Filthy Commerce

How to reframe data, taxpayers' edition

Hat tip to Megan Kelly for the heads-up on the original AP article.

Today, the Associated Press published "Nearly Half of U.S. Households Escape Fed Income Tax." The following caught my eye:

How dare you eat well on my dime!

Before we get to the link-baity article, let me drop some background on you:

-- "Relative to the price of everything else in the economy, sodas (the orange line) are 33 percent cheaper than they were in 1978. Butter (dark brown) is 29 percent cheaper. Beer (gray) is 15 percent cheaper. Fish (the yellow line), by contrast, is 2 percent more expensive. Vegetables (purple) are 41 percent more expensive. Fruits (green) are 46 percent more expensive." ("What's Wrong With This Chart?" NYT, May 20, 09)

-- Three years ago, Speaker Pelosi elected to spike the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment (offered by Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ)), which would have cut subsidies to several commodity farmers and boosted spending for nutrition and food assistance programs. In 2008, the government launched a $20 million Healthy Incentives Pilot project to "determine if incentives provided to recipients at the point-of-sale increase the purchase of fruits, vegetables or other healthful foods among SNAP participants"

-- The USDA's Thrifty Food Plan is really tough to follow. Legions of bloggers can attest to that.

-- One in eight Americans now rely on SNAP to help stave off hunger, up from one in 50 back in the 1970s. Or, to put the numbers in a different perspective, in the 1970s, 2% of Americans needed federal assistance to get food on the table; now, 12.5% do.

Eat the rich; they're healthier than the poor

Longtime readers will know that food-- how it's produced, what we pay for it, what we should pay for it, what criteria we use to determine how to spend our food dollar, transmuting those criteria to a food-lifestyle decision, how to prepare it -- is a recurrent topic on this blog. We've talked about the real and imagined obstacles to shopping at Whole Foods (more here), whether or not it's ever a good idea to eat fast food,how it's tough to be a thrifty food shopper/consumer if you don't already have capital to invest ... anyway, we all like to talk about food as a reflection of larger commercial and cultural forces.

We're all familiar with some basic facts: the current U.S. diet requires a hell of a lot of resources; junk food provides a bigger caloric bang for your buck; both urban and rural Americans struggle with "food deserts," i.e. places with limited to low access to grocery stores. (For the record: "low access" is defined as "no grocery stores within 10 miles or less.") With the exception of the very poorest of the U.S. poor, there is a strong correlation between obesity and poverty in the U.S. because of a killer trifecta: access only to cheap calories, a lack of places to safely exercise, and insufficient education on nutrition.

(For those who wonder why the rural poor, who presumably don't live in crime-ridden projects, can't take a jog, I have one word for you: sidewalks. When you live someplace without them, it's harder to get in even casual everyday exercise.)

Because it is so easy to look at the American foodscape and see the effects of the killer trifecta, it should, in theory be easy to be compassionate toward those who do not have the luxuries of choice and economy. And it should, in theory, also be easy to back the idea that personal and community health can be improved by giving people the tools they need to eat well over their lives.

You'd think it would be easy, yet somehow Caitlin Flanagan was unable to take time out of her busy scheduling of fapping over Twilight to give it a try. Instead, she denounces school gardens in "Cultivating Failure" (The Atlantic's Jan/Feb 10):

With these gardens—and their implication that one of the few important things we as a culture have to teach the next generation is what and how to eat—we’re mocking one of our most ennobling American ideals. Our children don’t get an education because they’re lucky, or because we’ve generously decided to give them one as a special gift. Our children get an education—or should get an education—because they have a right to one.

It's a poorly constructed argument.

First: at no point does Flanagan ever acknowledge why the idea of teaching children about nutrition and food production might have gained traction in the first place. Instead, she credits Alice Waters with mysterious powers of the occult and reasons that politicians and school administrators are all the victims of (organic) witchcraft.

Second: earlier in the piece, Flanagan righteously defended "education" as "the state standards for English and math." This conveniently overlooks the abundance of actual educational skills the kids can pick up while gardening -- planning ahead, problem-solving, analysis, observation -- much less the anthropological, biological and nutritional lessons afforded by explaining how the Native Americans' "three sisters" methods of planting afforded soil remediation, pest control and a diet rich in protein and vitamins.

Third: Flanagan doesn't bother to address and refute the point that our children's right to an education should include the right to know how their bodies handle the basic process of digesting food and absorbing nutrients. Instead, she claims that the one Ralph's she visited in Compton is proof that inner-city kids are at no risk of not getting vegetables.

