Shopping: From "fugue state" to "essentials-only mode"

Recession Can Change a Way of Life

Excerpts:

Many studies have shown that when a job is harder to find or less lucrative, people spend more time on self-improvement and relatively inexpensive amusements. During the Depression of the 1930s, that meant listening to the radio and playing parlor and board games, sometimes in lieu of a glamorous night on the town. These stay-at-home tendencies persisted through at least the 1950s.

In today’s recession, we can also expect to turn to less expensive activities — and maybe to keep those habits for years. They may take the form of greater interest in free content on the Internet and the simple pleasures of a daily walk, instead of expensive vacations ...

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Recessions and depressions, of course, are not good for mental health. But it is less widely known that in the United States and other affluent countries, physical health seems to improve, on average, during a downturn. Sure, it’s stressful to miss a paycheck, but eliminating the stresses of a job may have some beneficial effects. Perhaps more important, people may take fewer car trips, thus lowering the risk of accidents, and spend less on alcohol and tobacco. They also have more time for exercise and sleep, and tend to choose home cooking over fast food.

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In addition to trying to get out of the recession — our first priority — many of us will be making do with less and relying more on ourselves and our families. The social changes may well be the next big story of this recession.

Comment: Maybe some of these changes will be good in the long run! Next article highlights the Mall of America (from the NYTimes):

Our Love Affair With Malls Is on the Rocks

Excerpt:

... [The] Mall of America [is] a convenient starting point for rethinking the 50-year marriage between the American shopper and the American mall.

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Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of the problem: We are reliably informed that whatever part of the economic crisis can’t be pinned on Wall Street — or on mortgage-related financial insanity — can be pinned on consumers who overspent. But personal consumption amounts to some 70 percent of the American economy. So if we don’t spend, we don’t recover. Fiscal health isn’t possible until money is again sloshing into cash registers, including those at this mall and every other retailer.

In other words, shopping was part of the problem and now it’s part of the cure. And once we’re cured, economists report, we really need to learn how to save, which suggests that we will need to quit shopping again.

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At Web sites like deadmalls.com, the carcasses of these abandoned buildings are photographed and toe-tagged, along with tributes from former shoppers. All this as the worst retail environment in decades continues to sag in a sickly economy.

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The economic crisis has caused shoppers to go into an essentials-only mode. But the mall has never trafficked in essentials. You can’t, for instance, fill a prescription at the Mall of America, because it doesn’t have a pharmacy. You can, however, buy a vanilla hazelnut fragrance candle in the shape of a miniature cooking skillet. Or a $13 baseball hat that looks as though it’s made of cheddar cheese. A store called Corda-Roy’s sells a variety of bean bags that convert into beds. Magnet Max sells a battery-operated guinea pig that runs continuously on a spinning exercise wheel.

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SPEND enough hours in the Mall of America and you wind up in a sort of fugue state in which the specifics of time and place turn fuzzy. The hope, one assumes, is that you’ll spend more freely in this alternative universe of nonstop distractions.

Comment: From deadmalls.com view the story of Western Woods Mall (Cincinnati) where I worked as a shoe salesmen at Bakers Shoes in the late '60s. Re: "shopping was part of the problem and now it’s part of the cure": A low savings rate is the problem. Tax policies that "disincent" (deter) savings and investment hurt individuals and our society in the long run. This article is somewhat dated (January 2006) but discusses that issue: U.S. savings rate hits lowest level since 1933 - Consumers depleting savings to buy cars, other big-ticket items: "The Commerce Department reported Monday that the savings rate fell into negative territory at minus 0.5 percent, meaning that Americans not only spent all of their after-tax income last year but had to dip into previous savings or increase borrowing. The savings rate has been negative for an entire year only twice before — in 1932 and 1933 — two years when the country was struggling to cope with the Great Depression, a time of massive business failures and job layoffs."