I think it's universally true that producing is always better than consuming, but perhaps someone will refute that point convincingly.
There are things I want, that are not needed for my survival, but they are things I actually enjoy having, they serve some constructive purpose. I don't understand buying stuff just to buy stuff, just to have a new car, or just to have the latest version, it doesn't make sense. I think that is where some people that come into lots of money go wrong, spending it becomes their hobby, with out a job you got a lot of free time to keep yourself entertained. Producers would seem to inherently have the ability to deal with that free time in a much more fiscally responsible manor.
Society rewards production better than consumption.
Yet, when you think about it, when no one consumes, the value of production becomes zero, too.
Perhaps my initial sentence should be changed to: Consumers reward producers.
They're like a pair of chopsticks.
For individuals:
One could argue that when possible, consuming is always better than producing. You're swapping pieces of paper for real goods and services!
We're sort of fortunate that programming counts as "production" while playing computer games count as "consumption", and we're more interested in the former than the latter. I see it as just how the world works; "Fate" if you will. (I'm not religious, though).
EDIT: I save as much as possible and program lots, while my brother spends almost every dollar of his paycheck. So I'm biased.
I really like your point about production being useless without consumers, but I suspect that there will never be a shortage of consumers.
Perhaps at one point our species was consumerless, but the fact is, we work way better in a group, which means there will be consumers. I like turning steel into usable objects, I don't like mining it, there for I must be a consumer at some level. If I was forced to produce everything I needed to build something complex, like say a PCB board and components, it would take a life time to get everything necessary to produce something not all that spectacular.
I think the "bad" part of consumerism, is more a psychological state, like using drugs to escape a problem. Consuming on its own, isn't necessarily bad and you're right, very necessary. Perhaps its all psychologically based, I feel better building something, more than I do just waiting around for the next movie, or video game to distract me from my life. But really, whats the difference if what I produced just ends up sitting in the corner collecting dust, why I'm building something else?
In that sense, being a Producer, requires a Consumer, someone else to find what you have made useful. Otherwise all I've been is a consumer. Producing at worst, is a consumer, at best, helping make society a better place. Consumer at best is a Producer, at worst, just collecting, and creating a market, for junk to be eventually thrown away.