Yesterday Americans Spent $5 Billion Online (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CNN Money: Black Friday 2017 was all about digital sales. American shoppers spent a record $5 billion in 24 hours. That marks a 16.9% increase in dollars spent online compared with Black Friday 2016, according to data from Adobe Digital Insights, which tracks 80% of online spending at America's 100 largest retail websites... Meanwhile, malls and big-box retailers were left only slightly emptier. Early estimates from ShopperTrak, a data analytics company that measures the number of shoppers at stores, said foot traffic "decreased less than one percent when compared to Black Friday 2016."

Comments

More online, no surprise

[thereitis]

I don't have to spend any gas, spend less time, and don't have to deal with people exercising their primate brains elbowing each other just to save a few dollars. Just look at the black friday crowd videos on Youtube. You'd think the apocalypse had just been announced.

Re:More online, no surprise

[rtb61]

It's online, the entire first come first serve insanity can be entirely faked. Sure from the rest of the worlds point of view, online black Friday (although in today's SJW climate shouldn't it be a white Friday to reflect the shallowness of it all) is better, so we don't have to watch the consumer ugliness of the US but online specials can be entirely fabricated, public manipulations.

Re:More online, no surprise

[gtall]

Try the little pink pills next time.

Re:More online, no surprise

[nospam007]

"I don't have to spend any gas, spend less time, and don't have to deal with people exercising their primate brains elbowing each other just to save a few dollars."

indeed. I don't get it either, I prefer to buy online in my underwear on the couch.
It's more comfortable and you don't even have to buy clothes anymore, just undies. :-)

Re:More online, no surprise

[nospam007]

" I don't doubt you spent less time but there's a heavy selection bias in limiting yourself to just those things you plan to get."

It doesn't matter. It's all manufactured by Chinese kids anyway.

Re: More online, no surprise

[nospam007]

"You should get out of your mom's basement sometime though. A little sunlight is good for you."

Why? There were great online deals on solariums.

Re: More online, no surprise

[dougdonovan]

why would you fight traffic when you can do everything online. you are defeating the purpose of a home computer / smart phone.

I SAVED money

[p51d007]

I didn't buy a bloody thing :)

Re:I SAVED money

[Tablizer]

I did buy a bloody thing. I'm into the Addam's Family look. Scares the riff raff relatives away.

Online shopping for the win.

[Quato]

Too many people with no manners out on Black Friday. I had some lady try to run me over with her shopping cart in the Target toy section a couple years ago. I didn't move, and told her, "If you hit me with that cart, we have a problem." She stopped and grunted at me like a goddamn caveman. No manners.

Since that 5 billion was mostly credit

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know that it's a great thing, necessarily. Debt is absolutely out of control. The next recession could be a real financial apocalypse if people don't wise up.

Re:Since that 5 billion was mostly credit

[Tablizer]

could be a real financial apocalypse if people don't wise up.

China will own our asses. I'm brushing up on my Mandarin. Hey, there's a gift idea for ya.

Re:Since that 5 billion was mostly credit

[mentil]

Too bad half of the Chinese don't speak Mandarin. Also, the ~$1T we owe them is about what is handed by the Fed to the Treasury each year on a silver platter. If for some reason China said 'pay up or else!!' they'd just print another Trillion, no sweat. Much ado about nothing.

Re:Since that 5 billion was mostly credit

[geekmux]

I don't know that it's a great thing, necessarily. Debt is absolutely out of control. The next recession could be a real financial apocalypse if people don't wise up.

US National Debt was 8 trillion 10 years ago.

It's over 20 trillion today.

Consumers learned that behavior from Uncle Sam.

Re:Since that 5 billion was mostly credit

[gtall]

To put the matter in perspective, the total American debt is roughly $20 trillion. Foreign countries own about $3.2 trillion, the rest is owned by Americans or the American government.

A good portion of the government portion, about $5.3 trillion, is owned by Social Security, essentially IOUs. Those of you thinking that this is money stored in a mattress somewhere waiting to be spent, think again. SS is a pay as you go system. When the in-flows fall below outflows (as what is close to the situation now), then the money must come from the general fund. That fund is the same one that funds the discretionary spending (about $1.2 trillion now). Discretionary is the stuff that funds the military (about half of the $1.2 Trillion..but that will rise shortly). It also funds NiH, that asshole Pai, FAA, FDA, NSF, EPA, and a host of other bits and bobs that we have asked the government to fund.

Of the remaining 2/3s of the budget, SS, medicare, medicaid, etc., is the non-discretionary part. The non-discretionary means it is a part of U.S. law to fund those programs. Those are also the programs that are funding the Blue-Haired, we used to know them as the Baby-Boomers, then they became the Me-Generation, now they are the Give-it-to-Me-Now-and-Screw-Everyone-Else generation.

