I work at a bookstore (the second job I just got after failing to find a better job. yay for the economy!) and apparently sales are up and it is expected to be a good year for places selling small-ticket items like books and CDs. 

At least I have security at ONE of my crappy jobs!

Make art.

Wonder what they’d think about gift certificates to Good Vibrations, which are more fun but send the same message? 

I gave one as a wedding gift once, and it was very much appreciated, jokes about “marital aids” aside.

That said, I think a good “hard times” gift is a gift certificate to a store that has a whole lot of “need” items as well as “want” items.  It kind of pulls some of the value judgment issues about how “you” should use “my” money because you are poor out of play.

This is a totally un-exciting and impersonal gift but I’m back in school and money is tight so it was greatly appreciated.  My parents bought me a gift card for a local grocery store for my birthday.  It was such a relief to be able to re-stock the pantry!

One thing to keep in mind…in Connecticut, we’re getting a lot of warnings about gift cards for store chains that are in rough financial shape. If you have a gift card for a store like Linens’n'Things, you might not be able to spend it after the holidays, if your local store is going out of business.

Aside from that, I can think of a few good basic things: cookware, one of those sets of plastic food storage containers in various sizes, a good basic cookbook, a spice giftpack.

“smaller-ticket, practical items like blenders and video games”

In defense of blenders and video games, the reporter seems to have a completely different definition of “practical” than I do.

I like getting truly practical gifts the best, even in relatively good economic times. My mom renews my extended medical coverage for my birthday and I’m thrilled. If some necessities are taken care of, I have more freedom to spend my own money on things that I really want.

When so many other things are going horribly, it’s hard to get over-concernced about retailers & their needs.

This is why we need universal health care, decent unemployment benefits and the rest of the safety net. The industrial sector of selling people stuff they don’t need or really want (including the making of the stuff, the advertising of the stuff, the building of the stores, warehouses, roads and distribution systems) has gotten way too big in the past pick-your-interval, and it will be good for it to be smaller. But the costs of unwinding all the misinvestments that have been made up to this point are daunting—bad enough to almost make people not want to do it. Same thing for the mcmansion industry, the medical-administration industry and gosh knows what else.

If we had a real safety net, the resistance to fixing the structure of our economy could be so much lower. Instead of getting you screwed for years or for life, losing a job to structural changes should be like losing your big gig if you’re a right-wing apparatchik: embarrassing and inconvenient, but not a real threat to your standard of living.

Paul couldn’t be more correct.

The Good Vibrations vs Planned Parenthood comparison is interesting, though perhaps not for the reason you intended.  Good Vibrations largely bypasses the consequences of sex (sure, they sell condoms, but it doesn’t seem like that’s what most people go there to buy), while Planned Parenthood makes those consequences the very core of their organization.

Everyone likes fantasy, which is partly what GV is selling. 
No one, on the other hand, likes a “fallen woman.”

And here we are, where a gift certificate to an organization that offers health exams and birth control is less appropriate than a technicolor dildo.  Go figure.

In defense of blenders and video games, the reporter seems to have a completely different definition of “practical” than I do.

Agreed, I love video games, but I don’t see anything practical about them.  Until a Black Friday ad features sacks of rice, nothing there is terribly practical.

To be fair, PP doesn’t just look after the consequences of sex. They also see to unglamorous maintenance that is a prerequisite for a vigorous sex life—and a vigorous life, in general.

Think of PP as the pit crew on the road to sexual satisfaction.

because right now the trend for cheap, throwaway goods tends to overwhelm everything, including the electronics market

And people like me and my husband already despise that.

Of course, our “black weekend” purchases were a couple of pairs of shoes (to replace the 10+ year old shoes I have that are finally giving up the ghost) and some work slacks that’ll hopefully last the both of us a couple years at least.  He’s been researching GPS units because his 5-year-old handheld has given out. And both our amazon lists—which we’d like relatives to purchase from—mainly consist of books and movies.

Oh, and the kid is “getting” a Thomas train table + track we got from a neighbor who was putting them to the curb.  (I’m also picking up a couple of additional packs of track, because hers has been much abused.) The train table will be labeled as from her, and the new track from us. A couple of new games from us, and a desk/easel. And all this stuff better last a couple of years at least.

