“Make do”

December 20 I went in for my haircut, still a regular event in my life, albeit thinner.  Just a haircut and beard trim, once every four weeks.

This particular day I said to Pamela, “I suppose you’ve been pretty busy”.   Pam, who’s also the manager, said they were pretty busy for the holiday, but business had been unusually slow in November.  As she scheduled the next haircut she said  “Five weeks or six”, which surprised me – I’ve always done four weeks.  “Why?”  Customers were cutting back, she said.  Worried about anticipated personal economic downturns.

The entire thread of conversation surprised me, but not when we chatted a tiny bit about it.  We were talking about the practical matter of personal economics – the kinds of decision making individuals make all the time.  Can I afford this or that, or is it best to hold off, to make do, in case personal economics go south?

Examples?  Start with yourself, and how you really feel as this year ends…and how you act..and what you see and hear in person where you live, including yourself, family members, neighbors, friends.

We are not in normal times and in sundry assorted ways ordinary people, which are the overwhelming vast majority of us, have a cautious and apprehensive eye about the future, which is about to dawn in a few days, on January 1, 2026.  Most of us have been through “make do” times when we have to scrimp due to scarce resources.

Cutbacks like personnel layoffs are reductions in income with consequence.  Illusiona and fantasies are not reality: tariffs are taxes to consumers, not costs to the provider of a good.

Credit card purchases are not free money.  AI [artificial intelligence] and the like promise to reduce labor cost, but wages to labor are what makes an economy vibrant.  On and on.

What nobody at the highest levels seems to internalize is the fact that the true engine for prosperity is the little folks like all of us who produce and consume the goods that generate income, and “we”  includes not only the people who live in our own home, state and country in this interdependent world.

And wealth is more and more concentrated in the ranks of the already super wealthy who have absolutely no need for the surplus money they covet.  The obsession with colonizing the moon or Mars is an endless fantasy…don’t expect a lineup of migrants to either; nor expect boatloads of new resources from Mars to be mined and delivered to the local factory down the street.

I’ve always considered myself to be an optimist.  This attitude is being sorely tested.  In the coming weeks and months we’ll find out.

POSTNOTE:

Very relevant column in today’s Minnesota Star Tribune: Mn Star Tribune Billionaires 12 27-28 25