Caught In the Middle of a Thought Process, I Post a Highly Disjointed Sketch of Thoughts To Come

As we all contemplate how far down "down" is in our economy, I find myself thinking about one of the things I marvel at in American life: how few of the things that most of us consider the necessities of life are really necessities. I think these deep thoughts as someone who just ate a $3 bran muffin.

When I left my job at the end of the year, my wife and I cut back our spending -- the entirely natural thing to do, and exactly the thing everyone is doing that is contributing so mightily to our economic death spiral. We're all cutting back, even those of us still gainfully employed, because there's no telling what the future may bring.

After a month we took stock. I looked at our checking account and said: "Man, when we cut, we can cut a lot." And we did. We cut expedient, I'm-too-tired-to-cook carry-out meals. We stopped buying books and re-introduced ourselves to the library. I stopped buying wine. We skipped a couple of trips to nice restaurants and cut down on the recreational trips to shopping malls. Little things, big things, in between things: we cut them all -- except, apparently, $3 bran muffins. The result was a balance sheet that, despite my career predicament, was holding its own.

Anyway, the point of this is not that we're such fabulous financial managers; we're not. The point is that if my own little micro-economy is any indicator, the macro-economy may be in for a long slide. If Americans cut back to even a laughably opulent version of "the essentials" (I'm not giving up my $3 bran muffins!) that translates into huge changes in life as we know it, because so much of our economy is built on things that most of us now are considering primarily as ballast that can potentially be thrown overboard. 

I believe, personally, that we could do with less self indulgence. I have believed for a long time that materialism is a cancer on our society and that we are literally killing ourselves in a quest for things that ultimately don't matter. I don't know why childless couples want 5,000 square foot houses, or why people need new cars every couple of years, or why dinner at the casual dining concept-of-the-moment once a week is mandatory for people's sense of well-being. I don't get big screen TVs as something worth going into debt for and I don't think the ability to spend $500 a day at Disneyland should be part of anything called "standard of living."

My underlying personal belief in simple frugality, of course, doesn't extend as far as good wine (or $3 bran muffins) and I'm sure that there are plenty of big-screen TV owners who think spending $50 on a solid Chateauneuf du Pape as the height of decadence. I seriously don't intend to hold myself up as any kind of example and do not for a minute imagine myself some kind of neo-Thoreau living in my own private Walden.

What I do mean to say is that, with rare exception, each of us is undergoing our own belt-tightening, confronting our worst-case scenarios, being forced to prioritize in a way we haven't in a couple of decades, at least. We're each acquiring our own economic scar tissue, whether from opening our 401(k) statements or going through foreclosure.

I just find myself wondering: when this is over, where will be our new equilibrium? How will our expectations have changed? What will be our new definition of The Good Life? How will we have changed, and will it be for the better?

So here are some predictions:

• Financial stability will be the new status symbol. Forget the big house, the boat, the expensive car; sexy is money in the bank and the monthly statements to prove it.
• Jobs will be seen more as jobs and less as vehicles to self-fulfillment.
• Several professional sports franchises will fold or be sold under financial duress -- hopefully hockey, but you never know.
• Society's tolerance for ridiculous bullshit of all kinds will decrease. Marihuana will be legalized, gay marriage will be recognized, and schools will stop teaching self-esteem, just to name three.
• People you know will take jobs in China.
• Plans for the George W. Bush library will be scaled back until it is exactly one square foot bigger than his father's.
• No one will buy $3 bran muffins.

Feel free to add your own.

Comments

[Lee]

Financial stability will be the new status symbol. Forget the big house, the boat, the expensive car; sexy is money in the bank and the monthly statements to prove it.

A Dave Ramsey wet dream. I wish you were right, but I'm pessimistic. Though personally I'm with you that in a perfect world that is how it should be. The wise and solid among us may pick up on this though.

Jobs will be seen more as jobs and less as vehicles to self-fulfillment.

