By MamaLiberty
Martha Stewart on the Amazon Effect: Need to get people into stores, they are really suffering According to Stewart, Black Friday sales help get consumers into the stores, but shoppers often end up buying more than they plan on.They’re not going to buy just the things that are sale, they’re going to buy other things too, that’s what the merchants need.”
The rich and famous Martha seems to understand that people buy more than they plan to… but is obviously more concerned with the fate of the stores than the budgets of the customers. Both are equally important, of course, but too few are looking at the truth of the whole thing: heavy handed government manipulation of the economy instead of a free market where both business and customers benefit.
An alarming number of shoppers are still paying off debt from last Christmas
And holiday-induced debt is a growing problem. Although survey respondents say they plan to spend roughly the same amount as they spent last year, 24 percent of shoppers say they overspent in 2016, while 27 percent admit to not making a budget at all. And holiday-induced debt is a growing problem.
There are a few more jobs this year, though the Bureau of Labor puts a rosy varnish on it, but these numbers are misleading. How many people are no longer looking for a job? How many are seriously under-employed? How many are one paycheck away from homelessness?
Small businesses and farms continue to fail. There are many reasons for this, of course, but few of the business reports are honest enough to say anything at all about two of the more obvious reasons, that being taxes and regulations.
This Is The State Of Small Business Failure In The U.S. Things are tough out there for new businesses. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Business Employment Dynamics, the number of businesses surviving past the first year has dropped from 569,419 in 1994 to 106,789 in 2016. Of the small businesses that opened in March 2015, only 79.9% made it to March 2016. Only about half make it to the fifth year. Fifty-one percent of businesses started in 2011 made it to 2016.
So, the government and celebrities are ignoring all that, demanding that people go out and spend, spend, spend as if more and more debt is perfectly reasonable. After all, people have the example of every non-voluntary government on earth to guide them… borrowing is “good,” and bankruptcy is normal… Reality is just so boring…
Nobody asked for my opinion, of course, but since you are reading this I’ll assume you will at least give it a thought.
Pay off your debt and resolve to borrow no more. Your Christmas can be bright and full of cheer without hundreds of dollars worth of more STUFF, and your new year will be far brighter without more debts to worry about.
The Price of Liberty 