Posted by mandewilkes on Uncategorized
Bottled Water Sales Sink
As part of my series on the curious state of the U.S. economy, one of the things I’m looking for is the possibility that the Piper has come a-knockin’. So far I’ve highlighted how bad it ain’t, an inconvenient truth you’re apparently not supposed to talk about.
Today, though, I came across some evidence which may indicate that the tides are turning, potentially marking an important shift in the series, the significance of which is in fact the reason for the series - to show in microcosmic snapshots why the financial doomsday refrain is overblown, sounded as a last-minute alarm before our penchant for prodigality catches up with us.
Bottled water is the ultimate status symbol, signifying a nation’s prosperity by gentrifying that most basic of substances. In the past decade, Americans have shunned free tap water for the costly bottled stuff - a luxury made feasible only by an economy in full bloom. Or by credit cards. Whichever.
Anyway, it looks like some people are turning back toward the proletariat, opting for tap water instead of its bourgeois counterpart. What was last year a $17 billion industry is gearing down as Americans are forced to revamp their budgets.
And, despite what the media and the government want you to believe, this is a good thing. We’ve been in desperate need of a shake-up to rid us of the notion that we’re somehow entitled to the best of the best simply by virtue of being an American.
I have high hopes that current financial straits will finally get people to live within their means - and I believe that the decline in bottled water purchases is a harbinger of the shift from frivolity to frugality.
Of course, as long as welfare recipients can use food stamps to buy bottled water, I probably shouldn’t expect the rest of us to settle for the stuff from the sink.
The story is not that bottled water sales are down. It’s that they were ever up so much in the first place.