Before that generation goes tits-up, SS and Medicare will necessarily be cut, so you youngins need to start saving. The current tax give-away masquerading as tax reform is being driven by Republican donors who promised the party they'd stop their political donations if they didn't get their tax cut. That means the federal budget deficit will expand quite a bit. The Republicans will then use this as a cudgel to beat back all those things they think government shouldn't be doing.The Democrats will run against this by promising more government goodies, which won't be paid for and the deficit and debt will also go up. The total debt will crowd out other spending and cause interest rates to rise because buyers of that debt will require a higher payoff to take the risk the U.S. will not default.

The end result will be (1) the blue-haired get screwed, (2) the military will shrink, (3) the worlds' bad boys will cause more trouble with the U.S. in retreat, (4) the poor will get screwed...yet again, (5) Science won't get funded, (6) medical advances will slow down (no longer science allowed). Oh, and the Republican's current infatuation with closing the borders and no trade agreements mean the U.S. will lose its export markets. Mexico is already starting to buy S. American farm produce over the U.S.'s.

Re:Since that 5 billion was mostly credit

[gtall]

Consumers weren't paying attention to Uncle Sam. They paid attention to their TVs which told them they could whizzy things now and pay for them in the future. Education loans were merely a large example.

Put the blame where it belongs, the American people are not saints who merely got screwed by government behavior. They were the ones who bought houses they couldn't afford, flipped house, bought stuff on credit.

They also refused to believe that character matters when electing politicians.

Re:Since that 5 billion was mostly credit

[thejynxed]

Mexico should start buying more of South America's so that we stop trying to keep the desert in California wet where they currently grow most of the things that Mexico was buying. Making farms out of desert is one of the reasons California struggles to keep any water in their aquifers, let alone get water to places like SF or SD. Phoenix has a similar issue and it's already been warned that it might not even be inhabitable by 2050.

Re:Since that 5 billion was mostly credit

[b0s0z0ku]

The next recession?

It will just be a buying opportunity for anyone who is smart enough not to have a lot of debt. Property and other assets going down in 2001 and 2008 were just called ... buying opportunities.

Worth it!

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I didn't buy *anything* for any of my deadbeat relatives. I just bought a bunch of stuff that will keep me amused for a few weeks. Money well spent imo.

Buy it!

[MrKaos]

Faith No More's Black Friday, says it all, enjoy!

Retail shot themselves in the foot

[skaag]

When you watch those videos of people trampling each other the moment the doors open, to buy a 40" television for $99, that does not exactly inspire someone to go to that store next Black Friday. That's why I didn't go out to Best Buy this Friday, and opted instead to just order my robot vacuum from Amazon, where it was priced exactly the same...

Black Friday at my house

[thegarbz]

So I was home yesterday. Here we have 1 day delivery on online purchases and I think I may have been the only person in my apartment building home. Long story short, my entire entry way is full of my neighbour's parcels and I've had a steady stream of people coming to pick them up.

Quite bizarre.

Re:wat

[nospam007]

"I mean I guess I get that it's a big deal that people spent so much online instead of locally, but $15 per individual isn't really that much money in the grand scheme of things."

So why are there then so many empty storefronts in every town?

Me too!

[antdude]

I'd rather pay for meals with family, friends, etc. as gifts. Also, I am still unemployed (almost a year) so I can't spend much.

I'd like to say, "Whoosh!"

[gerald.edward.butler]

But, I think that he may not have been joking and you are correct to call him the rude one. It's so outlandish what he said, that it's either a "Whoosh!", or, he is a fucking prick!

Best time to buy things...

[b0s0z0ku]

is after Christmas and New Years' when people's credit card bills from Black Friday come due. Nothing like getting a 50% deal on a scratch-n-dent return or something a pawn shop posts on Craigslist.

Even better, get a 2-3 year old TV which a sheep (baa-baa) just put on Craigslist (or out onto the curb) because they needed the latest, greatest, 8k OLED smart telescreen with camera and mic to listen to your home better..

Re:Best time to buy things...

[b0s0z0ku]

Yep, glasses or no, I can't tell the difference between 1080p and 4k at watching distance.

Re:Best time to buy things...

[b0s0z0ku]

At an hour's TV time a few times per week, can't say I give a cr@p, at least for $2000 worth of cr@p... :)

In-store sales numbers

[14erCleaner]

It took a lot of digging and some inference, but apparently in-store purchases on Black Friday 2016 were about $45 billion, so the online fraction is still only about 10% of the total. I guess that doesn't make a good headline, though...

Re:Better deals and greater availability of the de

[b0s0z0ku]

So a lot of the holiday spending that would have occurred between Black Friday and X-mess was shifted to November vs December.

BTW - if you had less money, why did you spend more? Were the things you bought actual necessities?