Some good reasons why we are in this mess

[AllentownJake]

If you go to a grocery store and walk down the soda lane. You'll see rows and rows of different colored sugar water. Some have sugar, some have an artificial sweetness so that in reality all you are drinking is water with chemicals.

Now the sugar water is essentially the same. They have slightly different flavors but it is all Sugar Water.

They have managed to convince us that one sugar water taste different and is better than the other and we should pay more for the one sugar water.

Another great example, the Gap Jeans company is made up of 3 brands of Jeans. Old Navy, Gap, and Banana Republic.

A pair of Banana Republic Jeans will run you $80. A pair from the Gap will run you $40. A pair from Old Navy will run you $20.

The jeans are the same. One doesn't last longer than the other, one isn't more or less stylish. They are the same fucking jeans. You are paying more for the damn jeans so that people will think you have money!

Not only have they made being poor something to be ashamed of, they have made being frugal and not a dumbass something to be ashamed of too!

[dkf]

1. I've never paid $80 for Banana Republic jeans in my life.

You can get it for $20 at the outlets.

[MineralMan]

2. Well...

The different sodas do, in fact, tasted different from one another, so the consumer has a choice to make if he/she wants some sugar water or corn syrup water. How much to pay? Depends on your choice.

Yes, the same basic jeans may well be sold for different prices under different brand names. However, you can head over to the nearest Farm Supply store and get them way cheaper, or to the local Goodwill or other thrift store and get them almost free.

It is your choice to feel ashamed. If you don't feel ashamed, you don't have to patronize any of those stores or drink any particular soda.

Nobody else should be able to make you feel ashamed.

[vadawg]

4. the soda bit confused me, i like diet pepsi (warm) and my misses likes diet coke cold

and never the two shall meet.

[glowing]

3. The Quality is different. Banana Republic colthes will last much longer than

Old Navy Clothes. I still have clothes from Banana Republic from 11 years ago. My old navy kapri's lasted 1yr. Gap is somewhat in between. Normally lasting for about 5 to 6 years or longer depending on how much wear you give them. I still have a pair that I bought when I was 18, I'm now 30. I suppose I'm lucky to still fit in something that I wore when I was 18. But there is a different in the clothing; even if its the same company.

[Indydem]

6. That is a coincidence then.

The clothes are made on the same lines by the same manufactureres with the same materials. They just throw a different tag on at the end. Old Navy was created, and still serves as (to some extent), an outlet for GAP seconds.

Only you can make yourself feel ashamed. Wear what feels good and go from there.

[glowing]

19. It may come from similar factories, but the bolt of fabric is different.

[Warpy]

5. The soda line isn't flavored water these days, it's WATER

and has been for quite some time, a dizzying array of packaging and labeling to convince us they're all different.

While it's probably in the mindless consumer's favor that there's been a shift away from sweetened bubbles to water, it's insane that it's been marketed in disposable plastic bottles at premium prices when perfectly decent potable water comes out of the tap and that water can be made superior to the bottled stuff by simple filtering.

Shelf space and advertising are where it's at, giving us the illusion of choice when there really isn't any.

[Indydem]

7. Have you seen whats in the water supply?

I don't drink bottled water, because I think its stupid to pay for it. But I can't disparage those who do based on whats actually in the municiple drinking water of most large cities. Any city that draws their water from streams and rivers which are used as sewage disposal systems of other cities can look forward to consuming a cocktail of pharmacueticals that I don't care to put in my body.

I'd get a Reverse Osmosis ssyem and drink more water, but it takes out floridation and that irks my wife, who works in dentistry.

[Warpy]

8. And distilled water leaches minerals from your bones

so you might as well put up with Prozac in parts per ten trillion. Trust me, your body won't know the difference.

I've lived in one area where the water was so bad they told us not to bathe in it, but to take quick showers. I used a water service there, ten gallons a week for drinking and cooking in addition to fruit juices, bottled seltzer, and the like.

Since I've had to use bottled water in the past, the fad held absolutely no allure for me. I use a Brita pitcher and that removes the chlorine and sediment and helps my tea and homemade seltzer taste great.

