Posted on 11/25/2011 1:27:16 PM PST by NYer
The only thing that bugs me is that they take a lot of useful stuff off the shelves at this time of year to make room for stupid stuff like red and green mittens.
We are having a bit of indian summer here today, I have roses blooming and if I were to go to walmart today to get some trimmer line for the weed whacker, there would be none to be found.
I refuse to participate in any coerced shopping events. I’ll do what I usually do, wait until three days before Christmas and then panic.
Love it!
I hate black ice.
I made the mistake of visiting Canada on Boxing Day a couple of years ago. I’d forgotten, because we don’t celebrate it here. What a madhouse! It took three hours at the border crossing to get back to the states.
Yup, same here. Can't say I have ever gone shopping on a Black Friday. Nothing would get me to one of these Thanksgiving night at midnight events.
Excerpt:
. . . capitalism - the word and the concept - was the brainchild of Karl Marx. As well as offering an “-ism” opposite his own -ism, it describes a rigid class society in which one class possesses the means of production, the other nothing except its labor. The latter class is called “The Proletariat” who, as Lenin declared, can lose nothing but its chains when it rises against the oppressor.
This is not the place to argue whether capitalism was the appropriate way to describe certain European societies. The point is that owning things has always been open to Americans. The moment you buy one share of stock, you part-own “means of production,” not to mention owning your home and arriving at your place of work in your own automobile - a very American image.
America never had a proletariat.
In that case, America could not have been a capitalist country.
To the best of my knowledge, no one has redefined capitalism after Marx, and it is inappropriate to use a word whose meaning is different from what the speaker has in mind.
Perhaps what we have in America is best described as a free-enterprise system.
(snip)
- Balint Vazsonyi -
http://balintvazsonyi.org/shns/shns100202.html
I don’t do it, but I think it’s great.
As far as being exhausted and leaving family, the author has obviously never been in a family like mine. Nothing gets a bunch of women excited like running out and getting a great sale.
People I know get up and get out, and have a great time together. They plan for it together, arrange things together, pile in the car and coordinate the running. They come home with piles of stuff, excited and talking and ready for lunch.
There is something inherently conservative and capitalist about getting out and getting great deals, and saving money!
I think it was last year, maybe two years ago, when I went on a Black Friday late morning to the neighbourhood Home Depot (yes, these places are more neighbourhood than 7 Elevens these days) to get some chingaletta, saw the line to the register of 40+ toy hunters, and though the chingaletta was still on the shelf, I said “frack it!”, and left.
Capitalism, yes. Bravo! But I´d rather stay home in my pajamas all day.
“I did find a couple of good online deals today...”
You are such a TEASE! We won’t be scrooges and tell anyone... so what are the good deals you found?
It’s not for me. My wife has gone to bump elbows with the masses. I think it’s nuts.
I can do that. But I have a problem. My bottle of rum is larger than my carton of eggnog. :-P
People trampling each other to death for made-in-China toasters and conservatives have no problem with it because it’s “capitalism”...
There are no toasters made in the USA anymore
http://madebyyankees.com/2008/04/20/still-no-toaster-made-in-usa/
The only problem with Capitalism is it tends to create too few capitalists.
Oh but that cheap cheap toaster will sure as hell have a lot of hidden costs further up the road.
That ride is ... America?
We can comment on it, can boycott it, but we can’t stop it.
Aquisition is what drives the country’s economy.
Capitalism is fine, but this has become a media-exploited freak show.
I read the European press, and all over the world they are reporting the incident with the woman who pepper-sprayed her competitors and telling their readers how many Americans were trampled during the Black Friday event.
The best thing a store could do for its future is to announce that it won’t do this. These loss leaders probably don’t make them that much money anyway, and if they just open at 9:00 am on Friday with a few specials and scattered reductions, they’ll probably make more.
We look like the Muslims going around gashing ourselves on the head on whatever their idiotic moloch holiday is where they do that.
I had to go to Walmart this morning for basic groceries. The only difference between this and any other weekday morning was more school-age children with their parents, since public schools were off. Everyone was as polite and cheerful as always ... I live in a nice place!
Petsmart had dog beds half-off, but that was still do much when the dog doesn’t *really* need a new one.
Well said.
God bless!
I will always remember that scene in “They Live” when he puts on the glasses and sees the money is actually printed with “This is your God!” but you couldn’t see it without the glasses... except subliminally.
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