Fourth: the entire piece is one in which she attempts to create a class war between well-educated "elites" and the immigrant/minority children they're depriving of their No Child Left Behind worksheets. While it is true that a lot of middle- and upper-class people are supremely oblivious to the genuine hardships a lot of people in this country face when it comes to getting decent food on the table, and it is equally true that some people think lifestyle consumption -- getting a CSA or buying organic -- is all we have to do to fix the broken American foodscape.

But explain how giving a child the tools to understand the world around them and the skills to grow their own food is so oppressive. She can't. She can only fling up her usual "The left is guilty of practicing what it preaches against! It's the real oppressor!" schtick and hope that people are too emotionally affected to bother picking apart her arguments.

Fifth: Try fact-checking beyond your neighborhood. After Wisconsin schools began teaching their kids about food and incorporating it into the daily grind, things like bad behavior plunged and academic performance rose. Going organic and local in Michigan helped keep tax dollars in the local economy, which in turn helps with municipal funding.

ANYWAY. You can read the article or you can shrug and say, "What can I do to help weaken the killer trifecta?" I'm going to point you toward the Community Food Security Coalition, which aims to execute "a comprehensive strategy to address many of the ills affecting our society and environment due to an unsustainable and unjust food system" And if you have any suggestions of your own, I'm all ears.

Walk away, but the responsibility still remains

There's a house in Alameda that's a foreclosure property, but it's still got all the utilities turned on. I know this because every night at 5 p.m. or so, the sprinkler system sputters to life. The sprinkler heads are set to douse the sidewalk, and one of them's been knocked off, sending a gusher of water into the street. The front yard is also flooded owing to poor siting or poor maintenance or the fact that it's the rainy season so really, there's no need to have your sprinklers on nightly.

Over the last two weeks, I've repeatedly called the bank listed on the property (Cyprexx, affiliated with GMAC) and I've called the real estate company listed on the sign in the window (Aurora Realty). I've even called the East Bay Municipal Water District, as California's still in the middle of a serious water shortage, and this is the kind of thing they should be interested in. EBMUD was super-helpful. The bank and realtor associated with this property? Not so much.

What has struck me, repeatedly, as I tried to get someone to fix this sprinkler issue, is how hard it was to find anyone who would take responsibility for the problem. Surely tending to a property is the ethical thing to do in a community, especially when one relies on the community's reputation and amenities to enhance the property's value?

In reading "Walk Away From Your Mortgage" (NYT, Jan 10, 10), the following stood out:

There are two reasons why so-called strategic defaults have been considered antisocial and perhaps amoral. One is that foreclosures depress the neighborhood and drive down prices. But in a market society, since when are people responsible for the economic effects of their actions?

Bzzzzt! Walking away from a responsibility doesn't automatically make it disappear. Someone needs to pick it up. And in the case of the broken sprinkler, it's the bank's responsibility, in theory. This is amusing when you consider that there's a case to be made that banks acted in bad moral faith in the first place:

There is an inherent imbalance in the borrower-lender relationship that makes this ["don't default"] message unfair to consumers: Banks set the rules during the housing boom, handing out home loans with no down payments, no income checks and inflated appraisals. Now that property values have dropped 20 to 50 percent in many areas, banks have been slow to modify troubled mortgages and reluctant to reduce principal debts.

-- "The Nation's Housing: Walking Away from a Mortgage," WaPo, Nov 28, 09

Which brings me to my contradictory point: I actually don't see a moral problem with walking away from your mortgage. Businesses often break or modify agreements without notice to the customer. Why shouldn't the customer have the right to do the same?  However, I do have a problem with consequence-free economic actions.

I really don't care if banks never wanted to get into the business of property management. What did they expect when they began peddling products they knew they'd be taking the collateral on? So step up to the plate instead of relying on the community to do it for you. There's no reason why the rest of Alameda should rip out their lawn and share toilet flushes because one willfully neglected sprinkler wastes water every night.

Pick a Fight Monday: There's no reason to romanticize the Great Depression

Over the last 18 months or so, there have been a plethora of articles and blog posts about how the adults of today are revisiting the habits of their Great Depression-era forebears. ("Great Depression Holds Lessons for Surviving Tough Economy," CNN, Oct 13, 08; "Survival Basics from Depression-era Kids," Wisebread, Oct 31, 08; "Wisdom of the Aged," Time Out Chicago, Dec 8, 08; "Making Ends Meet in the Great Depression," NYT, Apr 1, 09; "Catering to the Recession Mentality," WSJ, Nov 9, 09;  "Will the New Frugality of Born of the Recession Shape a Generation?" WaPo, Dec 20, 09; "Recession Generation Will Spend Less for Life," Newsweek, Jan 9, 10)

Think about how trendy things like gardening, canning and sewing have gotten among a certain subset of domestic bloggers. I am pretty sure the trend is peaking, as there's a book about to come out about channeling your grandmother's household skills, and lifestyle books usually reflect popular sentiment; they don't create it. ("Book Aims to Connect New Generation to Grandmothers' Skills," Spokesman-Review, Jan 10, 10) And plenty of green bloggers are now claiming the Great Depression was awesome in that everyone was forced to reduce, reuse and repurpose things.

