Consumers

Consumer Spending Drought: 16 Signs That The Middle Class Is Running Out Of Money

Is "discretionary income" rapidly becoming a thing of the past for most American families? Right now, there are a lot of signs that we are on the verge of a nightmarish consumer spending drought. Incomes are down, taxes are up, many large retail chains are deeply struggling because of the lack of customers, and at this point nearly a quarter of all Americans have more credit card debt than money in the bank. Considering the fact that consumer spending is such a large percentage of the U.S. economy, that is very bad news. How will we ever have a sustained economic recovery if consumers don't have much money to spend? Well, the truth is that we aren't ever going to have a sustained economic recovery. In fact, this debt-fueled bubble of false hope that we are experiencing right now is as good as things are going to get. Things are going to go downhill from here, and if you think that consumer spending is bad now, just wait until you see what happens over the next several years. (Read More....)

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Black Friday Violence Worse Than Ever As American Consumers Fight Over Deals Like Crazed Animals

We all knew that this was coming, didn't we? Each year Black Friday violence just seems to get worse and worse. What does it say about American consumers when they are willing to fight like crazed animals just to save a few bucks on cheap plastic crap made in China? Not that retailers are innocent in any of this. It certainly seems as though many of them purposely create wild situations on Black Friday where customers will rush like crazy people into their stores and nearly riot as they fight over discounted merchandise. The more Black Friday madness there is, the more of an "event" it becomes, and the higher the profits of the retailers go. This year there was more Black Friday hype than ever and there was also more Black Friday violence than ever. It is being projected that this year a record-setting 152 million Americans will go shopping between Thanksgiving and Sunday night. That may be good news for the big corporate retailers, but the shocking lack of character being displayed by American consumers all over the country this weekend is very bad news for the future of this nation. (Read More....)

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Federal Bureaucrats: Get Your Dirty Hands Off Of Our Light Bulbs

In the United States today, thousands upon thousands of ridiculous federal regulations tightly control almost every area of our lives. One example of this is that starting on January 1st, we are no longer going to be able to buy certain kinds of light bulbs in the United States. Back in 2007, President George W. Bush signed a law that mandates the following: "Manufacturers will no longer be able to make the 100-watt Thomas Edison bulb after Jan. 1, 2012, followed by the 75-watt version in Jan. 2013, and the the 60- and 40-watt bulbs in Jan. 2014." Yes, you read that correctly. Federal bureaucrats are running wild and the nanny state has decided that you are simply not going to have the choice to buy traditional light bulbs anymore. So why the change? Incandescent light bulbs have not been proven to be unsafe and consumers still want to buy them. The new CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) light bulbs are more expensive and are actually worse for the environment. So why was this law passed? The feds passed it because they decided that existing light bulbs use too much energy and have too large of a "carbon footprint". Instead of giving us choices and attempting to persuade us to change, the federal government is ramming their will down our throats. Well, it is about time that we told the federal bureaucrats that are trying to take our freedoms away that we want them to get their dirty hands off of our light bulbs. (Read More....)