all. this. stuff.
Who is buying all this stuff?*
Linen bedding sets that are, for some reason, £300+.
Sparkling water machines.
£500 coats (every coat made of natural fibre is somehow £500 now?) and £500 boots to stomp around town in - vegan leather!
Specialist face creams, electronic firming devices, designer perfumes. Are you on the waitlist for the next drop?
Who is buying all of this?
At-home pilates reformers with matching accessories in muted pastels.
Morning green powder, coffee with collagen, breakfast vitamins, exercise proteins, and nigh-time magnesium, available in both a powder and a cream! Subscribe and save!! Pause anytime!!!
Hair masks, sheet masks, red light masks (and don’t forget to upgrade to include the neck treatment, too).
Botox, filler, filler dissolvent.
Veneers, deep-plane face-lifts, maintenance tweaks, and the time off work to heal.
Who has not only the money, but the time for all this?!
The new iPhone with a new case, isn’t that cute? AI will answer your emails for you! Blue light glasses. A pop socket. An app that tells you when you’ve had too much screen time.
Stainless steel pots, Hexclad pans, multi-burner griddles, all of which are everyday kitchen essentials that will last a lifetime.
A cashmere blanket scarf that doubles as a throw, perfect for international flights in business class. (Business class!!)
The beverage fridge, the skincare fridge, the claustrophobic little cylindric wine cellar you drill into your kitchen floor and talk about ad nauseam at parties. (We get it, Dave, your favourite holiday is Beaujolais Nouveau Day.)
WHO IS BUYING ALL THIS?!? (And I’m not even going to mention the firehouse of junk out there that’s marketed to men and children.)
I recently read that in the US the top 10% of earners are responsible for almost half of all consumer spending. Another shocking stat is that almost 1% of America’s entire GDP is put on American Express Delta Rewards credit cards**. Are we living in a simulation?! How does any of this alleged spending - and I am being so serious - make any sense? WHO IS BUYING ALL THIS STUFF??? How many luxury high-rises, exclusive spas, five-star hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants, and designer boutiques can we sustain when 55% of the UK is worried about how they will afford heating their homes in winter***??
This week, we got news that a local mental health charity that our WI supports is closing due to a lack of funding and I’m so fucking furious about it. Our community resources are being stripped away with only a few crisis support organisations still limping along, trying to catch anyone who slips through the gaping holes in our social safety net. We could improve so many lives if we restructured labour laws and taxation to make our societies more equitable. If we more evenly distributed wealth and created a society where fewer people lived with the eroding stress and constant panic that stems from financial insecurity, our healthcare costs would decrease, consumer spending across the board would increase, and our communities would become more vibrant and safer. It’s short-sighted and unimaginative to let this level of income inequality to persist (and grow!). It’s repugnant to let the wealthy hoard more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes, and for what? (Seriously, I’m asking.)
I want so badly for every single person to be paid a fair wage that allows them to live comfortably. I want meaningful work in respectable environments to be accessible to people of all education levels. I fundamentally believe that everyone should be able to afford to live in a safe, well-proportioned, and well-insulated home, that this basic level of accommodation should in no way be seen as a luxury or outlier. I very badly desire a wealth tax that goes towards funding our medical services, our community centres, our schools, our roads, and the arts.
I really don’t understand why any of this is controversial; it seems like a real no-brainer to me.
*Almost all this stuff is regularly marketed to me on Instagram (Meta has an astoundingly poor grasp of my personal financial standing) or is written about in the media I consume with a tone that’s like everyone is doing/buying/consuming this one extremely expensive thing (why yes, I do subscribe to The Cut). And look, I’m not immune to this kind of marketing. I have some ritual powders that I consume to balance my hormones and increase the quality of my sleep or whatever. I often fantasise about having my very own pilates reformer and sauna. I live in a dual-income home with no dependents and though I can’t afford a house, I can afford lots of other garbage and the siren song of consumer spending is sometimes incredibly difficult to ignore despite my knowing better. The trappings of our capitalist culture are not attributed to personal failings, but the vast majority of us are all waist-deep in this muck and we’re a helluva lot closer to slipping under the surface and being homeless than we are to being a billionaire (or even a millionaire!) so I think we collectively need to band together and demand better.
** I can’t 10000% verify this stat right now bc the billionaire-owned Bloomberg newspaper article that I read it in is paywalled and my gift link expired, but I texted enough people about it after initially reading it a few months ago that I think it’s legit.
***Yes, I know this article is from last year, but even with the winter fuel payments for pensioners going out this year, I think, based on vibes, that it’s fair to extrapolate it to apply to this winter as well.