Here's what everyone conveniently leaves out: People did these things not because they wanted to, but because they had to. An entire generation did not decide to make the 1930s the greenest decade, nor did they decide to reject consumerism for DIY empowerment. Those benefits were side effects.

Did the country lose its mind for the past ten years and go nuts with buying houses they couldn't afford and lifestyles financed by credit card? Yes. Are we paying for that now? Yes. Is it kind of awesome that people are changing some of their habits so they're not merely uncritical consumers? Yes.

But for God's sake, be critical of this Depression-revival chic too. The Great Depression created staggering workloads for women ("Life In (And After) Our Great Recession," The Atlantic, Oct 09), so remember that the next time someone asks why you're not cultivating your own organic plot/canning your own preserves/sewing your curtains out of old sheets/cutting your husband's hair/following the dictate to only eat food your grandmother would recognize. If you must embrace the habits of the Great Depression, do it with your eyes wide open to whether or not they're reconcilable to the realities of today.

It's very easy to downsize ...

... when you're playing from a position of strength.

I read today's NYT article "In Recession, Americans Doing More, Buying Less," and my first thought was "It's very easy to stop shopping for entertainment when you're already sitting on a mountain of material abundance."

For the last two decades, thanks to the rise of IKEA and Wal-Mart, thanks to the emergence of design as a mass-market merchandising factor, thanks to masstige, it has been very, very easy for people to attain some level of material luxury without spending a lot of money. And at some point, when you're bored with shopping and have a stronger incentive to do without it ... cue the "You don't need to shop to have fun!" ethos.

This article reflects one facet of what promises to be a large and tiresome upcoming trend: People who got downsized out of their jobs and decided, What the hell, I'll live simply. And oh, how easy it is for them to do that when there's a spouse who pulls in the benefits, or there's an emergency savings account or a hefty severance package to cushion the unemployment period, or they've got marketable skills to fall back on when the bliss doesn't pay the pared-down bills.

There's an old Doonesbury cartoon where Jane Fonda is exhorting a cleaning lady to exercise, arguing that if she can fit a workout into her schedule, so too can the cleaning lady. The cleaning lady retorts, "You're as busy as you wanna be. I'm as busy as I gotta be."

During this recession, there's a difference between those who simplified because they wanted to and those who simplified because they had to. Let's start noticing the difference.

Defining the luxurious online shopping experience

So we all know luxury brands are feeling the downturn as much as anyone else, but the article "Luxury Marketers Move Online, But Lack Digital Cunning" (AdAge, Sep 22, 09) caught my attention with the premise that:

The days of a tightly controlled brand, with beautiful merchandise and flagship stores at tony addresses, along with ads shot by high-profile names in Vogue and Vanity Fair, are over.

What I find worth pondering: shopping online is hardly the same as getting your tuchis kissed at Cartier. In fact, the transactions seem remarkably consistent no matter the price point: You click on things to put them in a "cart," you "check out," and you get an email receipt. I am willing to accept that the convenience of shopping in your PJs at 3 a.m. is, in and of itself, a luxury. But I figure I pay for that luxury via the shipping rates. When you strip out the qualities that go along with a luxury bricks-and-mortar experience -- total a##-kissing and clean, nice-smelling place -- what are the digital analogues?

I doubt we'll see shoppers hit a masstige or luxury-brand website, have the revelation that oh my gosh, all these years they've been paying for an intangible experience, and abandon their shopping carts. But I am curious as to how luxury brands will maintain the patina in a digital environment. What constitutes luxury in online shopping?

Rage-inducing read of the day #1: "I'm praying for another boom"

Edward and Maria Moller are worried about losing their house — not now, but in 2013.

That is when the suburban San Diego schoolteachers will see their mortgage payments jump, most likely beyond their ability to pay.

Like millions of buyers during the boom, the Mollers leveraged their way into a house they could not otherwise afford by taking out a loan that required them to make only interest payments at first, putting off payments on the principal for several years.

[...]

The Mollers owe so much more than their house is worth, and have so few options, that they are already anticipating doom.

“I’m praying for another boom,” said Mr. Moller, 34. “Otherwise, we’ll have to walk.”

-- "Interest-Only Home Loans Start to Backfire," NYT, Sep 9, 09

To recap the story for those of you playing along at home: Thanks to the people who took out interest-only loans on the faulty assumption that the market could only keep going up, we'll be looking at a glut of bank-owned inventory and soft real estate prices for years. It's a great time to be home-shopping, if you've got the money for it.

(FYI, in the story, it's revealed that the Mollers refinanced their house a few months after buying it in 2005, so they could pull out cash and pay off debt. Applause to the reporter for finding a textbook-perfect illustration of all the conventional wisdom surrounding people caught by the collapsing bubble.)

The September issue

Via Jezebel: Vogue has the lowest quantifiable monetary total for the items featured in its September issue compared to either Harper's Bazaar or Elle.

I personally think they were handicapped by their "100 under $500" index in the back. How's a magazine supposed to compete when it insists on featuring something other than Prada's $2000 spike-heeled rubber fisherman's waders (as seen on page 558)?

It's cheaper to keep her

This past weekend, I read Don't Get Caught With Your Skirt Down: A Practical Girl's Recession Guide. I figured it might come in handy for the side gig -- perhaps show some tips or pointers for smarter spending.

What ended up sticking with me instead was the chapter on how staying in your marriage is a smarter recession strategy than splitting. The sentiment directed toward us married girls is that losing another household earner's a bad move, and one of the things we have to guard against in these, our troubled economic times, is the predatory vamp. Presumably, there is an entire class of woman out there who sees a wedding ring and thinks, Ka-ching! Meal ticket!

The advice: recognize that men see "an affair almost as a vacation--a welcome relief from the everyday," so don't take it personally. And to stay married.

I thought of this chapter yesterday when reading the NYT's "Those Aren't Fighting Words, Dear," wherein the author deals with her husband's attempts to leave their marriage by correctly sussing out that his midlife crisis has nothing to do with her. She endures a rocky period, but at the end of it, manages to keep the husband and their 20-acre spread.

Both things I read were refreshing in the author's ability to assess relationships as long-term projects to be managed on a multiyear timeline. It's sort of how you're supposed to  think about your personal finances, yes? 

Money troubles do make for relationship difficulties: a recent ING survey found that 29% of Americans said the recession has "added stress to," "strained," or even "ruined" their marriage/relationship. This in itself isn't news. But the idea of sucking it up in the short term -- that's new. We see it in things like the Modern Love column and the book. And we see it in articles on couples who split up but still live under one roof. ("What God Has Joined Together, Recession Makes Hard to Put Asunder," WSJ, July 13, 09)

I wonder if we're going to see a permanent shift of societal attitudes regarding marriage, or if this is a short-term blip based on temporary economic circumstances.

As it is, the Economist has already reported that the rate of divorce in the UK is falling -- in part because fewer people are marrying in the first place, and in part because the average age of first-time spouses is rising. The UK isn't the US, but it will be interesting to see whether the US divorce rates rise or fall -- and which populations are the most susceptible to change.

It's the last vaguely-thematic bridal post, because it's the last day of June!

I saw this press release and had to share:

Is there anything smugger than a do-it-yourselfer?

So the NYT ran an article today, "Even to Save Cash, Don't Try This Stuff at Home," and it's your basic tale of people who decided they'd save money on haircuts, replacing toilets, etc. by doing the work themselves ... only to do the work badly and end up paying a professional more to fix their mistakes.

The basic lesson of the piece -- if there is such a thing -- is that doing it yourself is only cost-effective if you have the know-how and good luck to be able to do something right. Left unwritten in the piece is the first rule of DIY: Don't wait until an emergency to pick up a new skill.

Anyway, unlike the "I'm an economics reporter earning six figures, but ended up in foreclosure" piece that we all read earlier, this piece has a comments area, and oh my gosh, the people who are weighing in on the hapless subjects of the article are a most insufferable collection of smug finger-waggers. I mean, I realize that the whole point to a comments section on an article is to give every blowhard on the Internet a venue in which to shore up their own shaky sense of self-worth by tearing down other people, but even by that metric, the commenters on this article make me want to go order a few thousand dollars' worth of work from a handyman out of sheer spite.

The amusing and paradoxical thing is, the Internet is great for encouraging people to take the leap into DIY-hood. For example, House in Progress demystified demolition and project management for me, while This Young House provided step-by-step inspiration for finishing touches. There are myriad cooking and crafting blogs that encourage people to cultivate new skills. I haven't looked yet, but I bet there are sewing blogs that walk people through making their first sundress.

