The Myth of Gay Affluence...? 1

2 readers, on opposite sides of the planet, sent us the same story link so of course, we're gonna write about it - when we get the fuckin' time........

(Underlining and bold print by FuelMix):

1.   The Hype

"Up through the 1970s and ‘80s, gays and lesbians played a seedier role in the public consciousness. The “gay lifestyle” was the bastion of society’s most depraved individuals; sleazy bathhouses, leather bars, and so on. The image of gays and lesbians began to change, however, once Wall Street and Madison Avenue realized that there was a vast, untapped market of potential consumers.

“Corporate America was one of the first targets in terms of trying to improve policies around LGBT issues,” says Gates, “and part of it was this idea that they needed to focus on the LGBT community as a consumer market that mattered.”

Marketing firms conducted surveys to try to show not just affluence, but disproportionate levels of brand loyalty were a hallmark of gays and lesbians. In the media, gay men became well-to-do, cosmopolitan, and voraciously consumeristic. In 2012, Experian, a national marketing firm, released a business report claiming that the average household income of a married or partnered gay man is nearly 20 percent more than a straight married or partnered man ($116,000 compared to $94,500).

“The downside,” says Gates, “is that those marketing studies looked at the LGBT community as a consumer market, which is a very different perspective compared with how a social science researcher who does poverty research would look at those questions.”"

--------The Myth of Gay Affluence, by Nathan McDermott, The Atlantic, 21 March 2014 and quoting Gary Gates, Professor of Law, UCLA, Williams Institute.

We like this article because it attempts to import some sanity into the apparent hype of the power of "the pink dollar".


2.   The Bigger Picture

1.   The above quotation is consistent with our view expressed in Gay Pop Fadeout 2 that since the 1990s, there had been a massive public relations campaign to rehabilitate the image of gay men after the ravages of AIDS in the 1980s.

2.   Further, in our post, Gay Business Trends, we said this:

"For over 25 years, it's been fashionable to talk about the power of the "Pink Dollar". This is the assumed purchasing power of the affluent gay man, who, devoid of the usual hetero commitments,  is said to have the financial means to indulge in never-ending sessions of retail therapy globally. 

Recently, we came across the figure of US850 Billion as the projected purchasing power of the LGBT "community". We were baffled by this figure because like so many other things in Faggotry, one is not supposed to enquire too closely. We haven't seen any breakdown of figures amongst the L, G, B and T categories. Everything is just lumped together."

3.   The Macro Picture - Wealth Inequality in the USA

1.   We'll use the US as the example, since this is Ground Zero for the origination of "pink dollar" hype, using (as the initial quotation points out) its twin facilitators of Wall [Fraud] Street and Madison Avenue.

2.   We've mentioned in this blog that - whether deliberate or not (we suspect deliberate) - the financial policies of the US resulted in the evisceration of its middle class to such an extent that there are now 2 social classes: the rich and the poor. Whilst distinctions exist between the rich, wealthy and uber-wealthy, it can be seen from the above chart that the distinction between the poor and the middle class is shrinking.  Effectively, they are merging.

What caused this.....?


4.   "Financialization" And The "Wealth Effect"

1.   "Financialization" a.k.a. "Mercantilism"........A prolonged period of (virtually) Zero interest rates from 2000 allowed the banksters to engineer "boom and bust" cycles - DotCom/Tech, Real Estate, Sub-Prime Securitizations, Stocks, Student Loans, Car Loans.......in other words, low interest rates boost credit creation i.e. debt.  The average person is enticed to take on debt with teaser interest rates (which then increase exponentially according to the fine print of the loan document, which they never read). They are conned - and have conned themselves -  into thinking they are "investors" when in reality, they've taken on far more debt than they could service.

2.   Initially, this creates an artificial "Wealth Effect" - people buy and spend more, they feel "richer" 'coz now they're "investors".  So the average (white) idiot shows up in a fancy restaurant and flashes the AMEX Gold Card, jets off to Vegas on his credit card, takes a line of credit covering furniture for the house, installing the jacuzzi in the backyard and creating the Media Room he's always wanted instead of that pokey Family Room with the Naugahide sofa - then brags at the backyard barbecue that he bought 6 houses "with no money down" - AND was offered a great deal on a silver Mercedes E-Class with Zero Interest for 6 months AND he's just opened a Stock Trading Account on Margin.

Coming up:
5.    What The Average American Didn't Understand
6.    Evaporation of "The Wealth Effect" in the US
7.    US Middle Class No Longer The World's Richest
8.    Epidemic of Hunger in the US

9.    Somewhere In There Is A Fag - or Two
10.  The Rise of the Upper Middle Class and The Rich
11.   Canada and Asia

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