On my way into work this morning, I heard a story on the radio about how back-to-school spending is supposed to be down this year. One statement in particular, I felt, was worthy of blogging about. This quote comes from one Patricia Edwards, an analyst at Storehouse Partners (whatever that is):
The trends, especially for the teens which is where a lot of the spending happens for back-to-school, they’re the same! The only thing they’ve really added is plaid. And, ya know, you go out and buy one or two plaid pieces of clothing, and you’re set.
Allow me to translate that to how it sounded to me:
KIDS THESE DAYS! What is wrong with this generation?! They care nothing about fixing the economy. All they care about is saving their parents’ money. We are in a financial crisis, people! This is no time to watch your budget! And to top it all off, they are too lazy to change their fashion styles all the time. When I was a kid, if you wore the same outfit to school twice, you would have been ashamed of yourself. And we made it a point to change what we wore every year, so that we could make fun of the poor kids that couldn’t keep up. Now, all of a sudden, it’s like everyone thinks it’s cool to be poor, just because their parents all lost their jobs. Sheesh, I don’t know where this country is heading, but we’ve got a long road to travel if these penny-pinching hooligans don’t go into debt soon.