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April 29, 2008
The prosperity: it's everywhere!
When I was very young, long ago, one of the posters on my bedroom wall showed a skinny, curly-haired dude sitting down to dinner. A newspaper on the table had the headline "Beef Shortage Critical!" The guy was spooning canned Alpo onto a plate of spaghetti while his dog made sad eyes up at him.
I found this hilarious. Imagine, a person eating Alpo!
Did anyone happen to catch this hilarious article in Sunday's NY Times?
Here's a representative sample:
“People have started to shift spending as if we were in a recession,” said Michael McNamara, vice president for research and analysis at MasterCard.Such trade-offs were on vivid display last week in Ohio, where layoffs have been rampant. At Save-A-Lot, a discount grocery store in Cleveland, Teresa Rutherford, 51, chided her sister-in-law, Donna Dunaway, 44, for picking up a package of Sara Lee honey ham (eight ounces for $2.49).
“We can’t afford that!” she said. “Get the cheap stuff.” They settled on a 16-ounce package of Deli Pleasures ham for $3.29, or 34 percent less an ounce.
The women said that soaring prices for food and fuel had changed what they buy and where they buy it. “We used to eat out at Bob Evans or Denny’s once a month,” said Ms. Rutherford, who works in an auto-parts factory. “Now we don’t go out at all. We eat in all the time.”
Ms. Dunaway, a homemaker, used to splurge on the ingredients for homemade lasagna, her husband’s favorite, before food prices began to surge this year.
“Now he’s lucky to get a 99-cent lasagna TV dinner, or maybe some Manwich out of a can,” she said. “I just can’t afford to be buying all that good meat and cheese like I used to.”
...
Burt Flickinger, a longtime retail consultant, said the last time he saw such significant changes in consumer buying patterns was the late 1970s, when runaway inflation prompted Americans to “switch from red meat to pork to poultry to pasta — then to peanut butter and jelly.”
“It hasn’t gotten to human food mixed with pet food yet,” he said, “but it is certainly headed in that direction.”
Something to think about as you savor your $6 Corona at the indie rock show, my fellow plutocrats.
The fine lady and I on a recent morning clearly heard an NPR reporter refer to "the current economic downturd" just before the segue to the bottom-of-the-hour jocularity moment. "Downturd" is now a household favorite.
Oh, and by the way—
