Ground fog with a drizzling rain this way-early Monday on California’s north coast, and the end to round one of a not-so-fabulous holiday season.
This year might be a crazy yuletide.
Despite the expansion of Black Friday, and the swell of people in stores, the end result wasn’t so hot: Overall spending was expected to reach $57.4 billion for the weekend, according to the retail federation. That’s down from $59.1 billion last year.
All the fighting and brawling didn’t seem to matter.
(Illustration found here).
Yet this is Cyber Monday, with online sales already popping the cork rising ‘17.3 percent on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, outpacing sales growth at brick-and-mortar stores.’
And this seems the route: RetailNext, an analytics firm, found overall shopper traffic between Wednesday and Friday fell 5.2 percent and that customers went to fewer different stores, doing more online research beforehand.
InterWebs first, then shop at the old brick-n-mortar.
Walmart brawling over flat-screen TVs is only the tip of the human/American iceberg. One off-shoot of this crazy world is the end of “social trust” among ordinary folks:
These days, only one-third of Americans say most people can be trusted.
Half felt that way in 1972, when the General Social Survey first asked the question.
Forty years later, a record high of nearly two-thirds say “you can’t be too careful” in dealing with people.
An AP-GfK poll conducted last month found that Americans are suspicious of each other in everyday encounters.
Less than one-third expressed a lot of trust in clerks who swipe their credit cards or people they meet when traveling.
“I’m leery of everybody,” said Bart Murawski, 27, of Albany. “Caution is always a factor.”
…
In fact, some studies suggest it’s too late for most Americans alive today to become more trusting.
That research says the basis for a person’s lifetime trust levels is set by his or her mid-20s and unlikely to change, other than in some unifying crucible such as a world war.
People do get a little more trusting as they age.
But beginning with the baby boomers, each generation has started off adulthood less trusting than those who came before them.
Yeah, us baby-booming assholes can only trust when there’s a war.
And one good, natural reason for the rise of distrust could be the asshole government — the current the worse ever.
From the Washington Post:
According to congressional records, there have been fewer than 60 public laws enacted in the first 11 months of this year, so below the previous low in legislative output that officials have already declared this first session of the 113th Congress the least productive ever.
In 1995, when the newly empowered GOP congressional majority confronted the Clinton administration, 88 laws were enacted, the record low in the post-World War II era.
…
With such little time to get things done, senior House GOP and Senate Democratic advisers suggest that a trio of benefits that expire Dec. 31 are not likely to win approval.
Those include some unemployment benefits, funding to help workers displaced by global trade, and a collection of business-friendly tax breaks, including some for research and development.
Another key issue that is up in the air is the “doc fix,” a nearly annual alteration to the fees paid to Medicare providers to assure that doctors and hospitals do not drop patients from the entitlement program.
…
House and Senate negotiators have been trying to reach agreement on a broad farm bill that would extract more than $30 billion or so in savings from current spending levels, but they have been unable to close the wide gap between their respective proposals on funding levels for food stamps.
Ah, yeah, the old food stamp noodle.
US people, though, ‘trust’ President Obama, or so says Former Obama advisor David Plouffe, who on Sunday visited ABC News This Week and offered an upbeat assessment of the president (via Mediaite):
“This has been a tough task,” Plouffe said.
“It’s not just health care. The shutdown affected everybody’s confidence in government. But let’s fast-forward to the State of the Union and the months after that. Health care working better, a lot of people signing up. The economy continuing to strengthen. Hopefully no Washington shutdowns. I think the president’s numbers will recover. I think people’s confidence will recover.”
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan rebutted that Obama’s broken “if you like you plan, you can keep your plan” pledge would permanently cost him in the polls.
“I think he spoke directly to this, and I think people accepted what he had to say,” Plouffe replied.
“I think people trust this president. There have been numbers all over the place. But I’m confident that in a few months from now, the trust numbers will come up, and his approval number will come up.”
A prediction out there in a the fog of the future. An old country song — ‘If we make through December…‘
First, however, is to tackle Monday head-on, or head-first, or maybe with head down.
(Illustration out front found here).