On the gumption of consumption

By Johnny D. Symon

With the wonders of digital TV, last night on hearing the news of Michael Jackson's untimely death, I cranked up my notebook to peruse a hoard of new TV and radio channels. At first most had doubts about his passing, then, as official news came in, the "I can't believe it" angle gained prominence. To be honest I was no fan of Michael's music, but acknowledge that much of his early work contained an essence that's proving itself to transcend time and age groups.

On BBC Radio one presenter named Paul Gambaccini offered for me the best synopsis on Michael Jackson's music, citing the Thriller album as the prime example he said iTunes and the internet have flattened out history. Young folks check out and download music while most times being unaware of it's age. They like it, they buy it. So today a new set of Jackson fans are growing, which should ensure that the Thriller album remains the highest seller in history.

That's more or less what Paul said last night, according to my tired ears and brain. Sadly I listened to numerous other presenters and callers around the digital world, asking the same question, "Was Michael happy ever in his life?" And I thought to myself, "What a way to depart the mortal coil, having much of the world questioning your state of being." I don't have to ask that question concerning myself, and neither do my friends. "My cup runneth over!" because whatever happens, (and whatever's my middle name,) I'm satisfied with my lot. Yet for people like Michael Jackson, fame and fortune turned sour, and his machinery became like a loaded gun.

"And until thou truly hast, this dying and becoming,
Thou art but a troubled guest O'er the dark earth wandering."
— Goethe

Through much experience of trial and error, I'm convinced that no one can be truly happy until they can greet darkness as an old friend, and feel comfortable within themselves listening to the sound of silence. Do I feel a song coming on here? Well the sound of silence is all that remains for Michael Jackson. His past collided with his future, and his past walked off unscathed, leaving the future to others. May he rest in peace at last.

Just two and a bit weeks ago the EU Commission threw out a press release containing a minor gloat, stating that EU consumer confidence had fractionally risen. I love this kind of political trash because it's thrown out on more than regular intervals with no accompanying evidence, kinda like "the green shoots of recovery" thing as they did in Spain a week or two back. The crazy and inept Banana Republic government proudly announced signs of "brotes verdes" (green shoots), and all because the out of work figure had, as usual, gone down a little due to the onset of summer and the tourist industry. The Conservative Party concorded with the Zappo regime by saying "green shoots, sure, but it's hashish and you guys are smoking it!"

Well the aforementioned green shoots quickly withered and died with a spattering of new economic figures both in Spain and the EU. And with Spain's unhealthy reliance on tourism and the service industry, news that tourism over the past five months is down 12.5% on the same months last year, has rendered the green shoots of Banana recovery in second position to the likelihood of Iberian cerdos growing wings and flying to the moon to discover water ahead of NASA.

Historically Spain has been in the grip of a two-sided confrontation; right and left, the faithful and the faithless, the gifted ones and the jackasses. It's no secret that most of Spain's finest thinkers were seen as such only when they either through force, coercion, or desperation, departed Spanish soil. In a small way this formula occurs in other countries such as Australia, Scotland and England. Generally speaking, if you hail from one of those three places, and become famous abroad and not in your own homeland, you'll be used to getting spat at in the street, whereas in the US of A it's the opposite way round; get famous at home, and remain there, then you've got it made. And even on that rare occasion when Americans do set up home elsewhere, if they become famous in those countries the folks back home will not hold it against you.

You know something? this American thing had me rattling my brains trying to understand the differences between the experience of famous Americans and the bad experiences of famous foreigners at the hand and mouth of their fellow countrymen. Logically one would suspect that since America is not just a land of opportunity, it's a land of strong competition, the jealousy angle should be all the greater, when in fact, at least to my mind, it barely affects the fame model. Whereas, on the other hand, the few famous Australian names I can muster up in my memory, such as Paul Hogan, Frank Ifield, Rolf Harris, and Kylie Minogue not forgetting Skippy, were more popular abroad than at home.

