Why Ask Why Do Poor People 'Waste' Money On Luxury Goods?

A very good question

From Facebook, I came upon this controversial headline, Why Do Poor People 'Waste' Money On Luxury Goods? It is in my view one of the best-written commentaries on the sociology of hedonism and consumption.

I will not attempt to rewrite the article here, I suggest you click on the link and read; however, there some interesting points that the person raised that are good for discourse.

Respecting others in how we present ourselves

The issue of balancing means with acquisition in pursuit of keeping up with the Joneses or putting up a façade is something I have opined about that I think plagues one of the cultures of my ancestry.

Besides, a very robust exchange on Twitter about appearance and respect went along the lines of a lady taking offence at being approached by a man in sagging trousers.

I could understand what she meant, I opined about how appearance is a function of comportment, and the way people might react to us.

Presentable is not exactly acceptable

In this, I see the conflict or the confusion between presentable and acceptable. The article takes a stab at it with this, “Presentable is the bare minimum of social civility. It means being clean, not smelling, wearing shirts and shoes for service and the like. Presentable as a sufficient condition for gainful, dignified work or successful social interactions is a privilege.”

“In contrast, ‘acceptable’ is about gaining access to a limited set of rewards granted upon group membership. I cannot know exactly how often my presentation of acceptable has helped me but I have enough feedback to know it is not inconsequential.”

I have found that there are elements of presentable that ease the way for being acceptable, but one should know the difference between sophisticated and ostentatious, just as the subtlety of understated compares to the vulgar to the Englishman in me.

I believe these matters of presentable and acceptable reach beyond goods and things to personality, the names we bear or the ones we dare to give our children, the way we engage friends and strangers, and it is a function of comportment.

Keeping up with the Joneses

However, we return to the question that highlights another aspect of character, the earn-and-spend culture that means we have nothing in store for the future and exemplified in the immediate gratification of acquiring for status instead of status being the determinant of acquisition.

None of which is entirely healthy regardless of status, if the need to have is to satisfy a vacuous want to be seen having something to be able to belong or show-off.

Yet, there is a market for this type of person because the virtue of contentment and the wisdom that informs better choices for deciding what is presentable and hopefully acceptable is different from what drives the acquisition of things.

What our presentable should do

What we do in striving for the presentable is to allow the gatekeepers open the doors to where we can be acceptable, it requires we either know the defaults of presentable or acquire the Shibboleth of acceptable.

This is quite different from self-aggrandisement, the luxury good from underwear through designer wear, accessories and expensive toys in the quest to belong. Thereby presenting a public face of plenty underpinned by a private penury.

Penny-wise, pound-foolish

We all have our stories, but I tried to sum it up in this tweet that I posted earlier, “The context of presentable and acceptable in terms of the decisions we make and how we spend can be the difference between foolish and wise.”

Back to the article, if you have not yet read it, Why Do Poor People 'Waste' Money On Luxury Goods? – A very good question with a long backstory.

Holiday snaps: A touch of privilege

Step forward for access

The wait at Madrid was long enough, just under 3 hours of killing time during which I sat in the dire lounge watching planes touch-down and take-off.

I had arrived too early for a gate number for my transit flight and was informed I would be called when the gate is known.

A few minutes before boarding time I saw the gate on the screen and made for the boarding gate, within 10 minutes the announcer asked us to come forward giving priority to those who might need assistance, elite passengers and those with children.

Grabbed from privilege

So, I stepped forward being an elite passenger by reason of loyalty but just as I was about to present my boarding pass, I was tapped on the shoulder by a man, a father with his wife and child in a stroller and he gesticulated to his child, I then gesticulated with my cane.

The question then becomes who needs more assistance, two able-bodied adults with a bubbly child of 2 or a man who needs a cane to walk about?

The matter of priority is another thing, I would have had to show off my elite card and mouth a near obscenity – in both cases, the fair-minded would defer to my being served first in those circumstances.

I was in no mood to get rattled by some stupid sightless aggravation, I let them go before me, I would have been slower anyway because we had to ride a bus to the plane getting there by steps; there was no gangway connection.

