I was reading comment by Rosemary Beham today in the Times, and found that I didn’t like her very much. This was one of those times where I really take a dislike for what someone is trying to say. She starts with a patronising attack on January shoppers. She asks if the lives of the consumers who rush to the shops at the start of the sales are really so meaningless? She then tells us that we can’t afford to shop either, given levels of personal debt. Everything we buy is apparently bought on the never never.
Firstly, there is nothing wrong with looking for bargains, this is the market at it’s best. Neither is there anything wrong with us borrowing money to pay for bargains. Rosemary argues that our rush to the January sales goes against traditional values like hard work and saving. Well I would have thought our rush to spend less on what we might have spent double on the day before proves that we are just as thrifty as our Victorian counterparts. Furthermore, neither is debt a bad thing. Providing it is manageable, which for the vast majority it is, then debt is an all round advantage. Instead, Rosemary thinks we should cut up our credit cards and leave are cars at home. Presumably she thinks we should crawl back into caves and wear leaves too.
29/12/2006 at 01:35 |
Although the trouble may be that it is the very people who are buying goods on credit cards leading up to christmas are further fuelling the red numbers post hoc. Debt is not just a financial problem. Re the article – consumers will do what they think is rational. If they want to sacrifice future consumption for current consumption then they will do. But having made that choice, they need to allow themselves to remember in the future that that was their consumption choice.