A perfect storm is about to form, as three major elements relevant to our consumer culture are about to converge.
The convergence of these three elements will pose both a challenge and an opportunity, if we have sufficient will to take advantage of it.
The elements of this perfect storm are these:
1.) Record high prices for heating fuel and natural gas.
2.) Changes in bankruptcy and credit card debt rules.
3.) That annual orgy of unnecessary consumer spending known as Christmas.
More after the fold...
There is one special interest group in the US which is absolutely and utterly ignored, despite the fact that it is larger than senior citizens, evangelical Christians, and Hispanics combined.
I'm talking about consumers.
In a few short weeks, we will be expected to sally forth to our local spendatoria and buy shit we don't need to give to people who have bought shit we don't need to give to us. Every year, people say they're going to cut back, and every year lines form outside the local Wal-mart at 4:30 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving to celebrate the "Birth of the Savior" by loading up multiple shopping carts with piles upon piles of pure, unmitigated horseshit.
Oh, how the corporations laugh, rubbing their hands together with equal measures of glee anad greed, as we appear, zombie-like, to do their bidding. The entire retail economy is dependent upon the 4th quarter. The whole shooting match, the entire Potemkin village that is the Bush economy, depends upon our inability to just say no.
No, my son in law doesn't need another sweater. No, my granddaughter doesn't need a sex-stereotyping dolly from China. No, I don't need anymore Steelers jerseys.
And what I really don't need is to know that the people I love the most are taking on debt for the privilege of dancing on the end of Wal-Mart's (or Macy's, or Nieman-Marcus') string.
Bake me some brownies. Build and decorate a birdhouse. Pinecones are free, glue is cheap. Make me a wreath.
But I am, of course, pissing in the wind. Despite the stratospheric cost of energy, and despite the credit crunch that will result in doubled card payments and devastated budgets, the spendfest will commence as scheduled.
But what if it didn't? What if the truckers shut it all down in November, as a result of 3 dollar diesel? What if folks got their credit card bills and their gas bills on the same day and began to shit a thin stream of fiscal fear? What if we all fucking wised up at once?
What ramifications? What leverage can we demonstrate as consumers? And, by way of a poll, what are you going to do about it?