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washing dishes with cold water, keeping the house at 50 degrees in the winter... in a household above the poverty line, these are signs of mental illness, not of a vanishing virtue. I can't figure out why Leonard didn't point this out.

I know people with these issues -- let's call them issues, to be polite -- and they're horrid to be around; you can almost see the little thing spinning in their heads, fretting about every dime that might come out of their wallets. Trying to convince you, at the supermarket, to choose the orange juice that costs ten cents more.

It's a strange kind of OCD, that, in this modern world, ends up being all-consuming, because we almost always can be spending money on something.

There's a difference between being cheap and being frugal, and it shouldn't be ignored.

She should have thrown away the clams.

Because if she had gotten ill, she would have
spent more than she saved on the medical bill.

The cheaper objects are, the more objects are accumulated. There is a valid place for _economy_ -- for the judicious, economics-based acquisition of objects.

When everything is cheap, people wind up with a massive accumulation of relatively useless artifacts--all of which require "maintenance" -- placement, upkeep, reserved storage space, etc. It's better to have to carefully deliberate the purchase of an object that one is to bring into one's life.

I have a friend with a horrible hoarding problem. Cheap goods have done her no favor whatsoever.

I agree with #2.

And no, #3, she is generous to a fault; she tips well. There seems no basis for your wild generalization, in my experience.

Having mass thrift and saving makes real sense in a society that manufacture and exports products. Germany and Japan and China.
The US has become a non-productive consumer society that simply consumes. It is a consumption economy. Without massive personal spending there is no economy. The US may be hitting a wall here.

"Home economy" is actually redundant! The Greek root of "economy" means "household management" (see http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/economy). Calling Pat O'Conner....

Lauren seems to have it backwards in my opinion. Americans have always over-valued cheapness, attributing a kind of moral greatness to it, even when it undermines our environment and our jobs. The drive for bargains at Walmart and Costco has sent jobs overseas, and destroyed the water and air in regions we can't see; cheap food results in CAFOs--where thousands of animals are raised in horrendous conditions in the interest of cheap meat. "Look! I got a bargain!" has always been announced with pride.

As a child I read about the worlds most miserly woman in the Guiness book of world records and focused on the line "she lived on cold oatmeal". I misunderstood that as her literally living (sleeping) on a bed of cold oatmeal. So funny to remember that childhood misunderstanding.

Should we be spending all of our time thinking about money (saving it or not)? Is that what life is about?

ING Direct encourages starting savings accounts and or checking accounts w as little as a dollar, and even pay interest with no minimum balance.

It is not unheard of today for financial institutions to see the bigger picture.

poor people cannot afford cheap products. r

Leonard:
I would like to point out that cheapskates are often cheap when tipping (waiters, barbers, bartenders, etc). These people make minimal salaries and depend to an extraordiary degree on receiving adequate tips for the services they provide.

I'm afraid the recession has become the occasion of the sin of Puritanism on the part of some of us on the Left; some of us treat the desire for things the way the Church have traditionally viewed the sexual passion: an excrescence not present in our ideal state which should be at best tolerated and always suppressed.

Now, the delusion that the right stuff will 'make it all o.k.', fostered by advertising, is the source both of a great deal of unhappiness of which drug abuse is a small but emblematic part. And making people feel dependent on having luxuries is a great way of making them more fearful---someone once said to me that we were nowhere close to late Weimar conditions, and I responded that we were used to so much more that people now might react as if they were starving once they couldn't afford cable, or a new car....

But basically, I think a big, successful, chunk of the Enlightenment Project has consisted in making people _expect_ the better standard of living that can be provided via the fruits of technology and sociopolitical evolution. When people live less close to the margin, they actually begin to _believe_ that they have rights (see what is generally called 'The Sixties', which have in fact been 'blamed' by some well-regarded Establishment types on the sense of prosperity about at the time). Prosperous people are somewhat less susceptible to the lies of bosses and preachers---is it any coincidence that Europe puts up with more comfortable unemployment than do we, and seems much more secular/atheist?

I think the road to greater human freedom lies through helping people have more choices, and that material choices are inevitably part of it.