to spend or not to spend - that is the question

I try to keep my blog away from economics. I don’t talk about it for one because I don’t know that much about economics. Secondly, everywhere else the economy is being talked about and none of it is good news. Well, today I am. And if you have had enough of it like me just skip this and come back tomorrow.

There seems to be a small dichotomy growing about the state of the economy. On NPR yesterday there were two completely opposite views of the economy. The first was a woman who called in to talk about how people because of the economy are now learning (for the first time) that you can save money by packing a lunch every day for work instead of going out to eat. She went on to be outraged by the fact that we could be in a society where people were just now learning this simple little way to save money. (From a sociological standpoint, the woman has completely missed the point of how society and culture of the United States affects this, and not how stupid these people may be - but that is beside the point.) The point, of course, this woman was making was that a collapsed economy shouldn’t be teaching people how to save money. We should already know it and should be doing it.

The second caller was, to say the least, upset at the suggestion that people should stop going out to lunch everyday. The funny part is that the caller was a chef. His living is made on people eating out. Not just eating out, but spending lots of money eating out.

To me this dichotomy seems to be a moot point. No? When the economy starts going up people will start spending money again and the chef will be happy. People will forgo bringing their lunch to work and start eating out again. I could be wrong. But in a consumerist culture our culture depends on it - like the chef said.