Three week's ago in London, a discount retailer opened a new flagship store in Oxford Street (a very famous shopping street in London's downtown West End, for those of you that don't know London). Anyway, 50,000+ people turned up on the opening day and waited in long lines for access.
Since then, a staggering half a million shoppers have visited.
Let's be clear here ... this is a discount retailer with 160 other stores around the UK, selling lots of merchandise of a similar quality and price that you can find in plenty of other stores. So no exclusivity here, no bargains of a lifetime, no life changing experience.
So what's the point. Well, at the same time as shopping has surged, the UK population appears to have collectively abandoned religion. It's not a great leap to suggest that the devotion formerly given to religion, has for many people been transferred to shopping (and sport).
The question is whether this really matters. Do we need to be concerned about an obsessive devotion to buying things? Is this actually a better or worse state of affairs?
graeme
16 Comments
My answer: Marx said "Religion is the opiate of the masses." There's two ways of looking at this: 1] irrational belief in "God" or the "divine" gives false hope and insulates the proletariat from the ugly realities of capitalist life; 2] WHATEVER the obsession of the day is that distracts us from reality and anesthetizes us to the pain of capitalism is our "religion."
This second perspective would go along well with (German-American theologian and Christian existentalist philosopher) Paul Tillich's idea of "God" as man's "ultimate concern": that is to say, whatever it is that we give the most attention to, focus the most energy upon, devote the greatest part of our lives to is, essentially, our "God."
Shopping is something like a religious experience in the developed world, to be sure. It is no coincidence, I think, that it is the most highly technologically and economically developed nations that see the fastest and greatest decrease in overt forms of worship. Look, for instance, at Ireland in the last decade-and-a-half. The "isle of Saints and scholars" has gone from (about) 90% weekly church attendance to a bit over 50% since 1990.
In a Capitalist society, one might be forgiven for saying that consumption is our religion, advertising our liturgy, and shopping our major sacrament -- with cash as our Eucharist.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Wow. I don't know. I suppose I'd rather be healthy, prosperous, and secular than poor, hungry, and religious. When you're starving, of course, either your immediate survival, or your "rebirth" into some paradisiacal afterlife is likely to be your ultimate concern, and I don't wish starvation on anyone.
I just wonder: is it IMPOSSIBLE to have a technologically and economicially developed society whose individual members put, as their ultimate concern, the welfare of all before the welfare of the self?
What can be more enjoyable than the shared experience of standing for hours in a parking lot with 50,000 others? It's almost as good as a march on Washington! Add a drizzle and it's even better. Isn't it said that misery loves company?
Like ladies of yore who reputedly sought a spiritual lift through buying a new hat or getting a new 'do, I constantly surf the web in search of a new e-store to explore. New experiences are so invigorating. I have roomsfuls of merchandise intended to become gifts some day to someone _ it's such an awful feeling when something like National Salesclerks Day dawns and I realize that not only have I nothing on hand to give to my favorite salesperson, I don't even have something new and different to wear for the occasion.
Why, I have almost as many shirts as I have CDs. If I really like one, I buy an extra and stash it against the possibility the first one with be stained or perhaps ripped by thorns while I'm picking grapefruit. I've been thinking of adding a second story to my house as just one big walk-in closet!
Yet I'm not self-centered in my shopping _ I buy tons of stuff for my children and grandchildren. I usually forget to mail the package, but don't they say it's the thought that counts? I especially enjoy buying jewelry for my Aunt Mary _ perhaps because I not only don't have an Aunt Mary but I don't even have an aunt; that way I get to keep it for myself *hehehe*.
I don't even need a Grand Opening _ I can go to the grocery store for milk and come home with $93.72 in goodies in those adorable plastic bags. When that happens, I tell myself it wasn't wasteful _ it's all food and I'll eat it sooner or later. Besides, you never can tell when a curling team on tour may stop by for a snack; being prepared is everything.
Of course, those three potted miniature roses I bought at the supermarket aren't exactly food and may be considered an extravagance since I live in a desert, but there's something to be said for bringing additional beauty to life.
I even understand why those who still go to church do so, though it's not my thing. No doubt they feel a need to congregate even when there isn't a Grand Opening. Me, I feel just soooo isolated on Sundays because there's no mail, and that means no new purchasing invitations.
But a religion? Wellll, that's a bit much. I don't imagine I was created by Wal-Mart. I don't have a mystical vision when using a new shampoo. I don't experience blessed ecstasy when Toshiba launches a bigger plasma TV.
But getting and spending is a creed to live by. The ability to amass enormous credit-card debt is a measure of a life well lived. If you lack faith in this truth, just look at the US government.
Credo quia absurdum est.
*sigh*
I do...
