Hi as you can see in this graph from Google Insights, the interest for gifts in the US is declining. Now, may say that the interest for online gifts is declining, however, it should be in the rise. What is happening? Well, I think that a better indicator that the DOW JONES is how people’s interest for gifts is. Why? Well, ultimately companies make their most money during the holiday season and most people purchase the most amount not for themselves, but for gifts. People are willing to spend even what they don’t have (credit) to buy things during the season to make their loved ones feel special.

This season seems a bit off though. It seems like it has been declining since 2007. The problem that I see with it is that the government has been infusing lots of cash into the economy to prevent this. Lots of money. And you guessed it right… it doesn’t seem to be working. I looked at other statistics for example related to cash for clunkers. The government program for buying cars that according to the media was a huge success. In my opinion it wasn’t. It helped dealers in the very short term because they got people to buy at least some cars. But what happens now that there is no program? Nothing. No buying of cars. So, now what? Another cash for clunkers every month? Obviously Cash for Clunkers was not a success.

So you say, ok so then what? The real problem is credit, not money. The people don’t spend these days because they have no money. They don’t spend because they have no credit. In other words, most people feel like they have put so much stuff in their credit cards already that they can’t afford to do more. The government has understood some of this problem and tried to address it by restricting the way banks kill credit card customers. But that is not going to help immediately, in fact it is going to hurt even more. Because it prevents the average Joe from using a credit card easily and fast.

What is the real good answer? People in the US have to go to work. We have to work hard and for less money, but be extremely productive. Make sure that the services are high quality and that because of the quality we are competitive. It is hard to want to compete by money, specially when everything here is way more expensive than in third world countries. But is going to happen eventually.

On the other hand, the fast easy answer to the symptoms is this: forgive people’s credit card debts. How? Well, maybe a government program that takes credit card debt and slices it by half. As I said though, that won’t help in the long term, is only to treat the symptoms, because you will increase consumption but not value.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Producing value for others is not an easy task. For most people, their lives are completely tied up to their jobs. Their jobs provide the security of sustainability and affordability of social anesthetics like shopping sprees and Friday’s dine out.

My questions today revolve around: why do we all live so attached to the pursuit of money? why is it that we believe that with more money our life would be easier, safer and better? I have the impression that most people in their death beds don’t look back and say: “I would try to live longer so that I can make more money”.

A life in the pursuit of “more” is a life full of absolutely nothing. If I live my life as if I was awaiting for a destination I would miss my life completely. Because life is really the trip.

The worst part about it is that I pretend that my only problem is lack of money when in reality deep inside I know that the real lack is faith.

If you take two people and send them to a deserted island: To the first one you give a million dollars and to the second you give a reason to live, who do you think that would last longer?

We are like money hungry robots with junk-filled garages. We associate so much pleasure to the act of getting that we have forgotten how does it feel to give something to somebody else.

The paradox:

I want to work hard to get more money. The more money I get, the more things I buy. The more things I buy the less money I end up with. So I have to work more for more money.

In the end, I have neither money nor life. It is a pretty clever distraction.

Summarizing: Our entire lives we sell our time in exchange for money. Money that we plan to use to buy a better life. But at that point we have no time left.

Is like working at Disney World. Waking up every day and working hard. When you retire, somebody asks you if you enjoyed the rides and you reply: “I didn’t have time to enjoy them”.