Signs Of The Time, Part 1
In trying to determine the direction of the U.S. economy, practitioners of the “dismal science” would argue that we should focus primarily on the empirical data at hand. Yet, can we also find clues as to where we are heading from what’s going on around us in our daily lives? Are there things that you’ve seen or heard that just scream “excess!” and lead you to believe that we’re at some tipping point? For example, in the late nineties I remember hearing how employers, forced to compete against one another in a sizzling job market, were trying to lure new college graduates with outrageous salaries, stock plans, gym memberships, VIP parking, the works. I had a pretty good idea this particular situation wouldn’t last. As a matter of fact, only a few years later I was reading about laid-off executives flipping burgers at local fast-food joints.
Consider the following story from the January 28 issue of Time. In “Your Own Personal Paparazzi,” Jeninne Lee-St. John talked about how regular people have been paying up to $1,500 a day for the privilege of having their own “paparazzi” follow them around. Lee-St. John detailed how one couple in Austin, Texas, hired some of these freelancers to follow them around one night. Apparently, the paparazzi were so convincing in their pursuit of the couple that random passerbys started taking photos of the couple with their camera phones and asking who they were. I know… let the sheeple comments begin.
In another instance, a 29-year-old Chicago man and his friends hired a paparazzo to accompany them as they went bar-hopping for the man’s birthday. To their surprise, the guys were able to avoid the lines at some of the clubs. “People thought, these guys are important people,” said the birthday boy.
A number of these personal paparazzi companies are popping up in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and even across the pond in the United Kingdom. Lee-St. John wrote:
The trend is driven by the twin obsessions with chronicling one’s life and experiencing fame. “We live in a culture where if it’s not documented, it doesn’t exist,” says Josh Gamson, a University of San Francisco professor of sociology who studies culture and mass media. “And if you don’t have people asking who you are, you’re nobody.”
I don’t know about you, but it sounds more like an inferiority complex to me…
Sphere: Related Content
January 28th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
>”In trying to determine the direction of the U.S. economy, practitioners of the “dismal science” would argue that we should focus primarily on the empirical data at hand.”
That’s where the trouble begins. Right now, contemporary economic thought focuses on Quantitative (Empirical) analysis to the extreme and neglects good old-fashioned deductive reasoning. A more complete critique of the contemporary economic thought: Why is the market so easily tossed and turned by dribs and drabs of data?
January 31st, 2008 at 12:26 am
Thanks for the comment CIJ.