Late but sped

When we finally got on the plane, I thought we would be on time, it took another 45 minutes before we took off just because some people had taken their Spanish siesta early rather than make their way to the airport and onto the plane.

One thing about flying is you cannot be done for speeding, we made up for lost time and gained back 30 of those 45 minutes, an Airbus 330-200 it was and what a bumpy ride we had in the air at some points.

Baggage declaim

At Las Palmas, one of my airport peeves was played before me, people who gather at the conveyor belt blocking the way for others who already have their stuff on the belt. There just doesn’t seem to be any decorum at those places, dare I say a sense of breeding at the risk of snobbery.

When I said excuse me to get my suitcase, with a cane in one hand, surely, someone could have offered to help, but no, I struggled with it and as I got it off, well, it literally landed on a big buffoon’s feet who should have moved out of the way seeing I was pulling off the equivalent of a trunk. It should not be Baggage Reclaim but Baggage Declaim.

At the exit, I saw my name with the N in my surname, I forgave the infringement, handed my suitcase to the chauffeur and got to the hotel to be welcomed by known faces again.

Nigeria: A National Assembly fudge

It is a fudge

It is a fudge, if I ever saw one with influence peddling gaining the upper hand over a straight-forward legislative process.

The ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo was supposed to appear before the House of Representatives Committee on Power and Steel yesterday to answer questions which he did not.

Apparently, the ex-President had prepared a presentation and sent a letter through his Special Assistant stating that he was slightly indisposed after preparing the presentation and hoped that his presentation would suffice without holding up the committee in its work.

The ex-President had earlier agreed to appear before the committee but some advisors prevailed upon him to wield status, demand privileges and consequently he questioned the manner of the invitation and never appeared.

Refusal precedes withdrawal

In what is quickly becoming a farce, the committee then withdrew the invitation, but this was after the invited had failed to appear – so where they should have flexed muscle as a constitutionally constituted organ with the mien to invite any Nigerian citizen to a sitting, they caved in to pandering and compromises that in my view has diminished the standing of the legislature.

Like I noted yesterday, the Nigerian Bar Association had said the invitation was exercised within the legal remit of the legislature, that is, the committee can invite any citizen; an ex-President is a citizen first and then any other dignities and achievement are beside the point of being first a citizen.

Who is the President today?

There might however be a case for preserving the mystique of the office of the President, as the report indicated; the withdrawal was to avoid desecrating the office of the President.

One would think the office the President is the preserve of the incumbent rather than previous holders, else that would mean a perverse order of precedence exists that places ex-Presidents above the law and possibly beyond the survey of the incumbent.

The question then becomes; who is an ex-President answerable to?

I cannot believe that ex-President Obasanjo is being accorded these courtesies when he himself does not accord the President any courtesy – I noted at a gathering to honour the elder brother of the President (Shehu Yar’Adua), ex-President Obasanjo singularly and prominently did not rise for the President when he took the podium.

A quoted source says, “It is not about Obasanjo. It is about the office and stature of a former president of this country. It would set a bad president (sic) [precedent – ThisDay try proofreading your copy] to put him in the dock at the National Assembly and subject him to the kind of questioning that former ministers have been subjected to in the last few months nothing has changed on the investigations, but something has changed in the way the matter will be approached.”

An untenable situation developing

In my view, this elevates intransigence and truculence to a subjective variable that now has prominence when men fear to stand in the power of their office to seek the truth in the name of Nigerians.

The ex-President would not now appear in the chambers of the National Assembly but he would be interviewed in private – it offers unprecedented latitude for the ex-President to dictate the whole proceedings.

He can refuse to provide evidence or answers under oath, he can require none of the proceedings be on record and he can decide he has no further time for the legislature.

In fact, when he was President he showed scant regard for the separation of powers and this attitude seems to have followed him out of office.

In the end, I am disappointed by the way our democracy has been subsumed to the cult of personality, regardless of the protestations of the quoted source – if an ex-President can be selective about giving account for his tenure of office, we have potentates that would continue to riddle Nigeria with bad governance and get away with it.