Yet the DIYers who commented on the NYT article? More or less approach the idea of doing it yourself from exactly the opposite angle of all these bloggers. I guess that's what happens when you're more concerned with making yourself feel better than you are with winning hearts and minds.

Always in Vogue: compulsive shopping

One of the perks of post-surgical recovery -- besides the perpetually-runny nose --is that this "short-term medical leave" thing leaves me with plenty of time to catch up on my magazine reading. Since nearly every magazine I like goes out of business, it's slim pickings in the glossies pile. However, I have demonstrated my usual resilience and pluck by reading the May 2009 Vogue.

The front of the book usually features some essay wherein a writer attempts to contextualize the sticky and materialistic end of Liking Nice Things against deeper metaphysical questions like "So what does this say about my values as a human being?"

This month's essay is by erstwhile Village Voice columnist Lynn Yaeger. It is billed on the front cover as "You're Fired! Surviving and Thriving After the Pink Slip." However, the essay itself is about survival and thriving only insofar as they apply to Yaeger's compulsive shopping. Sadly, it's not online yet, but this passage should give you an idea of where the whole piece goes:

The banker said I should make a budget. We decided that after my fixed expenses -- the mortgage, the cable, the Blackberry, et cetera -- I would have $50 a day for everything else. That notion lasted exactly one day. Where was the Rene Furterer Okara shampoo I depended upon? My T. LeClerc face powder? Wolford tights?

Happily, Yaeger realizes she can continue her shopping so long as she amps up the freelancing and adjusts her retail expectations; a few paragraphs later, she exults that a $118 silk blouse at Anthropologie is nearly as thrilling a purchase as the $1000 Junya Watanabe it's knocking off.

I understand that Vogue is not in the business of selling reality, and that's not why I picked it up. But there's something profoundly tone-deaf about the article, the same way Alexandra Penney's article was. Vogue is in the tricky spot of trying to set the tenor of retailing talk, but it seems sometimes, it might be more prudent to look around and see what everyone else is doing.

Gray Lady discovers those of us on budgets aren't living in wretched squalor

I am sure that to someone in the food department at the NYT, trying to throw a dinner party for six on a $50 budget must have seemed like good service journalism, but Frank Bruni's writeup comes across as slightly tone-deaf to the times:

I half expected tuna casserole. With a mesclun salad to start — if I got lucky. [...] Less than $8.50 a person for a full dinner? I didn’t see how this budget allowed for much strutting, not even from home cooks as gifted and resourceful as [NYT food writers] Kim Severson and Julia Moskin.

-- "Comrades at Arms: Two Food Writers in a Kitchen Smackdown," Mar 24, 09

This comes but 13 days after the NYT tasked designers with making over a room for less than $300 in "The $300 Makeover (At Least That Was the Goal)." (They mostly failed.)

Stories like these make me livid. Let me count the ways.

And you shall know us by the trail of our stuff

So much of it is the kind of stuff that is purchased in optimism, with a sense of brio perhaps -- a red velvet ottoman? Oh, yes, let's have one. Six months ago, All Seasons did six to eight evictions or foreclosures a month; now it's 30 to 40. It will slow for the holidays; All Seasons takes time off for Christmas.

If the lemon chalet cremes are the worst thing to happen this year, I'll be content

You can tell the financial mood in America is ugly when something like selling Girl Scout cookies turns into excuses for criminal activity and cries of unfair competitive practices. To wit:

"Masked man nabs $800 from Girl Scouts" (Juneau Empire, Mar 10, 09) -- "Two 10-year-old girls were left in hysterics after a masked man brazenly stole nearly $800 in cookie sale proceeds from a local Girl Scout troop at Fred Meyer on Sunday night."

"Fake Money Used to Buy Girl Scout Cookies" (MSNBC, Mar 2, 09) -- "Someone is cheating Girl Scouts, using fake $20 bills to buy cookies. One troop in Bremerton is out $100, and some fear the fraud is spreading to other Girl Scout troops."

"Why Do the Girl Scouts Ban Online Cookie Sales?" (Newsweek, Mar 11, 09) -- "If you have an individual girl that creates a Web presence, she can suck the opportunity from other girls," says Matthew Markie, a parent who remains involved in Girl Scouts even though his three daughters are well into their 20s.

With regards to the people in the first two stories: Someone needs to make up a derogatory slang nickname for people who prey on cookie-slinging elementary schoolers.

