Wednesday, July 9, 2008

A very small person

The bigger things get, the smaller we are becoming.
And you are a small person.

She's having a conniption that because a new US supermarket Warehouse Club is coming to Australia we'll all be buying in bulk, buying more. She uses the example of packs of 36 toilet rolls and 25kg dog food bags.

Sweetheart, toilet paper doesn't go off, I buy it in bulk and stock up when it's cheap. I have two large dogs and if I could buy the quality dogfood I already buy in 25kg bags cheap I would.

These quanitites and shopping trolleys "twice the usual size" will obviously turn us all into spendthrifts and rampant consumers because, well, look:

... It encourages a mentality of fear, famine and greed. It encourages people to consume more than they need. Eat three chocolate bars for the price of one. I've opened that kilogram bag of chips, so I may as well polish it off. We don't need any more towels but they're so cheap! Lets get 20. Because it's cheap people feel they're getting value for money. They're not. It just means they're eating more, spending more and feeling emptier. Instead of going to the local supermarket to buy what they need, they're driving kilometres, taking 20 minutes to park and buying stuff they don't need, because it's cheap. And it's there.
And on an historical note, she's known what it is like to be poor, to have the family home sold from under her as a child, to be embarrassed by her poverty. And she's:
...glad the price of petrol is going up and the price of food is rising. It's the only way that we're going to stop, look around and realise what things are really costing us.

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