Oooo. Snap!

Five minutes after 9/11 George Bush told everyone to get back to the mall. He told the American people that shopping was patriotic.

If the middle class, which represents the vast majority of consumers, spent within their mean, the current economy wouldn’t exist. Car manufacturers, for example, wouldn’t be able to charge tens of thousands for crappy automobiles and they couldn’t count on Joe Average trading in his auto every few years either. Small shitty apartments in Bumfuck USA wouldn’t have cost half a million dollars either. The fact is, the wages of the middle class have never kept up with inflation, and if it weren’t for credit cards and low interest lines of credit, the endless consumption the economy demands wouldn’t be sustainable. Corporations and businesses have reason to be terrified that mass unrestrained consumption is coming to an end. Everything our economy is built on depends on consumers being in debt. If everyone stops shopping and making frivolous purchases of, for example, magazines, Megan will find herself unemployed. She may be a little too thick to connect the dots, but eventually she’ll be faced with it. Of course, she may have an inheritance or money socked away. Maybe she doesn’t need a paid gig. She’d be one of the lucky few.

It’s not just the iPhone with this woman. She has a regularly rotating “Gadget of the Week” on the sidebar, detailing what bit of electronic tat she bought last. Sometimes, the gadget is just the latest generation of something she already owned - see the current item, a Tivo Series III. And the damn things read like ads, too (”Is it worth spending over $500 on a Tivo? I’m sorry to report that it is…I’d give up my dishwasher before I’d part with this”). The whole effect is not unlike that of many other Randian social Darwinists - go forth and spend, unless ye be poor. Then condemn thyself to serfdom, plebe.

But that’s not fair. I mean, it’s not like Megan’s never known what it’s like to want. Why, she once went a whole year and a half without buying a new wardrobe! Plus, she sacrificed so much by not selecting the most lucrative degree possible! Maybe we should go easy on her - after all, she’s suffered so much for her craft.

From the comments:

I agree with your anit-materialism (sic) POV. However, let me offer an explanation for the vapidity of the middle-class. Imagine you had little in the way of social and/or intellectual capital to pass on to your children. One thing you could give to your kids is “stuff.”

The middle class is so stupid and classless. And vapid. I suppose they should be buying their kids subscriptions to The Atlantic. That would class up the joint.

TBogg, how’s your dick these days?

The soulless libertarian is a thing to behold. According to McArdle the average postal worker is better off now than Cornelius Vanderbilt, thanks to color TV, SUVs and indoor plumbing, among other things. However, due to falling wages and the outright theft of a huge increase in productivity in the last 20 years by the Wall Street parasites, the American worker has been forced to live on credit to buy those very things that supposedly make him better off than a Vanderbilt, which McArdle now says workers shouldn’t buy unless they can’t afford it, like the Vanderbilts used to. And yet without consumer spending, there is no wealth creation for their libertarian heroes to invest. Meanwhile, the McArdles decry minimum wage, unions, etc. and defend a system whereby a hedge fund manager can make more in a single hour than the average worker will in a lifetime (and more in a few days than the average heart surgeon in a lifetime)* while the economy for the rest of society** collapses.

If we were to design a sensible economic system from scratch, I don’t think it would use the casino as its prototype, and thumbsucking libertarians like McArdle would have to work for a living.

*John Paulson (no relation to the Treas. Sec.) “earned” 1.85 million per hour in 2007 ($3.7 billion for the year) by betting against the financial market. He produced not a single thing, nor created a single job in the process.

**a concept foreign to the libertarian mindset

Well of course middle class families are stupid and insignificant. If they weren’t they’d be upper class, duh.

I know that egotism and this particular strain of libertarianism go hand in hand. Still, would it be too much to ask to find a Randian libertarian who didn’t believe that s/he is Superman?

Another commenter there recommended an anniversary edition of Atlas Shrugged for the tykes. I’d prefer a Dickensian “beating and no supper” to that.

There’s always conversion to the Jehovah Witnesses as an excuse for no presents. The upside is they don’t have to go to Iraq in a few years. The JWs aren’t into warfighting or presents.

I love the way the privileged and affluent McAddleBrained who apparently has never actually worked for a living so handily dismisses the plight of those whose worlds have be upended by forces far beyond their control. I suppose such asshatted elitism is easy when you get your money for nothing and always have. Now where did I put my tumbrel and guillotine….

