Lower-Income Americans Starting to Opt Out of Holiday Spending (bloomberg.com)

that headline needs to win some sort of award

I'll light the bonfire for the presentation.

The Bloomberg article seems to be based on this survey [0] (do a web search for the sentence "Deloitte study shows higher percentage plans to spend nothing" from the Bloomberg article if you like). It does not seem to phrase things in such a tone-deaf way as the Bloomberg headline either [1].

[0] "2021 Deloitte holiday retail survey", https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/articles/us16... (PDF)

[1] The survey instead says "Perhaps the most sobering pandemic trend is that low-income groups continue to suffer." on one of the first slides instead of the euphemism that the article uses.

“Man lost in desert opts out of drinking water” - Bloomberg

Perhaps this is a result of just about everything costing more except the price of our effort.

Let's hope middle-income Americans genuinely opt out of pointless holiday consumerism and into asceticism.

Lower-Income. George Carlin would have fun with this. The word is poor. A new four letter word.

My extended family has opted out of holiday spending for many years now. It’s just not sensible to buy things we don’t want or need, and we’re not low income. Plus it’s a good way to stick it to the big firms who moved their factories overseas.

If I need a product made overseas I just buy it direct from China, which always saves money. End-arounding the nominally US companies who just take the moron cut is everybody’s duty.

Maybe the government should stop printing money, so we don’t devalue the lower incomes savings and stagnant income.