By way of LewRockwell.com, I came across this Boston Globe article on Maine’s supposed culture of “Yankee thrift”:
Across the country, masses of worried consumers are taking lessons in getting by with less, turning to websites like suddenlyfrugal.com and thenewfrugalmom.com, and signing up for classes in car care and cooking. But in Maine, where Yankee thrift has been a way of life for generations, and the unofficial motto is the proverb “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,’’ the notion of a “new’’ frugality is met with blank stares.
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Across much of this sprawling, rural state, the art of living cheap is hard-wired into the regional DNA, a skill proudly passed down through the generations. Here, where hardened farmers and fishermen have been long battered by economic squalls, and incomes have lagged well behind the rest of New England, bargain-hunting and bartering are practices widely embraced. In their relentless pursuit of a good deal, Mainers scour yard sales that go on for days, scavenge the streets during local cleanup weeks, and pore over dog-eared copies of their beloved Uncle Henry’s Swap or Sell It Guide.
You normally have to go to a dairy farm to get this much bullshit. The penny-pinching nature of the average Mainer is understandable once you learn that the state is essentially a giant retirement home. The median age in Maine is 38.6, one of the highest in the U.S.; only West Virginia is older, and not by much (38.9). If there’s one thing old people aren’t known for, it’s being big spenders. The fact that Maine is around 96% white also explains its populace’s predilection for saving; whites have a higher future time orientation.
Take Martha Wolford, who makes do in Chester, north of Bangor, with two modest Social Security checks every month. She is 71, has no computer and no cellphone, and drives a 13-year-old Ford Aerostar van, which she calls, enthusiastically, “a great car!’’ She cans fiddleheads in spring and tomatoes in the fall, wears T-shirts – she buys five for $10 on sale – and raised six children on her husband’s paper mill salary.
“The only time I might go a little overboard is the time of the month when we get our Social Security checks,’’ she confessed. “Then I might buy extra paper products.’’
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Wolford loves thrift shops, plays Scrabble, and can’t recall the last restaurant she went to with her husband, though they are planning a night out, maybe at the Olive Garden, for their 50th wedding anniversary in September. She has made no changes since the economy went sour, and still splurges on stamps so she can frequently send notes to friends and acquaintances.
The first woman interviewed in this piece is in her 70’s. Frugality among the elderly is common, usually out of necessity; people on fixed incomes can’t run around blowing money on every shiny trinket that they see. My mother’s parents were extraordinarily cheap, despite having more money than the average retirees; I once remember my grandpa yelling at my sister for daring to channel surf on his precious $80 Toshiba. The Silent Generation was even cheaper; I’ve known children of the Depression who continued to do absurd things like use cheap lard as a condiment on their sandwiches, despite the fact that they weren’t living hand-to-mouth anymore. Remember the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry has to talk his parents out of going to dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon to save a couple of bucks? It’s like that with old farts most of the time.
A nontrivial amount of human culture and morality is the result of genetics. The Mainer preference for frugality comes from their advanced age and overwhelmingly white racial background, not some nebulous “Yankee thrift” culture that doesn’t exist in economically depressed areas such as Detroit that happen to be NAM dominated. This is something HBD’ers know, but “normal people” are intent on denying, rabidly attacking anyone who dares to point out that not only is the Emperor naked, his most royal sceptre is microscopic.