With regards to the last one: The cookie sales make a lot of money for the Girl Scouts. So I can see why it's terrible to teach the girls about things like "competitive edge in the marketplace" or "using innovation to create a market advantage." And heaven forfend the girls should come up with and execute these ideas on their own! That will not help the Girl Scouts' bottom line. And it certainly won't prepare any of the girls for life in the working world -- not the ones who created a competitive advantage, nor the ones who learned about competitive advantages the hard way.

(Token disclaimer: the statement made above reflects only my private assessment. It is not reflective or, or endorsed by, any of the Girl Scout organizations with which I am remotely affiliated.)

One growing industry: spite

Yesterday, I read "Forced from Executive Pay to Hourly Wage" (NYT), an article that illustrates how some formerly well-compensated middle-management types are coping with extended joblessness, both from a financial and psychological perspective. It is not a bad look at how fragile one's position in the middle class can be. And today, I read "Their Golden Years Just Became Dimmer" (WaPo), which examines the effects of the alleged Madoff scheme on one family: the initial investor is now out her life savings -- savings which keep her in the nursing home that treats her for Alzheimer's. Subsequently, the daughter now has to forestall her own retirement, and the grandson is going to be assuming a tremendous debt burden as he leaves school.

Both articles examine how larger economic forces are affecting small, middle class households; both point out that formerly comfortable families are now greatly uncomfortable thanks to forces beyond their control.

After I read each article, I clicked over to the comments. People who took the time to comment generally fell into the following groups:

"This is what you get for being greedy" -- These folks consider anyone who is not living hand-to-mouth to be morally suspect in some way, and therefore, any downturn in fortune is merely the universe evening the score.

"Everyone in the middle class sucks, so they're getting what they deserve" -- Usually written by someone who is happy to tell you how, despite multiple degrees in what should be an eminently employable field, such as rhetoric, they've spent two decades underemployed. And this is the fault of everyone who has failed to pay them what they perceive they're worth. Reap the whirlwind, ye who failed to employ rhetoric teachers across the nation!

"Americans are materialistic greedhogs, and the faster they fall into poverty, the better for us all" -- Folks who expressed this sentiment opened their posts with pieties like "This is what happens when people forget to 'live simply, so others may simply live.'"

"You'll all be sorry once civilization collapses" -- These people are delighted at the prospect that civilization is about to collapse, presumably because they've read The Postman a few times and have an action plan in place for that eventuality.

"You don't know real suffering like I do" -- Some of these are heart-rending comments, where people describe the frustration of trying to keep their heads above water. Others are vicious diminishments of other people's woes, because the poster's permanently bitter.

The messages I took away after reading hundreds of angry, bilious comments? First: the tendency to blame the victim here strikes me as superstitious, as if pointing a finger at someone else's decisions will somehow insulate the poster from befalling a similar fate.

Second: A lot of people in America are really, really angry. They feel screwed over by their fellow Americans, by their employers, by their politicians. This anger has little rational basis; it's all in slights that are carefully hoarded, and misperceptions that are fostered by demagogues. This seething swell of resentment could get ugly. Or it could be cathartic. Who knows which way it'll go ..

Well, at least the gender roles aren't being downsized

Exhibit A: "Men who are depressed about staying home don't seem like great prospects for resolving the famous conflict of the second shift—the familiar dynamic in which the woman in a two-career couple does most of the chores and the child care on either end of the working day. And indeed, the latest time-use data show that men don't do more child care than they did before after they lose their jobs."

-- "Unwashed Coffee Mugs: How the Recession is Affecting Relationships," Slate, Feb 20, 09

Exhibit B: "I guess I'm kind of traditional. So if a guy can't really take you out or doesn't have the money or the state of mind to take girls out, then it's not going to go anywhere."

-- "Market for Romance Goes from Bullish to Sheepish," WaPo, Feb 25, 09

Always look on the bright side of life

If I had mad xckd-type skills, I'd draw the line graph charting the tenor of consumers-in-the-grip-of-a-recession coverage. The arc can loosely be described as passing through the following phases:

Americans spend like [drunken sailors/ plucky heroines in a chick-lit novel/ pre-Revolutionary French demimondaines] and won't they be sorry: Someday. Any day now. The signs and portents foretell imminent doom!

Seriously, guys, things are not looking good for the over-leveraged middle class, especially if your entire division is suddenly circled in red on the corporate org chart: This is where the mainstream media begins running stories about uneasy workers, generational job shock and how we've all discovered coupons again.

Oh, sweet Christ, it's hailing bankers! Companies are dying off faster than polar bears! Surely the collapse of America is imminent: Okay, it's one thing for the little people to start buying generic, but when the moneyed are suddenly less so, we're all screwed. A little job anxiety, anyone?

