Black Friday: A Shameful Orgy...

[wa3zrm]

...Of Materialism For A Morally Bankrupt Nation
theeconomiccollapseblog ^ |

It has been called "America's most disturbing holiday". Black Friday is the day when millions of average Americans wait outside retail stores in the middle of the night in the freezing cold to spend more money that they do not have for more cheap Chinese-made products that they do not need. It is a day when the rest of the world makes fun of Americans for behaving like "rabid animals" and "zombies" as we indulge in a tsunami of greed. It truly is a shameful orgy of materialism for a morally bankrupt nation. It is being projected that approximately 140 million Americans will participate in this disgusting national ritual this year. Sadly, most of them have absolutely no idea that they are actively participating in the destruction of the economic infrastructure of the United States. If you don't understand why this is true, please be sure to read this entire article all the way to the end.
The amount of merchandise that is purchased on Black Friday is absolutely staggering. For example, just consider how much stuff is sold at Wal-Mart alone...

Wal-Mart said it recorded more than 10 million register transactions between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Thursday in its stores and nearly 400 million page views that day on walmart.com. It sold 2.8 million towels, 2 million televisions, 1.4 million tablets, 300,000 bicycles and 1.9 million dolls. Big-ticket electronics like big-screen TVs and new videogame consoles were among the top sellers.

But each and every year, Black Friday also seems to bring out the worst in many people, and this year was certainly no exception. The following are just a few of the national headlines about the rioting and the violence that we witnessed...
-"Holiday shopping season kicks off with fights, arrests"
-"Violence flares as shoppers slug it out for best Black Friday deals"
-"Watch Screaming Mobs Fight Over Televisions At Wal-Mart"
-"Two Arrested After Stabbing Over Parking Space At Wal-Mart"
-"Rialto Walmart Thanksgiving brawl sends one police officer to hospital"
-"Walmart Ejects Customer For Filming Violent ‘Black Thursday’ Mobs"
-"Cops: Shoplifting suspect shot after dragging officer"
And sometimes the violence extends out into the parking lots and into the surrounding neighborhoods. In Las Vegas, a man that was carrying a big-screen television home from Target was shot in the leg...

According to police, a man purchased a big-screen television from the Target store near Flamingo Rd. and Maryland Pkwy. While he was walking to a nearby apartment complex, a man approached and fired a warning shot, causing the victim to drop the television, police said.
Officers tell 8 News NOW the gunman then took the television to a nearby car that was waiting, where a second man helped the gunman load the TV into the car.
The victim approached the two men and tried to get the television back. That prompted the gunman to fire several more rounds, shooting the victim in the leg.

Every year I go over to YouTube to check out the madness that breaks out on Black Friday night all over the nation. Posted below is the best compilation video from Black Friday that I could find. In particular, I love how this video compares American shoppers to zombies...

CONTINUED

[wa3zrm]

And there is one more video that I wanted to share with you. In this video, activist Mark Dice dresses up like Santa Claus and mocks Black Friday shoppers for being "parasites" and for ruining Thanksgiving...

