Shopping—our patriotic duty?
Good morning, Netizens...
Someone called me on my statements the other day about Christmas Shop-til-you-drop mentality, and after a bit of research and introspection, several of you have perfectly-valid points.
Like most of you, the news that Wal-Mart shoppers were so eager to take advantage of a Black Friday sale that they trampled an employee to death leaves me totally aghast, sickened beyond words and angry at the collective values of our country. That has not changed.
An unfortunate truism, however, is that we are a country in desperate need of more shoppers. Consumer spending makes up 70 percent of the economy and, given that consumer spending is undergoing a sharp decline, the less we shop the worse our economy gets. That is if you believe the economic theory that fewer shoppers equates to declining profits for businesses, which equates layoffs which equates to even fewer Americans with the wherewithal to shop; shopping seems to be the driving factor for most of our economy. This version of economics has even led some observers to state that shopping is an act of Patriotism, such as George Bush urging us to shop after 9/11.