Chile and China

My mother loves the dollar store. She loves the whole cult and mystique of the dollar store. I think there are a lot of people like her. I'm not one of them, although I consider myself frugal. I just find most dollar stores are filled with stuff you really don't need. If you don't need something, even if you can get it for a buck, it's still not cheap.

Anyway, the other day she said to me that everything that comes from her new favorite (upscale) dollar store (which is actually called the $1.19 store, a name that is curiously hard to say) is made in China. In fact, my mother reports that so much of everything we have today comes from China it's starting to get on her nerves.

I just bought a new Macintosh laptop computer (I'm bi-platform) and I was only mildly surprised to see the sticker on the box. Made in China.

My mother then made another observation: all of the producer in our part of the world comes from Chile. We live in Texas, but we're eating what is grown in Chile.

What do we make any more? I know America has gone to a service economy (but even there, we're messing up ... look how many service centers are outsourcing to India) but food and cheap junk used to be a mainstay.

It occurs to me that a lot of this stuff ... fruits, vegetables, small everyday items ... are likely things that our Depression-era ancestors raised or made themselves. We don't do that any more. Just like getting the car washed or hiring somebody to walk the dog, we now get others to grow our produce and make our kids' toys.

Too Many Economists Can Make You Nuts

How is economic news like the psychic hotline? First, both of them try to predict the future (with intermittent success). Second, both of them are really trying to get you to spend money. And third, both psychics and economists don't know you.

My great-grandparents did not go broke in the Depression. They were living in New York at the time and they remembered stories about people who jumped out of the skyscrapers on Wall Street after having lost everything in the crash. My people didn't go broke in 1929. They went broke about a decade earlier.

While economic news has value, the problem is that you cannot take broad economic news and apply it specifically to you and your situation. As economists are making us nuts and arguing about whether this is or is not a recession ... who cares? I guarantee that some people are going to make money in this so-called recession. Others will lose money. Others will stay the same.

Sometimes we become part of the economic story. Some of us are facing layoffs, unemployment, upside-down mortgages, and even foreclosures and bankruptcies. That's bad. But to paraphrase Tolstoy (apologies in advance), every person who goes broke goes broke in his or her own way.

I hate hearing economic doom and gloom messages because it discourages some people from cleaning up their own financial house and it gives other folks the idea that financial problems may not be their own fault. I'm not saying that all financial problems are your own fault -- but the more responsibility we can take for our financial situation, the more control we have over our money.

Are we in a recession? I don't know. I don't care. I'm still concerned about reducing my spending and increasing my income. Don't let the prognosticators get your eyes off your goals!