Okay, Skippy's a questionable example, but I liked the guy so much I had to find some place to put his name down. For me, Skippy is the most gifted Australian in history; he was funnier than Paul Hogan, even when Paul did The Hogan Show back in the 70's, and that series was for me a classic; and he sang better than Frank Ifield; and he didged his doo better than Rolf, without the wooden pipe, and that takes some doo-ing! And as for Kylie, there's no doubt that she sings better than old Skip, but her dancing don't come close. Nonetheless, all five aforementioned most famous Australians held one thing in common; they were topnotch performers, and high-end wealth generators. In turn, and as a direct consequence of their gifted labors, they built and inspired consumer confidence. This however did not place them in the realm of consumers as well, for they did not consume, the fans did. Now with this we're approaching a series of strong points, requiring everyone's attention, and it all boils down to "what exactly constitutes a consumer?" And therefore "what exactly is consumer confidence?"

When the EU announced a scant rise in European consumer confidence, they neglected to fill in the details, most importantly of what exactly do they regard as a consumer. This should not be a moot point because the importance of understanding what a consumer is should already be cut and dried. Well the sad fact is, it ain't.

If you or I drew out a set sum of money from the local bank, that was the financial fruit of our sweated brow, and we headed on down to an electronics store to buy a big new flat plasma screen TV, we did not in effect "consume" the TV and automatically become a member of the Consumer Club, what we did was to "exchange" our hard-earned cash and the store exchanged it's TV for our loot. Neither party consumed anything. It was a trade. Whereas if you or I took out credit to buy the TV, we'd automatically fall into the "consumer" category, which is a little unfair because even this method is not consumption, at least on our part, because if we received credit, the bank would anticipate a higher return on the loan they made, and we'd generally expect to pay more for the TV in the longrun, so even this example fails to place us in the Consumer Club.

Even an automobile is tagged as a consumer when folks discuss mpg, and it's not the case, because in reality the automobile "utilizes" the gas to deliver the distance and serve its owner. The car is not a consumer. It'd be only too easy to liken the gas consumption, or utilization, of a car with a wild bush fire, and there's no connection, for you see, a wild bush fire consumes everything in its path, yet for no purpose, whereas an automobile uses just enough gas to serve its owner's needs.

Are you guys still with me here? Well let's go a step further and use our automobile and gas point as an analogy.

What if we likened Barry White House and his government to an automobile. Would this be a fair analogy? Let's see shall we?

The Barry White House car would begin life at the gas station, and there it would remain because, as regards value for money, it's the worst automobile possible. You see, for each gallon you poured into the tank, the fuel gauge would not only show empty, it would actually be spinning backwards! After 24 hours of trying to fill the tank, your savings would be cleaned out and you'd owe a fortune in unpaid gasoline, gasoline that would not appear if you drained the tank, for the tank would be dry.

This analogy of the Barry White House automobile is, I believe, a fair representation of the Ultimate Consumer, because Barry White House is a car that only exists to consume gas, yet will never turn a wheel. Its less than proud owner, not "consumer," is only taken for a ride when he gets the bill, the car goes nowhere. Well actually it's really a four-wheel black hole, consuming everything around it. That's the Ultimate Consumer.

It promises to take you to a few bankers so you can pay them your very own 1.4 trillion dollars to bail them out of a problem, thus turning the bankers into Barry White House automobiles too, and they join the Consumer Club. 1.4 gazillion dollars is a HUGE gaz consumption, especially if they, as beneficiaries, do the Barry White House too, and fail to turn a wheel. Worse still is the little fact of the personal income tax figure of that year, being 1.1 trillion! Therefore the Barry White House Bankermobile consumes 3 gaz-billion more than the sum total of America's personal income tax that's completely allocated to pay off our poor sad, and most unfortunate, banker fraternity.