Meanwhile, as retail stores all over America actively encourage this zombie-like behavior, police are actually cracking down on other groups of Americans that are actively trying to make this country a better place. For example, a Christian group in Lake Worth, Florida was kicked out of a public park for trying to feed the homeless on Thanksgiving. Of course this kind of thing happens all the time. In fact, dozens of major cities all over the country have now passed laws that make it illegal to feed the homeless. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled "One Lawmaker Is Literally Smashing The Belongings Of The Homeless With A Sledgehammer".
At the beginning of this article, I stated that those who go shopping on Black Friday "are actively participating in the destruction of the economic infrastructure of the United States".
How could that possibly be?
Aren't they helping the economy by spending their money?
Actually, it isn't that simple.
Just think about it for a moment. Where are most of the "advertised specials" that people go crazy over on Black Friday actually made?
If you guessed "China", you would be correct. In fact, it is very difficult to find any "Black Friday specials" that are actually made in the United States.
When you buy stuff made in China, you support workers and businesses in China. As I mentioned in a recent article, the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas.
Overall, the U.S. has run a total trade deficit with the rest of the world of more than 8 trillion dollars since 1975.
So when you look around and see lots of unemployed people, it should not be a surprise to you.
Right now, the labor force participation rate is at a 35-year-low and more than 102 million working age Americans do not have a job. That number has increased by 27 million just since the year 2000.
Because the American people are not supporting American businesses, our formerly great manufacturing cities are being transformed into rotting, festering hellholes. Just take a look at Detroit. At one time Detroit had the highest per capita income in the entire nation, but now it is a dying, bankrupt ghost town.
And of course this is happening to manufacturing cities all over the nation. Since 2001, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the U.S. have permanently shut down and we have lost millions upon millions of good paying manufacturing jobs.
Back in the 1980s, more than 20 percent of the jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only about 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
Good job America. And the following are some more facts from one of my previous articles about how our massively bloated trade deficit is absolutely killing our economy...
-There are less Americans working in manufacturing today than there was in 1950 even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then.
-Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.
-When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars. By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.
-Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately 6 million dollars (million with a little "m") for the entire year. In 2012, our trade deficit with China was 315 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
-According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
-According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
Unfortunately, most Americans never stop to think about what happens when we buy stuff from China.
When we buy stuff from them, our money goes over there.
At this point, they are sitting on trillions of our dollars and they have purchased more than a trillion dollars of our debt.
Up until now, Chinese demand for our dollars has helped keep the value of the U.S. dollar artificially high. This is one of the reasons why Wal-Mart can sell you those Chinese imports so inexpensively.
And up until now, Chinese demand for our debt has helped keep long-term interest rates artificially low. So the U.S. government has been able to borrow money at ridiculously low interest rates and U.S. home buyers have been able to get mortgage rates that are well below the real rate of inflation.
But no irrational state of affairs ever lasts indefinitely, and the Chinese recently announced that they are going to quit stockpiling U.S. dollars. Many analysts believe that this means that the Chinese will soon stop stockpiling U.S. debt as well.
So enjoy those super cheap "Black Friday specials" while they last. That era is rapidly coming to an end.
Now that the Chinese have stolen tens of thousands of our businesses, millions of our jobs and trillions of our dollars, perhaps they feel that there is not much more looting to be done. Our economic infrastructure has been essentially gutted at this point. Moving forward, China can afford to let the value of the U.S. dollar fall and the value of their own currency rise because even Barack Obama admits that "those jobs are never coming back".
And every single American that went shopping on Black Friday and bought Chinese-made goods actively participated in the ongoing destruction of the U.S. economy.
Good job America. You are a nation that is utterly consumed by materialism and greed, and you don't even realize that you are destroying yourself with your own foolishness.

[Premium Parrots]

.....then I say.........move to china....and prosper

[squeezyjohn]

Now that the Chinese have stolen tens of thousands of our businesses, millions of our jobs and trillions of our dollars, perhaps they feel that there is not much more looting to be done. Our economic infrastructure has been essentially gutted at this point. Moving forward, China can afford to let the value of the U.S. dollar fall and the value of their own currency rise because even Barack Obama admits that "those jobs are never coming back".
And every single American that went shopping on Black Friday and bought Chinese-made goods actively participated in the ongoing destruction of the U.S. economy.
Good job America. You are a nation that is utterly consumed by materialism and greed, and you don't even realize that you are destroying yourself with your own foolishness.

For that last sentence ... you could replace America with the name of any modern capitalist western nation - and it would still ring true!

It's very emotive language to say that the Chinese have stolen anything ... businesses or jobs. It has essentially been given to them on a plate by the western governments who have attempted (successfully) to sell the lie that we're too good to make things any more and we can just keep all the high tech and service industry for ourselves while the Chinese can get their hands dirty! It's always been a ridiculous plan - but any of us in Britain who argued that we should lend a hand to support our heavy industries during the '80s were shouted down as backward-looking commies by the majority. Hindsight doesn't help much in this situation!

