Advertising Made Me Buy It!

Health Populi talks about a Harris Poll showing that US citizens blame advertising "for peoples' economic woes."

I should note that this blame is "compared to others in "The Media,"" not overall, so the poll is not actually saying the people think advertising is the main problem facing this country today. Which is good, because that would certainly be an oversimplification.

I have mixed feelings about advertising, to be sure. There are plenty of things I wouldn't know existed without it, and therefore would not buy, thus saving myself money.

On the other hand, there are things I may find out about via advertising that I actually like, want and find useful, but would never have had a chance to get if I never knew they existed. Which might still save me money at the moment, but at the cost of convenience, time, increased efficiency that might save me more money in the long run, etc.

You just can't relax with advertising, I think is the thing. It's always out to get you. It may give you some useful information, but that's not its primary purpose, so you have to be constantly suspicious, which is kind of wearing.

And the fact that I'm constantly suspicious of it may cause me to have less-than-kindly attitudes toward advertising in general, and therefore to be inclined to blame it for everything bad that happens to me.

You suck, advertising! If not for you, I never would have bought that new EZ-SuperMop and decided to clean my floor and then slipped and fallen and thrown my back out!

I'm just using myself as a theoretical example here, not relating an actual occurence or attitude. In real life, rather than blame advertising, I choose merely to steer clean of cleaning the floor. Safer for everyone in the long run.

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Go Work in Health Care

The Health Care Blog has an interesting post on the economy, noting that the health care sector is one of the only places jobs are not being lost at the moment.

Especially libraries, right? Everyone needs libraries! Well, they're not specifically mentioned, but it does say that "hiring remained robust at the nation’s hospitals, physician offices, diagnostic labs, nursing homes, and home health care agencies." 

I'm going to assume that this will spill over to libraries, just to comfort myself.

Anyway, the post observes that while it's good to have robust hiring somewhere, this could also mean less impetus for controlling those out-of-control healthcare costs we hear so much about. After all, if people are making a living with the system the way it is and jobs are being lost all around in other industries, do we want to mess with something that's sort of working?

There's more information in the Health Care Blog post, which details some of the complexities of the situation.