Agreed. I didn’t mean that a PP gift certificate was necessarily appropriate gift material.

...or that PP would object to people spending gift dollars on the fun side of sex.

If we had a real safety net, the resistance to fixing the structure of our economy could be so much lower.

Also, what paul said.  It’s clear that this situation means we need to move to an economy where large sections of it are stabilized by public investment, and health care is the logical place to start.  It would protect us from having to buy VCRs as a patriotic duty.

Yeah, great points Paul & Amanda. Unfortunately, everything is connected.

That said, I think a good “hard times” gift is a gift certificate to a store that has a whole lot of “need” items as well as “want” items.

Target gift certificates for everyone!!

On a serious note, I suspect one of the problems for retailers is they are luring people into buying with such steep discounts that even if people are spending more, the margins are really poor.

We went out and bought a bed today for my kid, who is three and was still sleeping in his crib. We got a twin over full bunk bed because we’re planning to buy ourselves a new bed as well, but have nowhere to store our old mattress and don’t want to throw away a still decent, but old and too small mattress. The bed, combined with the twin mattress and delivery, came to $650. Which is way more than we would normally spend on the kid for his birthday and Christmas and Hannukah combined (which is how we’re considering the bed), so for us, we’re spending more than normal. But it was a deep, deep discount. I don’t think the store made that much off it. Multiply this kind of trend by thousands or millions of shoppers.

Similarly, when we went into BedMart to look for mattresses for ourselves, we were looking at $1500 mattresses that had been floor models and were going for $600. Good for us. Bad for them.

My suggestions:

* a coat that is sturdy enough to last several years and good enough looking that they’ll actually wear it that long

* a well-made cooking tool (note that well-made does not have to = expensive - I got a good and heavy KitchenAid nonstick pan from Target for $30 last year) or good cookbook, as someone wisely mentioned above

* public transit passes, for the less-sentimentally inclined

* a board game or two that they’re likely to enjoy playing - many hours entertainment for the cost of 2 or 3 movie tickets

* Along those lines, one of the cheaper Netflix subscriptions.

* gift cards to stores like Target where you have the option to spend it on necessities or a more “just-for-fun” item

* For kids - art supplies, books, games, blocks, legos, play-doh - anything that they can use inventively to play with more than once or twice

And here we are, where a gift certificate to an organization that offers health exams and birth control is less appropriate than a technicolor dildo.  Go figure.

I think the other part of the resistance is that it’s presenting health care as a luxury item you can give to someone and not a necessity.  Not that you can’t give necessities as gifts, but unless you have a very specific kind of family/friends, giving necessities as gifts is basically saying that the gift-giver knows you need some help because times are tough for you.  I think that at least some people don’t want to think about the fact that health care is a luxury item for people who have to choose between their pap smear and paying the rent.

Mnemosyne hits the nail on the head:

I think the other part of the resistance is that it’s presenting health care as a luxury item you can give to someone and not a necessity.

For me, the goal of gift-giving is to make the recipient as happy as I can, given the budget I have. I hope I don’t let other motives intrude on that. I shouldn’t allow myself to let showing off, or sending a message, detract from the object of the exercise, namely, making the recipient happy.

What I consider an appropriate gift depends on how well I know the person. Just speaking for myself, I’d have to know someone really, really well in order to feel like a PP gift certificate was appropriate. (Do they like practical gifts? Would they feel like I was judging their lifestyle, or even thinking too much, about their finances?, etc.)

Whereas, I wouldn’t think twice about giving a GV gift certificate to most of the (age appropriate) people on my list—because I know it would be appreciated.

Mnemosyne:

I’m not sure that giving necessities as gifts always or even mostly works that way. Money is fungible, so giving the PP gift certificate means someone could spend the money they were going to spend there somewhere else instead. Or they could pass it on to someone they know needs it. Sorta like those sweaters some people’s mothers always give them—if they look decent and fit that’s fine; otherwise they’ll brighten someone else’s holiday.

Ah, a thread where my own cult-ish fundnut background can come in handy for trivia reasons!!

Speaking as a fundnut survivor, the PP gift cards are a great idea because most fundnut girls honestly, truly believe that ALL PP does is abortions. Nothing else. 100% abortions, all the time. This is a very common belief among fundnuts - it’s even featured in the Left Behind books (thanks, Slactivist!). The gift cards are great, because - after their heads explode - you can explain that PP does all sorts of womens’ health things, not just abortions.

