The October 23 Sunday New York Times included a lavish, glossy, 66-page “Special Advertising Supplement” devoted exclusively to selling outrageously expensive men’s and women’s wristwatches. Apparently the mega-rich need to get a head start on their Christmas shopping. It struck me as ridiculously self-indulgent and tone-deaf, given the currently realities of unemployment, home foreclosures, escalating childhood poverty, disintegrating infrastructure, and growing alarm about the vast income and wealth disparities in our country.
No prices were listed with the watches being advertised, apparently following the cliché justification, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” So I went on the internet and looked up the prices of some of random watches listed in the magazine. The first one I checked was $7,365, which is about $2000 more than the tuition and fees for a year as a full-time student at most campuses of the California State University. The next one was $60,753, which is more than twice the maximum possible annual social security benefit. This is absurd. There's something wrong here. Production and sale of these ostentatious time pieces (however beautifully and precisely engineered) is not going to result in jobs for people who need them or help insure a just, humane and strong society. Our focus needs to be on prosperity and opportunity for all, not opulent trinkets for the few.