No, the OP is right. The economy would collapse. 70% of US GDP is personal consumption. About half of that is spending on consumer goods and frivolous services

No, the OP is right. The economy would collapse. 70% of US GDP is personal consumption. About half of that is spending on consumer goods and frivolous services. So you're hitting 35% of the US GDP [1]. Let's assume that if people across the nation stopped spending as much on fluff, they stopped spending by about 2/3. You're looking at a GDP fall of more than 22%. For perspective, the Great Depression saw a fall in GDP of 26%. The Great Recession saw a GDP fall of * merely * 5% [2]. And that figure understates the final effect because it ignores feedback loops: consumer goods spending falls, which causes consumer goods workers to lose jobs, which makes every type of spending fall, which loops back, and so on until the entire economy tanks. Which will also, incidentally, make the world economy tank. Domestic and international political unrest ensues. After a long (decades?) period of upheaval, yes, things would adjust. Keep in mind that it has been 5 years since the most recent recession and neither the US nor Europe have completely recovered. Over the long-term economies are self-correcting. They would self-correct sharply downwards in the sense that everyone would enjoy lower real wages. I would be wary of indulging in economic fantasies. [1] http://www.policymic.com/articles/15097/us-gdp-is-70-percent-personal-consumption-inside-the-numbers http://www.policymic.com/articles/15097/us-gdp-is-70-percent... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...