It's been a non-stop inflation show for six years and they can't figure out why people want to buy shit before they can no longer afford those things due to the rapid inflation?

I spent more than I wanted to and should have on PC parts in the last year... But waiting risked the prices going even higher and becoming more unaffordable (which yes fucking happened with the items I got which are now MUCH more expensive than they already were).

Like the idea that they can't put together a strong economy comes from the poorest scrambling to get their before their last chance to do so dries up.

We all know this is unsustainable and collapse is inevitably coming. Why wouldn't we be spending now to prepare for the collapse?

"Americans are still ramping up their discretionary spending across both goods and services, suggesting consumers are increasing their spending because they want to and not because they have to," Bank of America said last month in an analysis of card spending of its own customers.

Get fucked BofA, maybe we’re having to pay more for stuff like Hulu because they’re raising prices and we need something to fall asleep to so the screams in our head are a little quieter.

There's also buying things because of hopelessness and overwhelm.

There have been many times where I have just turned around and walked out of a grocery store without buying anything because the prices are so absurd that I guess I just don't need to buy food today.

And then, on the other hand, there are things that I have bought that I normally wouldn't justify spending money on, but it's hard to be thoughtful when it feels like the whole system is broken and the prices don't make sense on anything anymore anyway.

These choices are "consumer confidence" or "rational choices," or whatever the MBAs at Bank of America want to frame it as. For me at least, a lot of this is just truly a fundamental loss of faith in the system itself, and a sense of hopelessness that rational choices don't even really matter anymore.

But what are they spending it on?

There's such a thing as shopping therapy for useless and speculative items, like Pokemon cards and Trader Joes bags, and also spending on numbing substances like alcohol and drugs are more indicative of an unhealthy social structure.

It takes data?