I should just change the title of this blog to "Americans Are Full Of Shit" because I find myself saying it so often. But the fact is, we are. Take the iPhone, the latest gadget that just pisses me off. There are several reasons it pisses me off but the main one is that I don't think anyone needs or can seriously justify a $199 telephone. Let's just get it out of the way. People who are buying these are generally poseurs who just want to be seen as part of the cool, hip, in-crowd. It is nothing more than that.
Even if you want to argue that anyone needs to be able to quickly access the internet and watch videos on a phone, there are other phones that do these things more cheaply than the iPhone. But those phones don't look as cool. They don't have the cachet of the iPhone. It is amazing to me that people who piss and moan about the economy, or gas prices, or that they don't have any money, will spend $200 on a phone.
In a recent comment to a post from Mando Mama on her blog, I remarked about how my father and I were driving and I noted how full the Best Buy parking lot was. To reiterate the point I made to her, Best Buy is arguably a store of "wants." There is almost nothing, maybe actually nothing, in a Best Buy store that is a necessity. They predominantly sell computers, TV's, video games, and DVDs. While these are all nice shiny baubles, none are necessities. Still, Best Buy's parking lot is pretty crowded and people, some of whom have probably been on TV moaning that they can't pay their mortgage, or who walked away from negative equity, or who have declared bankruptcy, are walking our with boxes, disks, and iPhones.
Again, to restate what I said in my comments to Mando, people can do whatever they want with their money. They earn it and can spend it on whatever they want (though I hate when people buy things only because their friends have it and they don't want to be left out or look less than cool - how pathetic). However, if people are going to spend their money on this stuff, then I wish I could apply two simple rules:
1. Don't bitch to me about the price of necessities. If you're spending $100 a month on cable/internet service, have a 4 person family where every person has a cell phone (maybe some iPhones), your kids get every new video game they want, and you have a closet full of DVDs, then I don't want to hear you complain about the price of gas or food. Period.
2. Don't look to me, or my tax dollars to bail you out. I do not want billions of dollars of American taxpayer money to go into a slush fund to renegotiate mortgages for people who shouldn't have been in those houses in the first place and, when times were good, didn't deny themselves a single thing they wanted. You dug your grave, lie in it.
Of course, I won't get either of these things. Americans believe we're entitled to take great vacations, have every new gadget we want, and spend $120 on our hair and $30 on our nails. But we want gasoline, electricity, health care, and education to be cheap, or better yet, free.
I saw a news report a couple of weeks ago about a couple complaining that they couldn't pay their mortgage and the wife said they had $30,000 in credit card bills. How the fuck do you get $30,000 in credit card bills? And where's all the shit you bought with it? It didn't look to me like their house was all that fancy or the furnishings were super expensive. They did not have a significan illness that resulted in this debt. So what the hell did they buy on credit cards for $30,000? So they basically receive $30,000 in bills every month! Really? Really? Wow.
The problem is that in a rational world, these people would be in a world of hurt. They'd lose their house, many of their possessions. They'd have to live in an apartment, have their credit ruined, and scrimp and save for things they needed. It wouldn't be pleasant but maybe, just maybe, they'd learn something. Instead, because it's America, we can't actually punish anyone. The government will pass the legislation to bail their mortgage out, the couple may declare bankruptcy after which some creditors will still be happy to loan them money, and they'll escape relatively unscathed, probably to go on spending as if nothing every happened. Unreal. We really need to look at our priorities in the country.
Even if you want to argue that anyone needs to be able to quickly access the internet and watch videos on a phone, there are other phones that do these things more cheaply than the iPhone. But those phones don't look as cool. They don't have the cachet of the iPhone. It is amazing to me that people who piss and moan about the economy, or gas prices, or that they don't have any money, will spend $200 on a phone.
In a recent comment to a post from Mando Mama on her blog, I remarked about how my father and I were driving and I noted how full the Best Buy parking lot was. To reiterate the point I made to her, Best Buy is arguably a store of "wants." There is almost nothing, maybe actually nothing, in a Best Buy store that is a necessity. They predominantly sell computers, TV's, video games, and DVDs. While these are all nice shiny baubles, none are necessities. Still, Best Buy's parking lot is pretty crowded and people, some of whom have probably been on TV moaning that they can't pay their mortgage, or who walked away from negative equity, or who have declared bankruptcy, are walking our with boxes, disks, and iPhones.
