As we near the American holiday of Thanksgiving, it's going to be a bit harder this year to pause and give thanks. With the economy tanking, the administration on snooze control, the GOP ready to torpedo a huge sector of the economy, and so many other harbingers of tough times ahead, well a lot of Americans will be giving thanks things aren't worse- with their fingers crossed.
Thanksgiving has one other recent tradition: the day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday) marks the start of the Christmas shopping frenzy. This year retailers are desperate to see consumer spending pick up again. It's not happening. Sara Robinson over at the Campaign For Our Future looks at what that means. (more)
Following up on a story by Pam Spaulding, Robinson looked into an email going around which warns this is not a good year to give gift cards because a lot of stores aren't going to be around after the holidays. Snopes puts it perspective, but it's still pretty sobering. As Robinson notes:
So this is what it looks like -- the end of the Great American postwar shopping spree. Snopes takes pains to point out that for most of the listed retailers, closing a few dozen underperforming stores out of the many hundreds they own is simply sound business -- a small contraction in response to the larger economic contraction going on around the country, and way of battening down their hatches to better weather the coming storm.
But it's also a harbinger of things to come. Americans simply don't have that kind of money to throw around any more. The next several years are going to see more big-chain bankruptcies as more of us learn to live with less, and as the country begins to resurrect the kind of survival skills and attitudes that got our great-grandparents through the last Depression.
One of the consequences of an economy dominated by bigger - but fewer - players is that it's a lot harder to avoid bad times. When you share the road with an elephant, if anybody stumbles, everybody loses. Economists are starting to worry about price deflation - a condition where prices fall, but no one buys because there is no money available. It's a really tough economic dilemma to get out of, especially now when the financial systems are freezing up and credit is not flowing the way it should in a healthy economy.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, in good times money likes to go out and make friends - the flow of money makes everyone better off. Right now money is hiding under the bed with the doors locked and the shades drawn because it's afraid the wolf is waiting at the door. (Not the kind that Sarah Palin can shoot, either.)
The Bush administration (and the GOP) is ideologically incapable of doing what needs to be done: re-regulating the financial markets and providing effective oversight, getting money to ordinary people, ramping up government spending and social programs to stimulate the economy and providing a safety net for people who don't have golden parachutes. The financial sector has been busy playing games with money instead of investing in assets in the real world. The big corporations have been so busy overcompensating their executives and paying off the shareholders they've lost track of running their businesses, or the mutual benefit from having a workforce that makes enough money to actually keep the economy afloat on somethings besides credit.
Which leads to a couple of observations.
ONE: Robinson notes
But it's not just about buying less stuff. We're also about to re-learn quite a few self-sufficiency skills that we were able to farm out to others when times were better -- a development that may also redefine our sense of what's "cool." Going forward, "cool" may necessarily be less a matter of who's wearing the newest stuff from Abercrombie (if you're under 21) or Nordy's (if you're not) -- and more about how competent you are at gardening, fixing cars or computers, sewing, cooking, or being handy around the house. People who have useful skills -- and who have invested in good tools -- are going to survive the coming crunch in much better style than people who don't have either. For the next while, wealth is going to be less about what you own, and more about how clever you are at creating the basics of a good life on a vanishingly small budget.
For decades the U.S. has driven its economy on a never ending treadmill of consumption. Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff explains in detail how that came to be, how it works, and the nasty consequences that follow from it. If you watch the video - about 20 minutes - guaranteed that you'll know more about economics than 95% of the talking heads in the media, and 100% of the GOP. The current economic unraveling offers the opportunity to start getting off that treadmill and start moving to a more sustainable economy. Back to Robinson (and you should really read the entire post):
It's a scary time -- but not all of it will be bad. America's become (quite literally) fat, lazy, and isolated, outsourcing everything to the rest of the world and expecting they'd continue to take care of us. Worse: we've developed an overweening sense of entitlement about that. Nothing in the world has mattered much at all to us, as long as we could spend Saturdays wandering the mall. Making our lifestyles lean and green is going to be a hell of a challenge -- but we've risen to it before, and I'd like to think we're still up to it now. It won't be easy; but we may be surprised at some of the unexpected satisfactions we'll discover along the way.
TWO: Something that can be done right now.
If you read alternative newspapers, you may have seen a recent suggestion that shopping local can make a big difference in your community. Metroland of Albany, NY picked up on an initiative traced back to Jody Colley. (Scroll down the page at the link to Shopping for your Community.)
Altweeklies ask readers to shop local this holiday season
To some people, $100 is a pittance: easily earned, easily spent, and easily forgotten. But what many consumers don’t realize is that where they choose to spend their money is an investment with potentially huge consequences. If spent in the right place, that $100 will re-enter the local economy and strengthen the community.
A hundred dollars is all Jody Colley is asking the readers of about 80 alternative weekly papers nationwide to spend this holiday season in local, independent stores. The publisher of the East Bay Express in Berkeley, Calif., believes that if she can get her readers to spend that much of their holiday budget in an independent store or on an independently provided service, they will see a monumental improvement to their local economy. Just how monumental? The average net impact is estimated to be about $6 million per community. And with all the weeklies combined, the impact nationally could mean $482.5 million staying in the communities where it was spent. If all of Metroland’s readers were to commit to the $100 buy-local pledge, the net positive economic impact on the region would be about $5 million.
emphasis added
Black Friday IS coming up after all. This year more than ever, people are going to be watching how they spend their money. Spend it so it stays in the local economy, and you'll be helping not only yourself but your neighbors. You'll be helping to support local employment. Spend it in Walmart and you'll just be helping the Walton family pile up even more billions which they'll use to ship jobs overseas, brainwash politicians into protecting their wealth, and fight giving workers a living wage or decent working conditions. (As a recovering former Walmart employee I've seen how it works first hand.)
As the publisher of Metroland Stephen Leon observes,
....One enthusiastic supporter of the initiative is Metroland’s own editor and publisher, Stephen Leon.
“I think one of the reasons the timing was good this year,” said Leon, “is the economy being the way it is has made people think, ‘OK, the national economy and the world economy are tanking. We’ve got a big problem here, so where do we start solving this problem?’ Many people have come to the conclusion that if we strengthen our own local business community, that’s the only thing we really have control over.”
He cited research showing that only 43 percent of the money spent in big-box chain stores is put back into the local economy. If the store is locally owned, however, that percentage is more like 73 percent.
“A hundred dollars is not a lot of money in the big scheme of things,” he said, “but a lot of people making sure to spend at least hundred dollars in the local community as opposed to a Barnes and Noble or a Wal-Mart or whatever—it’s surprising how big the impact is.”
emphasis added
The big coporations are not going to save us - in fact their tax breaks and bailouts are killing us and corrupting our democracy. If we help our neighbors, we help ourselves. So, when Black Friday rolls around, make an effort to shop wisely and shop locally.