Posted on 12/29/2002 5:52:26 PM PST by summer
Xmas Sales Did Not Tank
So why is everyone reporting that they did?
By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, December 26, 2002, at 1:51 PM PT
Journalists who write about government spending get clobbered on a regular basis for using the term "budget cut" to describe a smaller-than-expected rate of increase. Why don't business writers get clobbered for doing the same thing when they tally holiday spending? "Retailers Face Worst Holiday in 30 Years," proclaimed the Washington Post on Dec. 24. "Shoppers had told polling organizations earlier that they would spend less this year than last year, and they probably did," reported the New York Times on Dec. 25. Even the financially sophisticated Wall Street Journal ran a Dec. 26 Associated Press story with the misleading headline, "Retailers Fear Weakest Sales in Decades as Final Rush Fades."
A close reading of any of these stories makes clear that more U.S. dollars were spent buying holiday gifts this year than in any previous year since the birth of Jesus Christ. Or at least, that's what the estimates given most credence by these newspapers say. The AP and the Post cite the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd., as estimating a 1.5 percent increase. The Times cites Charles Hill, research director at Thomson First Call, as estimating a 1 percent increase.
The business press pegged the 2002 holiday shopping season the "worst in 30 years" not because sales declined, but because sales increased by a smaller-than-expected percentage. A survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers found a median expected increase of 2 percent. Compared to that, 1 percent or 1.5 percent is obviously disappointing. Last year, holiday sales increased 2.3 percent over the previous year's. One or 1.5 percent is clearly a smaller rate of increase than 2.3 percent. But it's inaccurate to call a smaller rate of increase "less" spending.
It is true that this year's holiday spending didn't keep pace with this year's overall rate of inflation. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index rose about 2 percent over the past year. Corrected for inflation, then, holiday spending declined somewhere between 0.5 percent and 1 percent. Maybe people are spending less on presents so they can spend more on health care, whose cost rose 5 percent over the past year. At any rate, if people this year spent 0.5 to 1 percent less in "real" (i.e., after-inflation) dollars than they did in 2001, an accurate way to summarize that would be to say, "People spent about as much this year as they did last year buying Christmas presents."
[Update, Dec. 27: The New York Times today made "holiday sales tank" the lead story on Page One.]
Cuz we have a Repub prez. Hey get with the program ;-)
We know Wal-Mart and the other retailers are doing well, now how about the manufaturing sector?
Strange.
Yeah... for a second there I thought I was reading something from The Onion.
Wal-Mart should have numbers out... has anybody seen 'em? They had day-after-Thanksgiving numbers out the day after. Surely they've released some numbers since then. Here's what I found so far:
The world's top retailer, Wal-Mart, lowered its sales forecast for December to a two to three percent increase over the same period last year, just two weeks after predicting a three to five percent increase.It sounds to me like you nailed it: they're up, just not as much as they had planned. |
According to this philosophy, Tom Daschle got a pay cut when they voted themselves their last pay increase.
It's Doublespeak, and it's aimed at decreasing the current administration's popularity.
The stores love them. They know they won't have a check bounce.
"Every store we went to was packed with HISPANICS buying everything in sight. They have cash."
Last year, a typical person bought 200 widgets each for $1 each, spending $200.
This year, the same person spend $203, and was able to purchase 199 widgets. This is due to the fact that spending was up 1.5%, but consumer prices rose 2%, so people spent slightly more, but received slightly less. It was a blah year. Not terrible, but nothing to call home to mom about either.
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This is interesting. Like most people, I hadn't been paying much attention to retail sales figures, so I was a mark for the Democrats' headline writer, who apparently wants me to think that things are going down the drain.