;-)
:P
Forgetting the pain of capitalism... with more capitalism? Unbelievable but it does ring true. Perhaps we are all beating back the demons of capitalism by purchasing the next new shiny thing we don't need but must have to make us feel good in the moment.
And then the moment passes, and we need another, and another... When does it stop? When we are all diagnosed with shopping addiction? Oh, but I forgot, Western society has normalized compulsive shopping so that power shoppers are the winners of some competitive sport, which requires large masses of people to camp overnight in front of the new Target store just to get the first top from the Stella McCartney Collection, in order to... what? Resell it on e-Bay to those not tough enough to battle the crowds?
If shopping is the new religion, and the shop mongers end up at my door to convert me, the only thing I can say is, "No thanks, just looking!"
From Credit Action (UK)
Total UK personal debt
Total UK personal debt at the end of February 2007 stood at £1,310bn.(That's 1.3 TRILLION!!!) The growth rate increased to 10.5% for the previous 12 months which equates to an increase of £116bn.
Total secured lending on homes at the end of February 2007 stood at £1097bn. This has increased 11.6% in the last 12 months.
Total consumer credit lending to individuals in February 2007 was £213bn. This has increased 5.5% in the last 12 months.
Total lending in February 2007 grew by £11.2bn. Secured lending grew by £10.3bn in the month. Consumer credit lending grew by £0.9bn.
Average household debt in the UK is £8,793 (excluding mortgages) and £54,124 including mortgages.
Average owed by every UK adult is £27,856 (including mortgages). This grew by £218 last month.
Average outstanding mortgage for the 11.704m households who currently have mortgages is £93,730.
Average interest paid by each household on their total debt is approximately £3,513 each year.
Average consumer borrowing via credit cards, motor and retail finance deals, overdrafts and unsecured personal loans has risen to £4,525 per average UK adult at the end of February 2007.
Britain's personal debt is increasing by £1 million every 4 minutes.
Today in the UK:
Consumers will borrow an additional £318m today
The average household debt will increase by over £13 today
300 people today will be declared insolvent or bankrupt
Citizen Advice Bureaus will deal with 5,300 debt problems today
The average car will cost £15 to run today
Raising a child to the age of 21 will now set you back £23.50 daily
The price of a typical house will increase by £41 today
24.3m transactions worth £1.3bn will be spent on plastic cards today
£82m will be spent online today
1/3rd of all groceries we buy today will end up in the dustbin.
Servicing Debt: Almost 300 people are becoming insolvent each day. The number of UK personal insolvencies continues to increase with 29,804 individuals entering into bankruptcy or an IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement) during the final quarter of 2006. The figures represent an increase of 7.1% on the previous quarter, reaching a total of 107,288 for 2006, up almost 60% from the previous year's figure of 67,584.
Volumes of calls to Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) help lines increased by 50 percent to almost 300,000 in 2006. During 2006, the average debts of a CCCS client rose by two percent to £31,370.
Over six million UK consumers have taken out debt consolidation loans over the last three years in order to ease their debt problems.
Almost half of people in the UK are getting stressed at least once a week (47%) according to the Samaritans, with three quarters of people getting stressed at least once a month (74%). The biggest cause of stress for most people is money (51%), followed by job (38%), then family (27%).
Citizens Advice says they were approached for help with 15% more debt problems in January 2007 than in January 2006. They dealt with 1.4million debt problems in the past year – 11 % up on the previous 12 months and double the figure just eight years ago. This equates to 5,300 new debt problems a day.
Aggregate household debt has risen dramatically in recent years, and the level of secured debt as a percentage of disposable income reached 126% in the third quarter of 2006, while unsecured debt amounted to 26%.
Over one million adults are currently falling behind with payments and a further two million are constantly struggling. People living in rented accommodation, particularly those in local authority housing, were more likely to show signs of financial distress than those who owned their home outright, and almost 10% of respondents have experienced financial difficulties within the last five years.
Research by BBC Breakfast suggests that more than a quarter (27%) of us are anxious about how to pay the bills.
The number of households struggling to repay their mortgage debt has risen to 7.7% according to the Bank of England.
During the third quarter of 2006, 34,626 mortgage possession actions were initiated by banks and other lenders. This is a 15% increase over the third quarter of 2005.
The number of people hit with a County Court Judgement (CCJ) - ordering repayment of outstanding debts - has leapt by 18per cent. 165,000 people had CCJs imposed on them between April and June of this year, which is up by 25,050 on the same period in 2005. Lenders were aiming to recover around £½billion of bad debts through CCJs last quarter.
A recent report from Datamonitor reveals that the UK is responsible for a third of all unsecured debt in Western Europe and that the average UK consumer owes over twice as much as the average western European owes.
Over two million households are estimated to be struggling to pay council tax according to a recent report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) clients have an average of £13,000 of debt which is nearly 17.5 times their monthly income. On average it would take CAB clients 77 years to pay back their debts in full.