The worst thing is that we are under the false impression that in the west we live in a free-market economy ... we don't because behind the scenes the political and banking classes have been running around like headless chickens doing everything they possibly can to force the interest rates down and hide the true effects of the cost of the debt society has racked up in it's orgy of greed. Only once that fictional safety net has been removed can people even begin to realise that they have to change their behaviour overnight and start understanding their own wealth (or lack of it ... in most cases!)

[Ansel]

a gargantuan boil pulsating off the back of capitalism...

[muddyfunkstar]

There were fights over this stuff in the UK as well. It's not just America.

It's just utterly tragic what we've all become.

[Premium Parrots]

see? This why we really do need guns.

Got to get that new electronic device away from the other shoppers.

[squeezyjohn]

I think most of the complaints about black friday over here is that it smacks of a pathetic attempt to brainwash people in to buying more crap they don't need wrapped up in the disguise of a tradition in the making!

The sooner all the artificial props are taken away from the economy the better ... but the powers that be won't let that happen until they can't stop it anymore because the ensuing carnage will cause a major social breakdown once everyone realises that they've been mis-managed by the political classes in to tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds of debt per person whether they are financially responsible people or not. This impending disaster is probably the worst black mark against the values of democracy to date - it's going to be exposed as fundamentally flawed because the politicians are interested in votes and will lie, squirm and massage the figures to keep the majority happy ... and as long as they do that people will vote for them - because most people are stupid!

No matter how volatile that breakdown will be ... I'd rather be alive during the period of honesty and transparent economics that must follow than today I'm afraid.

[squeezyjohn]

And when it all goes tits up in the UK which I'm predicting with my angry crystal ball -- you know who to come to for snus or chew right?

[Thunder_Snus]

Had to work a black friday once at sears. Sucked although I am happy we were a shitty store (like all sears') and not many people came. I understand its the kickstart of christmas shopping and all that jazz but if you are seriously going to waste all that time and be in a huge crowd of people just to save a few bucks on things...maybe you shouldnt be buying it in the first place. I see it all the time in insurance...some guy needs this 14 bmw but can't afford the insurance when he could have bought the 12 or 13 or even a different make and saved a boatload... If buying a TV for 500$ would put me in a bad financial situation what is the point of buying it for 400$? Now I'm just 100$ away from being in a really shitty situation.

I agree with everything wa3rzm, except maybe the economic inpact of it. Saying made in china means less for USA is really a 2 way street. If i invent a product and it cost me 50$ to make it here or 12$ to make it in china it's really increasing my business in some ways. I'm making larger margins and can hire more sales people, the lack of input required could even allow me to hire some extra sales people/managers I don't really need...but the margins are so high its still a money saver. Although American manufacturing american sales american management is an overall boost in employment... a lot of products can't launch without that low input cost. Infact a lot of people who care about the "made in america" label, start in China looking to produce a profit so they could start to produce in America for more steady growth.

Overall black friday should be banned. Why does making prices low one day need to be done? It's kind of like being asked to get a store loyalty card....noone wants the emails couldn't they just lower their prices? Couldn't every store just have slightly lower prices year round instead of one day where prices are usually being sold at a loss hoping you will buy something else with a high mark up too?

[wa3zrm]

And when it all goes tits up in the UK which I'm predicting with my angry crystal ball

How do you know the UK will go tits up before the US? Remember, everyone is armed to the teeth over here!

Buying Guns on Black Friday Becomes Tradition Under Obama

Although much of the gun control push under President Obama has failed to result in new laws, it has succeeded in creating a new tradition where shoppers scoop up guns on Black Friday so they can place them under the tree on Christmas Day.
As the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported, the jump in 2011 marked "a 32.01 percent increase over" the sales on 2008 Black Friday--the year Obama was first elected.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...