First-World Purchases

This link is to an on-line article about 23 things you've got to have.  Water that is LED-illuminated to be red or blue depending on if it is cold or hot.  A tie that inflates to be a pillow.  A "do everything" cooler.  And 20 more items that sound really fun, but are actually really superfluous.

Remember the singing fish craze of a few years ago?  (I often see them at yard sales today, along with many other things that people bought on whims.)

After reading the two books in the series Families of the World: Family Life at the Close of the 20th Century, by Helene Tremblay, a couple of years ago (reviewed here), I realized anew just how little most of the people of the world have.  And, making boxes for Operation Christmas Child, and seeing videos of how most children are delighted to get a toothbrush, or a single stuffed animal all their own, has driven the point home also.

It's difficult, and unnecessary, to draw any hard and fast lines as to what constitutes wasteful spending and what doesn't, and the point of this post is not to condemn what people spend or to go into anxiety mode over expenditures.  I probably spend more on some things than other people would.  But when I see links like the one above, it makes me realize once again how much we have in the "first world," compared to most of the people around the globe.  Enough to waste a lot of it on things like ties that inflate to be pillows.