Entry #9: Oh Dear, Socialite Wears 10 Year Old Dress

People, please. Or perhaps I should say, newspaper people, puhleese. The days of conspicuous consumption are over! A new more altruistic time is upon us! Rather than compulsive shopping, it’s the era of responsible spending! Oh for god's sake, did everyone lose their minds?

Today’s missive is shaping up to be a rant. And it is directed at the New York Times. My hometown paper that I love. But yesterday, above the fold, on the front page, this headline: "Extravagance Has Its Limits As Belt-Tightening Trickles Up".

Really? I'm supposed to have sympathy for socialites and other well employed people who have to spend less than they earn? Was I also meant to have envied them their extravagant lives prior to the tsunami? Give me a freaking break. Where is the voice of the real people who were responsible pre-tsunami and are still responsible -and still spending, therefore keeping the economy going as it were - post-tsunami.

Today's NYT has an interesting juxtaposition of above the fold headlines: "As Jobs Vanish, Motel Rooms Become Home" with a heart-wrenching photo of nice middle class kids sharing a bed in room jammed with stuff, placed next to the headline: "Madoff Will Plead Guilty; Faces Life for Vast Swindle".

Surely I am not the only one to see the problem here, am I? Am sure Times did not mean to be ironic. That's the exact problem. They are serious.

Here's the shadow storyline that drove the shadow economy: let swindlers get away with bilking investors - separating fools from their money - for as long as possible, than bemoan the fact that individuals pay by giving up lives they couldn't afford in the first place. Don't mean to be cold but, if it's too good to be true than it's TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE and 1+1 does not = 3 (the arithmetic many seem to have embraced over the last 20 years) instead of the depression era generation's 1+1 = I can't afford to buy that right now I will have to save for it and, dear heaven help me, wait (delay gratification).

That's what I think is missing from the current mainstream story line - a lot of people knew the emperor was naked, the financial system was headed for a breakdown and that they were over leveraged. A lot of people gambled and lost. It would be far better for America if we were to simply acknowledge this fact, learn from it and move on rather than bemoan the destruction (we brought on ourselves) and proclaim the death of a lifestyle that is well known not to deliver fulfillment.

And hopefully we won't forget that living well does not require stuff and does require responsibility for self and others - which includes holding self and others accountable through political and civic action - and a meaningful free press.