What we are going through is going to make the Great Depression look like an afternoon case of the blahs: Now that everyone's reacquainted with the joys of class resentment and budgetary anxiety, let's fan the flames by running long, thinky pieces on how the very fabric of American society is about to be rewoven into sackcloth for the tough times ahead.

Ignore the eeyores -- always look on the bright side: This recession/depression/econopalypse is going to make us all better people. We'll spend less frivolously! We'll find the hidden opportunity in this great economic reshaping! We have dumped the old economy and are now hot enough to make them sorry for what they did to us!

Now, like the classic Kubler-Ross model for grief (denial, anger, bargaining, despair, acceptance), these stages are not necessarily linear -- today's "Surprising Upside of Being Downsized" can be tomorrow's "25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis" or "25 People at the Heart of the Meltdown." But I'm wondering: is it time for us to stop wallowing in the "We're all doomed" mindset and start being plucky? Or would it maybe not hurt Americans to ease back on the blind optimism a little?

Truly, the demimonde are different from you and me

"I always reach for the check because it is too weird if no one does. Who wants to sit around with a check on the table? It lingers. It’s uncomfortable. If you can’t afford to pick up the check for lunch, then you shouldn’t go."

In other words, [Terry Press] said, if the arrival of the check is more awkward lately, it is because some people have not yet adjusted to the new economic truth.

-- "At Business Meals, Who Pays the Tab?" NYT, Feb 11, 09

See, the great thing about being a cheapskate who brown-bags it is I don't have to have any awkward Who's paying for this? moments at the end of lunch, because I already know who paid for lunch. However, people for whom social lunches are a part of their job are apparently fielding some awkward end-of-meal moments.

Read all the way to the end and the charming practice of "credit card lottery." It is like the people who participated thought American Psycho was a how-to manual for working on Wall Street.

Which one of the 8 new shopping types are you?

Advertising agency M&C Saatchi says the downturn has created eight different spending personalities:

■"Scrimpers", who are trading down and going for cheap stuff.

■ "Crash dieters", who have cut spending on all non-essentials.

■ "Treaters", who buy themselves special gifts from time to time, especially as a reward for their frugality.

■ "Justifiers", who like spending but need an excuse.

■ "Ostriches", who behave as if nothing has happened.

■ "Abstainers", who put off buying items until they can afford it.

■ "Clothcutters", who reduce their spending on some items to buy stuff that's more important to them.

■ "Vultures", who thrive in an economic crash because there are so many bargains.

-- "Frugality Is Back," The Age, Feb 6, 09

The article goes on to talk about the challenge retailers face in trying to reach so many different spending types at once. And it points out that in terms of consumer spending categories, it's like it's 1991 all over again.

What your fellow (non)shoppers are doing: the newly non-rich edition

OK, now that we've had a little time to recover from the news that many of our nation's bankers might have to forgo the annual family ski vacation, fire the private driver-cum-security guard, bypass the three new designer ballgowns required for charity galas, and pare the annual grocery bill down from $15,000 ("You Try to Live on $500K in This Town," NYT, Feb 8, 09). What about those of us who don't have to fret about trying to live on a mere half-a-mil?

"'Shopaholic' will do awesomely well," people who made "Shopaholic" say

Hey, remember how we all debated whether or not Confessions of a Shopaholic, coming soon to theatres near you, might have missed the bus in terms of movies that speak to the American public?

It turns out someone at the LAT was also wondering. And in today's "Hollywood make-believe crashes into real life in 'Confessions of a Shopaholic'," the people who made the movie and are now marketing it insist that verily, Shopaholic is a film for our times:

The timing for this movie couldn't be better," producer Jerry Bruckheimer said. "This is the journey of a young girl who has a problem and she turns her life around. It's a tale the whole world can learn a lesson from."

[...]

Jim Gallagher, president of marketing at Disney, said he was confident that "Shopaholic" would play well with audiences who were looking for a light diversion amid these dreary times. It could also be helped by the built-in "chick lit" readers -- the book series has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide -- who have made films like "Sex and the City" a hit. "I can't think of a time where people are more in need of laughter and entertainment more than they do right now," Gallagher said. "This is a great story about empowerment and transformation."

I am willing to concede a point regarding the "people love escapist fare" argument. I suppose we will have to wait and see whether the Shopaholic heroine becomes a rallying figure for a nation of recovering spenders, or if she will be reviled as too fictional even for an escapism-loving public.