Don’t tell me that having an economy two-thirds reliant on consumerism while wages have been stagnating for years doesn’t work. Next you’ll be telling me that ubiquitous borrowing to paper over that wage stagnation might lead to disaster. C’mon people; let’s get out there and shop our way to prosperity!

Sorry - still reeling over that woman’s inappropriately chosen ‘degree’.

Dammit, Jim, I’m an historian, not a consumer!

I stopped visiting her site when she had a post saying “how ludicrous to give welfare recipients more food stamps - why, most of them are overweight anyway” and then follow-up up with “I did an experiment and spent only what they spend (on food) for a whole week” so she clearly knows the plight of the poor.

I wonder if she bought her upscaling Blu-Ray DVD player to play on the 52″ flatscreen 1080p that week or the next?

Wow—McMegan seems to be made from the same clueless, self-involved cloth as my mother-in-law! No soner had she finished lecturing me on why I shouldn’t buy Christmas gifts for my nieces (her grandchildren), despite my renowned bargain hunting ability (as in a $10 gift would originally have been a $50 gift)—she demanded that my husband, myself and our daughter fly across country to spend Xmas with her.

No, she wasn’t going to pay or help us with the airfare or hotel stay (no that we expect that, just saying). So while she couldn’t see how we could afford maybe $50 to benefit children, she wanted us to spend over $2,000 to benefit HER. And suggested we charge it.

Maybe we should go easy on her - after all, she’s suffered so much for her craft.

Certainly we’ve suffered from her craft.

Thank you TBogg. This post really touched my heart.

fascinating to see the ads that popped up alongside this post

On the bright side it sounds like Megan is calling for the abolition of capitalism.

-G

Frankly, I’ll lick the taint of anyone who has ever called that ignorant cow “Miss Zeitgeist” in casual conversation.

There may be something more pathetic than assigning yourself a nickname, but it likely involves a microwave, a power drill, and a cantaloupe.

“Miss Zeitgeist” seems to be missing out on the latest trend - perhaps the Atlantic should replace her with a libertarian from Mumbai so she can get in the proper mindset.

In the 1960’s there was Black Christmas… no gifts purchased. No accomandation to machines of power that stood against civil rights progress, maintained economic classism and the war. After the first year (you often had to buy materials to make things) my parents ammended it to allow book purchases at a small business bookstore and a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store where the money stayed in the poor community. It remains a steadfast tradition. Shopping was a family event and limited to one day in each location. The very process of shopping in these arenas made us see more than ourselves.

Question: Since when has “Bah humbug” become a good survival strategy?

Answer: Since now

“What makes me mad is that we’ve created an environment where the most magical thing that can happen to a child is to be given a few pieces of plastic glued together in China.”

Man, that’s cold.

I got in a huge argument with one of my cleaning customers recently over this. She wanted to know why our country is where it is today and when I tried to explain to her that we are a materialistic society and that we don’t save up to buy things anymore, but do whip out the credit card instead, she felt I was bashing her directly! Good gawd. She is wealthy and she and her husband are great with their money too, but when someone like me who is trying to explain the greed in our nation, for some reason….it’s taken personally.

She was stuck on the ‘bad loans/mortages’ meme too. I tried to explain to her that some did lose their homes to these kinds of loans, but they also lost their home because they lost their job or they were injured without insurance (or their insurance stopped paying for their medical bills at some point). She didn’t want to hear it. It was the POOR who broke America. *rolling eyes*

Suze Orman was on MSNBC last Friday and she summed it up well. We need to stop whipping out the credit card everytime we want something! And when MSNBC told her that companies were worried that they weren’t going to make much money during the holidays this year, Orman basically said, “Oh boo hoo”. LOL! She’s right, of course. When a company or person is raking in the dough, they should be setting money aside for the future days when they aren’t raking in the dough. Makes sense to me. Americans as a whole aren’t capable or even want to prepare for the future. They just want it now, now, now!

Sad.

Tbogg’s use of the Oliver Twist picture is more meaningful than perhaps he knows. People who have wealth and privilege most of the time want to believe that they got it because they are somehow intrinsically better, which is a Victorian belief. Dickens illustrated this through Oliver Twist - poor people get that way because they are stupid and bad - Oliver ended up with the poor through a mistake - but he was good because he was really one of the upper classes, so he got himself ‘discovered’ and saved.

no, i am the one who broke america, but i always figured i could just buy a new one at the market if this one got damaged. right?

new thready goodness upstairs.

