A Shopping Guernica Captures the Moment

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: A Shopping Guernica Captures the Moment
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: November 29, 2008

From the Great Depression, we remember the bread lines. From the oil shocks of the 1970s, we recall lines of cars snaking from gas stations. And from our current moment, we may come to remember scenes like the one at a Long Island Wal-Mart in the dawn after Thanksgiving, when 200 frantic shoppers trampled to death an employee who stood between them and the bargains within.

It was a tragedy, yet it did not feel like an accident. All those people were there, lined up in the cold and darkness, because of sophisticated marketing forces that have produced this day now called Black Friday. They were engaging in early-morning shopping as contact sport. American business has long excelled at creating a sense of shortage amid abundance, an anxiety that one must act now or miss out.

This year, that anxiety comes with special intensity for everyone involved — for shoppers, fully cognizant of the immense strains on the economy, which has made bargains more crucial than ever; for the stores, now grappling with what could be among the weakest holiday seasons on record; and for policy makers around the planet, grappling with how to substitute for the suddenly beleaguered American consumer, whose proclivities for new gadgets and clothing has long been the engine of economic growth from Guangzhou to Guatemala City....

***

Live within our means and save: This new commandment has entered the conversation, colliding with the deeply embedded imperative to spend. And yet much of the distress is less the product of extravagance than the result of the fact that in many households the means are nowhere near enough for traditional middle-class lives.

Wages for most Americans have fallen in real terms over the last eight years. Pensions have been turned into 401(k) plans that have just relinquished half their value to an angry market. Health benefits have been downgraded or eliminated altogether. Working hours are being slashed, and full-time workers are having to settle for jobs through temp agencies. Indeed, this was the situation for the unfortunate man who found himself working at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. Friday, a temp at a company emblematic of low wages and weak benefits, earning his dollars by trying to police an unruly crowd worried about missing out.

In a sense, the American economy has become a kind of piñata — lots of treats in there, but no guarantee that you will get any, making people prone to frenzy and sending some home bruised.

It seemed fitting then, in a tragic way, that the holiday season began with violence fueled by desperation; with a mob making a frantic reach for things they wanted badly, knowing they might go home empty-handed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/weekinreview/30goodman.html?hp

[hlthe2b]

1. "In a sense, the American economy has become a kind of piñata

— lots of treats in there, but no guarantee that you will get any, making people prone to frenzy and sending some home bruised."

I think this is the issue at its core....

[demodonkey]

2. Great analogy. Piñata. And everybody trying to grab and get their whacks in no matter who they hurt.

If nothing else happens during Obama's term of office, I hope history shows that somehow this is when we turned around the "me-first" attitude of the past two or three decades. Because if we don't, we aren't going to be around as a civilized nation much longer.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Live within your means and save

is what I've done all my life, with one brief exception (and that has long been paid back). I avoid shopping after Thanksgiving except for essentials.