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-Martinis costing anywhere from $30 to $150 are popping up in places like New York and San Francisco. -The maximalist martinis encapsulate "loud luxury." -Loud luxury, in contrast to "quiet luxury," is about spending a lot and owning it. Martinis are having a moment — so, naturally, that means someone has to start charging exorbitant prices for them. Enter: The $40 martini. Recent stories from Eater SF and Punch have dug into the rise of "maximalist" martinis popping up in cities such as San Francisco and New York at wildly high prices. In Manhattan, there's a $45 citrus martini at...

Consumer spending came to a halt last month: Retail sales fell 0.3% from the prior month, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. Why it matters: Weak car sales weighed on retail sales, as vehicles got more expensive, shortages persisted and borrowing costs rose. Stripping out autos, ­re­tail sales actually rose 0.5%. Details: Overall retail sales eased from April's downwardly revised 0.7% increase. In May, consumers ramped up spending on services, including at food and beverage stores (+1.2%). Consumers cut back on goods, like furniture (-0.9%) and electronics (-1.3%). The bottom line: The unexpected drop in retail sales, which aren't adjusted...

I recently re-watched one of the most eye-opening programs on the 20th century, The Century of the Self (BBC 2002). It looks at the development of advertising, particularly the theories and work of Edward Bernays. You’ve seen his work, but you didn’t know it. He was one of the pioneers of modern advertising as well as modern government propaganda. Particularly in the 1920’s, he played a key role in moving America from a need-based economy to desire-based consumerism. One result was a flourishing and growing wealth across the land (except for the collapse in the Great Depression). America moved past...

You know it’s bad in cable news when someone at MSNBC says cable news is no longer news. A woman named Ariana Pekary, who worked as a producer on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” quit her job recently because she just couldn’t do it anymore. That she managed to stay any length of time working for a prima donna like Larry is a testament to her intestinal fortitude, but even a true believer has their limits. What has happened to cable news in the era of the Trump presidency was even too much for her. I’ve been sounding this...

More than 200 celebrities, scientists and Nobel Prize winners have signed an open letter rejecting the idea that things should “go back to normal” after the coronavirus pandemic ends – arguing that we must, instead, stop “the pursuit of consumerism.” Now, to be clear, I’m not attacking them for their success – or even for them enjoying it with lavish lifestyles. What I am saying, however, is that I can’t help but be irked by the unconscionable lack of awareness you’d have to have in order to sign something like this while you’re sitting in an extravagant home surrounded by...

A host of celebrities and scientists including Madonna, Robert de Niro and a clutch of Nobel Prize winners have called for radical change in the world rather than 'a return to normal' after the coronavirus lockdowns. Hollywood stars Cate Blanchett, Jane Fonda, Marion Cotillard and Monica Bellucci also added their names to the open letter published in the French daily Le Monde. The signatories are pleading for an end to unbridled consumerism and a 'radical transformation' of economies to help save the planet. The movement has been penned and led by actress Juliette Binoche and astrophysicist Aurélien Barrau. A full...

The printer installation bypassed my router's security. Essentially, it asked for a "User ID", the router name, but not the password: presumably, on the pretext of user convenience. It means, I could hijack my neighbors' routers and use them for printing without their ever knowing anything about it. I love Epson printers. I got 10 years' service from 2 printers. I only had to buy new printers when operating system upgrades could not use the drivers or I couldn't get ink. I tried to get a new printer that doesn't have color cartridges. The Epson printer I came up with...

They date back to the time of Thomas Edison. They’ve provided decades and decades of warm bright light to our homes and workplaces. And they’re about go bye-bye. Starting Jan. 1, 2018, the humble everyday incandescent light bulb will continue on its long and steady fade into our collective memory. Manufacturers will no longer make the traditional 100-watt bulb and stores will eventually sell out of current supplies. Consumers will have to choose from more efficient bulbs that use no more than 72 watts, including halogen incandescents, compact fluorescents and light-emitting diode, or LED, bulbs. This is not the first...

Not gonna do it. No NFL party. No TV screen with football on it. Kinda chilly. Probably an indoor activity. It may be a good time for a MAGA rally.

Pope Francis will offer his thoughts to the camera in a new documentary by Oscar-nominated director Wim Wenders, its backers have announced at the Cannes film festival. “A Man Of His Word” will see the Argentine pontiff respond to questions submitted from people around the world, with US production company Focus Features billing the film as “the first in which a Pope addresses the audience directly, discussing topics such as ecology, immigration, consumerism and social justice”. German director Wenders, who has been nominated for three Oscars including for his Cuban music documentary “Buena Vista Social Club”, said Francis was “a...

I attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2011. It's the world's largest trade show, with hundreds of new products introduced each year. What I saw were booths stuffed with future landfill: docks, dashboard mounts, adapters, robotic vacuum cleaners, 3D TVs. One afternoon, I attended a panel discussion about the rapidly approaching "connected home," referred to nowadays as the Internet of Things. The panelists promised that household devices of all kinds would soon be connected to one another and to the internet, thereby transforming the average American home into a futuristic fortress of hyperefficiency.

Melissa will do anything to feed her online-shopping addiction — even if that means subsisting off a diet of microwaveable soup. “I’ll eat only ramen in order to shop,” she says. The 34-year-old — who works in sales at Red Wing Heritage, a leather goods brand, and asked that her last name not be used for professional reasons — receives two to three packages a week at her East Village apartment thanks to her daily binges. “I love coming home and there’s a package,” she says. “It’s like there’s a prize at my door.” Americans spent a record $341.7 billion...

Jamie Dimon is sounding the alarm on auto loans. "Auto is clearly a little stretched, in my opinion," the JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO said Thursday morning, speaking at the Alliance Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York. "Someone is going to get hurt... we don't do much of that." But other lenders have. The average size of new auto loans is rising, as is the average payment size, according to research from Experian released Thursday morning. In May, the total amount of auto loans cracked the $1 trillion mark for the first time, marking a 10 percent increase. It comes...

Women are paying thousands of dollars more over the course of their lives than men to purchase similar products, according to a study of the gender pricing of goods in New York City, which revealed widespread gender-based pricing disparities. Comparing nearly 800 products with clear male and female versions from more than 90 brands sold in store and online, NYC's Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) which carried out the study into gender pricing, found that the women's version of products cost more than men's. [Snip] The DCA found that, on average and across five industries, women's products cost 7 percent...

More than 50 million Americans have not even STARTED their Christmas shopping yet and nearly half the country hasn't finished Despite early retailer promotions meant to entice shoppers, 54 million Americans or or 17 percent have not started holiday shopping about a week before Christmas - one percentage point less than last year, a recent poll found. The Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted between December 14 to 18, also found that less than a third of shoppers had completely finished their shopping. The pace of sales is crucial to retailers who receive a substantial portion of business during November and December.

The Left delights in their moral superiority about shopping on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Progressives and Big Labor are petulant about the dirty dozen stores that will remain open on Thanksgiving Day, and mainstream media carps about the "Black Friday Creep" of businesses opening its doors earlier. I don't shop on Black Friday, and I am home all day with my family on Thanksgiving; however, I understand too that a modern economy never really sleeps. Why should it? How can it? Frank Sinatra sang about how capitalism’s most important city New York, New York is a city that never sleeps....

Angie's List must face claims from a woman who says it suppressed negative reviews on a contractor who bilked her, a federal judge ruled. Janell Moore claims she paid the contractor, Bravo Philadelphia, $4,000 to remodel her kitchen after seeing positive reviews on Angie's List. The contractor did not finish the work and refused to refund her money, she says.

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia (AP) — Pope Francis denounced the "throwaway" culture of today's society that discards anyone who is unproductive as he celebrated his first public Mass in Bolivia on Thursday, one of the key days of his South American pilgrimage. It was to culminate with a summit of farmers, fishermen and indigenous whose causes have long been championed by history's first Latin American pope.

Hopes that the pope’s encyclical will narrow the climate-change divide are likely to be dashed. “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,” Pope Francis tells us in his encyclical Laudato si’. The encyclical had climate alarmists in a swoon for the pope’s deep dive into climate policy and taking a swing at skeptics for denial and obstructionism. But the encyclical has the merit of honesty in not maintaining any pretense of objectivity and balance. “Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity” — the pope writes in...

As expected, the Vatican released Pope Francis’ much-anticipated encyclical on the environment this morning, and as anticipated, it demands a radical departure from the current status quo. Titled Laudato, Sí in honor of his namesake St. Francis of Assisi, the Pope calls for a “bold cultural revolution” in apparent ignorance of the horrors meted out in the previous century under that rubric, to combat evils in the present time, both imagined (or at least highly speculative) and real. The main focus for the media will be on the pontifical call to arms on climate change, but there’s at least...