Y’all Need to Spend More This Xmas
The following important advice is aimed at Australian readers, although it is most likely that it applies to most other nations as well.
Y’all need to spend more this Xmas.
It seems that the 25 basis point reduction in the wholesale cost of money earlier this month has not had the desired effect. Not yet anyway.
The basic plan (of the Reserve Bank of Australia) went something along the lines of: Drop the interest rate by a quarter of percent and that will get people out spending up for Xmas, which in turn will save the retailers, which in turn will save people from losing jobs and will assist the general economy.
Basically a reasonably good plan.
The problem is, so far anyway, the general population has not embraced this plan. In fact, at this point, the Xmas lead-up spending this year is lower than it was last year. Not exactly the desired outcome.
According to the government ‘households’ are saving, as an average, $415 per month more than they were in 2007 because we are all too scared to spend. We are all saving up for a rainy day—for the bad times to come (although we are not too sure what they are).
I can assure you that my ‘household’ does not fit that profile. My ‘household’ has not saved a penny over the last 2 to 3 years. In fact, without actually seeing their bank accounts, I am not aware of any of the ‘households’ that I know that would be saving $415 per month more than they were saving in 2007.
The government keeps telling us we have never had it so good. We have never been this well off. Well how come is it then that when I first got married and bought a house and I was paying off a car (which I am not doing now), that I had more—in relative terms—disposable income than I have now?
Anyway … back to the point of this posting.
Y’all need to spend more this Xmas. The country NEEDS you to spend more this Xmas. The retailers need the sales and the government needs the taxes—they’ve spent all the money they had when they first got into government.
So, instead of banking that extra savings $415 for November and December you need to go out and spend it. What is a measly $830 compared to keeping jobs for people in retail and boosting the governments tax take up a little?
Surely you could buy some new shoes for yourself, or a new watch (I haven’t bought a new watch for about 15 years), or a smartphone upgrade (seen the new Motorola RAZR?) and buy it outright (don’t away give half you money to a carrier), or a couple of DVD box sets (don’t waste money on Blu-ray, trust me on this), or even a television upgrade (upgrade that slightly fuzzy plasma to one of the new super-sharp LED LCD units), or get a tablet PC (the Acer Iconia is currently rated as the most functional and versatile tablet PC), or a Kindle Reader (there are three new models out and they are seriously cheap), or, my final suggestion, get one of the Limited Edition Xbox units coming out this month.
Just make sure you spend it and don’t save it—although as I write that down it does sort of seem like bad advice. Hmmmmm.