Three quarters (74%) of British couples find money the hardest subject to talk about with their partners according to the Financial Services Authority (FSA). They also found that over a quarter (27%) of couples regularly argue when they try to discuss their finances; about a third (32%) of couples lie to their partners about how much they spend on their credit cards; over a third (35%) of British couples are kept awake at night worrying about their money situation
A quarter of those in debt are receiving treatment for stress, depression and anxiety from their GP.
Plastic card / Personal Loans: The combined value of transactions made on charge, credit, debit and store cards was £470 billion in 2005. It is estimated that this will reach £639 billion in 2010.
Total credit card debt in February 2007 was £54.5bn.
According to the BBA the proportion of credit card balances bearing interest rose to 75.5% in January 2007.
The average interest rate on credit card lending is currently 17.09%, around 11.85% above base rate.
Almost five million UK credit card holders paid a penalty fee on their plastic in 2005, according to research by MoneyExpert.com and Defaqto. More than 10 per cent of the population racked up charges for items such as late payments and exceeding credit limits
3.4 million credit cardholders in the UK regularly make only the minimum repayment on their credit card. 11% of those with a credit card only ever make the minimum repayment – increasing to 18% for the 25-34 age group.
It has been estimated that in 2005 banks & finance companies sent 1.26bn items of junk mail such as credit card offers and invitations for loans. This equates to approximately 27 enticements to take on new credit per adult.
Plastic cards in issue were 183m in 2005. This works out at 4 plastic cards for every adult in the UK.
282 plastic transactions took place every second in the UK in 2005. There were 86 withdrawals made every second (equal to £5,455 / second) from UK’s 58,000 cash machines in 2005.
There are more credit cards in the UK than people according to APACS. At the end of 2005 there were 74.6m credit and charge cards in the UK compared with around 60 million people in the country.
Young people (under 30): Research by pfeg (Personal Finance Education Group) has revealed that over half of England’s teenagers have been or are in debt by the time they are 17. In addition, 90% worry about their money and spending but tend to think of overdrafts and credit cards as easy ways to spend more than they earn, or to buy things they couldn’t normally afford.
Nearly half (44%) of young Britons aged 16 to 24 say their friends put pressure on them to keep spending even when they have run out of money.
Graduates leaving university this year had average debts of £13,252, a 5% increase on 2005, according to a survey by NatWest bank. 62% of graduates leave university with debts of over £10,000.
Recent research shows that budgeting is the last thing on many students’ minds as the vast majority (80%) of 16-24 year olds admit they don’t keep track of their finances. Also, despite the likelihood of being on a tight budget, 1 in 5 doesn’t know within £100 what their financial state might be.
Pensioners / Pensions: The Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) said that the number of over-60s with money worries grew faster than any other age group last year. Pensioners are being forced into debt because of the rising cost of living.
One in four over-60s still have outstanding mortgage debts - an average of £31,000 per head
The Pensions Commission says that 11.7 million workers do not make any contribution to a private pension.
Half of Britain's pensioners are said to be cutting back on other things to pay annual fuel bills averaging £1,100. A survey by energy comparison website uSwitch indicated that two million over-60s spent more than a tenth of their income on fuel.
26% people over 65 said that they were finding paying Council Tax difficult and they had to cut-back on basics, borrowed or gone into debt; or found they had no money left at the end of the month once they had paid their bill.
More of us are saving for a holiday (49%) than for our retirement (46%) whilst just 28% of us are satisfied with our current savings for retirement.
In 2004/05, 39 per cent of the 35.4 million working age population were members of a private pension scheme (occupational or personal), down from 40 per cent in 2003/04.
Housing: According to the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) the average house price in the UK in January 2007 now stands at £205,286 (£212,845 in England). UK annual house price inflation rose by 10.9%. Annual house price inflation in London rose by 13.2%.
The price of a typical house increased by the equivalent of £41 per day during the last 12 months.
The Bank of England raised the Base Rate from 5.00% to 5.25% on 11th January - the highest level since May 2001.
The average Mortgage Interest rate at the end of February 2007 was 5.66%.
According to the Nationwide house the housing market showed further signs of cooling during March. The price of a typical house increased by 0.4% during the month, bringing the annual rate of house price inflation back into single digits at 9.3%.
The average loan approval for house purchases in February 2007 has increased above £150,000 for the first time and now stands at £150,400 - 14% higher than a year earlier. It has taken just under 4 years for the average loan size to rise from £100,000 to £150,000, having taken around 9 years to double from £50,000 to £100,000.
Gross mortgage lending had its highest February ever at £24.6 billion according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Although lending was down by 7% on the £26.6 billion recorded in January, it is up by 9% on the £22.5 billion of lending in February last year.
