Commie Rant, Black Friday edition: 1983 vs. today has been the period in which our income gap reversed direction and went back to what it was in the 1920s. The people camping out, and rushing around like madmen before the supplies run out, are incentivized by the discounts much more powerfully than in the past. And over time, people have learned to delay many ordinary purchases until Black Friday, and much of whats being purchased has nothing to do with Christmas. Who gives a 48 flatscreen TV as a Christmas gift? So the psychology has also become I waited all year to buy this thing, so I could get it for half what it would cost me some other day, and there are only four of them left, and there are five people running down this aisle ahead of me! And of course the retailers have gradually come to cater to that, and our economys entire business model is centered on a one-month purchasing frenzy, much the way an ice cream shop depends on summer. We could teach a college course on the economics of sociology by comparing the track of our economy with the evolution of Black Friday on the part of both retailers and consumers over the last 30 years.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 14:19:06 +0000
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