Posted on 08/09/2009 10:54:48 AM PDT by Kaslin
The resistance is well underway.
Affluent Americans – defined as the top 20 percent of U.S. households by income – spent about 10 percent less in 2008 than they did in 2007, according to a study by luxury-goods researcher Unity Marketing. And those households with incomes of $250,000 or more are cutting back on spending even more than all affluent households overall. 54 percent of these consumers are spending even less in 2009 than in 2008.
Those $250,000+ earners, threatened and demonized by President Obama, are retaliating with their most powerful and damaging weapon: not spending. It is a quiet, deliberate, determined, very real resistance.
To be sure, some of the cutbacks in spending are related to investment losses, job losses and actual reduction of spending capacity. But much more has nothing whatsoever to do with the ability to spend – only with the unwillingness to spend.
Most in media do not understand the reality of this deliberately reduced and postponed spending as a political resistance movement. But that’s what it is. I’ve talked to many affluent entrepreneurs and professionals who have worked hard for years to finally reach their present income levels. They are intentionally refusing to spend money as a means of protest.
I was recently thinking about replacing my Ford Explorer with a new SUV, at minimum a new Explorer, but perhaps a Lincoln Navigator or Cadillac Escalade. The day Obama first trumpeted the proposed 5.4 percent tax surcharge on gross income of us high-productivity, high-responsibility, high income earners I changed my mind. Instead I spent $514.00 getting a little fender ding months old fixed, paint scratches touched up and the car detailed. The $30,000.00 or $40,000.00 I would have spent on the new car – and I’m a cash buyer – can sleep idly in the bank until the man who has chosen me as his target is gone. And I view it as deliberately depriving him of spending he desperately needs to help his economy. He needs me and others like me buying a new car a whole lot more than I need one.
This is also the first calendar year in at least a decade in which I’ve gone 7 months without buying so much as a single stitch of new clothing. Not a necktie, not a sports-jacket, not a shoelace. Not because I lack the financial ability. And not because I lack interest. I usually buy at least a few new things each season, and for my speaking engagements, I’m actually overdue a new suit. A store I patronize even advertised a remarkably attractive offer last week, offering two free suits with purchase of one. But I will not give the president even a dime of help. I have joined the Affluent Resistance Movement.
Business owners, CEO’s and entrepreneurs are resistors too. Fred Smith at Federal Express has outright stated his company’s order for a fleet of jets is pending and subject to cancellation should the speed-to-unionization scheme Obama supports be enacted – in effect, another epic tax on businesses like his. More CEOs need to step up and make similar threats. If the President will threaten business, why shouldn’t business threaten back?
Together, those in the resistance should all go public, and tell the affected merchants, service providers and professionals why. Business leaders can explain to their vendors that the money not spent with them is political resistance. If those of us in the $250,000+ targeted group, and those who lead companies small and large, all cut spending by yet another 10 percent or 20 percent, we can protest more emphatically than if we all picked up placards and marched up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. We can demonstrate that no power trumps the power of the purse.
It pains me greatly to suggest this, since I advise businesses on marketing and I am paid to help them boost sales. But desperate times demand desperate measures. So I say: send a message. Join the resistance. Buy nothing.
Hire at will, fire at will. Funny thing about society today. It’s almost impossible to fire somebody for cause. It’s the simplest thing in the world to fire them for no cause. GDO. It’s in the bible.
Thanks for your lack of emails.
My trophy wife can become Nurse Rachet when she feels it is necessary.
To keep her happy, I turned off the power to the computer, printer and DSL modem until yesterday.
That's a good point. Kennedy writes
The $30,000.00 or $40,000.00 I would have spent on the new car – and I’m a cash buyer – can sleep idly in the bank until the man who has chosen me as his target is gone. And I view it as deliberately depriving him of spending he desperately needs to help his economy. He needs me and others like me buying a new car a whole lot more than I need one.
The problem with his tactic is that, if Bambi's policies cause inflation, Kennedy's money will melt away as it sleeps idly, even as his need to replace his wheels grows.
In his article, Kennedy focuses on foregone consumption spending. But if you have assets to preserve, once you've stocked up on those necessities for a SHTF scenario, the real problem is to buy assets that will grow in dollar-denominated price and dividends faster than inflation.
Hey, Grampa! :^D
BUMP that !!!
I was in WallyWorld the other day and their BTS section is still fully stocked and in reasonable order. Usually by now (a week before school starts) it looks like the scraps the piranhas left from a cow. Only a few registers open, too.
I took a "vacation" (actually, a long weekend at the In-Laws) this past weekend. Place is in the middle of a small resort town.
Town should have been mobbed (mid-summer, good weather, weekend). Not even close. I'd call things "steady" but not "busy". For instance, we went out to eat on Friday night (local place, Great BBQ + Blackberry Cobbler). We just walked in at 6:00pm and sat down right down. I've never had that happen before, in the 10 years or so Mrs WBill and I have been going there. All of the touristy shops had people in them, but I don't think I ever saw anyone buying anything.
I'd have to include myself on that list as well. Dinner out Friday was the "Vacation Splurge", as I've just taken a 10% paycut. Not too much in the way of discretionary funds floating around in my wallet.
Well yes, we are certainly in agreement here, somehow I may have given you the wrong impression but I hope not. Speaking of Dingell I have an old friend, basically that I grew up with, who works with/for/around Dingell, very disappointing. And yet my friend who had attained a fairly high position in the NM highway dept. resigned because of ethical reasons! Go figure.
I’m assuming that his “ethics” were based on truth and honesty but now I’m puzzled. You would think that he could also see some large gaps in the ethics of the Dingell bunch...
Listening, reading, watching and experiencing the assault on us (conservatives in general) by this administration, the open hostility displayed and parroted by the quislings in the administration and the MSM leads me to the conclusion that this is not going to end the way they (the administation) thought it might—peaceably or at least by us going quietly into the night. But what I’ve seen time and again are these same public trough feeders re-elected time and again. There have been a few exceptions but they march on.
And for the sake of my children and especially my grandchildren I won’t shrink from this fight either. How is it that we could see this coming for so long and so many seem so flummoxed?
An no, I have never belonged to AARP nor will I ever of course. After the first mailout to me 17 years ago, with a Marks-a-lot I drew a black border, skull and crossbones with the word “SOCIALIST!” in the center, that was the only thing I ever received from them. I thought, wow, they do look at this stuff sometimes.
Regards,
“This is also the first calendar year in at least a decade in which I’ve gone 7 months without buying so much as a single stitch of new clothing.”
I did have to buy clothes this year because I lost nearly 50 lbs in a fight with cancer last year (I feel great, though!). I bought nearly all of it in small businesses, or at Mervyn’s and Gottschalks which both sadly went out of business. That meant that the money did not go to buy new goods but to pay off the companies’ debts. I also shop at second hand stores. No more Walmart for me after their meetings with 0banana about DMV-style health care.
LOL Dave, didn’t know you had a Trophy Wife, but hope she’s the ‘original’! Thanks for pinging.
She is the one and only original.
Remember how we used to say... “Then the terrorists have already won!” Well??? (grin)
[She is the one and only original.]
That is lovely Dave, and thus - you must be a Trophy Husband!
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