Posted on 08/18/2010 8:41:43 AM PDT by lakeprincess
Shiny new shoes, No. 2 pencils, a snappy lunchbox: Back-to-school shopping was once a welcomed ritual. No more. Big prices and small budgets have turned the once pleasant annual purchasing party into an allegory of a flagging economy, producing parental angst and industry cheerleaders who urge the moms and dads to at least "buy American." ... On average, American parents spend from $545 to $671 per child
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I bought paper this year. It’s the lower grades that break the bank. We are re-using everything. I stopped contributing to those teacher’s “wish lists”.
JP Morgan Chase did the survey. Maybe that’s what they spend per child in the NE.
That sounds like a staggering amount. No way could people living paycheck-to-paycheck do that; in fact they may be lucky if they have gotten the Christmas charges off their CC.
Now they are supposed to send TP and Clorox wipes, too!
We have an 8th grader and 11th grader. We spent no where near that amount. I don’t count clothes because I buy them new clothes year round, they don’t wear uniforms.
Most expensive item was a graphing calculator for the 11th grader @ a little over 100.00 bucks.
So boo-flippin-hoo.
They’re including clothing with the supplies and whatnot. But still...
Just what in the world are the schools doing with all that property tax money? Pure extortion, “for the children...”
I wonder how many small businesses restock their “office supplies” this time of year? Seems to be a good time to do so.
The schools didn’t pay for supplies when I was a kid in the 60s.
This has been going on for decades. Nothing new, but just more expensive.
“...American parents spend from $545 to $671 per child...”
Some do perhaps, but others send their students off to school with only an empty stomach to be filled with a free breakfast and lunch.
The teachers collect all the shiny new supplies from the “haves” and put them in a box. Then the students learn their first lessons in the Dem’s “spreading the wealth” as all students get supplied from the box. That will get them ready for forking over 50% of what they make to the IRS later.
Good...then it is time to put a stop to it...take the money away from the unions and pension funds; and use that money to buy supplies.
By cramming almost all the clothing purchases into the tax free weekends, it becomes that much.
I hear you...
You’re a STEPmom?? heh heh!
Lots of us are, I guess...
The author is right: this was only a “ritual,” and one borne of relative affluence. Very rarely did a child need all those stuff on the supply list — it was just fun to have and sort of ushered in the new school year with a little excitement.
Ditto for many kids with clothes and shoes. Fun, but not exactly necessary. Waiting for fall and Christmas sales was often doable.
Today holding on to our discretionary consumer spending is about the only way we, as individuals, can actually protest the economic garbage coming out of the Obama administration. I, for one, will not spend one dime more than absolutely necessary because I will not prop up this nonsense.
BO can pass all the laws he wants, but he will never make me spend my money.
isn’t it just awful?
At least at my kids’ school, parents buy their supply packs BEFORE the end of the previous school year.
We came from Canada (LEGALLY) and my parents were of modest income. My mother was a stay at home mom. They both thought this “back to school shopping” thing was almost a RELIGION and totally dispatched it. We received hand me down clothing and offcasts from more affluent parents and we LIKED it.
Rarely did we get a whole new set of clothes and school supplies at the end of August.
And I did the same for my now grown children when they were young.
By contrast, “Hubby’s” status conscious ex-wife takes all three under 14 yr old children to Ambercrombie and has a field day with half of Hubby’s net income every month (child support)
Of course, all three children are failing grade school so academics is not important to her. . .after all, she is a CHILD PROTECTIVE WORKER by trade. (barf)
Sigh!
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