I’ll be too stuffed, but mostly just too lazy, to post something throughout the next couple of days, so here is a developing list of things to read throughout this weekend, (mostly holiday-themed). Happy Thanksgiving from the Cornell Insider and the Cornell Review!
At least the Christmas stimulus strengthens the economy, right? Wrong, says Waldfogel. If all spending justified itself, we would pay people to dig holes and then refill them — or build bridges to unpopulated Alaskan islands. Spending is good if the purchaser, or the recipient of a gift, values the commodity more than he does the money it costs. Otherwise, there is a subtraction from society’s store of value.
Christmas etiquette involves composing one’s face to feign pleasure when unwrapping an unwelcome windfall — say, a sweater of an appalling color and a style that went out of style in the 1940s — and murmuring “Oh, you shouldn’t have” without revealing that you mean exactly that. Price of the sweater: $50. Value to recipient: $0. Actually, less than zero, considering the psychological cost of the forced smile.
Rich Lowry (who was recently in town): Pilgrims Planted the Seeds of America’s Abundance:
As our Founding Fathers knew in their bones, this represented the merest beginning, situated as we were in what George Washington called “a most enviable condition.”
Paul Johnson writes in his magisterial “A History of the American People” that 300 years after Winthrop’s arrival, “the United States was producing, with only 6 percent of the world’s population and land area, 70 percent of its oil, nearly 50 percent of its copper, 38 percent of its lead, 42 percent each of its zinc and coal, and 46 percent of its iron — in addition to 54 percent of its cotton and 62 percent of its corn.”
Will’s article overlooks the fact that gift givers receive a certain amount of value (satisfaction, utility, w/e) from purchasing and giving gifts. If this value is taken into consideration, then maybe all the spending would justify itself.