"See, a refund is really free money! And anythin' under $5 is free!"
The denial of reality has now gone front and center - barging into the realm of economics and finance. This according to a recent WSJ piece in which consumers have made up their own "rules" concerning money and its value - also which forms can be considered real, and less real.
Yes, it's absolutely true and to prove it here are a few of the dumbo "rules" 'Muricans now seem to be living by as their brains crater from perceived hyper inflation and as they remain unable to escape Covid:
1) Using cash doesn’t really
count as spending.
2) Prices should always be rounded down.
3)Savings are earnings.
4) Anything that costs under $5 is free.
Now, how about some explanations, dumbos? Well according to Jennifer Guldner, a 39-year-old social worker in Royersford, Pa. who's an adult with an adult brain and ought to know better:
“A refund is free money, 'cause now I get to spend the first outlay on something else!"
Errr....not really, lady. You are still out the $39.95 or whatever you shelled out for those Halloween candy and costume purchases. But no, she doesn't feel like she's out but rather than she's "making money" by using returned old money. This is what happens when one suspends the laws of economic gravity. Her initial spending (e.g. 39.95) was returned - refunded so now she can spend it all over again.
True, but the point is it's spent and she's now down $39.95 in her bank account! That spending did not ADD $39.95 to her account balance.
Guldner is by no means unique. It appears millions of American consumers are gleefully touting their
twisted spending logic on social media, often under tongue- in- cheek
hashtags—and the tabulations are now jumping into real-life. Even whole companies are getting into the act, obviously to use this skewed logic to try to garner more sales. For instance, a few days ago, Sparrows Tattoo Company, of Mansfield, Texas, publicly cited the arithmetic of dumbo Econ 101 to
demonstrate how getting tatted makes financial sense. In a FB post one of their geniuses actually wrote:
“Tattoos are basically free because you pay for
it once and have it till you die. Which
means it only costs cents a day when you divide total cost over how long you’ll
have it.”
Yeah, but what if you shell out $900 for a back tat and then you get killed in an auto accident the next day. That's one day you had it, $900 paid. Can the corpse get it back, say, and preserve it as a zombie?
This B.S. rings true to Josh Benevides, 47,
the co-owner of a used-sporting-goods store in Juneau, Alaska. He bought an
exercise bike for physical therapy after he tore his ACL, and felt hesitant
about the bike’s $400 price tag until he soothed his mind with an equation:
400B$/ 400 = 1 $
Translated:
“If I ride the bike 400 times, then it only costs me
a dollar a ride!”
But wait, this goober now claims he's gotten the cost down to "a dime a ride". He says he's used it about 4,000 times so:
400B$/ 4000 = .10 $
Leave out all the baloney about money per ride, he still laid out $400 bucks for the bike. That means his bank acc0unt has been reduced by 400 smackeroos and I don't care if he rides his bike a million times it won't change the decrease in his bank balance.
This latest spasm of public daffiness in rationalizing spending takes new heights when it claims: "Anything that costs under $5 is free".
Yeah, well try buying something for $5 each day of the year and then tally it up at the end. You will see that your bank account has plummeted by $1,825. Now, we're starting to talk real money - given that amount can pay the rent in Denver for a month for a 1 bedroom studio apartment.
Going back to Guldner, the Pennsylvania social worker, there are evidently more money tricks she has to offer. Recently, according to the WSJ piece, Guldner set out to buy a pair of Dr. Martens boots that cost
$130. In her search, she found a similar pair that cost only $50. By her distorted rationalization, buying the cheaper shoes meant she had actually made money.
She said (quoted in the piece):
“There was $80 more that I could have for sports
bras and sweaters,”
True, but you still laid out $80 for a C -grade pair of boots that'll likely last half as long as the pricier pair. So now, when you have to replace them - that will be $130 for the new better pair, plus the $80 you blew on the cheap ones that didn't last.
Of course, U.S. businesses have long tapped into quirks and glitches in
consumer brains such as the tactic of rounding large amounts down. Thus, they will price items - say like a TV just below the dollar threshold, so
that a TV costs $299 and not $300. That's why when I go to make a purchase I always round up because I know what the game is. $19.99 for a DVD? I call it $20 and too much!
Incredibly, the economic derangement has now spread by gender. The hashtag
#girlmath, often promoted by women themselves, has more than 844 million
views on TikTok. One example: Kayla Garza, a 22-year-old college student at the University of Houston recently bought a pair of jeans from American Eagle for $95.95 but told her mom they were $90. Somehow, the young miss truly believes the $5.95 difference she conjured up is chicken feed. That's despite there being well over 12 million folks in this country - many day laborers - who earn that as an hourly wage, picking cantaloupes or whatever. Must be nice to be so ethereal and detached about money.
She said she understands now why many Starbucks customers feel drinks they buy using their app don’t cost anything. Well, take a price of $5 for a Grande latte. (Say here in COS) But what if instead of blowing that amount daily on a latte one invested it - say 30 years - and at just 6 % interest? Well, she'd have about 150 grand. Surely enough to pay off any student debt and plenty left to put down on a home.
Then there's Marley
Brown, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who buys
concert tickets, and determines the cost based on total hours of entertainment.
So by her dumbo logic, if she pays to see Taylor Swift’s three-hour concert two times it was worth her
money. Huh? Sorry, kid, you're still out the $3,000 or whatever you spent on the 2 tickets.
Here, in this short Newsweek video,
Teenager Explaining 'Girl Math' to Her Dad Sparks Debate Online (newsweek.com)
her dad tries to talk some sense into her addled brain - to no avail:
Marley also believes the cost of clothing can be
calculated per wear. Therefore a $50 sweater worn 50 times technically means the sweater
costs $1. Again, check whatever bank balance you have, kid. You will see it diminished by 50 samolians.
All of this is "logic" she has explained to her
father, Austin Brown, a 47-year-old finance professional, in videos that have
gone viral on TikTok. He often rebuts her arguments, pointing out the faulty
calculations in a fatherly fashion. Their videos have received over 12 million
views. I'd say dad Austin needs many more iterations to squelch this baloney which may be partly responsible for why so many U.S. consumers (and voters) are off their rockers in interpreting current economic conditions.
Checking out the video link posted above one will see dad and daughter squabbling over the cost benefit of getting free shipping. Marley says to her dad, Austin:
“If the
shipping is $5, I’ll get another $10 shirt for the free shipping because I’d
rather pay for a product and not something I don’t have a return on."
Austin, thankfully, didn’t agree - telling the little imp:
“You’ve just fallen prey to consumerism culture by
spending money on something you didn’t need in the first place,”
He also needed to put pencil to paper to show how all this money she's spending adds up, shirts plus $5 shipping etc. The question, of course, is whether the money is coming out of her account or daddy's. He says Marley is "financially responsible" but that only applies if she's handling her own accounts well and doesn't run to daddy for money. Or, use his accounts or an account set up by him.
As for the dolts who insist cash is doesn't count as spending, here's a way to bust that nonsense one time - based on a tactic I posted some years ago. You - the parent - give the kid $25 in cash to spend - on whatever. But when that cash is gone, that's it. No extras using a credit card! The reality of cash as real money and real spending will sink in fast enough!
Basically, the recent exposure (in the WSJ) of these silly economic consumption games shows why too many Americans are behind the spending -eight-ball - and also perhaps why they're yelping about the inflation so much. If they paid more serious attention to where their money goes -in and out- maybe they wouldn't be bitching so much about Biden and the "bad economy"!
See Also:
And:
Is The Current Inflation Rate Really Running At 13 Percent? I Call Bunkum On That Claim
No comments:
Post a Comment