I was talking to my mom, and we got on to the subject of the Beatles. I told her that Mr. Rilch has promised to get ne the Beatles Anthology, piecemeal: one cassette at a time. My mom said, “Oh, he should save up and get the boxed set! It’ll take time, but he’ll probably save twenty dollars that way!”
I said, “Well, we don’t save up for things like that; they’re not that important.”
She said, “If it’s not that important, why are you spending more than you have to to get it?”
So we had a discussion about her parents and grandparents, and how they used it up, wore it out, made it do and did without. This wasn’t in the nature of a lecture; I love to talk about society in eras I haven’t lived through. I like the story about my great-uncles riding the rails to find work in the '30s, and my mom working in a box factory*.
But people don’t do it like that anymore. The economy has changed drastically since the '50s, and it’s virtually impossible to get, or even calculate, how close you get to getting the most for your money. Consequently, people don’t “save up”, except for the big things; you save up for a car or a house or tuition. But for something like a boxed video set, you can’t save a precise amount out of your precise budget.
Example: Say my mom wanted a bracelet in 1948. She would have seen one bracelet in one shop and asked the price. She would have calculated an amount she could deduct weekly from her salary as a shoe-store clerk and figured the number of weeks it would take to raise the price of the bracelet. When she had the full amount, she would go back to the store, after checking periodically to be sure the bracelet hadn’t already been sold. If it hadn’t, she would have bought it, and gone back to getting her coffee at Chock-Full-'o-Nuts.
Mr. Rilch wants to get me the Beatles Anthology in 2001. He has to compare prices at Virgin, Tower, Dave’s Laser, Borders, Circuit City, and Amazon. He can’t calculate a fixed amount to take out of his salary, because his work schedule isn’t fixed. So he just has to wait for a time when he has the approximate amount to spare. Then he has to check and see which of the potential sources still has the item, and if the ones that are available are at an acceptable price.** Much less time and fuel wasted if he just gets one cassette at Virgin every couple weeks.
So people just don’t save their nickels and dimes in the old coffee can any more. Consumerism is so out of control, if you want something, you just have to get it when you see it, and before someone else kneecaps you for it.
*No kidding. Her task was to take the box lids that had had the shiny paper applied but not tucked in, and fold the paper down over the flaps. I once told her to watch the Simpsons episode where the kids go to the box factory, and she told me afterwards that she about died laughing.
**Anyone need a personal shopper? Mr. Rilch is your man! Well, no, actually he’s my man. But I’ll share!
:sigh: