What do you think of this recent term that sometimes makes the front page, i.e., “consumer confidence?” I find it an odd one, indeed.
And certainly don’t recall reading about it as a teen back in the late ‘50s or early ‘60s. Of course I mainly read the sport pages in those days, not to mention the comics!
Still this term “consumer confidence” sometimes mystifies me. I basically find it silly and pretentious, and really, “non-news.” To which you may well reply, and justifiably: “What about consumers trying to get certain goods in the era of COVID? Or when supply chains got severely rattled? What of people simply finding prices of certain items too steep for their budgets?”
Points well taken. But I guess part of my problem with this “consumer confidence” estimate is that we’ve already become an over-the-top consumer society anyway. Too often we take and don’t make. Which can be a problem, no?
Is Mr. Trump right to want American manufacturing going gang-busters again? I’d say emphatically yes, but no as well!
The part of me that salutes the president on this issue deems it a smart and realistic policy. Why let Communist China continue to pilfer and use poorly paid workers to decimate one industry after another over here? The Rust Belt? Residents of Buffalo-Niagara certainly know a good deal about THAT, and not just as an abstract trope to be tossed around on talk shows by journalists or think tank types.
So why did I go ambivalent on you and also put in a “no” above? Because manufacturing of, say, steel or aluminum, not to mention coal mining, oil production, or rare earths extraction, all can pollute, and badly.
Which means more respiratory problems, higher cancer rates, you name it. There again residents most particularly of the Falls have searing memories of a certain site with the word “canal” in it – I won’t go on and on re that ultra-tragic occurrence, telling you what many know so much better from bitter experience. Is my “no” redolent, too, of the NIMBY stance many progressives now take when it comes to installation of wind gizmos and so forth? I guess so. Like everyone, I like the purest air possible, and anything that facilitates good health.
And yet I still admire what Pres. Trump is trying to do in this regard. One key part being a reduction of our balance of payments problem, and of an addiction to indebtedness, and which has also been related to this consumerism à gogo here. He’s not wrong to preach a couple Christmas toys (from China) per kid, vs. 30-odd! Not wrong either to deplore near-empty cargo planes flying to Beijing, and returning stuffed with hi-tech fare sometimes mis-labeled on manifests to elude restrictions.
Consumer confidence? My foot! Although (you’ll hate me) I have yet another devil’s advocate view brewing inside, and ready to mock my initial position here. Which is?
That you do have to have “consumer confidence” in one domain, i.e., in the food items we buy and eat. That I’ll readily concede; but on balance, I STILL don’t like this phrase or the so-called “news” I’m supposed to ingest on it.
As in: “Consumer confidence fell last month by 1.7%,” and don’t you forget it! More important than potential nuclearization of Iran, Russian destruction of Ukraine, or America’s drug problem? No way.
Mostly this feels to me like ersatz news, and pretentiously portentous! Me, I’m still going to keep skipping anything they tell me on it.
I imagine many of ye readers also jump away from such economic gobbledygook, and that includes those who don’t like having whichever administration’s policies skewered in this oh so official-sounding way.
I’d certainly lack chutzpah were I forced to walk on the roofs of high buildings! But a lack of “consumer confidence”? So far amidst this amazing cornucopia of goods and services we’ve grown to expect, and which has if anything, become ever more handy and copious, I haven’t yet experienced that now-hyped “malaise.”
A greater problem here is a severe lack of gratitude for what so many industries have innovated (going far back to Edison, Ford and the rest), and which too often get taken for granted. But … “consumer confidence?” Three big boos!