Good Vibrations…eh. I grew up in fundnut mania, yet all my married girlfriends openly bought flavored condoms, and all the unmarried girlfriends had a vibrator stashed away in a drawer somewhere. They got the “sex is fun” thing. It was the “abortion is complicated and not everyone can afford birth control and not all men will use it properly and accidents happen and this stuff should be safe, rare, and LEGAL” that they didn’t get. Which is why getting them into a PP for a pap smear is a GREAT idea - they can see, first hand, the kind of women who go there (not Jezebels) and the people who work there (not baby-eating Satanists).

The first step on the path from fundnut city is realizing that your pastor is full of shit.

I’m not sure that giving necessities as gifts always or even mostly works that way. Money is fungible, so giving the PP gift certificate means someone could spend the money they were going to spend there somewhere else instead.

Which is why you give them to people who are struggling financially—if you give them a Target gift card, it frees up rent money.  If you give a gift card to Planned Parenthood, that’s a medical exam covered and a tank of gas that you might not otherwise have had.

Think about it—which person in your life right now would you give a PP gift card to?  How about a grocery store gift card?

Let me take this opportunity to ask everyone to do some shopping “local.” The multiplier effect in your local community—especially if you shop at small, locally-owned businesses—is much greater than shopping at a big box store. It’s local jobs, local tax revenue, etc.

May not help this economy directly, but my sister gave me $50 at Kiva.org for my birthday. I was sooo excited, its a wonderful idea. Loan out money to help people around the world get a head start, and there is a good chance you will get it back in time to loan out again.

http://www.kiva.org/

I know what i’m giving this Christmas…that and chocolates and Mint Slices.

For me, the goal of gift-giving is to make the recipient as happy as I can, given the budget I have.

Hear! Hear!

As far as the annual practical gift vs “fun” gift goes ..... like the song says, yes its bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too

Clothes for my niece and nephew. Fortunately they are 3 and 4 and are still under the impression that the clothing I buy them is cool - and one less outfit their parents need to get them.

My sister usually gets a gift card to somewhere she can get work clothes. I checked the list of places going out of business. Workout clothes for her husband, or something useful for him on his daily train commute (magazine subscription). I tried to be practical last year and get my brother stuff for his house, but he told me that he was so sick of people doing that (he moved under two years ago) so I bought him a t-shirt I thought he’d like and will probably get him something similar this year.

Mom and Dad no longer get gifts. A few years ago Mom said that they really had everything they could possibly want, and stop already. So I started adopting a child from the Angel Tree at work. (I dislike the Salvation Army as a rule, but I know our local Salvation Army workers and I approve of this project.) So I buy mostly clothes and a few toys for a child who would otherwise not have anything new this season.

My partner is in need of some new clothes and I saw a beautiful jacket she will love. I think she’s getting me some clothing too, and we are in need of a few things for our new apartment which I think we’ll consider gifts to ourselves as a couple and call it a holiday season. We moved in together at the beginning of the month and plan to buy a mezuzah together (we know we’re supposed to do it within 30 days of moving, but we didn’t plan for hospitalization, hospice, death, and shiva for a family member to be part of that 30 days, so we think we get a bit of leeway on that one.)

I could totally use some new socks for Christmas. That would beat the hell out of the GPS unit I got one year (what the hell were my parents thinking!?). And my siblings were all very pleased to receive the grolby-is-broke gift of surplus shop socks last year. So, that could be a silver lining. Of course, this year I’m too broke and distracted to get anything for anyone. I think that rowmyboat and I will need to give each other the gift of continued mutual regard this year. Birthday presents are more exciting, anyway.

Our economy seem(ed) to be run as a type of Positive Feedback Loop: imagine a mic next to a speaker, everything getting louder and louder until KA-BLAM! But with most of the necessities of life taken care of, what is there for most people other than “stuff”?

For the single male in your life (friend/brother etc.) Socks & underwear.  No joke. You’ll win the best gift contest (unless someone gets them a video game system///still, you’ll get a genuine thank you.)

