Father Christmas Heads for America

I won’t repeat here the outlook for Christmas sales reported in my Sunday Times column (26 November, 06) except to say that retailers seem to have big smiles on their usually sad faces. Porsche dealers in New York can’t wait until those multi-million dollar bonus checks begin raining down on Wall Street’s brokers and bankers. Property agents are scouring the market for “merchandise” to show customers interested in mini- and not so mini-palaces in New York’s finest buildings, especially those with spectacular views of Central Park. Five million gets you a “fixer-up” that your decorator might be able to turn into a habitable abode to which you will be willing to invite colleagues to view your latest acquisition-at-auction of a painting by an artist whose name might still be an art-world by-word a decade hence -- or who it is equally likely will have descended to the ranks of the obscure.

Early indications are that America’s shopping list includes more than Porsches and cooperative apartments. The average worker will earn $1,000 more this year than last, and will have a cornucopia of electronics, apparel and toys to choose from, all cheaper than ever. Toys, one expert estimates, are 40% cheaper than they were five years ago; flat-screen television sets have moved from the unaffordable to the inexpensive-enough-to-have-in-multiple-rooms; computers continue to get more powerful and less costly. Good news for the young and the affluent baby-boomers who take time off worrying about the safety of the social security system to treat themselves to all of the above.

The elderly, no longer mostly poor, are finding the going a bit tougher, as their fixed incomes come face-to-face with the hard reality of rising cost of prescription drugs. Cheaper PCs don’t do very much for this group. Still, by and large they are far better off than earlier generations who reached what still can be called “the golden years”. A full 30% of  Americans who report the lowest income, a group in which old folks are overly represented, own their homes free of mortgages. Health care is more available, both for the insured and uninsured; facilities tailored to their needs are springing up not only in golfer-heaven Phoenix, but in university towns such as Madison Wisconsin, places not exactly the destination of choice for the weather-conscious, but rich in intellectual offerings to students of all ages.

Yes, there are pockets of people outside the market economy, and beyond the reach of the multiple government programmes aimed at alleviating poverty and illness. But all in all, most Americans have few reasons to worry about their economic future. Not all, mind you, but most. Now if some way can be found to produce a satisfactory result in Iraq, one that denies it to jihadists as a base of operations, Americans will go smiling into the New Year.