My Lefty friends are inundating me with email that tells me not to spend “one dime” on inauguration day, Thursday the 20th.
Unfortunately, several of the boycott emails included the standard pre-election hate rap. The hate movement clearly isn’t going away, ever.
If the hate movement hadn’t described itself as such, I would be more reluctant to use the term hate movement.
The cute boycott is what I want to use to call attention to the reality of our lives.
I spend 94% of my total income with credit cards, electronic transfers and a several dozen checks a year. Since the early 1970’s this is a drastic change. Back then, 3% of transactions were on credit cards and the average person wrote 240 checks a year. Very little electronic funds transfer existed for ordinary Americans.
I now spend 3% of my income in cash in the U.S. and 3% in Tokyo and overseas, where credit cards are less widely accepted.
That means that 94% of my total income travels by check and electronic data 260 days a year.
So on January 20th when I am supposed to be boycotting spending, I will still be spending one-third of 1% of my annual income in checks and electronic data transfers. That one third of 1% is roughly twenty times what I would ordinarily spend in cash on any one day.
The money I have most control over is the cash I spend, one twentieth of the money I spend in any one day; the rest is moving merrily along the electronic money highway without any supervision from me, debiting my checking account and debiting my credit card account.
If I am in anyway representative of American spenders, and I know that I am fairly close to the norm, then the total spending on Thursday the 20th, if half of all Americans joined the boycott, would drop by $25 million.
Considering that total American spending on Thursday January 20th will be $30 billion, it is hard to imagine that anyone could notice the boycott even if they tried very hard.
If Lefties could actually become simple livers then the boycott would turn into a real decline in consumer spending. Otherwise, the reality is that Lefties will eat just as much and buy just as much; only they will spread their spending over a few days rather than during the one day boycott.
Ineffectiveness creates cuteness in kittens and boycotts.