also suits the live of common people fine. The uncertainty of the future life increases the risk of advance consumption, alarming us the infeasibility of over consuming. There are many possible unexpected things in the future like traffic accidents, work changes or disease breaking out. What is more, people always tend to eager for more rather than just what they can afford. Unfortunately, too many people are too young to have learned this principle. So every time when the end of the month is approaching, these poor people find they haven’t have well controlled their desire for purchase and now they are unable to carry such hurry debt. So, as every one can image, tragedy comes into being. Those who can’t afford loans have got to borrow more money from bank and pay for their old debt. As this vicious circle continues, the investment of bank is “increasing”, country’s income is “increasing”, GDP is