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Black Friday: A Shameful Orgy Of Materialism For A Morally Bankrupt Nation
theeconomiccollapseblog ^ | 11/29/2013 | Michael Snyder

Posted on 11/29/2013 4:53:58 PM PST by SeekAndFind

It has been called "America's most disturbing holiday". Black Friday is the day when millions of average Americans wait outside retail stores in the middle of the night in the freezing cold to spend more money that they do not have for more cheap Chinese-made products that they do not need. It is a day when the rest of the world makes fun of Americans for behaving like "rabid animals" and "zombies" as we indulge in a tsunami of greed. It truly is a shameful orgy of materialism for a morally bankrupt nation. It is being projected that approximately 140 million Americans will participate in this disgusting national ritual this year. Sadly, most of them have absolutely no idea that they are actively participating in the destruction of the economic infrastructure of the United States. If you don't understand why this is true, please be sure to read this entire article all the way to the end.

The amount of merchandise that is purchased on Black Friday is absolutely staggering. For example, just consider how much stuff is sold at Wal-Mart alone...

Wal-Mart said it recorded more than 10 million register transactions between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Thursday in its stores and nearly 400 million page views that day on walmart.com. It sold 2.8 million towels, 2 million televisions, 1.4 million tablets, 300,000 bicycles and 1.9 million dolls. Big-ticket electronics like big-screen TVs and new videogame consoles were among the top sellers.

But each and every year, Black Friday also seems to bring out the worst in many people, and this year was certainly no exception. The following are just a few of the national headlines about the rioting and the violence that we witnessed...

-"Holiday shopping season kicks off with fights, arrests"

-"Violence flares as shoppers slug it out for best Black Friday deals"

-"Watch Screaming Mobs Fight Over Televisions At Wal-Mart"

-"Two Arrested After Stabbing Over Parking Space At Wal-Mart"

-"Rialto Walmart Thanksgiving brawl sends one police officer to hospital"

-"Walmart Ejects Customer For Filming Violent ‘Black Thursday’ Mobs"

-"Cops: Shoplifting suspect shot after dragging officer"

And sometimes the violence extends out into the parking lots and into the surrounding neighborhoods. In Las Vegas, a man that was carrying a big-screen television home from Target was shot in the leg...

According to police, a man purchased a big-screen television from the Target store near Flamingo Rd. and Maryland Pkwy. While he was walking to a nearby apartment complex, a man approached and fired a warning shot, causing the victim to drop the television, police said.

Officers tell 8 News NOW the gunman then took the television to a nearby car that was waiting, where a second man helped the gunman load the TV into the car.

The victim approached the two men and tried to get the television back. That prompted the gunman to fire several more rounds, shooting the victim in the leg.

Every year I go over to YouTube to check out the madness that breaks out on Black Friday night all over the nation. Posted below is the best compilation video from Black Friday that I could find. In particular, I love how this video compares American shoppers to zombies...

And there is one more video that I wanted to share with you. In this video, activist Mark Dice dresses up like Santa Claus and mocks Black Friday shoppers for being "parasites" and for ruining Thanksgiving...

Meanwhile, as retail stores all over America actively encourage this zombie-like behavior, police are actually cracking down on other groups of Americans that are actively trying to make this country a better place. For example, a Christian group in Lake Worth, Florida was kicked out of a public park for trying to feed the homeless on Thanksgiving. Of course this kind of thing happens all the time. In fact, dozens of major cities all over the country have now passed laws that make it illegal to feed the homeless. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled "One Lawmaker Is Literally Smashing The Belongings Of The Homeless With A Sledgehammer".

At the beginning of this article, I stated that those who go shopping on Black Friday "are actively participating in the destruction of the economic infrastructure of the United States".

How could that possibly be?

Aren't they helping the economy by spending their money?

Actually, it isn't that simple.

Just think about it for a moment. Where are most of the "advertised specials" that people go crazy over on Black Friday actually made?

If you guessed "China", you would be correct. In fact, it is very difficult to find any "Black Friday specials" that are actually made in the United States.

When you buy stuff made in China, you support workers and businesses in China. As I mentioned in a recent article, the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas.

Overall, the U.S. has run a total trade deficit with the rest of the world of more than 8 trillion dollars since 1975.

So when you look around and see lots of unemployed people, it should not be a surprise to you.

Right now, the labor force participation rate is at a 35-year-low and more than 102 million working age Americans do not have a job. That number has increased by 27 million just since the year 2000.

