The Rembis Report And Other Fascinating Topics - Volume CXXIV

As we head into the American “Holiday Shopping Season” this newsletter is the last of six weekly editions in a series about the cost of everything, overspending, corporate profits, and general wastefulness. I am looking at what we do to save money while companies try to get us to spend more and will examine why cars and houses cost so much. Is the price of food fair? What about everything else? Is there anything we can absolutely do without? Who can afford to buy anything, really? To get caught up, click the links below.

• If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It - Part I

• If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It - Part II

• If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It - Part III

• If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It - Part IV

• If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It - Part V

“Christmas time is here
Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of the year” - Vince Guaraldi Trio

That’s right, kids! Only 42 days until Santa soars across the sky and brings you that thing you really, really want (If you have been good). You didn’t even need to mark your calendars because the calendar companies, both digital and print, have marked them for you. Just for good measure, to make sure you can’t miss it, commercials started a couple of weeks ago, well before Halloween. So get out there and shop!

Because that is what Christmas is all about. Forget about the real reason for the season. Linus VanPelt just told Charlie Brown what he needed to hear so he would not jump off of Snoopy’s dog house. Then (spoiler alert) the gang decorated his poor little tree and made everything special.

And all was right with the world. In the cartoon land of Peanuts, anyway. In the real world, even a Charlie Brown tree costs a pretty penny. But Christmas, the “holiday season” to be precise, ticks closer every second. Before you know it, it will be too late to shop. That is why Amazon plans ahead every year, offering you their own unique holiday, a 48-hour sale two weeks before Halloween they have dubbed Prime Days. If you missed it, don’t feel bad. So did I. There was nothing I needed to buy from Amazon on either of those days. I did not mark it on my calendar, and even when I heard it was Prime Days from whatever advertising came my way, I did not visit the site to see what deals there were. I don’t even have a Prime membership. Shopping (for anything) ranks low on my priority list. It is just not for me. I think I have told you that before.

More major shopping days are on the way. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, will be here before you know it. People will line up outside of Best Buys and Walmarts before they have even have time to belch after their family meals. Some stores open at midnight. The more conservative stores will wait until 4:00 or 5:00 AM to force their sleep-deprived hourly workers who could not afford to take that day off to show up for work and open the doors to a stampeding herd fighting for a limited number of whatever the latest and greatest must-have toy will be this year.

The day after that is Small Business Saturday. This holiday is crafted to shame people into shopping local if they haven’t already blown their budgets on Amazon Prime Days and Black Friday. It’s a nice theory, to buy stuff from a local business, to support them instead of corporations. But if you don’t have a small business nearby that sells what you want, you will buy that stuff from a big retail store online. That is all there is to it.

Then, there are the days after Christmas, when everything that hasn’t sold gets marked down by 10% - 20% - 50% - 90% folks! It’s a New Years Day blowout! Everything must go to make way for new inventory. This is when the savvy shoppers swoop in and clean out the shelves. But not necessarily for themselves, no. Those bulk shoppers are filling their carts and posting that stuff for sale on eBay, Etsy, and Amazon. With prices this low, they can’t lose. Even if they sit on inventory for a while, eventually, it will sell. Some online retailers have the same products for sale on all of these sites at the same time and keep all of their inventory in an Amazon warehouse. You may have purchased something from eBay or Etsy and received it from Amazon with a little note inside stating that it is a gift, when it is not a gift at all. This is why.

You would think that everyone would have caught on to all this manipulation by now. That nobody would want to shop for Christmas anymore. Only 31% of the world is Christian. But, it keeps rolling along, giving an annual boost to the U.S. economy.

I have a uniquely American perspective. I am not sure how commercialized it gets in the rest of the world. I have not traveled far outside of the U.S. at Christmastime, just Canada, and I saw no difference in retail tactics there.

I wonder how long it takes for the average American to get tired of Christmas holiday shopping? For me, it took about 50 years. I always liked it, at least, I did, until I felt like I had finally bought everything I could possibly buy and given every gift I could think of. I know I am not alone in being the Grinch who feels like it is a huge chore and just wants to get back to work and stop hearing the same regurgitated songs, some of which are centuries old.

But, it is tradition, Mike!

Yes. That’s it. Tradition. That’s how they get you.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with that. Holidays are traditions. They are great for kids and bring families together. That is what they are supposed to be about, not being an economic driver.

But Christmas would just not be Christmas in America without the retail holiday shopping season. We need the lights on trees and houses. We need malls bustling with full parking lots. We need garland and fake snow and reindeer and Santa sleighs and snowmen and elves. Without that stuff, it would just be another day, and it would be boring.

While it might bug some people that it all seems to be about money and nothing else, so what? If they can’t handle that reality, that’s too bad. There are bigger things to be concerned about. Christmas holiday shopping is just an annual spike in spending that helps out businesses not tied to the military-industrial complex. That is where the real money is at.

War is what really runs the economy. Not Christmas shopping, not insurance, not oil, or cars, or energy. War.

When you say “economy,” Mike, what do you mean?

The economy is the system by which goods and services are produced, distributed, and consumed.

The greatest, most powerful economic driver in history is, and always will be war. It does not always a force a positive economic result. Sometimes, war creates terribly negative economic results, but as a main driver of the economy, it can not be disputed that war is a major cause of both destitution and prosperity with lingering effects. Every war there ever was proves this.

The polar opposite of the military-industrial complex is The Institute for Economics & Peace, where they study these two subjects on a worldwide scale. They know that, of course, we do not need war. It is foul and unecessary. Until it is. Sometimes, to preserve peace, we must fight terrorists who would not want others to engage in their traditions and celebrations. When facing armies of people brainwashed by hate, who would prefer their peaceful neighbors did not exist, just because they are different from themselves, it is important to go to war, and eliminate them before they completely destroy the innocent.

This is the reason we celebrate Veteran’s Day. To salute those heroes who vanquish monsters to preserve what peace we may enjoy. So, when you hear that your government is sending billions in war machines to another continent, realize that it is for a good cause, and this is why you can celebrate the holidays with your family.

Not a perfect solution, by any means. Certainly not what you want to spend money on. They say if it ain’t broke, don’t bother to fix it. But when something is definitely broken, we do what we must to make it right. Even when it is beyond our budget. That is our nature.

Thanks for reading.

If you are new to the Rembis Report and would like to read any of the previous issues, PLEASE CLICK HERE to access the archives. To read it from the beginning, PLEASE GET A COPY of The Rembis Report: An Observation.