Amanda,

As a Dad of former college students (all out on their own, now: hooray!!), I don’t necessarily have a good “gift” idea, but I had a standard stocking stuffer item that always went over well: rolls of quarters! Even if the kids don’t like to laundry, it has to be done sometime.

I guess it also discourages them from shipping it home to be done.

IP

my niece is 12-almost-13. i would LOVE to get her the PP gift cert., especially because my bro-in-law works for a catholic hospital and there is NO WAY IN HELL she will ever be covered for birth control by his insurance.
but she, and i quote, thinks “sex is icky!”
no, really. i am the one who does all the “Talks”. do you know how hard it is to explain how important condoms are to a 12 year old who starts screaming when the word “penis” is mentioned? i mean, really, where the HELL does her attitude come from? i don’t understand it.
erm, sorry for the rant there.

so what i am getting her instead is a membership in this video game co-opt thing, where for a small amount for a membership members can trade their video games. they do anime too, on a seperate membership and that’s what her parents are getting her. its local, but i bet that there are similar things in lots of places.

my other niece and nephew (my other OTHER sister’s kids; i have too many sisters) are 5 and 6. last year i got them matching “armor and swords” and they beat the hell outta each other. this year, she wants ballet lessons and he wants piano lessons. my mom can’t afford them (and my sister has recieved her Ph.D in losereconmics from the Jerry Spring Institute), so my other 2 sisters and i are going to split 6 months of lessons for each. then, if they keep with it, the same for their birthdays.

besides books (or rather, gift certificates for books) i am asking for this: http://www.mercycorps.org/mercykits/941
mercy corps uses, at a minimum, 89% of donated monies. generally, less than 10% of donations are used for admin or other things, almost ALL of the money goes to the actual recepients. which is damned hard to find in most donations. i am very happy with this idea - i want to help, but i have very few other ways than money. i can barely walk; what else can i do? and it pleases the people who are getting them, too. because A)i never want anything but books and B)they also feel they are helping other people.

i wish everyone luck in their gift purchases :D

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I’d like to share what should NOT be done, and that is to follow the wishes of the Chicago Tribune. Saturday’s editorial about “being patriotic by shopping” isn’t tasteless enough by itself, but when mixed in with news coverage in the same paper about the Wal-Mart stampede and the Toys R Us shooting, the editorial transcends mere tastelessness with lines such as:

America, do what you do best: Plunder stores like those feral brides-to-be who rush the floor at Filene’s Basement to grab those deeply discounted wedding gowns.

Leave no store untrammeled.

Editorial link is here, but I copied it into my LJ in case the link changes.

As long as we’re trading tips on helping others—if, like me, you work for a giant evil corporation, they often sponsor programs that you can donate to.  Our office adopts a family every year (basically, the whole office buys presents for strangers who really, really need stuff like cookwear and shoes) but the company also offers stuff like Adopt-A-Senior, which you can do by yourself or with only a couple of people.

I always overspend at Christmas, but lately it’s been for charity, not for my family.  I think I feel guilty about not giving consistently the rest of the year.  :-(

I spent thanksgiving in bed, hiding from cultists.

I decided not to go home for thanksgiving, and this past Wendesday, I was patronizing the local cult-owned deli down the way, and to ward off invitations to go back to their house for more lovebombing and general Woo, I lied and told the christian acid casulties that work there that I was going home.

Well, they walk to work right past my house at all hours, day and night, so I just stayed in bed and read Robert Jordan.

Family would have been nice, though.

Necessities are really good.

My mental secret for surviving extreme financial hardship is this: don’t want anything but cheap food. When you can’t really afford things that you don’t HAVE to have, tricking yourself into focusing on how tasty your afternoon apple is so that you aren’t feeling sorry for yourself is a feat that is worth mastering. So it’s a good idea sometimes to get ideas from the hivemind like this, instead of asking. It took me hours to even think of a short wish list when I was asked for one by my brother.