Because the American people are not supporting American businesses, our formerly great manufacturing cities are being transformed into rotting, festering hellholes. Just take a look at Detroit. At one time Detroit had the highest per capita income in the entire nation, but now it is a dying, bankrupt ghost town.

And of course this is happening to manufacturing cities all over the nation. Since 2001, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the U.S. have permanently shut down and we have lost millions upon millions of good paying manufacturing jobs.

Back in the 1980s, more than 20 percent of the jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only about 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

Good job America. And the following are some more facts from one of my previous articles about how our massively bloated trade deficit is absolutely killing our economy...

-There are less Americans working in manufacturing today than there was in 1950 even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then.

-Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

-When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars. By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.

-Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately 6 million dollars (million with a little "m") for the entire year. In 2012, our trade deficit with China was 315 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.

-According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

-According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.

Unfortunately, most Americans never stop to think about what happens when we buy stuff from China.

When we buy stuff from them, our money goes over there.

At this point, they are sitting on trillions of our dollars and they have purchased more than a trillion dollars of our debt.

Up until now, Chinese demand for our dollars has helped keep the value of the U.S. dollar artificially high. This is one of the reasons why Wal-Mart can sell you those Chinese imports so inexpensively.

And up until now, Chinese demand for our debt has helped keep long-term interest rates artificially low. So the U.S. government has been able to borrow money at ridiculously low interest rates and U.S. home buyers have been able to get mortgage rates that are well below the real rate of inflation.

But no irrational state of affairs ever lasts indefinitely, and the Chinese recently announced that they are going to quit stockpiling U.S. dollars. Many analysts believe that this means that the Chinese will soon stop stockpiling U.S. debt as well.

So enjoy those super cheap "Black Friday specials" while they last. That era is rapidly coming to an end.

Now that the Chinese have stolen tens of thousands of our businesses, millions of our jobs and trillions of our dollars, perhaps they feel that there is not much more looting to be done. Our economic infrastructure has been essentially gutted at this point. Moving forward, China can afford to let the value of the U.S. dollar fall and the value of their own currency rise because even Barack Obama admits that "those jobs are never coming back".

And every single American that went shopping on Black Friday and bought Chinese-made goods actively participated in the ongoing destruction of the U.S. economy.

Good job America. You are a nation that is utterly consumed by materialism and greed, and you don't even realize that you are destroying yourself with your own foolishness.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: blackfriday; mammon; mammonism; materialism; thanksgiving
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To: Mastador1

Sorry but it is best to realize that this vile man was elected twice. America has changed.


21 posted on 11/29/2013 5:23:03 PM PST by allendale
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To: a fool in paradise

Read it, it’ll make you chuckle and gasp at the same time.


22 posted on 11/29/2013 5:23:33 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet ("Of the 4 wars in my lifetime none came about because the US was too strong." Reagan)
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To: SeekAndFind
Black Friday: A Shameful Orgy Of Materialism For A Morally Bankrupt Nation

A morally bankrupt nation might be a great overstatement.

Only some subcultures are represented among the dysfunctional. Granted, the Obama Medicaid subculture is close to the 50% mark, but if you're a normal, employed, net-income-tax paying American, I very much doubt that watching the mobs on TV you'll see any of your neighbors there.

23 posted on 11/29/2013 5:25:39 PM PST by publius911 ( At least Nixon had the good grace to resign!)
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To: Usagi_yo

Is that somehow a good thing?

Wouldn’t your life be simpler if you took-in 8% of your annual gross monthly January-November, and then 12% in December?


24 posted on 11/29/2013 5:29:15 PM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: a fool in paradise

The headline certainly describes communist utopias


25 posted on 11/29/2013 5:31:05 PM PST by GeronL (Extra Large Cheesy Over-Stuffed Hobbit)
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To: Sacajaweau

****The women are cleaning up and it seems it won’t end. ***

WHAT! WOMEN CLEAN UP AFTER? Wait till I tell the wife! No wonder I have dish pan hands!


26 posted on 11/29/2013 5:33:26 PM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Sometimes you need 7+ more ammo. LOTS MORE.)
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To: Gluteus Maximus

I wouldn’t have been there, but I was paid to be there. Crowd dynamics can be pretty scary.


27 posted on 11/29/2013 5:33:57 PM PST by refreshed
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To: SeekAndFind

Went to a Walmart Express today. Took no time to find a parking spot, was in the store maybe five minutes, found what I needed and was checked out within three minutes. No lines anywhere.