The famous are different from you and me

We grubby nobodies are cutting back on spending to pre-WWII levels ("Falling U.S. Consumer Spending Making Tough Times Tougher," CSM, Jan 9, 09). So celebrities have bravely stepped forth to save the nation. In "Let Them Eat Awards Shows" (NYT, Jan 8, 09), people associated with the glittery deathmarch known as the entertainment awards season are arguing that everyone could do with a little escapism:

"We are focused on bringing viewers what they want, which is a moment of respite,' said Orly Adelson, president of Dick Clark Productions. "Especially in times like these, people need entertainment." (One area in which handlers are not so laissez faire: Winners are being encouraged not to fuss over Mr. Obama in their speeches out of fear that everyone who clambers onstage will have a comment.)

Besides, who will save the small businessperson, if not the event planner who needs a thousand gilded magnolia leaves for dinner centerpieces, or the phlanx of A-G listers who need to be fake baked for that unhealthy glow? I'm only being half-snide. As "Designers Lobby for Red-Carpet Presence" (WSJ, Jan 9, 09) reports:

As sales of designer goods have plummeted over the past several months, Hollywood's awards season has become all the more important to fashion designers and accessories labels who are trying to get people to spend once again.

The net effect for this year? Fashion publicists are working like crazy to get their clients placed. God bless the celebrities for generating work!

The business of stuff

One of the growth industries of the aughties has been in the storage and organization of stuff. This was an industry born of Americans' patriotic shopping habits, and for many years, business has been good. You have your self-storage facilties (which store surplus stuff), you have your Container Stores, you have your makers of storage boxes and bins, you have your magazines like Real Simple and Organize.

Well, we'll have Real Simple. Organize is shuttering. This is not surprising news, but I did wonder: What if the magazine's demise isn't a casualty of a shoddy media strategy or soft ad market for shelter titles? Might it be an indicator of a shift away from the "Help! I have too much crap!" consumer mindset?

Ugly goes clear to the bone

Back in September, the skin around my eyes suddenly got very itchy and sensitive to everything, from air molecules on up. It was uncomfortable and two kinds of ugly, as I was either sporting puffy, shiny red skin or shriveled and peeling red skin. The only thing that's actually worked to restore my normal appearance has been an eye cream that costs approximately $64 per ounce.

As I was dabbing it on the other morning, I was thinking about how lucky I am that picking up a new tube of this business every four months isn't an issue. If we had to cut back spending, I thought, would I try a cheaper cream and risk another round of looking like I've just been beaten? Or would I cut back someplace else? What are women who do have to cut back doing?

A few articles have taken stabs at answering that question.

The rich are different from you and me

I've only been losing my retirement savings slowly via my 401(k). Former Self editor-in-chief Alexandra Penney lost hers in one fell swoop. And here is what she has to say about it:

I wear a classic clean white shirt every day of the week. I have about 40 white shirts. They make me feel fresh and ready to face whatever battles I may be fighting in the studio to get the best out of my work.

How am I going to iron those shirts so I can still feel like a poor civilized person? Even the no iron ones need touching up.

[...]

I love beautiful things: high thread count sheets, old china, watches, jewelry, Hermes purses and Louboutin shoes. I like expensive French milled soap, good wines and white truffles. I have given extravagant gifts like diamond earrings. I traveled a lot. In this last year, I've been Laos, Cambodia, India, Russia, and Berlin for my first solo art show. Will I ever be able to explore exotic places again?

[...]

Yesterday, I took my first subway in 30 years. Dennis came with me to show me how to get a MetroCard. The world looks very different from a crowded Lexington Avenue number 6 train.

-- "The Bag Lady Papers," The Daily Beast, Dec 17, 08

If this is supposed to make me feel bad for someone bilked by Bernard Madoff, it's not working. Penney spends more time bemoaning the demise of her cushy existence -- replete with a beach cottage, a New York apartment and rented studio space -- than she does the termination of her maid's salary.

By the way, Yolanda the maid is supporting a family back home. She joins the ranks of other domestic workers across the U.S. who are now being sacked by the nouveau pauvre. See also: "Trickledown Downsizing" (NYT, Dec 10, 08), "When the Going Gets Tough, Some People Lay off the Nanny" (WSJ, Dec 11, 08) and "Cutting Back on Domestic Help During Tough Times" (WSJ, Dec 15, 08)

(Feel free to make your own comments about how the nouveau riche turned nouveau pauvre have never grappled with noblesse oblige.)

For another angle on how rich people are coping with the discovery that they're not so rich, check out NPR's Dec 15, 08, "Florida Pawn Shop Sales Booming After Madoff Revelation."