If you can’t afford to give your friends something like medical care, and don’t want to go the gift card route, a basket of their favorite toiletries would be a joy. Chapstick, lotion, shampoo, soap, etc aren’t something you can get with food stamps. And as has been said, even if they aren’t that poor, it frees up money for other things.
Women on a tight budget need the socks/underwear gifts as much as men, if not more so. We are, after all, taught to put other people first AND to fret about our appearance. So wearing socks with holes wears on a woman’s self-esteem, even though she doesn’t feel she deserves to buy replacements until other people in her life are taken care of first. After all, the holes don’t show… but she knows they are there.
Chocolate, cookies, etc, if they aren’t dieting. A friend sent me a gift certificate for a pound of Sees. When I had a cold and my period at the same time, I really needed the comfort of chocolate and was so happy to have it.

to add to what Samantha Vimes (any relation to the Discworld character? i’ve been meaning to ask) says about women needing undergarments - they almost invariably cost MORE for articles that are no where near as durable. so not only are we supposed to have more, say, panties than men have underwear (so we can show off more and be prettier i guess) but we have to replace them three times as often.

socks… i love socks. i have never met a dryer that doesn’t eat them, either.

I suppose you could argue that video games are practical in that they offer a better hours of entertainment/cost ratio than DVDs or going to the movies, but it’s still a very odd sentence.

Make Booze! Make candy! Make Make Make!

I did coffee liqueur for everyone last year. This year it will probably be giant pans of cashew or peanut brittle or pralines.

These are both nicer than baked goods because they keep well and people don’t need to eat them right away like they have to with other homemade foods.

I was thinking about making sausages too, but we’ll see.

Amanda: I think some people don’t even really care if electronic goods fry out and have to be replaced frequently—-means you know what to buy people for Christmas.

If people cared, it wouldn’t change shit.

I got a HiFi system for christmas 25 years ago. It still works fine. Years later I added a CD player, same manufacturer, same price range. It lasted 5 years. I bought another one. It lasted 3. The a DVD player. 4 years. Last year, I went to a mom-and-pop electronics store and asked “How much do I have to spend for a player that lasts 10 years?” and the answer was, “These things do not last ten years, ever. If you do not care for any special features, the cheapest will serve you just as well as the most expensive.”

I do not have to replace my phone every two years because mine is 15 years old and does not break down. Everyone else has broken phones all the time, regardless of income and shopping preferences. The average sound quality would have been unacceptable in the 70s. With mobiles, the companies give you a new one free of charge every two years because mobiles don’t last much longer than that.

Current consumer electronics are cheap crap, and throwing money at them does not help. Might as well throw the money somewhere else.

My husband and I are full-time grad students, so a little insulated from the national economic woes but saddled with our own student debt and semi-nonexistent income. For our wedding in September we got gift cards from Trader Joe’s and Target. I think people appreciate that their loved ones need groceries more than they need 300 count sheets, and I think that this Christmas this appreciation will be extended across the country.

I hope that our economic “downturn” (which isn’t actually a downturn) prompts folks to think more critically about what they “need,” and, ultimately, prompts folks to just buy less stuff. I don’t object to people spending money; it’s the carbon dioxide output that really brings me down.

My main problem with practical things and art is that I already have all the stuff that I need (and this includes clothes and kitchen items) and then some. I’ll go with books, booze and candy.

Grolby: I could totally use some new socks for Christmas.

Yes. What is it with socks? There never seem to be enough, the only place I can get cotton ones for a decent price is at the Christmas market, and I can’t get woolen ones at all.

denelian: i mean, really, where the HELL does her attitude come from?

Too young? I’d have screamed when I was eleven and listened (uncomfortably) when I was twelve.

I’m really excited about one thing I’m putting on my christmas list this year. See - I always take my car in to the shop to get the oil change, but I’ve always wanted to learn how to do it myself. This year I want a family member to teach me how. Works on various levels :

* The gift is practically free;

* The gift saves money in the long run;

* The gift involves family bonding activity.

I’m a genius! Maybe there’s something one of your family members could teach you this year?

My mental secret for surviving extreme financial hardship is this: don’t want anything but cheap food. When you can’t really afford things that you don’t HAVE to have, tricking yourself into focusing on how tasty your afternoon apple is so that you aren’t feeling sorry for yourself is a feat that is worth mastering.

And there’s another side to that, which is mostly applicable to people with somewhat less extreme hardship: almost any food you can prepare yourself is cheap in comparison to eating out, even (or especially) fast food. When I was a young reporter, I discovered I was much happier splurging on a pound of $3-a-pound asparagus to go with my rice-and-bits-of-meat than going to a restaurant and spending two or three times as much for dinner.

