Americans are Celebrating the End of the World

It’s YOLO all the way to an inhabitable planet.

It’s no secret that things are tough out here.

• The rent is too damn high, but mortgages are higher.
• Food is expensive, and good, healthy food is out of reach.
• Schools are a disaster, and having kids will financially break you.
• Jobs are available, but you need two just to stay afloat.
• And, oh yeah, the world is literally on fire.

So what’s a red-blooded, true-blue American to do in the face of these challenges. Why, by becoming the Consumer Patriot that the corporations and politicians have spent decades convincing us to be.

While patriotism might not be the same high priority as it was immediately after 9/11, consumerism is strong and running rampant.

Living It Up

In light the mounting global financial and climate headwinds, some people are straight up partying like it’s the end of the world, especially Millennials and Gen Z.

Economists call it doom spending. I call it checking out after a lifetime of seeing the Dot Com bust, 9/11, 20 years of Middle East wars, the Great Recession, and COVID.

Otherwise known as burning out rather than fading away.

Altogether, Americans are worried about their money. According to the study, two thirds of Americans say the current state of the economy gives them anxiety about their finances, with Gen Z and millennials being most likely to report feelings of financial anxiety (71%).

To cope, many Americans are doom spending (27%). For the purposes of this study, “doom spending” is defined as spending money despite concerns about the economy and foreign affairs to cope with stress.

This phenomenon, most common among younger generations (35% of Gen Z and 43% of millennials), may have gone up at the same time as Americans’ concerns about the economy have gone up (64%).

Older generations may claim, “We had it hard, too, with our own wars and protests, the Nixon Shock, the Cold War, 70’s inflation, etc.”

Well, you can ignore them.

I’m not saying they had it easy, but their lives are more than half over, and they don’t have to spend the bulk of their lives dealing with the a) the deliberate destruction of any semblance of governmental social support and b) the realization that the entire world will burn in the coming decades, both of which are due to a handful of political pussies who care more about their own checking accounts than the people they were elected to represent.

But I digress.

While I’m not on board the doom spending bandwagon, I can certainly sympathize.

The media will tell them to stop spending and start saving, which some have, the point of being labelled “doom savers” (my god, the media can be mind-numbingly unoriginal).

The problem with that advice is that is doesn’t answer the question, “To what point and purpose?”

In other words, why should we save?

Should we save for a house that will be ineffective in cooling us under the ever-increasingly hot summers?

Should we save to have kids who will have to face worse climate change effects than we can even imagine?

Should we save for that rainy day our spouse gets cancer and our insurance refuses to cover the half-million dollar treatment?

Or, should we spend what money we’ve got and actually start to feel good about ourselves for a little while in the face of a relentless and intractable onslaught of bad news over which we have absolutely no control?

“When you don’t really know what the future holds — or even if there’s a long enough future for you — people are focusing on the present and the short-term horizon,” says Chiraag Mittal, an assistant professor of marketing at the McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia.

And, he says, amid shifting attitudes around work and life, “people are choosing to prioritise their happiness and fun”.

Malcolm Harris, author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, argues intangible factors like these often get lost in the qualitative analyses that seek to explain macroeconomic trends. “

Working life can change in qualitative ways that the metrics are bad at picking up,” he says.

Yeah, no fucking shit.

“Or even if there’s a long enough future for you” isn’t a phrase that should be used in economic analysis.

The Problem with Doom Spending

There are a few issues with financially YOLO-ing the next few years, which I’ll describe soon enough. But zooming out to a macro level is that we are merely feeding into the very system that has created the world we so desperately want to escape.

The money people are spending is being funneled into the handful of mega corporations that run the world.

Sooner or later, this whole things will come down, and the bigger the companies are that fail, the bigger the bailout using taxpayer dollars will be.

You’ve heard the phrase, “Bootstraps for people, socialism for companies.” Well, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public will be on the hook for that socialist rescue plan, with money that is already being borrowed at 20% interest.

The smaller problems will also pop up when the next big recession hits, as people are leveraging themselves to the gills.

• Buy Now, Pay Later has skyrocketed the past year or so.
• Auto, credit, and personal debt are all at or near record levels.
• Monthly mortgage payments are up 20% or more.
• People are dipping into retirement to pay bills.

Again, I can sympathize, but you’ve got to remember that, even in the face of catastrophic levels of climate change, we will still probably live quite a long time.

I would argue that we need to start being smart about how we and our kids will live in the coming century that is destined to be one of the most momentous in human history.

I’m all for Carpe Diem and doing the important and great things now. But there’s a big difference between squeezing the most out of every day while planning for the future and simply chalking everything up to fate and living the YOLO life.

The Takeaway

We’re at the end of financial days, and everyone is spending their pandemic cash, their credit, their retirement. Nothing will be left when they lose their jobs, their cars, and their homes.

There will also be no one to help them, as the government will be too busy rescuing multinational corporations and everyday people will be too buys rescuing themselves.

Embrace the doom or try to prepare; it’s entirely up to you. Just know there are sacrifices either way.