[vadawg]

9. i got a well and after you get used to the slight minerally taste, the water ireal nice if that make

sense, personally i love not having to rely apon someone else for my water supply.

[Warpy]

11. You might want to get your water tested every once in a while

because pollution plumes are everywhere these days.

The best water I've tasted in NM was from an artesian well on one of the reservations. Unfortunately my connection moved away and I no longer get a gallon from him once in a while.

[AllentownJake]

14. If you drink Nestle or pretty much any other brand in the Mid Atlantic Region

You are drinking Allentown City Tap Water

[Warpy]

17. Most of it is ultra filtered tap water

which then sits in plastic bottles for weeks while chemicals leach back into it.

[madmom]

25. My daughter, while in high school, did a science fair project on water. She

tested city tap water, our water from a municipal water tower, the neighboring towns water from artisans springs, and my nieces pond fed water system. The best , by far, was the pond fed system,as far as contaminates were concerned. The worst was our municipal water tower, fecal coliform, from farm/field run-off.

[onethatcares]

10. and that's why I drink grey goose vodka

because it costs me more to get the same shitface on that I can with popov.:hide: just another way to show my affluence.:)

[CrownPrinceBandar]

16. Ah. Snooty French vodka......................

:P

I love it. GG is the only vodka I'll drink.

[omega minimo]

24. Not an option for the greygoose intolerant

[WCGreen]

12. Kirkland Jeans at COSTCO cost about 15 bucks...

They fit well, fade well and are durable.

[Bluenorthwest]

13. If only it were all sugar water!

Sadly, almost all soda is made with High Fructose Corn Syrup now. To get sugar water, you have to buy high end 'natural sodas' or Coke imported from Mexico.
So it is not even sugar water, that sugar water.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

15. Best thing I've ever done for my body was quitting soda..........

I've lost some weight, my kidneys feel better and my teeth no longer ache. And I only drank 2 sodas a day.

And I've never paid more than $30 for a pair of jeans. I usually buy Carhartt's. They're the only brand that I don't blow the crotch out of.

[GTurck]

18. This post is...

about how advertising has confused and conflated everything. We don't know what the different brands really are nor do we know for sure whether spending more money will buy us any sort of quality. The marketing industry just loves the confusion because it is the opening they need to sell their products.
One of the reasons I buy store brands is that I learned in a college level marketing course taught by a VP for Swift that the product lines produce the same items everyday and only change the containers and labels for them. Same with almost everything else. There may be some differences in assembly: overlapped seams; wider range of sizes; more colors in clothes; more up to date designing - but essentially only cosmetic differences. So I have to agree with Allentown Jake. Save money and forget about the label unless that label really is a unique one and that would be a long long shot.

[closeupready]

20. I don't drink soda, haven't for years, and I shop at Old Navy for

a majority of my clothes, but mostly I guess shorts and socks and tshirts. I don't really wear out my jeans and other tops so I don't need to replace my clothes so much. I do find Banana Republic fits better than Gap, where I almost never shop anymore because everything they sell sucks, IMO.

[omega minimo]

21. Paper or Plastic? Coke or Pepsi? Old cancer causing sweetener or new cancer causing sweetener?

Red dye #40 anyone :evilgrin:

[rug]

22. It's taken over politics too.

[DailyGrind51]

23. I buy dept. store house-brand jeans for $8!

[Gregorian]

26. Exactly.

When we put groups in "charge", people listen and believe. Even if it's lies. Corporations and government are both in "charge". "Better living through chemistry". That was a mantra in previous decades. The press spews things that ultimately benefit them. And the government and corporations do the same. Instead of saying that this planet is a tiny speck in the universe, we're all on this together, don't kill us or it. They say we will be better if we all have three children and drive a Lexus. Which translates to death. Billions of people breathing down each other's necks. Notice whenever a population begins decreasing. Governments go wild with fear. They even pay people to have kids. And the press could be talking about reality instead of entertaining us while we burn. Reality being that we need to be responsible. Things like keeping fit and eating properly, thinking about the future of all of us, not just ME.

