I watched Oprah the other day... yes, I'm that girl... It was an episode about money and being thrifty in hard economic times and there was a segment about a woman who makes it her "job" to save her family as much money on groceries as possible. Sounds rational, doesn't it? So I watched hoping to get some tips I could apply. In the end I was horrified by her methods so much so that I wrote to Oprah about it.
A little backstory: The woman took us to the supermarket. Amongst her tips for buying on sale, etc. her main advice is to use coupons. Now I've been known to benefit from a coupon or two, but in good conscience I could never go to her extreme. "See this bag of carrots is on sale for 49 cents, but I have a coupon for 50 cents, so FREE CARROTS!! And check to see if your store accepts double coupons because then you can save twice as much. This bottle of shampoo is 88 cents, but I have two 50 cent coupons so THAT'S FREE TOO!" And so on, and so on... In the end, her $127 worth of groceries (all on sale already) cost her $37 because of coupons. In my mind, this kind of consumer is evil. It's selfish and it's wrong.
My comment to Oprah is below:
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I have to say straight out that while watching this show two days ago, I couldn't help but be disappointed that this is the kind of behaviour that Oprah is promoting. Can't you all see that this kind of consumerism is narrow-minded, short-sighted and incredibly selfish? Perhaps it is because I'm Canadian (and have more of a socialist mind), but I see this as an extension of the mindset that has got America into trouble in the first place. "What I want. What I need." - with no thought to cause and effect.
Nothing is free. Nothing should be free. Everything comes from somewhere. Someone grew those carrots and spent time and energy and money to do so. Someone made that shampoo. Someone had to drive the truck to get everything to the store and someone had to stack the shelves. The farmer and the resource miner and the manufacturer are the backbone of any economy and the American consumer seems intent on screwing them any and every chance they can because it helps their immediate individual bottom line. $127 worth of groceries should never cost less than $40. Coupons are not money. They are a reward for being a loyal consumer. Who's winning in that situation? It might seem like you are, but that's a fallacy. How are you helping the economy? The farmer's being screwed because he's getting pennies for his produce. The manufacturer has to layoff line workers because they can't sell their product for the cost it takes to make it. What you all seem to fail to realize is that eventually, that's going to come back to bite you. Economies are cyclical. What goes around, comes around. If you insist on getting your carrots for free, next time, there may be no carrots on the shelf for you to scam. Or at the very least, the farmer will have a lot less revenue to spend in turn on your services.
It's going to be a long and painful lesson for Americans to learn how to pay for things what they're *really* worth. Products in America are ridiculously cheap compared to prices paid around the globe. You don't realize this, but neither do you seem to care. Shampoo should *never* cost only 88 cents in the first place, and scamming it for free is wrong. It's stealing. It's taking food out of someone else's mouth for the sake of your own pocketbook. Shame on you. Fair value and fair trade are ideas that "Joe the Plumber" will struggle to identify with as Americans have never been good at thinking how their actions affect others. There is an inherent selfishness in the American psyche that I'm not sure will ever go away. So far this is and will continue to be your downfall.
The trick is everyone insists on being "paid what they're worth", but they refuse to pay someone else enough for the value they offer. This deficit *will be* recouped somewhere down the line. Nothing is free. Everything comes from somewhere and a price must be paid for it either in cash money or in kind.
I heartily implore that as more and more layoffs occur and more families are struggling to make ends meet, please try to bear in mind what affect your actions will have down the line. If you want cheap produce, go to a farmer's market. That way you know that every penny is going to the person who's done the work. If you must save every dime you can, by all means, wait for the sales, comparison shop, be savvy. But "double couponing" is just immoral if it means getting things for free. You may be having a hard go of it, and that's unfortunate, but if you're thinking "better him than me", you're only hurting yourself because eventually, you're just biting the hand that feeds you.
Very well said.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like we're in the habit of continually creating more problems for ourselves by being short-sighted. We need immediate economic relief? Republican answer: tax cuts. Too bad that just limits the amount of revenue the federal government has, so we either have to cut spending (and by extension, cut programs) or we have to print money, increase inflation, and deficit spend. Why can't we just pay a little more in taxes?
We don't have enough money to put a down payment on a house that will get us a prime mortgage, so we take out huge sub-prime mortgages that we have no hope of affording in the long term; when instead we could just wait until we've saved enough for that down payment.
We don't want to spend the extra time, effort, and money to research and market alternative energy solutions, so we drill offshore or in ANWAR to drain the last remaining oil out of the ground. And all of this at what cost? We have no sense of sustainability or of thinking about problems intergenerationally.
Hopefully Oprah heeds your advice.