This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 9:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Whenever you read a story about declining consumer savings rates or increasing consumer debt load followed by some media explanation of why it’s not the consumers fault and it’s due to economic “headwinds”, remember this picture.
Consumers are lining up for hours for the opportunity to spend $199 to buy a new iPhone. Has there ever been any activity that makes less economic sense than waiting for hours/days in line to buy a product that will be mass produced to the point of saturation? It boggles my mind.
- John
July 12th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
People that buy iphones are wealthy or have high-disposable incomes - therefore it is not shocking to see the affluent waste time and money on a meaningless consumer item that conveys status.
For more details on the background of iPhone buyers:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/11/nielsen-iphone-in-fourth-place-among-smartphones-first-in-customer-satisfaction-not-for-long/
July 12th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Sent too quickly - which means to say: you can’t judge the state of the economy based on what these people are doing.
July 12th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
I’m all fine w/ people buying iPhones, but waiting hours in line when you can probably stroll into the store next week w/ 0 wait is just idiotic. Also, don’t forget that just because they may have high incomes does not make them wealthy.
- John
July 13th, 2008 at 9:20 am
What’s your point then? I was merely commenting on that you were making a connection between the economy and the purchase of iPhones - you seem to be making the argument, indirectly, that the notion of a struggling consumer is a media creation and using the iPhone line as an example. It’s not a good example - go to Detroit and see a more representative sample of average Americans.
I think we both agree it’s a useless activity, and is another great example of economic actors acting irrationally on the basis of a status item.
July 13th, 2008 at 10:59 am
My point was how the consumer mindset illustrated by the iPhone line is prevalent up and down the economic scale. This mindset has played a large part in the recent economic boom as consumer spending has increased to an ever greater part of GDP. But this spending has come at a cost, which is “declining consumer savings rates or increasing consumer debt load”.