by Morgan Carlson

Created on: March 09, 2009

There are some people in this world that can't save a dime if their lives were dependent on it. Moths in their wallet or a hole in the pocket doesn't even apply, as they spend their money before the moths can eat it and it never hits the bottom of their pockets before it has been handed over a counter. These people are just that type of breed... and they seem to be growing in number.

With so many products, stores, and facets of technology readily available at a fingertip, a person doesn't even have to get out of their PJs to make a purchase. Throw in some credit cards and a person doesn't even have to have the money to back their expense, though that style of living will definitely break them sooner than later. Yet even as someone falls into the self-dug hole of debt it doesn't seem to curb the problem. These people just live to spend, but it isn't "completely" their fault. Part of the problem lies in the monetary system of the modern age.

Forgetting the existence of credit cards for just a moment, even people with a load of paper notes in their pocket probably wouldn't recognize their presence easily, especially when those bills are in a reduced quantity with higher denominations. There just isn't a lot of weight in money, and that's the greatest manner of efficiency... for the producer of goods. For anyone else the absence of weight in money is a terrible consequence to their conception of value. A feather is a feather, even if the number is higher; it will still float out of their hands just as easily. But this wasn't always the case.

Back when gold was the staple of trade; it was easy to be hesitant with a purchase, because that weight in the pouch on your belt or the coins in your pocket was your wealth. Unless there was an otherwise un-interruptible supply waiting for you at home, it was a horrible burden of consequence to exchange it for anything less than the need of what you were paying for. This sensation of weight was a large part of the determining factor of whether a purchase was worth it or not.

Unfortunately those days are gone and replaced with a light piece of plastic that typically pours an equivalent amount of gold (if the system of money was still based on it) out onto the street and out of your hands. It really is unfortunate, but it is the way the world is. That is the way of a shopper: a person that lives on a want' basis.

No longer just an issue of need', most people only are driven to work as a means of affording their desire to spend. There is little need for objects or services that deny efficiency, but that doesn't matter. A membership at a gym that is only used once a month is typical of a person who has a tendency to buy so many clothes that they'd never once wear the same outfit twice. Or there is the technology fiend who buys more than they'd ever use, just as some owners of ipods download more music than they'd ever listen to. It is a matter of excess, and it is the foundation of competition and the fuel for the other spenders among them. It is a self-perpetuating "disease".

Will the obsession among shoppers ever cease? It is uncertain, but hopefully the rough economics of our times will help give a little rationale back into an unorganized genus of the compulsive shopper. But if it helps in the present, will the trend only serve to continue in better times? You better believe it, as the shopper is one that never dies... truly.

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