The Onion Daily Dispatch - November 21, 2011

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Congressman’s War Hero Son Would Have Wanted Highway Bill Passed 03.25.09 Rep. David Whittle (D-VA) speaks passionately about how his son, who died in Iraq, would have loved to see this appropriations bill passed. News in Brief » Smooth Transaction At DMV Exaggerated Into Story Anyway American Voices » U.S. Births Drop Again "Fine, I’ll start fucking again." opinion » I've Never Prayed Before In My Life, But I'm Absolutely Desperate by God Uh…hello? Anybody there? Man, this is so awkward. But I honestly don't know what else to do. Radio News » No One Has Heart To Ask Human Beat Box To Stop

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By Adam Dachis The Stupid Things You Do When Shopping (and How to Fix Them) It's officially holiday shopping season, and retailers are counting on your consumer impulses to drive you to buy everything your lustful heart desires. If you've ever ended up with a cart full of fishbowls, bedazzlers, and life-sized giraffe statues, you know shopping fever can cause you to make some pretty stupid choices. Here's a look at some of the most common motivators of bad shopping decisions and what you can do to put a stop to them. Stupid Thing #1: You Love Free Stuff, Even When It's Bad For You The power of free can be very compelling, so much so that you feel inclined to take any free item just because it's offered. This may not seem like such a bad thing because a free gift seems particularly harmless. The problem is, just because you're not paying with money doesn't mean you're not paying at all. The power of free can cause you to make choices you wouldn't otherwise make, and the consequences can be worse than letting go of a few precious dollars. Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, conducted an experiment where he and his team offered free tattoos to people at a night club. 76 people wanted to take advantage of this free offer. The crowd were an average age of 26 and were essentially sober (rating an average of 2.64 on a drunkenness scale of 1 to 11), and most of them only wanted a permanent tattoo because it was free: When we asked the people in line for the free tattoos if they would get the tattoo if it were not free, 68% said they would not. They were only getting it because it was free. We also asked the participants if they knew that there were free tattoos being offered at the party. The 90% that knew they would be giving away free tattoos were asked two follow-up questions. First, when asked when they made their decision to get a tattoo that night before or after arriving at the party, 85% said they made their decision before arrival and 15% made the decision after arriving. When further asked, on a scale of 0-100, how likely did they think they were to get a tattoo that night, people were on average 65% sure they would be getting a tattoo. A handful of participants didn't even know what kind of tattoo they wanted, but simply that they didn't want to pass up this opportunity. We do this frequently when free offers are made, and the easy way to solve the problem is to ask yourself a simple question: if this free thing was simply half price, or lightly discounted, would I still want it? If you answer yes, it might be worthwhile. If not, you should urge yourself to take a pass. The problem with free stuff is that there's often another form payment involved, like the sacrifice of personal information, and having your address sold to other companies who will send you a torrent of junk mail isn't necessarily worth what you seemingly gained for free. Stupid Thing #2: Your Brand Loyalty Is Just a Bad Habit If you've ever been called a fanboy/girl or consider yourself brand loyal, you might just be lazy. Some companies will treat you better than others, and often times you'll stick around for that reason, but consider all the options you haven't tried. People tend to judge products they don't use as inferior simply because they're comfortable with what they've got. This results in missed opportunities and, often times, wasted money. The problem occurs when we develop a brand habit that we confuse with loyalty. You've probably used the same brand of toothpaste, sandwich bags, or writing implement for most of your life. You also probably haven't tried many of the other brands. You found something you liked well enough, got used to it, and continued to buy it without really considering any alternatives. Once this habit has been built, you also develop a resistance to change (like with most bad habits). This resistance causes you to defend your choices, even if you might be wrong. We call this brand loyalty, but it's really just defensive behavior and being too lazy to try something new. Science Daily suggests a possible solution: When companies get consumers motivated about their products, they are just as motivated to protect the brand as they are themselves. So it's really more about the self than the brand. When people can self-affirm through other means and activities, they're not defensive at all. For example, if you've developed an obsession with gadgets and consider yourself a go-to person for purchasing choices, you're self-affirming through the brands you like. There's nothing wrong with having your opinions on a few products, but if you can feel like an expert about something that doesn't involve consumption you'll have an easier time shedding your brand loyalty habits. This will help you keep an open mind and not ignore possibly better and cheaper products you'd have otherwise have ignored. Stupid Thing #3: Your Desire for Greater Social Status Affects Your Choices You might think you're always out to buy the best possible product, but most of the time your purchasing decisions are just a means of competing for social status. In a consumer society, you do this because your product choices are a means of expressing yourself. With the massive amount of choice, it's easy to convince yourself that what you buy strongly conveys your personality in a way that makes you appear trendy and more attractive. In reality it helps you fit into a stereotype and dump money into a series of purchases that are ultimately pretty meaningless. This is because everything is capable of becoming a product, whether it's a part of popular culture or belongs to a group trying to defy it. David McRaney, writer of the book and blog on self-delusion You Are Not So Smart, explains how the system works: In the 1960s, it took months before someone figured out they could sell tie-dyed shirts and bell bottoms to anyone who wanted to rebel. In the 1990s, it took weeks to start selling flannel shirts and Doc Martens to people in the Deep South. Now, people are hired by corporations to go to bars and clubs and predict what the counter culture is into and have it on the shelves in the cool stores right as it becomes popular. While something may start out as authentic, it quickly loses that status as it grows in popularity and becomes a product. People then seek out new, more authentic experiences and the cycles repeats. There's little we can do about this, and it's not necessarily a problem. The thing we have to accept in a consumer society is that the choices we make about the stuff that we like is not really that important. You should dress in clothing that you feel makes you look your best and you should own the computer, toaster, or toothpaste you enjoy. What you shouldn't do is believe that those decisions make you special or more authentic, because then you're playing into a system whose only interest is winning your money. Real authenticity has to come from you. Stupid Thing #4: You Set Yourself Up for Buyer's Remorse You've heard that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and you've probably also applied it to your shopping experiences. Perhaps you bought an iPhone and wished for an Android, then switched and realized Android wasn't so great after all (or vice versa). Or maybe you've rushed into a decision to grab a limited-time offer only to find you spent a bunch of money on something you didn't want. With all the choices available, and all the manipulative advertising surrounding them, it's easy to make mistakes—or at least think you're making them—when choosing a product. You might think that the solution to buyer's remorse is weighing all your options carefully, but you'd be wrong. We are terrible at predicting the future, especially when it comes to our happiness, and we're generally happier when we just make a choice—even if that choice might be a bad one. Near-endless deliberation just stresses us out and causes us to wonder if we made the right decision after the fact. You can avoid that by just not thinking too much and going with your gut. Of course, you don't want to end up buying a bunch of stuff you don't need or really want as much as you might initially think. Doing that can incite buyer's remorse as well. It's common to make a quick buying decision because of a good deal and then find yourself regretting that choice soon after. The best thing you can do to combat this problem is to enforce a mandatory holding pattern of 24 hours or more before making any medium or large purchases and only buy from stores with great return policies. This way you won't purchase on a whim, and if you do end up with buyer's remorse you'll be able to undo the damage. This post was delightfully illustrated by Dana Zemack. Check out more of her stick figure comics on her web site and follow her on Twitter. Title photo remixed from an original by Jason Aron (Shutterstock). You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. Twitter's the best way to contact him, too. Share this:

