Word: holidaying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...That's interesting, because it's often thought we've reached the pinnacle of commercialization. Yes. Every generation thinks that it invented sex and thinks that it invented the vulgar commercialization of Christmas. But actually, our holiday spending has moderated relative to the size of the economy in the last two generations...
Starting to think about holiday gifts? Stop! Joel Waldfogel, author of Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays (Princeton), is convinced that giving Christmas and Hanukkah presents is bad economic policy. And as the chair of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, he's no economic novice. TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs, who is still hoping to get a few gifts this season (hint, hint), spoke with Waldfogel about his new book. (See pictures of retailers that have gone out of business...
What's your objection to Christmas and holiday spending? My objection is that the holiday spending doesn't result in very much satisfaction. Normally if I spend $50 on myself, I'll only buy something if it's worth at least $50 to me. But if you buy something for me, and you spend $50, since you don't know what I like, and you don't know what I have, you may buy something I wouldn't pay anything for. And so you could turn the real resources required to make things into something of no value...
...much is actually spent? In the U.S., about $65 billion a year is spent on holiday gifts. There's been this giant [holiday season] bump in retail sales in the U.S. going as far back as statistics are available, back to the 1920s and '30s. In fact, as a share of the size of the economy, the spending has gotten smaller over time. Our fathers' and grandfathers' Christmases were a bigger deal than ours...
...What if you don't give them holiday gifts? Well, I do give them holiday gifts, because they are people whose preferences I know a lot about. The problem arises in the situations where we have to give a gift, but we have no idea what the recipient wants. I'm not against giving gifts in the situations where we have a good idea what people want...