But then that was an express.

WHAT CROWDS!


28 posted on 11/29/2013 5:35:22 PM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Sometimes you need 7+ more ammo. LOTS MORE.)
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To: Revolting cat!

The Obama “Hope” shirt, while probably Photoshopped, is priceless in that picture.


29 posted on 11/29/2013 5:35:32 PM PST by Washi
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To: SeekAndFind

If people are given free crap long enough, they will come to feel entitled to free crap and defend that entitlement violently.


30 posted on 11/29/2013 5:36:43 PM PST by Washi
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To: SeekAndFind
"Black Friday is the day when millions of average Americans wait outside retail stores in the middle of the night in the freezing cold to spend more money that they do not have for more cheap Chinese-made products that they do not need."

Sums it up with bighting truth. Thanksgiving is still my most cherished holiday.

Christ wasn't born on Dec 25th based on scripture (probably early October Sukkos, Feast of Booths, Feast of Tabernacles.

I don't mind the commemorative holiday per se, but, like the word "gay", the entire season has been so totally co-opted that I think it's unsalvageable.

31 posted on 11/29/2013 5:42:39 PM PST by uncommonsense (Liberals see what they believe; Conservatives believe what they see.)
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To: SeekAndFind
What a crock of superficial moralizing! In a country of 316 million people, a few dozen ugly incidents on one day are taken as characteristic of the entire country and attached to a screed about US overspending debt and China's predatory mercantilism as a success.

Nevertheless, context matters. The supposed Black Friday "orgy of materialism" comes immediately after Americans gather with family to celebrate and give thanks for their blessings. Moreover, most of the ensuing seasonal spending is intended to provide Christmas gifts for family and friends, with children to be especially laden with gifts. Are these really so bad as national observances and traditions?

As for China, most of the ambitious and the wealthy there would prefer to emigrate and take US residence and citizenship if they could. As it is, with personal rights and property insecure in China, hundreds of billions of dollars in cash is sent abroad every year. China has a host of problems that diminish its attractiveness as a place to live and cloud its future.

Among the Chinese business elite, American made goods and the lifestyle that they signify are in great demand. A relative who does business in China tells me of associates who proudly keep and display American price tags and "Made in America" tags on home furnishings and clothing. They regard American made items as having better quality and design than Chinese counterparts.

There are entire residential real estate developments in China that attempt to replicate American style subdivisions and commercial space with Western and cowboy themes and street signage in English. For the Chinese, America means freedom -- and that is something we ought to keep in mind, including when a few Americans go overboard on Black Friday.

32 posted on 11/29/2013 5:44:55 PM PST by Rockingham
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To: SeekAndFind

Yeah, the nun getting trampled at the Black Friday sale at the religious store kinda makes that clear...


33 posted on 11/29/2013 5:47:53 PM PST by bigbob (The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. Abraham Lincoln)
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To: a fool in paradise

I did enjoy that movie when it came out.


34 posted on 11/29/2013 5:48:02 PM PST by ansel12 ( Ben Bradlee-JFK told me that "he was all for people's solving their problems by abortion".)
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To: Rockingham

35 posted on 11/29/2013 5:48:26 PM PST by Revolting cat! (Bad things are wrong! Ice cream is delicious!)
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To: Rockingham

36 posted on 11/29/2013 5:49:31 PM PST by Revolting cat! (Bad things are wrong! Ice cream is delicious!)
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To: refreshed

If it’s your job then what can you do? To be sure. No offense meant. I certainly avoid crowds, especially in those instances when a significant “Amish” contingent is expected. Just don’t go. It’s never worth it.


37 posted on 11/29/2013 5:49:45 PM PST by Gluteus Maximus
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To: Mastador1; allendale
"Just because obamaramadingdong “received” 52% of the vote does not mean that 52% of the voters cast a ballot for him."

My vote for quote of the day (and week)

38 posted on 11/29/2013 5:49:56 PM PST by uncommonsense (Liberals see what they believe; Conservatives believe what they see.)
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To: SeekAndFind

I prefer to shop at businesses whose primary purpose is to be profitable.


39 posted on 11/29/2013 5:50:36 PM PST by GSWarrior
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
I need to read more Terry Southern sometime. I have read a posthumous collection of writings (articles, remembrances, unpublished pieces).
40 posted on 11/29/2013 5:54:10 PM PST by a fool in paradise (America 2013 - STUCK ON STUPID)
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