Biggest Debt Leap in Years, More Than Half a Trillion Dollars in Just One Month
A couple of Thursdays from now, on the 28th of November, 2024 (fourth Thursday of November), it will be the Thanksgiving ritual (which has gone on for 403 years, i.e. longer than the US or Canada).
America celebrates not colonialism but a shopping ritual called "Black Friday", which in more recent years had a sibling ritual called "Cyber Monday". Both are opportunities for corporations and billionaires to pocket the little (remaining) money of the middle class or money borrowed by the poorest families, which see national debt skyrocketing and still wonder why the price of everything goes up so fast. It must be that "inflation" thing...
"Most of what they sell on Black Friday is basically garbage designed to sell on Black Friday," Ryan says. It's just impulsive buying. "It's the Windows laptops that are such low spec, they barely even boot Windows, much less run programs. Then you get the credit card bill."
"I bought a Vizio TV on Black Friday in 2015. Within a month the screen wouldn't work. Vizio didn't make that as one of their usual models so they upgraded me to one of their usual models with a nicer screen and more ports and a bit bigger through the warranty."
We remind people (almost every year) that it's also "buynothingday" or Buy Nothing Day because holidays aren't meant to be about consumerism and shopping, they ought to be about traditions, family, and perhaps stuff like food/cooking, music, hiking etc. The specifics don't matter, but mostly - at least as originally intended - it's about immaterial things.
The corporate domination over society has expanded to the political sphere and, in turn, has penetrated/permeated society itself. They take away the real holidays and replace them with "shopping experience" and "shop ambiance". Don't let them do this to you. Get rid of social control media and skinnerboxes while you're at it. They're meant to make you want things you don't really want, feel like you need things you never really needed, and feel like you need to want things all the time (when you already have everything necessary).
"I hate the shopping holidays," Ryan concludes. "Amazon does them throughout the year now. They call it Prime Day and it's stuff that is slow moving so they tell you it's a deal to clean the warehouse. They have more and more of them now. The Boomers took this beautiful country and they turned it into a retail/fast food hell. Passed laws where it's illegal to stand somewhere outside your home too long without buying something. They call it loitering. You know, we used to have public parks but now everything is so regulated that there's no freedom anymore. You used to be able to go there with your kids and launch a model rocket or fly a kite, and now there's so many weirdos and a lot of them are living in the parks. Besides, who has kids?" █