May not help when the wolf is at the door, but could help keep the wolf a few doors down…

I make a mixed CD for all my friends every year w/ a fun holiday card, a song for every month of the year.  It’s not anything practical, but it is inexpensive and personal, and I have fun combing through my music collection trying to find a song for August.  They can think of me when they play it and hopefully enjoy it in good health.

Socks from Clarke’s! They have a lifetime guarantee. If ever you find a hole, or lose the elastic, you return the socks to a local Clarke’s and they will give you a brand-new pair.

I got the BF a really nice, versatile chef’s pan—he loves to cook (lucky lucky me!) and his ex got all the cookware in their breakup over a year ago.

paul, you need to read How to Cook a Wolf by M. F. K. Fisher.

Avenger:

It is to my everlasting culinary shame that I have never actually made sludge. A lot of my one-pots from back then came close, but not quite.

Since acquiring spouse and offspring I’ve been discouraged from such pursuits, with the exception of Toddler Lunch Block.

Here’s what’s sick about the whole thing—-it wasn’t good, but spending is still up.  That’s our economy for you—-so growth-oriented that you don’t even need to shrink for there to be a problem.  It’s bad if you simply don’t grow at a ridiculously huge rate.  I fail to see how anyone could observe this attitude and think that we were facing anything but disaster.

(I have to get back to work, but consider this a placeholder until tonight)

Is there an economist in the house?

I’m serious.  This is one of the most level-headed blogs I read, but this reads like the “economic growth == cancerous cells” video that you posted a while back.

I’m not an economist, either, but I’ve been trying to read up on the technical aspects as much as I can, and one huge danger that’s frequently mentioned is a liquidity trap (see Krugman’s article here), which seems to mean that people would rather put their money under a mattress than invest it, mostly because people believe that their money won’t be worth less if they don’t invest, due to no threat of inflation.

So, it might be (again, IANAE), that we need growth to stimulate inflation, which the Fed can then keep at a simmer:  High enough to give an incentive to money on the sidelines to invest, but low enough not to eat into people’s wages.

Yes. What is it with socks? There never seem to be enough, the only place I can get cotton ones for a decent price is at the Christmas market, and I can’t get woolen ones at all.

What about cotton TIGHTS? I need some. I hate the spandex/nylon “tights” (wow, tights that are just as run-prone as hose . . . wtf?) I have looked at shoe stores, Target, Walmart . . . came up with 1 pair of gray with white stripes at Target. (Target also had a couple pairs of very colorful stripes, can’t get away with those at work though.)

NY Expat, have you listened to “The Giant Pool of Money”  from NPR’s “This American Life”?  I’m not an economist, but my brother is in the valuation business and he says it’s probably the most detailed and understandable explanation of how we ended up in this situation.  You can listen to it streaming or buy it from iTunes for 99 cents.

Basically, the amount of consumer growth that our economy has required for the past 15 or 20 years was unsustainable without huge amounts of borrowing.  It’s a structural problem, because so much of what used to run our economy—like manufacturing and even call centers—has been moved overseas that we were leaning more and more heavily on consumers to bail us out, and with wages stagnant since the 1970s, it was all going to come to an end eventually.

The really spectacular end is because of the decisions made by mortgage brokers and banks, but there were a lot of steps leading up to this meltdown.  Take a look at Fred Clark’s explanation of how our current business models ruined the newspaper business by demanding exponential year-over-year growth instead of just steady growth.

I went to Value Village and Goodwill on Saturday and the parking lots were packed (good thing I only had to park at one- the other I can walk to from my apartment).

I found some spools of ribbon, a few nice sealing glass jars and other containers for cookies, a new tea towel and a whole box of old cookie cutters (!). With some love and creativity (and soaking in OxyClean for the cookie cutters and older jars) they come out looking great.

I’m going to give folks at work nice big bags of assorted cookies that I make myself and tie the ribbons and cutters around them with nice homemade tags that say “Happy Holidays!”.

I also found a few other bits and bobs there- a nice unused box of wine glass markers for instance- that I can have as an “emergency gift”.

