Complex Numbers

Consumer Revolt

Wow, so much win today. First I find out that my entries for last month's "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  [13+] earned me 2nd place in that contest. Shiny new Merit Badge up there in the header

Then people tell me this blog won the 2019 Quill Award for blogging! (I haven't received official word yet, but more than one person has confirmed this.)

You can tell this comes as a big surprise to me, because how often do I use emoticons in here? I appreciate it very much, and I want to thank everyone who nominated or voted for this blog, or even read this thing, closed it in disgust, and then voted for a different blog. As I've noted with, what, a year and a half or so at the 30DBC, there are a lot of excellent blogs out there.

And yes, I know the awards ceremony was today, but I really dislike videoconferencing. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the efforts of those who organized, voted, and attended. Again, thanks

And now for an article related to yesterday's personal finance rant.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/recession-unemployment-co...

I Don't Feel Like Buying Stuff Anymore
Our economy is built on Americans of all class levels buying things. What happens when the ability — and desire — to do so goes away?

I didn’t even realize I’d lost my desire to shop until one day, about six weeks into isolation, I absentmindedly clicked on a Madewell email offering an additional sale on a sale. I don’t even have anywhere to wear the jumpsuits I already own, let alone one that would require heels.

Normally, I'd have stopped reading right there. This is obviously someone so far removed from my own experience that they might as well be on Mars. But I thought, what the hell, blog fodder.

Not wanting to buy things feels as bizarre as not wanting to sleep or not wanting to eat. It’s been ingrained in us, as Americans, as an unspoken component of residency.

We're far from the only consumerist society. And, in case you might have gotten the wrong impression from yesterday's entry, I'm not anti-consumerism. It's okay to buy things. It's okay to want to buy things. It's just that I counsel, and try to practice, thoughtful consumerism, not just buying things because they're on sale or because you're trying to fill that dollar-shaped hole in your heart.

One problem, in my opinion, is that advertising has caused us to confuse needs with desires. You need water. You want bottled artisanal water with just a hint of anise. You need food. You want fancy French cheese (okay, I want fancy French cheese). The author (presumably) needs clothing. She wants jumpsuits (whatever they are) from Madewell (whatever that is).

Okay, I know what a jumpsuit is; I've been reading science fiction almost since I learned how to read. But somehow I don't think we mean the same thing by it. Mars.

When wants become needs, that's when you start going into debt. And then someone like Marie Kondo comes along and entices you to throw out all that junk that, at one time, you "needed" and that filled that dollar-shaped hole in your heart, and you end up with a lot more space that you can then fill up with stuff that's ON SALE! 50% OFF!

And the cycle continues.

This, by the way, is why advertisers target young people. Old farts tend to know the difference between needs and wants. Besides, have you seen the crap they market to seniors? Utilitarian walkers with busted tennis balls on the feet? Come on, throw me a bone here. By the time I need a walker, I want racing stripes, dammit. Maybe even airbrushed flames or a large-breasted barbarian woman.

We’re trained to buy often, buy cheap, and buy a lot. And I’m not just talking about food, which everyone has to acquire in some capacity, or clothes. I mean all the other small purchases of daily life: a new face lotion, a houseplant holder, a wine glass name trinket, an office supply organizer, a vegetable spiralizer, a cute set of hand towels, a pair of nicer sunglasses, a pair of sports sunglasses, a pair of throwaway sunglasses. The stuff, in other words, that you don’t even know that you want until it somehow finds its way to your cart at Target or T.J. Maxx.

Definitely Mars.

Just because I'm in a good mood for once (see above about winning shit), I'll go through this list.

A new face lotion - I've never purchased face lotion in my entire life. Yeah, okay, I'm a dude, and I have been known to buy shaving lotion, but I rarely use it. Shaving cream, sure, but one bottle of shaving lotion lasts me a decade because I keep forgetting to slap that stuff on after scraping my face.

A houseplant holder - as I've mentioned in here before, plants die in my proximity (everything except, of course, poison ivy, kudzu, dandelions, etc.) A houseplant holder would be useless to me.

