The Problem Is: The Rich Don't Have Enough... Bling (They ain't bovvered, tho)

On the front page of my local newswipe this morning, below the dismal economic news, the tainted turkey news, the Mubarak-in-a-cage news, the bug news, and the weather (cold and wet; this section of California has obviously moved several hundred miles north in the last few years of so-called "climate change") there was a reprinted story from the New York Times, that bastion of the Little People, headlined:

JET SET'S LUXURY SPENDING SOARS

Isn't that special, though. Good to know that somebody's responsible enough to keep the Demand Economy afloat.

The luxury category has posted 10 consecutive months of sales increases compared with the year earlier, even as overall consumer spending on categories like furniture and electronics has been tepid, according to the research service MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. In July, the luxury segment had an 11.6 percent increase, the biggest monthly gain in more than a year.

What changed? Mostly, the stock market, retailers and analysts said, as well as a good bit of shopping psychology. Even with the sharp drop in stocks over the last week, the Dow Jones is up about 80 percent from its low in March 2009. And with the overall economy nowhere near its recession lows, buying nice, expensive things is back in vogue for people who can afford it.

But then, is it ever out of vogue? Certainly not. Remember all the luxury-filled movies from the '30's? No matter how bad things got for the ordinary sod, the movies showed you the Other Side of Suffering, where even the rich people's dogs lived better than you did, and they all talked so very fast, and they were jolly and charming and funny as could be.

And get this:

While the free spending of the affluent may not be of much comfort to people who are out of jobs or out of cash, the rich may contribute disproportionately to the overall economic recovery.

“This group is key because the top 5 percent of income earners accounts for about one-third of spending, and the top 20 percent accounts for close to 60 percent of spending,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “That was key to why we suffered such a bad recession — their spending fell very sharply.”

Now doesn't that make you feel better? If it weren't for the rich spending on Prada, you, you poor devil, wouldn't have anything. The statistics prove it! Ha! The top 20% make up fully 60% of consumption. No wonder nothing is being done to help the working and middle class, or to put anyone out of a job back to work. What's the point of it, when they still wouldn't have enough money to spend on $2,800 David Yurman pavé rings?

The lower eighty percent are obviously nothing but parasites. They're lucky to have anything at all.

As for all that bling-bling, here's a Catherine Tate gag with the Queen at the Royal Variety Show some years back. "Are you disrespecting me?"



And for those of us in a "Tumbrils and Guillotines" frame of mind, this little piece from last year by James Howard Kunstler should help get the Rage on:

Worse Than 1789?

Nan

I'm quite the fan of Catherine Tate. She's a brilliant comedienne whose characters are absolutely true to life as well as hilarious.

In this sketch, Tate plays Nan, an older woman barely holding on from the grip of dementia. Nan is sarcastic, funny, cruel, sweet, and often impossible, and yet she is beloved both by those in the sketches with her and by the public. She behaves like many older British women who are holding on to their independence in a more and more difficult period of their lives.

She reminds me of my mother. And this sketch is very close to what a partial family get-together at Christmas might have been like 30 years ago or more. At that time, my mother was in her 70's late 60s, my sister in her late 50's 40s, her son in his 20's. My sister was married at the time to her third husband, but he was never entirely accepted by my mother as one of "us." He was an artist rather than an East Indian, but to my mother's eyes, he was just as exotic if not more so.

My mother looked a lot like Nan. She dressed the same way, had the same frizzy hair, sat with her legs apart as Nan does. She behaved erratically, cursed like a sailor, laughed like a banshee. She told tales about those who weren't around, and as Nan does in the sketch, she would attack her own daughter when she left the room, only to smile becomingly when she returned. Her daughter was happy to return the favor.

So, apart from the British accents, this sketch is a little scene out of what might have happened in my own life -- if I had been around for a Christmas get together 30 years ago, but I was not.

My mother was a very unique person, fiercely independent, bright, when she was younger quite beautiful, clever, cruel, deeply distrustful of people in general, an animal lover, and as she got older, quite addled.

I had never encountered anyone quite like her until I read D. H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" and there was a scene in the midlands during which a proud middle-aged woman (character name I can't remember) who essentially has a raging fit. And I thought, well! Isn't that something. Yeah, I recognize that!

I learned later that my mother's grandmother had emigrated from Nottinghamshire in the 1880's. Her ancestors had been Irish and moved to England to escape the Potato Famine. My mother's grandmother had come to America alone. And she made her way in America on her own. Whether she was ever married, I don't know, but she had a daughter, my mother's mother, who instilled a sense of fierceness and independence in her daughter, my mother.

And so we get to Nan.

May the circle be unbroken.



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Just as an aside: My mother was born in 1911 and would be 100 years old this year (she died when she was 74). My father was born in 1901 and would be 110 this year (he died when he was 69).