We designed both our state employee health plans and the one we created for low-income Hoosiers as Health Savings Accounts and now in the tens of thousands these citizens are proving that they are fully capable of making smart consumerist choices about their own health care.

The folly of endless consumerism sends us on a wild goose-chase for happiness through materialism.

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.

The American Dream coupled with government subsidies of utilities and cheap consumer goods courtesy of slave labour somewhere else has kept the poor huddled masses from rising up.

The right way to reign in healthcare costs is not by applying more government and more controls and making it more like the post office it's by making it more like a consumer-driven market.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

The development of the food industry for both domestic and export markets relies on a regulatory framework that both protects the consumer and assures fair trading practices in food.

Perhaps more than any other the food industry is very sensitive to consumer demand.

When the farmer can sell directly to the consumer it is a more active process. There's more contact. The consumer can know who am I buying this from? What's their name? Do they have a face? Is the food they are selling coming out of Mexico with pesticides?

We need to recognise that what really matters isn't buying more and more consumer goods but family friends and knowing that we are doing something worthwhile with our lives. Helping to reduce the appalling consequences of world poverty should be part of that reassessment.