December 14th, 2008
Rob Walker in NYT: Are Americans Really Going Off Consumption?
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As the financial crisis snowballed this year, retail sales fell sharply, and government figures showed the first across-the-board decline in consumer spending since 1991. Curiously, many assessments of this development treated it as an exciting new trend — and maybe even an overnight realignment of where and how Americans find meaning and satisfaction in life. The lower-spending shopper of 2008 was promptly cited as evidence of a “new frugality” or a “saving is cool” mentality. “It’s a whole new reassessment of values,” one commentator suggested, while another posited that “America’s love affair with shopping” may be over.
Yeah? That seems like a lot to infer from data points in a government report, particularly when it suggests that yesterday we were vacuous shopping-bots and today we are virtuously sober citizens. At this stage, the evident hesitation to spend seems more like a function of fear than of frugality. Consumers, spooked by reports of declining spending, are deciding not to spend.
