Frugality is here to stay? Hopeful but doubtful...

For my inaugural post on this new blog of mine I figured I would spare the usual mission statement and diatribe associated with such a thing and say something simple. Ladies and Gentlemen, as a planet we are screwed and as a nation we are in a worse situation than most. That is likely to be the theme of many posts here. And so you don't get confused other common themes you can expect to see will be about technologies that may be considered "green" but are more of a necessity to life in the future, surviving in the post oil age, problems faced by our nation and our nations young people, and just about anything else that strikes my interest.

On to the post.

This morning while hoping to be called into work I was, as with every morning, watching the news. What caught my ear was a young holiday consumer being interviewed saying "cheap is the new black". I laughed at the idea and watched on. The report unfolded into an explanation of the use of coupons porting over from a analog paper form to the digital realm of smart phones. I like the idea of coupons and spending less for what you want to buy. Coupon technology has moved this forward a good amount, and at the very least its now easier than cutting up your newspaper every Sunday. However all this coupon stuff isn't the real point I'm trying to get at. The closing remarks of the segment, made by a middle aged holiday shopper with a slight accent, that said "frugality is here to stay".

Frugality is here to stay? I could certainly hope so, but has this latest recession really broke Americans of our addition to consumerism? I really doubt that it has. Regardless of my thoughts on the matter nation wide we are spending less than we have in years past. Despite the ham fisted efforts of the federal government with its cash-for-clunkers program, retail spending is down or slowing. Trade deficits are growing. Every segment of the retail economy, with the exception of box stores, is shrinking. And everywhere in the nation signs of the times are clear, but will we learn our lesson?

What is the lesson? Well to answer your question I'll be a dick and ask you to take part in an exercise with me. If you are in your home office or living room on your laptop or at the kitchen table, etc, I want you to look away from your computers and look around. Notice for me the amount of consumer items you have in your home. How many did you buy without having the cash for them? How many do you use every day, or every week for that matter? How many are the biggest, shiniest, most complicated model you could buy? How many come from China or other foreign powers? How many would only be able to be manufactured in an economic and industrial system based on the exploitation of fossil fuels? If it turns out that your looking around your house thinking "no way I never even noticed this stuff" your starting to get my purpose.

As a country we have sold ourselves to a consumer lifestyle. Our identities are bought and sold, right at the end of the highway at the strip mall, boxed up and shipped across massive oceans on equally mammoth container ships, from the expansive factory complexes of China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Etc.... For what ends? So I can watch my morning news on a 40" Samsung LCD? We buy what we want because it is made easy. But it is only easy because there is a demand for easy credit. There is a demand for easy credit because the Joneses were able to refinance and get money for a down payment on their new SUV!

If we stopped to think, really think, about how we live our lives and spend our money and leave a footprint in the sand we might rethink what we are doing. Perhaps the hapless shopper interviewed on the news this morning will go home and meditate on his comment. Maybe he and many like him across the nation will think about where their money went and why most of them can only afford to spend about $650 on their holiday gift shopping. Maybe some of them will think that they could make the holidays warm and bright in some other way than gift cards to Wal-Mart and Target. Maybe cash strapped shoppers will stick closer to home and shop their local downtown shops (if they still exist) before making the trip to a box store. But will it stick?

Well I don't know if any of it will stick. I don't know if anyone out there will ever realize that we need to consume less, save more, buy local, buy smaller, reuse what we have, repair what we already own, invest in our local economies, take part in rebuilding small businesses, and revive an America reeling from the morning after of its buy-bigger-buy-more consumption binge. Hopefully other cash strapped American Citizens out there will begin to think the same. and make the change.

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