A wine glass name trinket - aw HELL naw. For one thing, there's only one other person in my house, and my cats don't drink much. I know which glass is mine because it's in my trembling hand. As for the wine glasses themselves, I have a huge collection of complimentary wine glasses from various tasting rooms.

An office supply organizer - granted, I have one of these. I bought it when I had an office and supplies. It was a business expense.

A vegetable spiralizer - get the fuck outta here.

A cute set of hand towels - ...seriously?

A pair of nicer sunglasses, a pair of sports sunglasses, etc. - I had a prescription pair of Maui Jims. That might have been the most I ever spent on a single article of... clothing? Accessory? Well, no, I have a nice wool suit for funerals that was pricier. Nevermind. Point is, I sometimes pick up generic sunglasses at a convenience store for $10. I lost the Maui Jims and still have the cheap ones, so never again.

I get the impression that most peoples' algorithm for buying shit goes something like: IF I see an ad or display AND shit's on sale THEN I decide I need it.

For me it's: IF I identify a need or want THEN I go looking for something to fulfill it.

This doesn't mean I'm immune to impulse purchases. Oh, hell no. I was getting groceries delivered even in the Before Times, in part because whenever I went to the grocery store I'd end up buying a package of Oreos. The point being I know what my Kryptonite is and how to avoid it.

By not spending money on a lot of useless crap I don't need, I have more to spend on important things like beer, wine, travel, and cigars.

We buy to accumulate objects meant to communicate our class and what sort of person we are.

I'm not totally immune to that, either, but I can honestly say that I've never said to myself, "I'm going to buy this thing because it will communicate my class and what sort of person I am." So I guess I buy stuff that communicates that I'm not the kind of person who gives a shit about that sort of thing.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not attacking the writer of this article or anyone reading this who might think differently. Everyone has their own thing, and that's fine; even if I don't understand it, I accept it.

So how do Americans buy so much when we have so little discretionary money? Massive amounts of credit. Payday loans, credit cards, quick and easy car loans, and the newly common “Afterpay” function in online checkouts incentivize spending beyond our means. The average American has a startling $6,194 in credit card debt, with an average interest rate of 16.88%.

This "average American" thing is misleading. You can say that the average credit card debt in America is $6000 or whatever, but that information is useless without other statistical parameters. It also says nothing about savings. And the interest rate? I use a credit card for everything, but pay it in full every month, using it more like a debit card only with the purchase protection that a debit card doesn't provide, plus cash back. I don't even know what my cards' interest rates are (though I could look them up if I wanted), because I don't pay them; they pay me in cash back.

My lifestyle tends to not fit into sociologists' models.

That kind of spending is what our current economic model is based on: Americans of all class levels buying things and always wanting to buy more, regardless of their actual means.

Which is what I've been trying to say all along. And it's also why we're way past overdue to end the failed experiment of trickle-down economics and trade it for what I call piss-up economics. Stop giving more money to rich people. Give the money to all of us peasants, and it'll end up in rich folks' pockets eventually, because despite me railing about this shit, I'm under no illusion that anything I say is going to make a damn bit of difference.

As unemployment numbers continue to rise and most of the country is still in some sort of lockdown, any marketing that frames a new shirt as a “quarantine necessity” feels like a con.

News alert for the Martian: all marketing is a con. Some are more harmless than others, true, but they're all cons.

“Everything I’ve bought has been for my kids, who are growing out of their clothes,” Tania told me. “And I have agonized over every purchase. The calculus for every decision is: Do I need to put an essential worker in harm’s way to get this? Can I do without it? Can I afford it? Do we have anything that could work in its place? Can I wait 10 days for it, since that’s the average shipping time? And if I can’t have something immediately, do I really want it?”

Asking yourself "Do I really want it?" is a start.

The article, which is quite long, goes on to talk about consumerism as citizenship. I'd recommend reading it (or I wouldn't have bothered to link it), whether you agree with it or not. But I'm going to stop here and start drinking, because otherwise this might end up being even longer than the original article.