It does not augur well at all.

Nigeria: Leaving the objective for the subjective

Leaving the issue

This is probably a classic example of the issue I raised in my blog about the Senate Health Bill being rejected for having irregularities.

In that blog, I made the observation that generally Nigerians tend to leave behind the issue and pander around peripheral subjects that becloud the real matter at hand thereby losing the ability to objectively focus on what needs to be done.

No power for all the money

Nigeria has a serious energy crisis which is experienced by a majority through inadequate power supply; it would appear the last regime spent $16 billion according to some sources on building new power stations and fixing the transmission grid.

Nigeria produces 3,000 MW of electricity whilst it needs at least 8,000 MW, the Nigerian House of Representatives Committee on Power and Steel has been reviewing the numbers and contracts awarded having seen situations 18 turbines worth $3 billion are still at port because neither the government nor contractors have the means of moving the machines to their power station locations.

You are cordially invited …

Before concluding their report on their findings on the power contracts and why improvements do not seem to be commensurate with the moneys and contracts signed, the House Committee on Power and Steel, respectfully invited the former President Olusegun Obasanjo, his deputy, vice-President Atiku Abubakar and the former Minister of Finance Nenadi Usman to help understand the terms and circumstances of the contracts and what was expected for what was paid to fulfil those contracts.

Obasanjo and Atiku have offered to appear, Usman has been too chicken to appear at any of the committees to which she has been invited.

In general terms, if these people do have any information that would help us understand what was spent between $6.5 billion according to Obasanjo and any other figure of speculation, we would be glad to know why it has not yet resulted in improved power supplies or some other impediment to progress.

A legal clearance

The Nigerian Bar Association has been flipping the pages of the Nigerian Constitution and concluded that the legislature is within its rights of competence to invite, summons, issue a bench warrant or warrant the arrest of a citizen that refuses to heed its friendlier requests.

So, all should be in order for these people to respectfully present themselves to the committee and hopefully answer the questions they are asked so that the committee’s report might have a completeness that would allow us to move on to providing decent solutions for power.

Defending the indefensible

Well, not really, a group of lawmakers from the South West – read politicians driven by tribal instinct – have opposed the invitation to Obasanjo, criticising the committee for not seeking the backing of the principal officers of the House.

I think the committee already has the mandate of the House to review and investigate issues under their remit, if it includes inviting citizens no matter their previous status; they should not have to renew their mandate to invite individuals of interest to the committee.

They go on to argue that it is an act of disrespect to invite someone of Obasanjo’s status having served the country meritoriously as a past leader.

Well, I would contend, if he has served the country meritoriously, he should quite proudly and honourably be willing to defend and accentuate the good points of his service before any committee of properly constituted authority that might be seeking to get at the truth or attempting to impugn his service.

Obasanjo is already in the fray

Obasanjo may not have awarded the contracts but his regime should have had systems in place to monitor the progress of contracts and sanctions in place to exact against those who fail to deliver on the contracts.

Obasanjo himself has published information about what he spent on the power contracts which makes him a person of particular interest to answer questions on that matter – we should not be caught in the emotion of those lawmakers, the matter at stake is not about personalities, it is about questions that need answers that Obasanjo, Abubakar and Usman probably know a lot about.

Preserving a flawed status

The Nigerian Tribune which has an editorial remit that makes fawning sycophancy a prime art, suggests that Obasanjo and Abubakar might not appear before the committee.

Obasanjo, they say is being advised by his associates not to appear in order to preserve his status as former president – it makes you wonder if a former president of Nigeria does not come under that general collective term of citizen of Nigeria.

We are being regaled with due process talk of who should invite anyone between the Clerk of the House and the committee – it does not really matter to me, if the committee by a majority has decided to invite anyone, it just belabours process to have it contested by House officials.

But this is a clear example of people who are leaving the objective issue of obtaining answers to questions about power to peripheral subjective issues about status and respect – how that helps answer the questions escapes me and it does not help anyone – neither the summonsed parties nor Nigerians at large.