Further to my comments yesterday about the recession and jobs, FWers might
be interested in reading the latest of the monthly reports that I send to
shareholders in my choral music business. The fourth paragraph is of no
direct relevance to this List, but it can be generalised, I think, to hint
at a new sort of spending pattern in the coming years which will continue
the present trend away from production jobs to services.
<<<<<
Apart from China, the world-wide economic recession continues to deepen and
politicians in most developed countries, particularly America, are planning
all sorts of tax cuts, government subsidies and continuation of interest
rate cuts as well as urging their people to spend, spend, spend. If all
these strategems are successful, which I doubt very much (because too many
people have too many debts on their credit cards), then we'll be back into
the same sort of inflation era that we experienced in the 70s.
However, I think that the present recession will turn out to be somewhat
different from all previous ones because two quiet revolutions have
affected us in developed countries in the last thirty years or so. The
first quiet revolution is the downturn in family size. The populations of
most, if not all, developed countries are no longer self-sustaining.
Parents don't need to be urged to spend if they have two or more children
-- they have to spend as a matter of necessity. With one child or,
increasingly, none, a substantial part of the working population have much
more discretionary financial power. They've been tempted to spend this in
recent years -- in fact, hugely overspend -- but they're also capable now
of swinging the other way just as dramatically by reducing their spending
hugely if they're afraid of their jobs and want to pay off their credit
card debts and mortgages.
The other quiet revolution is something I've thought about for some years
and for which there's not the same sort of hard evidence. This is that the
affluent middle-class -- the consumerist trend-setters -- are no longer
quite so keen on spending more and more on gadgets and passive
entertainment and holidays. They simply haven't enough time or patience for
them. I think that the PC will have been the last new consumerist item of
price significance that they'll buy, and I think that the growth in
activity holidays in recent years, rather than passive holidays, is a
strong sign of this. For many years I wondered whether I was the odd one
out in thinking along these lines, but I was reading the other day that
this is now becoming a respectable school, albeit a small one at present,
among economists in America -- they're called the "Saturationists".
My reason for writing all this is because I think the latter quiet
revolution will be significant for the future growth of Handlo Music. Even
while the economics of "serious music" performance is becoming increasingly
dire (and even the sales of pop music by large corporations such as EMI --
facing huge losses!) I think we'll see a substantial growth in community
and chamber choirs in the coming years.
>>>>
Keith Hudson
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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