Survival of the Fattest

CB and I were talking about the insurance industry the other day, and she raised the point that nobody who's in any sort of sales or customer-service industry today has the slightest clue what's is like to actually have to work hard to get results. Really. There have been hiccups here and there, but the American economy has been booming for decades. People - even those who are conveniently labeled 'low income,' either for political or for other purposes - generally have no problems making ends meet, and squeezing substantial luxury into those ends.

This is not to say that there are no people in this country who cannot make ends meet, and who literally go hungry because there is no money left at the end of the month for food. Those people do exist, and in increasing numbers. But I honestly believe that's a fairly recent development. Up until very recently, you had to go WAY down to a very small percentage of the populace before you got to a demographic too broke to indulge in some level of luxury consumerism. Until recently 'poor' meant that someone's 40" TV was a projection model rather than a flat-screen, that they only had basic cable, and had to suffer through the inconvenience of a single car shared by the whole family. Tough times indeed.

Living on the recently-ended unending prosperity of unlimited credit limits, nobody really had to work to sell much of anything, including luxury goods. Nobody had to go out and court the public in any involved way to get goods to move. All anyone really had to do was make the goods or services available, and find a way to inform the public that they were available. Work hard to SELL something? Why bother? If Douchebag Consumer A, here before you at this moment, is unwilling to swipe his card to take a (whatever) home, no problem. Douchebag Consumer B, who will walk in the doors momentarily, won't hesitate for a second before adding a token additional amount to his already crushing credit burden, so he can take a (whatever) home. Regardless of whether he actually needs it, and sometimes regardless of whether he actually wants it, there's a good chance that he'd buy it, just because it's there, and with no need for any more of a sales pitch than putting on the shelf in front of him. That's how fat our economy was. To a large degree, it still is.

Take the pornography industry, for example. Talk about a discretionary expense; it's pure hedonism. If ever there was a economic niche that people would cut from their budgets, THIS IS IT. Yet even today it's a multi-billion dollar a year industry. According to some statistics, over $3,000 is spent on porn EVERY SECOND. This, coupled with other obvious points, and you really have to wonder. Like the fact that over 50% of Americans are technically obese, and the fact that people of hypothetically 'limited means' will pay $40 a month for a gym membership they use once a week. Mebbe this country might actually benefit from some LEGITIMATE lean times - not to be confused with the present - where we might be compelled to lose a few pounds, cut a few luxuries, and actually earn the money we spend as a society, rather than just piling up debt. While a slight necking down of NINJA and similar credit lines has supported more and more of that last point occurring, neither of the subsequent two points seem to be gaining any traction. There is no impetus for anyone to be lean and efficient to be successful, a situation which continues to persist.

With the general availability of credit, and with the government's ever increasing support of Robin Hood economics, I don't see how anything is going to change, and certainly not until there is at least one more substantial credit-market crash. We are so used to rampant consumerism, and so enabled to overspend by creditors (even today), that we as a culture are going to spend until we literally can spend no more. Seriously, the dollars in your bank account are of value only because every other currency on earth sucks even worse than dollars do. Every single asset underlying the value of dollars is horrendously over-extended. Strangely, the best thing to do in times like this is to actually have dollars on hand (cash). Let me know if you want to hear the reasoning.

I'm not sure I have any real point to offer from all this; the real reason I got launched onto this train of thought was from dealing with idiotic sales people and poor customer service habits that about here in Vegas. I'm sure its worse elsewhere, so I'm sure you have it locally too. Wouldn't it be nice if people actually treated you like they NEEDED your money and your business, instead of treating you like they're doing you a favor by deigning to accept your money and your business?