I would say that I could have spent over $100 getting all this together but even with the time I’m going to be spending baking I consider this an inxepensive way to show lots of people that I care about them and enjoy working with them. (and my apartment smells awesome)

Enthusiastic seconding for the practical gifts like coats, socks, gloves.  Best gift I ever got from a man—one of those portable jumpstarters for a car battery, back when they were a new thing.  Nowadays they come with air compressors and all kinds of goodies for mucho dinero, but I think this one was about $50 at CostCo.

Maybe because we never had a lot of money, but Christmas has featured practical gifts my whole life.  Not exclusively, but it is always there to one degree or another.  It wouldn’t occur to me to be offended that someone thought I was too poor to pay for it myself.  It is more like, “Yea socks!  I need socks.”

For me, I bake cookies for people I love.  Baking is one of the few skills I have to give a large number of cheap gifts.  I tried to learn knitting but got bored with it.  I’m teaching myself to sew, but I cannot make everyone a shirt.  Some people may prefer to not get cookies due to dieting.  They are free to throw them in the trash or give them away as soon as I am not looking.

syfr: I’m not in the US

This year, everyone who drinks wine will get one of the bottles I brought from a holiday in South Tyrol, my mother will get a CD recording of the choir I’m singing in, my always-broke friend will get an amazon gift card, a friend with small children will get unbreakable porcelain bowls, and those of my friends who are in town over the holidays get invited to the annual Really Big Holiday Dinner, which gives me an excuse to cook a five-course meal and use all those kitchen items I have.

I’m handwriting people letters this year. Bought a couple of people socks, of course, because socks and underwear are always popular gifts, but the bulk of my Christmas spirit will manifest itself in hand-written letters, sent by regular mail. It’s never more than a page long for me, it’s fun, people love ‘em, and a stamp is only $0.52.

I tried to learn knitting but got bored with it.

You are dead to me.

(Though if you ever pick it up again, for God’s sake don’t make a scarf.  Making nothing but scarves would bore anyone.)

It seems my point wasn’t entirely clear.

I don’t think I’d give a gift certificate to PP to anyone for the holidays, either.  I share the philosophy others mentioned, in which I like to give the gift that packs the most joy I can afford, whatever that happens to be.  However, I don’t have health insurance either, and the number of spheres of my life influenced by that tiny fact means that I would be open to receiving health care as a gift if it was for a particular service that I wanted and could not manage on my own.  That’s not the case at the moment, however, and I’m not needing or wanting anything in particular from PP in case you’re reading, mom.

Back to PP and GV:  I intended to say “acceptable” instead of “appropriate”—just that I don’t think GV should be more palatable as an organization to the masses than PP.  Sure, sex is good and should be fun.  You got no argument from me there.  But I don’t think PP deserves the demonization it gets from the people who think it can be defined as a baby-killing factory.  That’s all.

inge:
probably her age is a factor, but i was taught “how babies were made” the first time when i was three (when my mom got pregnant), so while i get the whole “it’s gross” factor from her age, i don’t understand why she won’t even listen to something she has been told before. if that makes sense…

All year long, while thrift and frugally shopping, I pick up things I know will make great gifts for friends and family.

So black Friday is for me, just another day. Saved myself from buying a $15 piece of crap today because it was somewhat right for someone, ‘cause I had already bought two more perfect things for next to nothing sometime this last year.

When Christmas, birthdays, etc. come up, I simply go to the “gift closet” and pull out what something had chosen, earlier.

As for the aging of electronics: I’m still using the Quasar TV I bought 15 years ago (well, the DVD player in it, finally quit.)

The Sharp TV I bought on sale: the DVD player inside died within the year, the Video player soon after, and the set itself went blooey within three years.

Complained to the clerk at Best Buy, and he said the same thing: nothing is built to last any more.

(Oh, and my last three laptops—Hewlitt Packard, Hewlitt Packard, Dell, may they all go to hell—required new motherboards within 6 months, 5 months and 2 months.)

I used to keep my laptops up to five years, but from what I read in the New Yorker, the Chinese manufacturers believe in planned obsolescence, build it in, to keep the workers working.