Again, to restate what I said in my comments to Mando, people can do whatever they want with their money. They earn it and can spend it on whatever they want (though I hate when people buy things only because their friends have it and they don't want to be left out or look less than cool - how pathetic). However, if people are going to spend their money on this stuff, then I wish I could apply two simple rules:
1. Don't bitch to me about the price of necessities. If you're spending $100 a month on cable/internet service, have a 4 person family where every person has a cell phone (maybe some iPhones), your kids get every new video game they want, and you have a closet full of DVDs, then I don't want to hear you complain about the price of gas or food. Period.
2. Don't look to me, or my tax dollars to bail you out. I do not want billions of dollars of American taxpayer money to go into a slush fund to renegotiate mortgages for people who shouldn't have been in those houses in the first place and, when times were good, didn't deny themselves a single thing they wanted. You dug your grave, lie in it.
Of course, I won't get either of these things. Americans believe we're entitled to take great vacations, have every new gadget we want, and spend $120 on our hair and $30 on our nails. But we want gasoline, electricity, health care, and education to be cheap, or better yet, free.
I saw a news report a couple of weeks ago about a couple complaining that they couldn't pay their mortgage and the wife said they had $30,000 in credit card bills. How the fuck do you get $30,000 in credit card bills? And where's all the shit you bought with it? It didn't look to me like their house was all that fancy or the furnishings were super expensive. They did not have a significan illness that resulted in this debt. So what the hell did they buy on credit cards for $30,000? So they basically receive $30,000 in bills every month! Really? Really? Wow.
The problem is that in a rational world, these people would be in a world of hurt. They'd lose their house, many of their possessions. They'd have to live in an apartment, have their credit ruined, and scrimp and save for things they needed. It wouldn't be pleasant but maybe, just maybe, they'd learn something. Instead, because it's America, we can't actually punish anyone. The government will pass the legislation to bail their mortgage out, the couple may declare bankruptcy after which some creditors will still be happy to loan them money, and they'll escape relatively unscathed, probably to go on spending as if nothing every happened. Unreal. We really need to look at our priorities in the country.
4 comments:
To prove your point about Americans, you can get no poorer customer service anywhere than BestBuy. And yet, people flock to it. Now, I do recall that, once, I did buy something useful there. I probably went in for something else, but I came out with vacuum cleaner bags. At my house, this definitely qualifies as a necessity.
The hardest part of facing all this bold and unabashed consumption is that it flies in the face of trying to teach my kids that they don't need all kinds of stuff. I can remember coveting two things as a kid: getting my ears pierced, and, knee boots. Now, knee boots did not really go with the catholic school uniforms but everybody had 'em and I really wanted them. But once I had them, I was like, "Wow, this looks really dumb." But my mother took me to downtown Wheeling to get my ears pierced at Stone & Thomas and I was beside myself. She got hers pierced too, and it was a day I'll never forget. Tenth birthday, I think. The other stuff we had was always put to good use -- a tape recorder (we made up all kinds of stories and did interviews, for hours and hours), some games, books, clay, blocks, paint, a few Barbies, and a super old house on about 20 acres. We were never bored. What happened between 35 years ago and today? If I could I would move my kids out to the country, but then I'd spend all my free time cutting grass. :0(
Well, I'm no Andy Rooney. I understand that today's world is different than mine when I was a kid 30 years ago. I'm cool with that. What I don't like is the concommitant lack of personal responsibility. The idea that people get into all kinds of trouble because of their discretionary spending and then want someone else to bail them out. Or they constantly complain about having no money. I don't want to hear it. If you have money to go out and have fun, drink, buy movies, etc., then you have money for necessities.
This post is fantastic! Wish it would fit on a billboard.
You could have in big, bold letters:
"Americans Are Full Of Sh*t"
And then your clincher could be in smaller print:
"We really need to look at our priorities in the country."
I would sponsor it. :)
BTW, Happy Birthday Eve!
Post a Comment