The other day I was reading about a British explorer who mapped the San Francisco bay area in the 1700's. Suddenly it was like a shock to think of a place that was virgin. Bears, cougars, fish, silence. Compared to cars, planes, houses, noise, people everywhere. One was frightening, beautiful, dangerous, healthy. The other is easy, disgusting, well I can't say many good things about it. The point was that we've been like frogs in warming water. When one jumps out and looks at the situation in perspective, what we are now is simply a DISASTER. Every day is a disaster now. Seven billion people all trying to figure out how to eat. The animals sitting in pens and cages and stockyards, suffering. Immense suffering.

We could do better. It's not a perfect world, but we didn't know when to stop. And what isn't being expressed down to the little people (us), is that there are limits. We've got people in jail cells. What is with that?! How many people should really be in a cage? It's just an indication of how mad we've become. Not those in jails, but those outside of them. Those making the laws, telling the "news", selling the things we don't really need. And just plain lying in order to make their lives easier. And we're all suffering for it.

This won't make sense to many people. In fact it'll sound outright nuts. I'll never forget when my first girlfriend (who lived in Tehran) came to California and said "Californians are car crazy". I literally didn't know what she meant. I was nuts about high performance cars. It took me a quarter century to see it. Now I hate cars. I hate everything about them. It's hard to see that harder can be better.

[Danascot]

27. I don't agree that frugality is seen as something to be ashamed of

(last sentence in OP)

There are significant indications that being frugal is coming back in style.

(My Scottish-Irish Yankee mother who still keeps every piece of aluminum foil, plastic bag and rubber band she ever aquired is suddenly hip!)

Two articles that make the argument:

Conspicuous Consumption, a Casualty of Recession

In just the seven months since the stock market crash, the recession has aimed its death ray not just at the credit market, the Dow and Detroit, but at the very ethos of conspicuous consumption. Even those who still have a regular income are reassessing their spending habits, perhaps for the long term. They are shopping their closets, downscaling their vacations and holding off on trading in their cars. If the race to have the latest fashions and gadgets was like an endless, ever-faster video game, then someone has pushed the reset button.

“I think this economy was a good way to cure my compulsive shopping habit,” Maxine Frankel, 59, a high school teacher from Skokie, Ill., said as she longingly stroked a diaphanous black shawl at a shop in the nearby Chicago suburb of Glenview. “It’s kind of funny, but I feel much more satisfied with the things money can’t buy, like the well being of my family. I’m just not seeking happiness from material things anymore.”

…more…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/us/10reset.html?hp

Frugal is cool in cash-strapped US

In the grip of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, America has undergone radical changes. Greed is no longer good and luxury is a shameful word. Paul Harris in New York analyses the tests facing the new president of a shattered nation

This new America is what Barack Obama has inherited. It is in many ways a broken country. When Obama takes the oath of office on 20 January watched by millions of Americans, his burden will be heavy in the extreme. The scale of the disaster is so large that Obama being America’s first black president will almost be a historical footnote. The numbers describe the extent of the catastrophe best. Seven trillion dollars has been wiped off a stock market that has dropped 33%, its biggest fall since 1931. Two million jobs have disappeared, wages are frozen and millions have lost their homes. The Federal Reserve is printing billions of dollars to keep the economy afloat. Banks have been part nationalised and the car industry of Detroit - once the symbol of the all-American lifestyle - is on life support and may not see the end of 2009.

These terrible facts are accompanied by a profound cultural shift. The era of individualistic consumption that swept aside the Great Society of the 1960s has come to an end. For three decades, American culture has celebrated the glories of unabashed capitalism and the ideals of the rich. No longer. From Hollywood movies to celebrity culture to television, frugalism is taking hold. Consumers are cutting back. Luxury brands are falling by the wayside. Even the excesses of the sporting world, from the Super Bowl to Nascar, are being curbed.

A national belt-tightening is having an impact on everything from restaurants and books to a collapse in the demand for cosmetic surgery. The recession is reshaping the cultural landscape in which ordinary people live their lives. As it prepares to inaugurate a new president, America is also trying to forge a fresh identity in a world unimaginably different from the one inherited by George W Bush only eight years ago.

…more…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/04/us-economy-thrift-barack-obama