I said I was going to write something I learned about Christmas shopping when I was a boy, and here it is (I’ve mentioned it before, but just thought that if anyone hadn’t seen it, or didn’t recall offhand, I’d just bring it up again.)
When I were a mere strip of a lad, back in the Dark Ages, large retailers were required to be closed on Sundays in New York State. (This “blue law” wouldn’t be completely abolished until the 1970’s, by the way.) I noticed one year, around the week of Thanksgiving, that the large retailers where my mother would shop would be open on Sundays from then till Christmas. I happened to ask my father Big Guy about this turn of events.
“How come the stores will be open on Sundays in December, but not the rest of the year?”
“Because it’s against the law, and they’d have to pay a fine for doing it, but they figure to make a lot more in December than the fine they’re gonna pay.”
“So then why don’t they open on Sundays the rest of the year and just pay the fine?”
“They gotta heat the place or air-condition it, they gotta light the place, they gotta hire more people or pay overtime, and what it’s gonna cost them to do all that probably won’t be made up by the money they’re gonna get– forget even about having to pay the fine.”
“But it pays for them to do it in December…”
“Hell yeah, with all the Christmas shopping.”
“But if it’s against the law, why does the local government let them open in the first place? Just to make money off the fines?”
“Well, yeah, that, and the money people would bring in from nearby towns one extra day of the week helps the local economy, and it helps pay taxes in the form of sales tax, too. Statewide, that’s gonna be a lotta money.”
“So, they just wanna keep it illegal just so they can make a few bucks off it, is what you’re tellin’ me?”
“Sure, that’s what governments do– you want them to fix your streets, collect the trash, and all that, ya gotta pay for it somehow. They figure out a way to nickel-an’-dime you, just to chisel. It’s when they chisel you, and they DON’T fix the streets and collect trash, that you got any complaint on this deal.”
Now, at that tender age, I thought I was hearing something that was perfectly wicked, something a kid my age shouldn’t be expected to care about or know. But I’ll tell you, despite whatever cynicism such a frank discussion would possibly have engendered in me, I don’t suppose that afterwards I was ever naïve enough to think that (A) the government always has my best interests at heart (or should) and (B) that you get something for nothing in this world just for living in it, and i learned that you need to dope out what the cost of things are REALLY going to be when all is said and done.
Are kids nowadays naïve enough to think there is EVER a form of government that isn’t ultimately merely engaging, in the words of the French official, in “Plucking the goose in such a way as to produce a maximal amount of down with a minimal amount of hissing”? Do they REALLY think that in some ideal society of “To each by need,” “Each” will be the one who makes the determination of what they need, and that the government will simply go along with it? And how to pay for it? “Soak the rich!”? In such an environment, who’d want to be rich? What about those who would not be morally swayed– would the naïve kids think trying to morally cow them into doing it will work without an implied “gun at the head” of those who will not pay their supposed “fair share,” whatever THAT is?
Now, I didn’t grow up in privation, but we were hardly comfortable middle-class either. We may have been the “Trump coalition” fifty years in advance of its being the voting bloc it became– my father got let go from a relocating business, and needed to start over, my mother needed to work a fairly drudgey job in a local small factory, this to try to make a few bucks for their old ages besides Social Security, and what expenses raising two kids entails. Perhaps having a sense that my parents, despite in some ways being played for saps, were still good hard-working people, and being basically earnest and conscientious, didn’t need to apologize to anybody for anything in the ordinary course of life, has stayed with me all my life, and I was able to size up what was going on in this past election. (Although, to be perfectly honest, my mother DID always looked for an edge wherever she could, and my father DID once turn down a promotion because, “For twenty bucks more a week, I don’t need the grief of THAT position!”– so they WEREN’T “plaster saints” by any means.)
So I put it to you: Did my father do me a favor by “tellin’ me like it is,” and seeing that I’d have a better sense of what life was actually about? (OK, that was a bit rhetorical.) But I need to ask– you who are parents, do you, or have you sought to, make sure your kids are NOT the speshul snowflakes we read about, and how do you go about it?
(Jeez– this SURE strayed from “Christmas Shopping,” didn’t it? ;-) …)