November 21st, 2011 Top Stories How I Use Robot Mode and Non-Digital Creativity to Accomplish More in the Day How to Deal with the New Crap You Can Expect from the TSA This Holiday Travel Season How Do I Avoid Poisoning Everyone at Thanksgiving Dinner? Get the Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard on Any Android Phone How to Get the Most Out of Google Music More Stories on Lifehacker »

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Moneybox: The Supercommittee Failed. Hooray!

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Moneybox The Supercommittee Failed. Hooray! How the absence of a deal may cut the deficit more than a deal would have. By Matthew Yglesias Posted Monday, Nov 21, 2011, at 05:49 PM ET Today's the day when Washington officially comes to terms with the fact that the "Supercommittee"—a bipartisan, bicameral group charged with reducing America's long-term fiscal deficit—won't agree on anything. This is being termed a "failure," and by the standards of D.C.'s fetishization of bipartisanship, it is one. But in terms of deficit reduction, failure is actually better than success. For starters, the whole premise of the Supercommittee was that if it didn't agree on something, then $1.2 trillion of spending cuts would be quasi-automatically implemented through a mechanism known as "sequestration." The cuts are balanced 50-50 between the security and nonsecurity sides of the budget. And while they're hardly irreversible, neither is anything else in American law. It's not possible for Congress to metaphysically commit future Congresses to future courses of action. But what Congress did to resolve the debt-ceiling standoff was to change the default rule. The $1.2 trillion in cuts will happen unless Congress and the president act affirmatively to stop them from happening. In an American political system bogged down by bicameralism, the filibuster, and the presidential veto, the default rules matter a great deal. So if it's $1.2 trillion in spending cuts you want, then $1.2 trillion in cuts were already put on the schedule by the debt-ceiling deal. That the supercommittee didn't agree on an alternative to the cuts doesn't make it any more (or less) likely that the ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Why America Is in Decline: It's Not Our Economy. It's Our Political System. Weigel: How the Bush Tax Cuts Doomed the Supercommittee Saletan: 12 Ways GOP Candidates Would Like the U.S. To Become a Christian Government	Advertisement
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Global Investors Reach A Historic Level Of Pessimism

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		Tech Entertainment Wall Street Markets Strategy Sports Lifestyle Politics Europe Video Latest Monday, November 21, 2011 Global Investors Reach A Historic Level Of Pessimism When fear and volatility enter the stock markets, investors are particularly quick to sell off their international investments in overseas stocks. However, Ian Scott, Nomura's Global Head of Equity Strategy, argues that these types of sell-offs are often followed by sharp, rapid rebounds in those very same equities. Scott notes that the current international equity flow metrics are unusually negative, which is an argument to buy.  At the current level, the only time it would've been too early to buy was during the Lehman Brothers crisis. Once again, investors have responded to the crisis environment by pulling in their horns, and repatriation has, once again, been the prevailing response... Read » Also On Money Game Today: CITI Presents CARBS: The 5 Countries Dominating The Global Commodity Markets Now A German 'Wise Man' Is Siding With Soros And Demanding Action From The ECB 10 Crucial Dates You Need To Watch In Europe Obama Says He Will Veto Any Attempt To Eliminate Automatic Spending Cuts After Super Committee Fails Advertisement CHART OF THE DAY: Why The Next Jobs Report Could Be A Real Monster CHART OF THE DAY: Goldman Reveals What You're Getting For Christmas CHART OF THE DAY: Oil Hits $100 -- Is It About To Kill The Economy Again? Share this: Facebook Twitter Digg Reddit StumbleUpon LinkedIn The email address for your subscription is: dwyld.kwu.wyldside@blogger.com Change Your Email Address | Unsubscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe to the Money Game RSS Feed Business Insider. 257 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010 Terms of Service | Privacy Policy

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