Black Friday... - Page 2

"Give it up. Thanksgiving is gone for good."    - CNN Money



http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/25/black-friday-ate-thanksgiving/?section=magazines_fortune
 

It's all up to you how you spend your time and money.
To save or not to save, if your buying quality you already have.

The machine knows us well.

"If You Shop on Thanksgiving, You Are Part of the Problem"

"I'm a capitalist. It's not my religion, I won't bow before its altar, I won't kiss its ring, but I believe in capitalism. It's an invention of man and it involves money, so it's not perfect, but I've never heard anyone suggest a better system. So I'm a capitalist.

I am not, however, a consumerist. I like the freedom and innovation of capitalism; I loathe the materialism and gluttony of consumerism. There's a popular misconception that capitalism and consumerism are inextricably linked; that one naturally involves and requires the other. But this is a fallacy. Certainly the "stimulus" programs a few years ago ought to have dispelled this notion entirely. The government perverted the free market and elected to hand free money to millions of people, hoping that they'd go out and buy a bunch of stuff with it. This was consumerism at the expense of capitalism, and it revealed our priorities: forget freedom, forget principle -- just buy stuff."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            -Matt Walsh, Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-walsh/shopping-on-thanksgiving_b_4310109.html

I have a confession,,....

Its hard for even me to believe, but I did it !!...I went shopping on Black Friday. Now mind you it was after midnight; not much after, but after. So I did not technically shop on Thanksgiving.....

No lines, no commotion either,,I simply went to Kohls.com and swiped until my heart was content,,,,,,What fun!!,,,

@Carlin can we still be friends?,,

@Carlin can we still be friends?

All I can say us whatever you bought me better be really nice, lol.

Seriously though, there really seems to be a particularly small contingent of people who both disagree with the commercialization of every part of Western life, and believe that it is possible to prevent what appears to the foregone conclusion.  I didn't shop yesterday, and won't until tomorrow, but it looks like I'm in a very small minority. 

I am with you Carlin. I am having my favorite part of Thanksgiving right, now.  Shopping can wait!   




The big kid will be hitting the mall with his friends later in the day. He's having pie for breakfast, too. 



 

How crazy is this ?  Just heard on the news today that (despite we don't
have Thanksgiving) there are moves afoot to introduce 'Black Friday', with
its large discounts, here !   I kid you not.

Hund  - my wife and I were just discussing recently what the next logical step in the progression (or regression perhaps)  might be.  Once you have successfully replaced the substance of the holiday season to a sufficient degree, does not the consumerism exist independent of all else, and become the focus of celebration unto itself?  I think your last post may be indicative of just that to one extent or another.

Thanksgiving with my family is always a wildly fun event.  Lots of food and of course dogs, all kinds of dogs and kids running around, it's controlled chaos until food hits the tables, amazing how that works .  We had friends from Turkey, Argentina, Germany, Slovenia, Norway, and my son's roommates (who spent their first ever Thanksgiving in this country with my family) from South Africa, Bosnia, and Hungary.  We all discussed the crazy consumer traditionn of leaving family and friends to shop.  After dropping my son, his girlfriend, and his roommates off (with care packages big enough to feed them for the next week), I drove by the local Walmart which is on my way home.  The parking lot was packed to capacity with a line of cars both directions on a 4 lane road causing enough of a problem that they had police officers directing traffic.  My neighbor works as a cashier for that same Walmart and said earlier she will barely have time to spend with family before she has to rush off to work.  People who shop on these goofy Holiday "sales" seem to forget about the people who work at the stores.  Unfortunately for my neighbor, she can't afford to pass up the day of work, plus she and others who work for many of these companies who open for Thanksgiving day shopping and such, say if they opt to miss work, it usually bites them down the road when it comes to promotions, raises, day off picks and so on.
 

Well Carlin I'd agree it is certainly indicative of that in re the UK, since we cannot
be progressing from the substance of the Thanksgiving celebration we don't have.