Osg1 20120731 CONSUMERS

The Osgood File.  This is Dave Ross on the CBS Radio Network

Has America forgotten how to shop?  Or could there be an alternate explanation.

More after this from David Harris of AJC:

(((SPOT)))

We know how to shop.  I think part of it is we’ve gotten out of the habit of throwing stuff away.

Graph of trash recession. Have we forgotten how to shop –

Or like anything – maybe we’re out of practice.

What would bring urgency topeopel waiting to buy.  That’s simple.  Rising prices.  Prices – have been dropping.  Which you’d think would b getting epoepl out, but only if you think they’ll go up will you rush out.

2009:
The economy is prompting people to repair things instead of throwing them away, Jasper said. Research has shown that in good economic times, people spend about 1% of their income on repairs, she said. That jumps to 5% in tough economic times.
"I've been in this business 23 years, and this is the first time I've actually seen a significant drop during a downturn," Dennis said.
Volume is down 10% to 20% at Waste Management Inc. landfills in Wisconsin, said Lynn Morgan, spokeswoman for the company's operations in the state.
Among the 21 categories of items shipped by rail, none have a tighter correlation to GDP than waste.
According to a 2010 piece on Bloomberg, economists Michael McDonough and Carl Riccadonna note that waste has an 82 percent correlation to US economic growth.
This should be pretty intuitive. The more you produce, the more you throw out.
McDonough, a Bloomberg BRIEF economist, tweeted out an update on the indicator.
And frankly, it stinks. Waste carloads are way down.

Psychology.  In other words, it’s US.  We just don’t have any ideas for starting businesses.

There may be baby boomers who decide – hell, I can just retire now.

Thanks to all the shows about singing and dancing, ther are lot of people whoclarly want to sing and dance.