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 thats what it is. Ive 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 Im 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 Ive 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, Im 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, CEOs and entrepreneurs are resistors too. Fred Smith at Federal Express has outright stated his companys 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 shouldnt 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.
Fire all Obama supporters...if any of them work.
If we do not get rid of Obama there will be no America. I would rather still have America, even if it is ruins. We can rebuild it better.
Buy nothing and max out your IRA and 401(k) contributions keeping your money out of the governmeents hands. Lower your withholdings so you break even in April, put the additional “take-home” in tax deferred savings.
I did the same with guns and ammo. Since I moved from California I’ve been able to own a more diversified group of firearms.
Having been a member of the resistance for years, I can't take that advice.
We are done with saving, scrimping & making do. This is no longer the America where that is admirable or even wise. It only makes you the target of higher taxes, so you can foot the bills that Obama is ringing up at an unprecedented rate. And if you think ANY of the current administration's programs will be rescinded by the next administration, you are far more optimistic than I.
Your wealth (no matter how well you guard it) is no longer your own. And day by day, it will be even more of a target by the wealth re-distributors. Spend it yourself or watch others appropriate it & spend it for you.
lol
I have cut back spending considerably.
Fine with me...Hussein gets as little from me as possible, because he will be taking from me as much as possible.
Economically Retarded is the best way to describe him and his followers.
......I am making her a cutting board......
You are following the advice of that great American economist, Professor Walter E Williams, who set the example by giving his wife an new ironing board cover and some vacuum cleaner bags.
Thanks, and understood. The logic is impeccable for a SHTF situation.
It’s not political for me. We’ve been trimming debt, increasing available cash for a while now.
The detached garage really needs new siding. But the quotes came back at 4K or more, we bought a hundred bucks’ of paint and did a patch job.
If we need something big, we look for a sale and free financing.
It’s about the anti-Christ Obama, but it’s not political. I just think that he’s harming the recovery and likely setting us up for a double-dip recession, among other problems down the road.
Maybe it is sort of like radiation on cancer. The wealth of the country is the host to the parasitic socialists who are using it to grow?
Until some bureaucrat finds an exotic slug and places it on an endangered species list rendering your land off-limits to everyone, including you. How many millions of acres have been confiscated as "wetlands?"
It will get you started with a main page and a second page. It is really easy to do.
Check out my Gun Rights & Politics Page
Good Hunting... from Varmint Al
Maybe having an ‘affluent lifestyle’ isn’t the most important thing right now.
The pain of keeping the recession going, until Obama leaves, is temporary. The pain that will be caused by all of the programs Obama is trying to put in place, will be permanent. If Obama succeeds, the American middle class will be wiped out, and we will never be free again (until the next revolution).
:>)
Awesome-Thanks
Excellent advice imho.
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Advice I can easily follow since my income has shrunk so much in recent years.
Exactly. There is more and more chatter on the internet about a ‘bank holiday’ within the next 6 months.
Buy durable good and things that will be easy to barter with.
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