Starbucks helps me Simplify Economic Suckitude

Last night, I was talking to a real dumb chick on the phone and she was having a hard time understanding how people knew that the economy was in trouble. Not one thing I told her about a lack of IPOs, a decrease in the value of the dollar, the housing crisis, the serious increase in mergers and acquisitions or even unemployment issues helped her understand the situation (to be fair, she works as a nurse which is pretty much the same gig no matter how bad the economy is doing). Then I saw this nugget on the inter-news this morning.

In the story linked to above, Starbucks announced that it will close six hundred stores. Starbucks has never announced a mass closing before. To give you an idea of how ridiculously rare this is, I want to take you back to an old South Park episode (yeah, only the most intellectual sources from Mr. Knees here).

In an old South Park episode, the town of South Park looks like they’re going to refuse the development of a new Starbucks coffee shop. One of the corporate guys in charge of new store development tells his Starbucks construction guys to stop, that the town doesn’t want them and they might as well move on.

“But what will become of us?” asks one of the construction workers.

“Jesus, Sanchez,” says the suit. “Quit being so melodramatic. Damn.”

The idea that even one Starbucks could go out of business seemed ludicrous at the time of that episode. But six hundred?

Six hundred mother-fletching Starbucks. That’s a lot of Starbucks.

Anyway, these Starbucks closings helped me understand the easiest way to communicate the disastrous economy to Dumb Nurse Chick. Here goes:

Most of the world buys product in dollars. As the dollar weakens, a purchaser gets less goods for his money. Meanwhile, as the dollar continues to weaken, most people and most companies begin cutting non-essentials out of their lives. For corporations, non-essentials can include employees, stores and well most anything not positively influencing the bottom line (i.e. making money). So, the cost of goods like say, coffee, get more expensive through the combined forces of a weakening dollar, increased inflation and the cost to transport goods (rising gas prices). Now, that would all be well and good if there became an increased demand for Starbucks coffee. But as consumers get poorer, there becomes less willingness to pay for Starbucks coffee (because it’s not essential).

So, if what you are selling is more expensive for you to buy and there are less people to buy it, well, you’re pretty much screwed.

In a good economy, we waste money on stupid stuff we don’t need because we can. In a bad economy, we brew our own fucking coffee.

This is a bad economy. And it looks like it’s staying that way for a long time.

On the bright side though, nothing is ever as bad as I think it will be.

Except for “Made of Honor.” I didn’t know any one movie could suck so badly.

You live and you learn and all that.