Thanksgiving shopping stats

http://goldenstateblog.latimes.com/

Memo to Mary Katherine: Uh-Oh
Michael Hiltzik

The council’s Thanksgiving week snapshot is here: black_friday_sales.pdf.
http://goldenstateblog.latimes.com/goldenstate/files/black_friday_sales.pdf

It shows that, for all the hoopla, chain store sales actually fell last week from the week before—a week without a fancy moniker to make people think it’s something special. Sales were considerably higher last week than for the same week a year earlier, but the council cautions that last year’s post-Thanksgiving shopping days were a disappointment (bad weather in the Northeast creamed sales on Saturday and Sunday), making this a deceptively "easy" comparison. All in all, the council isn’t very sanguine. It worries that this could be a "very promotional season" and that consumers enter the shopping derby "with little personal savings cushion and record high credit card delinquency rates." The council is projecting a total sales gain of 3-3.5% this year over last. That won’t even match the rate of inflation, which is running at 4.65% (including energy). Isn’t it grand that the new, stringent bankruptcy law went into effect in October?

The breathless reporting on Black Friday crowds as a sign of a ripping economy strikes me as an example of what I call the "Johannesburg effect." It’s derived from the mistaken notion many people had about the wealth of South Africa. For years, economists and reporters visiting apartheid-era Johannesburg would come away dazzled by the vibrancy of the economy. (This was especially true if they had stopped off first in black Africa.) The conclusion was that the end of apartheid couldn’t help but give everyone in the country, black or white, a middle-class lifestyle.

continued

of xmas gift giving of worthless crap that most dont need or want.

The first year was a little disappointing but the stress was gone! and the expense was eliminated, totally. We dont miss it one bit and I recommend it to everyone who is stuck in this capitalists materialist sham . We are happier and have lost no friends or family because of it. In fact we have influenced many to take the same course.

Do you really need that electric shaver that will be in the trash in several days?

I recommend it to all.

it's still fun to give something I've made...no clay ashtrays.

and you cant buy that at wall mart can you.

Isnt that what its supposed to be all about?

Where last year they were calling it a "bonzana" for the obscenely wealthy (and that one guy couldn't get enough of the $1000 Prada clothes).

Same this year or not?