December 11, 2020 - 7:00am
My cousin David is an economist, although I do not hold this against him. He mentioned the other day that he and his wife, also a social scientist, have an unusual approach to gift-giving, in that they don’t.
Or, rather, they don’t at Christmas, or birthdays, or anniversaries. Together, they worked out (he wrote up our conversation here) that “Given our average life expectancies (and marriage expectancy?) we are looking at well over 200 gifts” over the course of the marriage, and it’s quite hard to come up with that many thoughtful gifts. Instead, they do nice things together (meals out, day trips) and if — at any point of the year — they happen to see a gift that they think the other would like, they just buy it, and give it then. “It removes the stress involved with time constraints of birthdays, etc,” he says. “It also has the added bonus of being a surprise.”
It’s a well-established economic finding that gifts are (in one, quite narrow, way of working out value) a waste of money: that is, receivers of gifts consider them worth less money than was spent on them. People are less good at buying things for other people than for themselves, so they end up wasting money: a “deadweight loss” (or “welfare loss”) in economic terms.
That means, explains one paper, if “your grandma gives you a jumper worth $100, which you value only $30. The so-called welfare loss is $70, as your grandma spent $70 more than the jumper is worth to you”. The welfare loss is usually less than that (that paper cites other research estimating it at between 10% and 33%), but it’s real: if we all spent the money on ourselves, people would have more things that they actually want.
As David points out, gift-giving is also stressful. I’ve bought three quite large things for my wife for Christmas and her birthday (inconveniently, they fall at almost exactly the same time). But will she like them? I think so. But if I’ve completely misjudged it, she might be forgiven for wondering if I just don’t know her very well.
One response to that might be that you should give cash, instead, so the receiver can maximise their own utility by buying the thing they want. But as David says, that would be to act like a straw man of a bad economist, failing to take into account the more intangible benefits: the pleasant feeling that someone has tried to buy you a thoughtful present, that they went to effort, all the messy human stuff.
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SubscribeAfter many years of receiving a load of things that I didn’t want or need, I put a stop to it.
I asked all of my relatives to give money to their favourite charities instead of spending their money on stuff for me.
It also proved effortless to persuade most of them to allow me to do exactly the same for them.
It might not do the “wooly jumper’ industry any favours, but the warm feeling inside on Xmas day has never been better 🙂
I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas, that is a really wonderful idea and still in the Christmas spirit of giving.
Thank you – and all the best in return.
This is an idea I least understand. Say their charity of choice is Antifa, or some political group you hold as evil. They gave in your name? Too weird. And WT F is charity giving which carries no cost to ones self? Do you hold you committed a charitable act by requesting they give money in your name instead of giving you something you do not want? Weird beyond understanding except in some kind of new times, smart phone, cyborg reality. I think Sienfield and his Festivus holiday replacing Christmas is much more reasonable than your perversion of Christmas gift giving.
(instead of gift giving there is ‘feats of strength’ and ‘Airing of Grievances’.)
Wow – I didn’t see that coming.
Anyway – happy Xmas to you and 7881.
We buy our own presents and wrap them (and I reimburse the children for their costs).
This year I am getting a new hoover and some hoover bags, and some ramekin dishes to replace all the ones that have broken over the years. And my mum has got me some new slippers (which I’ve been wearing in since October). I am thrilled with my presents, especially the hoover as no-one else would dare buy it for me.
“a new hoover and some hoover bags”
I am over 20, so I know that hoovers with bags are not new.
Well, it is rare to find someone missing the point of something as wildly as you have, so made it worth reading just to see how crazy the world is.
Great points here. I’ve said for years that giving a gift voucher is the best type of present. Sadly in recent years many of those have turned out to be duds as the shops went into administration 🙁