34% of mortgages taken out by home movers in January 2007 were “interest only” mortgages compared with only 12% taken out in June 2003. 27% of these “interest only” mortgages were taken out without a repayment plan specified to repay the capital.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) expects prices to rise by 7% in 2007 and 5% in 2008. However, rising prices will stretch affordability even further, so the CML expects property transactions to fall. HBOS estimate 4% growth in 2007 and also predict that there will not be any towns with an average price below £100,000 at the end of 2007. Nationwide predict house prices will remain firm in 2007, rising between 5-8% during the year
Banks and building societies will hand out £1 billion every day this year in the biggest-ever home loan bonanza in Britain. The Council of Mortgage Lenders said 2007 will be a record year with an extraordinary £360 billion borrowed in mortgages.
Housing equity significantly outweighs mortgage debt. The value of housing assets increased by £410bn in 2006 versus a £100bn increase in mortgage balances. In 2006, the value of the private housing stock (£3.8 trillion) was 3.5 times the value of outstanding mortgage debt of £1.1 trillion.
Housing 1st Time Buyers: The average house price in the UK in January 2007 for first time buyers now stands at £158,097 which is an annual increase of 10.6%.
Affordability pressures continued to squeeze first-time buyers in January as income multiples were 3.30 times the average first-time buyer household income, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). The average new mortgage for first time buyers has now reached £113,200. The average age of a first-time buyer is 29.
According to the National Association of Estate Agencies (NAEA) the number of first time buyers were 12.3% of sales in February 2007.
New first-time buyers face double whammy of house price and interest rate rises. Higher house prices alone add £75 to typical first-time buyer monthly costs compared to last year. Interest rate increases bring this up to almost £120.
A first time buyer couple will now have to save up to the equivalent of 81.8 percent of joint take home pay, to build up the £32,784 needed for up front buying costs on a typical home, deposit and stamp duty.
In the UK, the average deposit provided by first time buyers in Q4 2006 was 16.2% of the purchase price.
Research by unbiased.co.uk has revealed that almost four million parents (38%) across Britain have either stumped up cash to help their children with a property purchase or intend to do so in the future. A quarter (25%) of these parents are contributing between £1,000 and £6,000, however 13% provide at least £20,000 in financial support. Furthermore, more than three quarters (76%) don’t expect the money ‘lent’ to be repaid.
Spending: Research by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) has revealed that households in the UK throw away around a third of all of the food we buy.
Norwich Union’s "Cost of Divorce" survey reveals that couples now spend an average of £28,000 when a marriage ends - twice the amount spent in 2003.
The average car now costs £5,539 a year to run, equivalent to £15 a day.
The cost of bringing up a child from birth to their 21st birthday has jumped to £180,137 (£23.50 per day). In the last year alone, the cost of raising offspring has risen by 9%, according to research from Liverpool Victoria.
The average wedding costs around £19,595. 45% of couples - some 117,000 nationwide - have no financial planning to pay for the big day, a study by stockbrokers Brewin Dolphin Securities found.
Money Education / Financial Literacy: One in three adults – or around 12.4 million people – refuse to plan their finances at all, and those that do find the time to review them set aside a miserly five minutes a week.
Recent research estimates that 50% of people don’t have a will.
A quarter of Brits (25%) have no idea how much they spend in a week, and a similar number (26%) have no idea of their monthly cash flow. This lack of knowledge extends into other financial aspects of life. Only half (51%) the population know the balance on their credit cards and nearly half (46%) have no idea what interest rates they receive on their savings or are paying on their accounts and debts.
Around 15 per cent of 18 to 24- year-olds think an individual savings account (ISA) is an iPod accessory, and one in 10 reckon it's an energy drink. With rising personal debt levels in Britain, and a lack of long-term savings, better money management seems a pressing issue.
Savings: Research from Alliance & Leicester shows that nearly one in three of us failed to save a penny during 2006. A fifth (19%) admitted to not saving as much as planned during the past 12 months. More than 8 out of 10 (82%) say they have earmarked 2007 as the year to sort out their savings
Over half of Brits have less than two months’ salary tucked away in savings. 27% of people have no savings at all and a further one in four (25%) have less than £3,000 tucked away for a rainy day.
Half the population (52%) could survive financially for just 17 days, should they suffer an unexpected loss of income, according to research by Combined Insurance.
Compiled monthly by Richard Talbot. richardtalbot@creditaction.org.uk. If you would like to receive regular monthly updates of these statistics then please register using the “Register to receive Debt Statistics” link at www.creditaction.org.uk/debtstats.htm. Note: new / changed statistics are at the start of each section.
Extracts of these debt statistics and figures may be reproduced subject to the following conditions;
No commercial or financial gain is made from the reproduction.
Acknowledgement of Credit Action as the provider of the information is mentioned in the reproduction.
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