My parents called me from Canada today to ask if it was okay if they just send me cash for Christmas, rather than the usual parcel of wrapped gifts.  They know that our money is beyond “tight” (my partner and I both lost our jobs in June, our four-year old car just got repo-ed, our fridge, microwave, and air-conditioner have all died in the past couple of months, we both have huge monthly medical expenses, etc., etc.).  I always get homesick around the holidays so I love my Christmas parcel of Canadiana, but this year what I honestly need is food.  I went through the period of gaining weight because I was depressed and eating away my sorrows… now I’m fading away to nothing because there’s no food in the house.  I told my mother that I’d be thrilled to take a Christmas check and to do some shopping at a store like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods—I could plan a few special meals that I’d otherwise be unable to afford, so it will be like a restaurant gift certificate (except that I have to do the cooking).  Even when we lived more comfortably, I’ve always loved and appreciated gifts of good food, whether it be something exotic and new, or something familiar and comforting.

Mnemosyne - knitting involves too much concentration for me and it takes a long time.  With sewing, I can actually finish something.

My sisters who are a biologist and a chemist and work in labs, also have the patience, mental acuity and dexterity to knit really, really, cool patterns.  I’m in marketing, I have a lower attention span.

Mnemosyne:  I wrote a reply to your comment last night, but it was somewhat link-heavy so it’s probably in moderation.  Hopefully it will be posted soon.

Reposting without links:

(Apologies for not replying last night, but my wife needed the computer.  Given the half-life of blog posts, this is probably going to be the equivalent of pissing in the wind, but there’s a lot of stuff I’ve read over the last couple of months, and I think some of you will find it interesting, and perhaps give a greater perspective on what our economy actually is.)

Mnemosyne:  I’ve actually listened to “The Giant Pool of Money” twice, as well as the sequel, “Another Frightening Show About The Economy”.  I don’t recall much mention of consumer overspending on that program:  TGPoM struck me as more of a primer on what Mortgage Securities were, and why so many were created.  Ironically, an article in the Columbia Journalism Review (www[dot]cjr.org/essay/boiler_room.php?page=all) that lauds the program as highly as your brother does illustrates where the program falls short:  TGPoM never mentions the deceptive techniques that mortgage originators used to convince people to take out insanely bad refinancing options.

Incidentally, that CJR article and this one by Michael Lewis: www[dot]portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom (his first book was Liar’s Poker, about his time on Wall Street in the late 80s) flesh out how mortgage CDOs were created in far less polite terms than the This American Life crew use.

Still, none of these pieces above are about what I was questioning:  The assumption that consumerist spending is out of control (and is generally unhealthy for the economy), and the assumption that wanting growth in businesses is somehow a screwy way of running things.

we were leaning more and more heavily on consumers to bail us out, and with wages stagnant since the 1970s, it was all going to come to an end eventually.

This post by Krugman, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/after-the-stimulus/, got me thinking that the “leaning on consumers” meme, while true to an extent (consumer spending was a greater proportion of demand with respect to GDP in 2007), doesn’t illustrate any truly radical change in consumer spending over the long run (the increase in spending was less than 5% higher than it’s average over the last 30 years).  I also dared to wander over to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and this short paper, www[dot]bea.gov/scb/pdf/national/nipa/2001/0301pce.pdf (it’s really short:  seven pages with mostly graphs and two tables), which also does an amazing job of showing how our spending has changed over the last 40 years, has a longer timeframe than Krugman’s article but shows consumer spending changing only by 5% over that timeframe, from 62 percent to 65 percent.

So basically, the economy has always leaned heavily on consumer spending.  While doing this research, I remembered an article by Elizabeth Warren (now, thankfully, chair of the TARP Oversight Committee), bostonreview.net/BR30.5/warrentyagi.html, that did a great job puncturing the notion that Americans are “buying too much crap”.  Shorter version:  Home prices, as what’s essentially a shadow private school system, and medical expenses are causing middle class families to be leveraged to the teeth (absolute necessities have gone from 54 percent of household income to 75 percent).  That BEA paper also shows the nitty-gritty details, and verifies Warren’s account.

The scenario of the newspaper industry that you linked to seems like a good example of what Amanda was talking about with respect to unreasonable growth expectations (though I think she misapplies it when it comes to retail, for the reasons I give above).  I’m not sure what the answer is there, though it would make more sense for the stock price to drop, rather than the businesses to “eat their seed corn”, so to speak.  Also, fact that it’s the Fourth Estate makes it more troubling than if it were a more routine industry in its last days.