Читать онлайн «Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping»
Автор Judith Levine
Also by Judith Levine
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Copyright © 2006 by Judith Levine
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Levine, Judith.
Not buying it: my year without shopping / Judith Levine.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Consumer education. 2. Shopping. I. Title.
TX335 . L456 2006
640’. 73—dc22 2005055517
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-8886-6
ISBN-10: 0-7432-8886-6
December 2003:
January:
February:
March:
April:
May:
June:
July:
August:
September:
October:
November:
December:
Acknowledgments
Index
December 2003
The idea occurs to me, as so many desperate resolutions do, during the holiday season. I have maxed out the Visa, moved on to the Citibank debit card, and am tapping the ATM like an Iraqi guerrilla pulling crude from the pipeline.
Convinced I am picking up no more than the occasional trinket—a tree ornament for Howard and Nanette, a bar of French soap for Norma—in just two weeks this atheist Grinch has managed to scatter $1,001 across New York City and the World Wide Web. I am not in the spirit, but somehow I have gotten with the program.And what a program it is. Through three years of lusterless economic reports and rising unemployment, consumer confidence has barely flagged. The coffins are returning from Iraq: by Christmas, the U. S. body count is near 500. Still, this month America’s good guys caught Iraq’s bad guy, several employee-starved companies hired several workers, and a “hoo-wah!” rose from the malls of America. Interviewed on the Saturday before Christmas, Everyshopper Barbara D’Addario chuckled as she told CBS what she had spent: “Today, about $75, and I’ve been here twenty minutes. ” What is the source of her generosity and glee? “[I have] great hopes that the economy is improving, and we caught Saddam Hussein,” said D’Addario. “We’re very happy. ”
We are very happy, and when we are happy, as when we are sad or angry or bored or confused or feeling nothing in particular, we shop. Those receiving the richest rewards from the president’s tax policies are responding most enthusiastically. Luxury watches priced from $1,000 to $200,000 are flying from the shops as fast as time. In the more earthbound districts, although sales are less brisk, the hoi polloi are enlisting in their own campaigns of retail shock and awe. At a Wal-Mart in Orange City, Florida, a woman is trampled by a crowd surging toward a pile of $29 DVD players.
