I am one of those persons who likes to read little “heart-string pulling” stories.
You know, a guy helps a homeless man tie his shoes and the homeless man ends up being a multi-gazillionaire and buys the guy a new car so he doesn’t have to walk to work (something like 27 miles from his family’s farm where his father is suffering from nose warts and his mother has chronic gas) to earn the money he’s saving up to go to college to be a veterinarian specializing in Himalayan yaks with hoof fungus disease and bladder-control issues.
Because those things have a direct impact on global warming.
It’s kind of a specialists’ specialty.
I also like reading about a kid who offers to wax a guy’s car so he can earn bus money so that he can get back and forth to school to become a doctor.
The guy who owns the car is so moved — not to mention he is a brain surgeon from a similar disadvantaged upbringing — he makes the kid an honorary brain surgeon and the kid winds up saving seven guppies from the fish tank in the hospital’s doctor’s lounge from some strange brain disease.
The average American will spend $920 on Christmas gifts this year, reaching a total of more than $1 trillion in holiday spending.
Eight percent said they would spend nothing, and 3 percent said they were unsure.
Twenty-nine percent expected their gift spending to be between $100 and $499 according to stats from Investopedia.
In 2001, the average American planned to spend $1,052 — the highest ever.
Following the financial crash in 2008, planned holiday shopping dropped to $417 in 2009— less than half of what people planned to spend in 2018, according to the National Retail Federation. Americans have been spending more on holiday gifts every year since 2008 (except 2012); although the holiday spending is still not back on the pre-recession trend, it seems to be headed in that direction — possibly thanks to lower unemployment, stronger growth, and higher confidence in the economy.