What? No one has mentioned Dana Peroxide’s prescription?

If you are out of work, get a job.

haha! good one Tex! most excellent.

I don’t understand the point (of view?) of the entry.

I do not care for Suzie but she is right that driving society on buying pieces of plastic glued together for 5 cents in China and selling it as must have for $30 in the US is not my idea of a great place to live.

Having been trying to put the breaks on this over the last few years I have been making good progress though still I get a tree’s worth of junk mail I will never respond to per day. And still buy enough with baby diapers and all that to be swamped with a decent amount of raw junk.

The problem I see is so many people have built their piece of the pie atop a silly idea of consumerism that even at its best does not really get people much and destroys the planet.

Yes buy some nice toys and things for the kids (or make them, or take them out sledding, whatever is fun). But with some 82% of people saying they are ramping back on what they plan to buy I think most people are on the same page and this is going to hit our “economy”.

What to do for equal education and meritocricy that is a hard question. What to do to instill a concience into the few percenters that are ulta-rich and the even larger percentage of people making I don’t care decisions (on cars and houses and vacations to finance on what will be tax payers bills) is a harder question.

In the end it may come down to not allowing things to get to big to fail. Not allowing a Bank to be to big to fail, not allowing someone so much credit that they will obviously fail.

We are getting stuck in damned if you do and damned if you don’t binds here.

Hi Redx, I think the post is railin’ on Megan McCardle whose article is link there in. I didn’t get it at first either. The consumerism is the heart of the discussion and the various edicts from “on high” from soulless money pundits who have plenty.

Thank you. The irony of all of this with Dickens is how he so fancied himself as sensitive to the plight of the poor. Meanwhile every person from a “lower class” is almost always protrayed as intrinsically evil—unless they have noble blood to save them. Even money didn’t automatically make you “good”, Our Mutual Friend certainly reflects that.

As for wealthy people viewing themselves as better, there’s also the entire Clavinist doctrine for you. And I can still remember my great aunt and uncle (big Rethugs, BTW), sniffing smugly as they remarked that so and so “didn’t seem to have much money”. Because obviously, so and so was lazy and/or stupid and thus there was their plight.

This article is just one more example of the never ending War on Hanukkah. What next? Dreidels mit no gimel?

Damn you all to hell, TexBetsy! LOL

Count me in as another person who has to fight hard to restrain violent impulses whenever I hear someone who has never had to worry about money in their life, never WILL have to worry about money in their life, blame the poor or middle class for ANYTHING.

It is the rich who make the rules, create and run the systems in which we all sink or swim, almost without exception.

Megan is a diseased soul. Since I’m not a violent person, I’ll be kind and generous and only wish upon Megan the disappearance of her trust fund and job.

Her writing would possibly become interesting as her paradigm was changed, which would in turn make her more employable! “I used to be a libertarian, then I lost all my money, then I got really sick and didn’t have any health care…” One can only imagine the touching vignettes about plucky Megan taking a waitress job and pulling herself up by the bootstraps.

Dreams.

“Since I’m not a violent person, I’ll be kind and generous and only wish upon Megan the disappearance of her trust fund and job.”

I don’t think this will happen. At 6′2″, Megan is too big to fail.

on one of the talking head news shows the other night, suzy was ripping the anchors and commenters a ‘new one’. cnn or msnbc (main host black guy-think it was cnn), tried to find the clip. they handed off a loaded question of assumptions about how spending is down-people holding on to disposable income, she was via the phone-she railed back that she travels all over the united states talking with people, that spending is down because they don’t have any money! what dissposable income?? (they are questioning cashing in 401k etc money) for food, rent, morgtgage payments, medical expenses. she was pissed. she can rant, but this time she was really angry at their ignorance and offhandedness about spending being down due to having disposable income and holding on to it vs. having no money in the first place to cover the bills…wish i could find the clip.

That from the woman who was pushing real estate as a great investment during the boom. Orman can be right about things like living within your means, but I was saying that YEARS before to friends. She’s just switching gears now hoping people forget her previous “wisdom”. She’s about as wise as a stopped clock.

