The Party's Over!

The Cushion is Gone!; the Real World Awaits...

This is a response to someone who asked me whether I thought that the economy has foisted major changes on people’s lives as it has in her particular neighborhood. Here’s my response:


Vilma, until Starbucks came along, I never spent much more than a quarter for a cup of coffee. Now, I listen to the people on line in front of me talking the Starbucks code and watching $5.00 plus change hands for what is essentially a cup of coffee. For the privilege of sitting with your nose squeezed against the window on an uncomfortable chair and being bombarded with music that someone with no sense of continuity has managed to piece together, I have had the privilege of spending twenty times what i used to spend on coffee.

Not that there's anything wrong about that.

But Starbucks is only emblematic of a generation raised on branding. Young people who must have the latest electronic technology and the brands that set them apart, even if they haven't earned that status through any kind of intellectual endeavor.

For them, the party seems over! We are now entering a period of what many might think of as the end result of their disengagement from what is happening in the real world. In their quest for big digs and fancy clothes, most people have simply allowed the government to be taken away; so that this government, in turn, can send your jobs overseas and allow the banks to make crushing profits. Whatever happened to the notion of usury where the banks are prohibited from charging outlandish interest rates? Just another one of those controls that simply slipped away in the corporate world’s consummate greed that says that more is never enough!

Well, today, the consumer is between a rock and a hard place. There is little to squeeze out of the equity account that hasn’t already been squeezed dry and most people's credit cards are charged to the max. Therefore, when your employer decides to eliminate staff because he is sending the heavy-lifting somewhere else, who suffers?

You and in the process all of America.

Don't be surprised at the scaling down of expectations in the next few years and along the way forget about those $400 Fendi purses and the $400 video games, it's now time to get down to business!

Les Aaron