[Radle]

Maybe you are misunderstanding what the term consume means?

Consuming means using resources on things that immediately loose their value. If you for example buy a house, that's not consuming since the house has inherent value.

But if you yourself the newest gaming rig, the gaming rig is consuming the money. This is what Americans mean when they talk about consumer society.

[Aaargh20318]

> Consuming means using resources on things that immediately loose their value.

You mean like food ? It's literally the first definition of 'to consume' on Google.

[Xophmeister]

Expending resources (i.e., money) for food doesn't cause the food to immediately lose its value. Expending resources (i.e., physical energy) for eating the food also doesn't cause the food to lose its value, as it almost certainly provides more energy and nutrition than is expended in its digestion, thus maintaining the consumer (i.e., a net gain); it may also have additional value, which probably attracted an additional cost to begin with (e.g., superior flavour, scarcity, etc.)

It's an overloaded term, sure, but it's clear that consumables -- i.e., things that need to be consumed to release their value, such as food -- only fall under the category of "consumption" when there's a surplus of value that becomes illiquid. For example, eating a balanced meal when you're hungry is a net gain, while eating 50 pizzas when you don't need to isn't!

[Radle]

The word has a dual meaning.

You can consume food, you car consumes gas and your girlfriends expensive holiday consumes money.

When Americans say "consumer" they mean someone who spends money on things that they are not going to sell again. That can be smartphones, luxury cars, drugs or food.

You could also say a consumer is the opposite of an investor.

[brlewis]

As a side note, a house also has inherent cost. If you're thinking of a house as an investment, you have to factor maintenance in, which can be hard to calculate in advance.