By now you all must be feeling the strong pinch of the law of diminishing returns, and so you should, but it gets worse because the Barry White House car is not only the world's Ultimate Consumer that turns bankers into consumers too, the BWA is proudly turning devil's playground dwellers in foreign parts into idle-handed consumers as well. This, however, cannot be included in the 1.1 trillion, neither can the Defense Budget of more than 7 billion. The Ultimate Consumer, therefore, has become the Ultimate Destroyer, and a sad history in the making. But he's not alone. The pattern on a political world-wide scale, at least in the West, is near identical.

The Ultimate Consumer can be likened to Spain's freak President, Zapatero, who chose the beginning of this week to tour Africa, announcing in Nigeria that he would proudly be handing over a further 240 million to the African cause. Yes indeed, nigh on a further quarter billion of Spanish taxpayers money destined to disappear without trace, as is always the case, while on that self-same day the EU Commission in Brussels chided and warned the Spanish government concerning its massive Federal debt. Another example of the world's Ultimate Consumer.

Now that we've ascertained the nature of a true consumer, let's discuss the subject of non-consumers, ie, Producers.

Michael Jackson was not a consumer, he was a "producer." He generated wealth by providing his consumers with the finest product he could muster. Unfortunately the power behind the machinery became too much for him to handle, and the rumors and scandals began. Ultimately his past became his greatest enemy and his greatest consumer, for as he began to retrace his steps and restore his past, he neglected to make account of his present and future. Resultantly his past consumed him.

Ordinary blue-collar folks should not be tagged as "consumers" either, for as they live according to their means, and work according to their gifts and abilities, they also are "producers." Productive producers. Consumerism does not enter into the picture because they in fact are the consumed. We all know this as a written fact, right? No? Then who paid Barry White House the 1.1 trillion? Was it Barry's? Well no, because Barry has never performed a single and productive day's work in his life. Yacking ain't working, neither is stealing and misappropriating other folks property. In a moral sense, the world's finest and most vital producers, ie, normal hard-working folks, have become products in the eyes of bad politicians.

So now that we've ironed out the whys and the wherefores, the whats and whatnots, of that which constitutes a "consumer," let's finally address the term "consumer confidence," and answer my question at the beginning, which was, "what exactly is consumer confidence?"

A confident consumer is a politician who can be satisfied within his or her self that their staple diet is plentiful and free. A political consumer experiences "consumer confidence" when productive people spend more of their income, for in turn tax revenues increase, and taxes are the staple diet of political consumers. Yet when crisis hits, and people spend less, political "consumer confidence" falters, as their staple diet shrinks. Folks like Barry White House, or Captain Kenya, can be likened to goatsucking teetee birds, they're all suckers, and, spiritually speaking, fools to themselves as all they do is "consume," regardless of the fact that their staple diet is drying up. They do call it a crisis, and crisis it is, because the real crisis has not yet begun. Green shoots of recovery are lies and imaginings, and the worst is yet to come.

I've just read an incredible new book by Santiago Niño Becerra, entitled "El crash del 2010. (Toda la verdad sobre la crisis.)" Santiago lectures in Economics at Barcelona University, and predicted the present crisis exactly and to the letter more than 6 years ago in an interview with the Spanish newspaper, ABC. I say his prediction was exact and to the letter, as indeed it was, but it goes a little further because Santiago does not believe that the crisis is on the wane, he predicts a massive crash next year, and I concord with him.

Perhaps Paul Gambaccini's words on iTune and the internet, flattening out history, can be used here too. Politicians have flattened out history, to confuse the world's producers over the time frame, the start and end, of the crisis, or should I say phthisis, for the lungs of industry are wasting away, and the future looks grim. As producers we suffer from consumption, a disease in the guise of our elected leaders. Progressive taxation will ultimately destroy us all. Consumer confidence? Some of us reckon that it will be short lived, and by politicians flattening out political and economic history, they've created an authentic flat earth that eventually shall see us sailing over into a national abyss.

© Johnny D. Symon