If the economy is really all that bad...

[Pacman]

...then why are people lining up to buy a $300 phone??

[James Hart]

PRIORITIES!!!!

(I don't even own a cell phone )

[Croox]

agreed, but some people want to be "fashionable and trendy and have new gadgets" than eat food or pay bills.

[DigMe]

The economy may not be doing all that well but the credit card companies are doing great!

bc

[Relic]

not me....if I had a spare $300 I'd go out and buy $300 worth of extra food and freeze it.

[hbarcat]

In my opinion, the economy is weakening because too many people have been going into debt spending money on crap they don't need in a vain attempt to keep up with their friends and neighbors when they purchase giant box houses, jet skis and fancy cell phones.

[gkbass13]

does questioning the quality of the economy qualify as political discussion? wink wink, nudge nudge

[TheDarkReaver]

Originally Posted by gkbass13

does questioning the quality of the economy qualify as political discussion? wink wink, nudge nudge

not in this context, it is more social I believe.

[Bass Thunder]

Just a thought.........

Maybe the overall economy isn't that bad. We haven't had negative GDP growth since 2001. We need 2 consecutive negative quarters to call it a 'recession'. Slow growth is still 'growth'.

The cheap iphone is $200 - that's only 2 tanks of gas for me with CA prices.

[lowendmafia]

I think it has a lot to do with spoiled teenagers that are spending their parent's money and young girls who want to be one of the Sex in the City characters. The iphone sucks, I will stick with my blackjack for $200 less.

[WRBass]

I started another thread a couple of weeks ago talking about how pet spending in the US is expected to grow 5% to 43.4 billion dollars. "Standard and Poor's estimates that the pet industry will grow by at least 5 percent annually in the next five years. Spending has gone from $17 billion in 1994 to $43.4 billion this year."

The media presents this in a negative way because before spending was increasing faster. But, people must have more disposible income if spending is increasing (IMHO).


Yea. Times are really bad:
"Nintendo has announced that the Wii has now sold over 9.5 million units in the US, following sales of more than 714,000 units during April. This puts the console approximately only 600,000 units behind the 10.1 million Xbox 360s sold in the US."

http://www.videogamer.com/news/16-05-2008-8326.html

[Ed Fuqua]

The bottom line is that, as always, a "bad" economy is not bad for everyone.

[senorblues]

When the credit cards don't work or the power goes out, things will get nasty real quick.

[Lalabadie]

With Rogers' Canadian contract, it's a total of 3 grand for three years of use.

[NJL]

Originally Posted by Pacman

...then why are people lining up to buy a $300 phone??

i agree, my contract with sprint ended today... what am i going to do? get on the SERO plan! 30 a month plus taxes.. almost identical to my plan now, but getting another 50 anytime minutes for literally 55 dollars a month less!!!

screw the iphone and a new rate plan (and a hard inquiry for the credit check).. why pay more when you can get waaaaay more for less..

[WRBass]

Originally Posted by senorblues

When the credit cards don't work or the power goes out, things will get nasty real quick.

Actually, your better off if the credit card doesn't work!

[Bass Thunder]

Originally Posted by NJL

i agree, my contract with sprint ended today... what am i going to do? get on the SERO plan! 30 a month plus taxes.. almost identical to my plan now, but getting another 50 anytime minutes for literally 55 dollars a month less!!!

screw the iphone and a new rate plan (and a hard inquiry for the credit check).. why pay more when you can get waaaaay more for less..

Sorry man. I'm already on ATT with the family plan and rollover minutes. Even adding in an ATT $30 'data plan' for iphone my PER PHONE cost will still be cheaper than most single phone plans around here with basic service. I have a different data plan now already anyway so it's not much of a step up there.

Also, LG, Motorola, and others have phones that cost more than $200. The new ones go to 8G storage, but nothing else goes to 16G. And nobody has an equal screen size.

Don't buy the phone, I'm not trying to suggest otherwise. It's still cheaper than a lot of Nokias on the market and equal to other comparable services.

Slam away....


.

[disenchant]

actually the economy is bad because people AREN'T spending money. they're out of jobs so they stopped spending so much in stores. we have stores going under because the cost of gas is driving up shipping costs, and they can't compensate by raising prices because people aren't spending.

our favorite restaurant just closed because of lack of business. who can afford to go out to eat?

the economic stimulus checks were supposed to get people to go out and spend money. but most people put it toward bills and food.

so people buying ipods, that actually helps our economy a little bit.

[GregC]

Originally Posted by WRBass

I started another thread a couple of weeks ago talking about how pet spending in the US is expected to grow 5% to 43.4 billion dollars. "Standard and Poor's estimates that the pet industry will grow by at least 5 percent annually in the next five years. Spending has gone from $17 billion in 1994 to $43.4 billion this year."

The media presents this in a negative way because before spending was increasing faster. But, people must have more disposible income if spending is increasing (IMHO).

If the growth of disposable income is declining, yes, that is a negative trend. *shrug* I don't see anyone saying it's the end of the world, but that growth rate could turn negative, then disposable income would actually be declining. If you want Pollyanna-ish views on the economy, I think you know where those can be found these days.

Originally Posted by WRBass

Yea. Times are really bad:
"Nintendo has announced that the Wii has now sold over 9.5 million units in the US, following sales of more than 714,000 units during April. This puts the console approximately only 600,000 units behind the 10.1 million Xbox 360s sold in the US."

http://www.videogamer.com/news/16-05-2008-8326.html

Nintendo came up with a great product that is taking share from the other consoles--and it tends to be cheaper than the others as well. That's great for Nintendo, but I'm not sure how this is a positive sign for the broad economy.

[WRBass]

Originally Posted by GregC

If the growth of disposable income is declining, yes, that is a negative trend. *shrug* I don't see anyone saying it's the end of the world, but that growth rate could turn negative, then disposable income would actually be declining. If you want Pollyanna-ish views on the economy, I think you know where those can be found these days.

Nintendo came up with a great product that is taking share from the other consoles--and it tends to be cheaper than the others as well. That's great for Nintendo, but I'm not sure how this is a positive sign for the broad economy.

Never mind! I couldn't get my point across in the other thread either! Yep, times are bad. It's so bad we can only increase spending on pets by 5% this year. And there is an expensive game system in 20 million homes.