Thrift has many paradoxes, the foremost being that if everyone is thrifty, the economy hurts. (The economy being an obligate fiend for consumer spending.) These days I like to go around saying, to anyone who talks about trying to cut back on $3 lattes or $30 sweaters, "In this economy, who can afford it?" (And I'm sort of saying it ironically, although of course no one would ever know that; I have to sometimes indulge my urge to be unnecessarily weird.) You could call the thriftward shift irrational, since the recession hasn't made us all suddenly broker. In fact, Dean Baker has pointed out that our real wages have actually gone up as prices have dropped.
Of course layoffs force some to cut back, and the threat thereof makes us all legitimately cautious. But who says we're rational? (Oh right, economists do.) We also react to the ethereal panic and want to hunker down. The entire economy can be like Wall Street in its self-fulfilling expectations. We think the economy is going to suck, and we thereby cause it to suck harder. Each individual household is responsibly protected, but the economy itself become the collective goat no one wants to feed.
My personal P of T is that the recessional spirit of the times makes me want to thriftify, even though my household income is at historic highs (meaning, middle-class eligible.) It suddenly seems cool to be plucky and resourceful, steadily defrosting my bricks of summer tomato sauce. Whereas in the boom economy, when I was boom broke, I had to make periodic pilgrimages to Payless for some knockoff insensible shoes, just so as not to feel left out. We are social animals, I suppose, listing toward the zeitgeist.
Yet another paradox is that thrift is good, but an Ascetic Mission is bad. (You might be on an Ascetic Mission if...you feel wrong paying $1.75 bus fare when it's raining but you could have biked.) Many forms of thrift are gratifying and fun, but going too far can set up a landslide of thwarted consumer desire. When I heard this story on NPR, I was totally with the newly poor and unemployed heroine, Gigi, as she described her excised spa treatments and her switch to outdoor exercise and her homemade clothes. But then she said she had "downgraded [her] coffee" from Starbucks to Yuban. This reeked of Ascetic Mission. I am a Peet's girl myself, and I appreciate the symbolism of ditching the morning Starbucks, but Gigi: there are less drastic measures. Like good coffee beans at bulk prices. And if that latte is so very sweet, why not make a weekly ceremony of it? The best kind of thrift, after all, makes us really enjoy the good things.
And P.S. Who's got the last laugh now? Could it perchance be the crazy lady who grows vegetables and keeps chickens and makes soap, and sometimes uses the eggs from the chickens as an ingredient in the soap. Oh wait, that's me! Ha! (That was me, having the last laugh.)
Of course layoffs force some to cut back, and the threat thereof makes us all legitimately cautious. But who says we're rational? (Oh right, economists do.) We also react to the ethereal panic and want to hunker down. The entire economy can be like Wall Street in its self-fulfilling expectations. We think the economy is going to suck, and we thereby cause it to suck harder. Each individual household is responsibly protected, but the economy itself become the collective goat no one wants to feed.
My personal P of T is that the recessional spirit of the times makes me want to thriftify, even though my household income is at historic highs (meaning, middle-class eligible.) It suddenly seems cool to be plucky and resourceful, steadily defrosting my bricks of summer tomato sauce. Whereas in the boom economy, when I was boom broke, I had to make periodic pilgrimages to Payless for some knockoff insensible shoes, just so as not to feel left out. We are social animals, I suppose, listing toward the zeitgeist.
Yet another paradox is that thrift is good, but an Ascetic Mission is bad. (You might be on an Ascetic Mission if...you feel wrong paying $1.75 bus fare when it's raining but you could have biked.) Many forms of thrift are gratifying and fun, but going too far can set up a landslide of thwarted consumer desire. When I heard this story on NPR, I was totally with the newly poor and unemployed heroine, Gigi, as she described her excised spa treatments and her switch to outdoor exercise and her homemade clothes. But then she said she had "downgraded [her] coffee" from Starbucks to Yuban. This reeked of Ascetic Mission. I am a Peet's girl myself, and I appreciate the symbolism of ditching the morning Starbucks, but Gigi: there are less drastic measures. Like good coffee beans at bulk prices. And if that latte is so very sweet, why not make a weekly ceremony of it? The best kind of thrift, after all, makes us really enjoy the good things.
And P.S. Who's got the last laugh now? Could it perchance be the crazy lady who grows vegetables and keeps chickens and makes soap, and sometimes uses the eggs from the chickens as an ingredient in the soap. Oh wait, that's me! Ha! (That was me, having the last laugh.)
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