Yesterday Americans Spent $5 Billion Online (cnn.com) 68
An anonymous reader quotes CNN Money:
Black Friday 2017 was all about digital sales. American shoppers spent a record $5 billion in 24 hours. That marks a 16.9% increase in dollars spent online compared with Black Friday 2016, according to data from Adobe Digital Insights, which tracks 80% of online spending at America's 100 largest retail websites... Meanwhile, malls and big-box retailers were left only slightly emptier. Early estimates from ShopperTrak, a data analytics company that measures the number of shoppers at stores, said foot traffic "decreased less than one percent when compared to Black Friday 2016."
More online, no surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's online, the entire first come first serve insanity can be entirely faked. Sure from the rest of the worlds point of view, online black Friday (although in today's SJW climate shouldn't it be a white Friday to reflect the shallowness of it all) is better, so we don't have to watch the consumer ugliness of the US but online specials can be entirely fabricated, public manipulations.
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Try the little pink pills next time.
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" I don't doubt you spent less time but there's a heavy selection bias in limiting yourself to just those things you plan to get."
It doesn't matter. It's all manufactured by Chinese kids anyway.
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"You should get out of your mom's basement sometime though. A little sunlight is good for you."
Why? There were great online deals on solariums.
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"I don't have to spend any gas, spend less time, and don't have to deal with people exercising their primate brains elbowing each other just to save a few dollars."
indeed. I don't get it either, I prefer to buy online in my underwear on the couch. :-)
It's more comfortable and you don't even have to buy clothes anymore, just undies.
Re: More online, no surprise (Score:1)
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"I mean I guess I get that it's a big deal that people spent so much online instead of locally, but $15 per individual isn't really that much money in the grand scheme of things."
So why are there then so many empty storefronts in every town?
I SAVED money (Score:5, Insightful)
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I did buy a bloody thing. I'm into the Addam's Family look. Scares the riff raff relatives away.
Me too! (Score:2)
I'd rather pay for meals with family, friends, etc. as gifts. Also, I am still unemployed (almost a year) so I can't spend much.
Online shopping for the win. (Score:1)
I'd like to say, "Whoosh!" (Score:1)
But, I think that he may not have been joking and you are correct to call him the rude one. It's so outlandish what he said, that it's either a "Whoosh!", or, he is a fucking prick!
Since that 5 billion was mostly credit (Score:1)
I don't know that it's a great thing, necessarily. Debt is absolutely out of control. The next recession could be a real financial apocalypse if people don't wise up.
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China will own our asses. I'm brushing up on my Mandarin. Hey, there's a gift idea for ya. [barnesandnoble.com]
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Too bad half of the Chinese don't speak Mandarin. Also, the ~$1T we owe them is about what is handed by the Fed to the Treasury each year on a silver platter. If for some reason China said 'pay up or else!!' they'd just print another Trillion, no sweat. Much ado about nothing.
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To put the matter in perspective, the total American debt is roughly $20 trillion. Foreign countries own about $3.2 trillion, the rest is owned by Americans or the American government.
A good portion of the government portion, about $5.3 trillion, is owned by Social Security, essentially IOUs. Those of you thinking that this is money stored in a mattress somewhere waiting to be spent, think again. SS is a pay as you go system. When the in-flows fall below outflows (as what is close to the situation now), the
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Mexico should start buying more of South America's so that we stop trying to keep the desert in California wet where they currently grow most of the things that Mexico was buying. Making farms out of desert is one of the reasons California struggles to keep any water in their aquifers, let alone get water to places like SF or SD. Phoenix has a similar issue and it's already been warned that it might not even be inhabitable by 2050.
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I don't know that it's a great thing, necessarily. Debt is absolutely out of control. The next recession could be a real financial apocalypse if people don't wise up.
US National Debt was 8 trillion 10 years ago.
It's over 20 trillion today.
Consumers learned that behavior from Uncle Sam.
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Consumers weren't paying attention to Uncle Sam. They paid attention to their TVs which told them they could whizzy things now and pay for them in the future. Education loans were merely a large example.
Put the blame where it belongs, the American people are not saints who merely got screwed by government behavior. They were the ones who bought houses they couldn't afford, flipped house, bought stuff on credit.
They also refused to believe that character matters when electing politicians.
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The next recession?
It will just be a buying opportunity for anyone who is smart enough not to have a lot of debt. Property and other assets going down in 2001 and 2008 were just called ... buying opportunities.
Worth it! (Score:2)
I didn't buy *anything* for any of my deadbeat relatives. I just bought a bunch of stuff that will keep me amused for a few weeks. Money well spent imo.
Buy it! (Score:2)
Faith No More's Black Friday [youtube.com], says it all, enjoy!
Retail shot themselves in the foot (Score:2)
When you watch those videos of people trampling each other the moment the doors open, to buy a 40" television for $99, that does not exactly inspire someone to go to that store next Black Friday. That's why I didn't go out to Best Buy this Friday, and opted instead to just order my robot vacuum from Amazon, where it was priced exactly the same...
Black Friday at my house (Score:5, Interesting)
So I was home yesterday. Here we have 1 day delivery on online purchases and I think I may have been the only person in my apartment building home. Long story short, my entire entry way is full of my neighbour's parcels and I've had a steady stream of people coming to pick them up.
Quite bizarre.
Best time to buy things... (Score:2)
is after Christmas and New Years' when people's credit card bills from Black Friday come due. Nothing like getting a 50% deal on a scratch-n-dent return or something a pawn shop posts on Craigslist.
Even better, get a 2-3 year old TV which a sheep (baa-baa) just put on Craigslist (or out onto the curb) because they needed the latest, greatest, 8k OLED smart telescreen with camera and mic to listen to your home better..
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In-store sales numbers (Score:2)
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So a lot of the holiday spending that would have occurred between Black Friday and X-mess was shifted to November vs December.
BTW - if you had less money, why did you spend more? Were the things you bought actual necessities?