In our family-4 kids,youngest now 23-we never “celebrated xmas” by exchanging gifts that were either broken or were tossed aside as interest waned. What have we done for the past 35 years? We spent our xmas & Thanksgiving days helping in a food kitchen, feeding the homeless/poor. Our kids started helping out when they were about 5-6 years old, the age where they can begin to take note of things outside the simple greed of a younger child. We were never disappointed in our childrens reactions to not participating in the wild consumer driven bigger gift giving extravaganza that is Xmas. The best thing. Our children are now either all married or in long term relationships and they are continuing the now family tradition. Spending Thanksgiving and Xmas day helping out in a food kitchen, feeding the poor and homeless. While we are not religious, we are all, in our own way, real christians.

Isn’t it funny how these people never seem to make the leap that if it’s stupid for average middle-class people to live eternally on credit so they can have whatever they want immediately, then maybe it’s also stupid to suuport a business culture valued almost exclusively on maximizing short-term profits as opposed to long-term viability? Maybe?

Oh, sorry, that must be my socialism showing again.

here here here! give that man some room! and let’s alll buy him a drink! Nice to hear someone tell it like it is. US economy is a joke, a house of cards built on credit. Has been since the 70s.

The concept that if you are wealthy it’s because you are blessed, as in chosen, by God is the basis of Calvinism. The Bushies and their ilk are neo Calvinists, and their philosphy aligns nicely with the notion that folks are poor because they have refused jesus, ie., have not been chosen to be born again, to ’see the light’. Therefore are not worth anyone’s time.

Scary, effective, and coming to a neighborhood near you.

“Sorry, kids. We’re too poor to be Christians, so we’ll have to convert to atheism and cancel Christmas. You can thank Megan for killing Santa…but I think that Sarah Palin took out Rudolph.”

Hey, could one of you kids alert BillO that Megan has joined the War On Christmas? Kthxbai

Let’s not forget just two years ago all the financial “experts” were writing articles about how stupid ti was to just waste and sit on your stupid, pointless home equity when you could borrow against it and make that money work for you by investing in the stock market or over improving your home!!!

Because why oh why would you ever be so stupid as to want to own your home, free and clear when you could owe twice what its worth now AND have worthless stock in defunct companies instead???

Next time you see this customer remind her that at no time was any bank ever forced to approve (or invest in) subprime mortgages. Nor was any bank forced to market them. Ask her to explain that one.

Hey, I’d like to be a fly on the wall in Miss McAddled’s closet. More than half, if not all, of the designer wear she owns is made for cheap in third world countries (China included); ditto for the plastic shit she buys.

The any-tennial edition of Atlas Shrugged

Do any of these fuckers read the parts where government-sponsored WMD get’s dissed because it’s immoraltaxpayer sponsored, or when Galt tells them there is no God.

Does anyone wonder why they ignore those parts?

Shorter McArdle:
Can’t afford Transformers for your kids this year? Let them eat cake!

All they know is Ayn Rand ate lunch in the Nixon White House with Rumsfeld and Bill Simon.

Dillon:

6′ 2″? Wow! That’s a storker!

I had gathered Megan was tall, but I didn’t know she was that tall.

Perhaps that contributes to her odd world-view that she knows what true suffering is.

Still, she seems to be everything I hate in the rich. Blind, stupid, ignorant, callous, arrogant, smug and superior.

And I would feel differently about her had she come from modest (and even better, poor) roots, which appears not to be the case.

Clueless is as clueless writes.

Nice, timr.
Sounds like you have more ‘real Christianity’ in your family than an entire megachurch full of Republican-Jeebus-wants-me-to-be-rich provincial pod people.

This year, for Xmas, I’d like to see Megan lose her blogging gig.

I’ve been pissed at Notre Dame ever since that day when I was watching the teevee and ironing my only decent pair of pants in preparation for a Really Big Date, and Bob Gladieux broke free for a long run against Southern Cal, and I was so horrified by the scene I froze up and stopped moving the iron and burned a perfect iron base into my only decent pair of pants and I had to hustle out and spend precious bucks on a new pair of decent pants, which from then on were known as the Bob Gladieux Memorial Pants. The Big Date was a bust and I didn’t get laid and to this day I blame Bob Gladieux.

that stupid cunt doesn’t have kids so who gives a fuck what she thinks?

“As for wealthy people viewing themselves as better, there’s also the entire Clavinist doctrine for you.”

speeeling: “Calvinist doctrine”

Clavinist Doctrine is instead based on a different target of selection:

“Well you see, Norm, it’s like this… A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo and when the herd is hunted, it’s the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive drinking of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”