My dad was a UPS man. So growing up, the job was always just a job -- a means to an end. Selling mattresses wasn't what I wanted to do when I grew up, but it pays the bills pretty well, and I do have some feelers out for other employment opportunities. While everybody else is moping, I plan on trying to make my next move (I'm an optimist like that.)

Several professional sports franchises will fold or be sold under financial duress -- hopefully hockey, but you never know.

You can only hope. Especially hockey teams in southern markets. Do Atlanta and Nashville really need hockey?

Society's tolerance for ridiculous bullshit of all kinds will decrease. Marihuana will be legalized, gay marriage will be recognized, and schools will stop teaching self-esteem, just to name three.

Marijuana, will be someday, but a generation from now. Gay marriage, it's on its way, I give it 15 years. But self esteem in school will unfortunately always be taught. Our educators will never give up their goal of raising an entire generation of pussies.

People you know will take jobs in China.

Maybe, as part of globalization in general. But if you think things here are bad, in China they're exponentially worse.

Plans for the George W. Bush library will be scaled back until it is exactly one square foot bigger than his father's.

Maybe. Clinton's already snagged all the good foreign donors.

No one will buy $3 bran muffins.

Yeah, and I'll give up my Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

[Wally]

Tom, I think they slipped some of that "Marihuana" as you call it, in your muffin.
Go home. Put some music on. Turn on your TV but activate the mute button. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Tom Wolper]

In my own musings, I wonder what the consumer landscape will look like as we come out the other end of this downturn. When people have to cut back, which institutions will no longer survive? For example, if you have to choose between your cell and landline phones, which would you choose? Business users have some advantages with landline, but the residential landline phone service might end. I assume other institutions that have stuck around out of inertia, like department stores and newspapers, won't survive. I don't get why people pay $100 a month for cable TV but I don't see a massive dropoff either.

Responding to some of your final points:

Financial stability will be the new status symbol. People don't fantasize about those who are just getting by. Even if it's unreachable for almost all of us, sexy will still be extravagant. After 9/11 there was a meme out there about police and firefighters being the new sex icons instead of pretty boy actors and rock stars. Just as that didn't happen, being able to afford a normal lifestyle isn't going to be sexy.

Several professional sports franchises will fold or be sold under financial duress -- hopefully hockey, but you never know. The difficulty here is that many taxpayers are on the hook for arenas and stadiums. And team owners have gotten some nice tax breaks in exchange for long term leases. So the first change in professional sports is the end of "Build me a new stadium or I'll move the team" blackmail. No city is going to agree to build a new facility to attract a team so no city will build a new one to keep theirs.

It will be interesting to see what happens to teams if the high priced skyboxes and club seats no longer sell. That could cause a revenue crash.

Hockey will survive, although I wouldn't rule out a contraction of the NHL. Hockey doesn't attract a large audience but its fans are fanatical about the local team. The snag to contraction will be taxpayer-funded arenas where the NHL team is the primary tenant.

Society's tolerance for ridiculous bullshit of all kinds will decrease. This makes sense but we have to find out how much inertia is behind the outdated institutions. A lot of useless dinosaur institutions have lobbyists who will push to keep the status quo in things like pot laws to keep from being cut back in areas like prison guard employment.

No one will buy $3 bran muffins. Boutiques and boutique items won't disappear. As long as people are willing to buy $3 muffins, somebody will make them and sell them. I stopped going to movie theaters when Netflix came around but I don't see the movie theater business collapsing. It just means somebody else is going. You might give up $3 bran muffins and someone else just can't give them up.

[Adam]

I think the sort of cultural shift Tom is predicting requires a far worse economy crash than we're receiving (and the kind that might actually be worth the debt we're about to toss on our great-grandchildren's backs). The 25% unemployment of the Great Depression was a horrendously scarring national experience that still leaves many of today's old people incapable of throwing junk of any conceivable use in the garbage. We're still under 8%.

[Wally]

When cities stop underwriting sports teams corporations will fill the void. We have been headed for a "Rollerball" scenario in sports ownership for a while now. This brings up the question of why it is a legitimate expense for a bank to buy the name of an arena or a bowl game. Nike, I can understand, but The R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl?