[Withnail]

http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... d-scuffles

“I got a Dyson but I don’t even know if I want it. I just picked it up,” Louise Haggerty, a 56-year-old hairdresser and waitress, said of her 1am trip to the Black Friday sales. “It was mental in there. It was crazy. It was absolutely disgusting, disgusting.”

“People were behaving like animals, it was horrible,” she said. “I only saw two security guards.”

[Islander]

I wrote about that and how bad it is on my Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-real ... 9847647325

[Tuike]

Is there some kind of coordinated effort to export Black Friday from USA to other countries? Some Finnish online stores have Black Friday ads on their webpage, but I think no one knows what Black Friday means. Physical Stores have no Black Friday ads or discounts. Poor effort to try bring Black Friday to Finland I think.

[Subjectivist]

Tuike, most Americans do not know what Black Friday stood for when it was created either, so don't feel left out.

[Loki]

Tuike, most Americans do not know what Black Friday stood for when it was created either, so don't feel left out.

Nobody really "created" Black Friday, current thinking is that the term was coined by the Philadelphia Police Department to describe traffic snarls on the day after Thanksgiving and before the big Army-Navy football game.

It's since been taken up by American retailers desperate to keep the debt-driven consumer economy afloat. Looks like European retailers are getting just as desperate as their American counterparts. The term seems a bit out of place in Europe, though, since it's so closely associated with American Thanksgiving.

[Subjectivist]

Tuike, most Americans do not know what Black Friday stood for when it was created either, so don't feel left out.

Nobody really "created" Black Friday, current thinking is that the term was coined by the Philadelphia Police Department to describe traffic snarls on the day after Thanksgiving and before the big Army-Navy football game.

It's since been taken up by American retailers desperate to keep the debt-driven consumer economy afloat. Looks like European retailers are getting just as desperate as their American counterparts. The term seems a bit out of place in Europe, though, since it's so closely associated with American Thanksgiving.

Hah, some 25 years ago in college economics class I was taught that Black Friday referred to the fact that income in company ledger books was recorded in black ink, and the last weekend of November was when retailers had enough income to pay off the debts incurred buying stock and paying labor.

[Loki]

That's a common myth, but apparently not true. NPR recently had a story on this, the only reason I know it. Wikipedia's entry on the origin of the term appears to be up to date.

A more important tidbit I recently learned about this time of year was what the "consumer economy" is really about. I can't count the number of times I've heard reporters say that the consumer economy constitutes 70% of the US economy. But turns out that retail household expenditures for goods and services are closer to 40% of GDP.

Anyone have similar data for European countries? Tuike, what role does retail consumerism play in the Finnish economy?

[Tuike]

Tuike, what role does retail consumerism play in the Finnish economy?

There are too few Finns and they have too little purhasing power to have consumer driven economy. Finnish economy is supposed to rely on exports, but exports have collapsed after Lehman. Now Gov debt is increasing fast.

[dinopello]

We have an unfortunate tradition of going to the malls (Columbus,OH) after Thanksgiving. Yesterday I saw a family where all women (rather rotund) were wearing t-shirts with this exact rhinestone saying on it



Googling it, it's apparently a thing. I thought it was funny. Coming soon to the UK.