Navigating the Consumer "Pleasure Revenge" – advice from Mark Twain, a Surfer and a Futurist Named Popcorn.
The post-pandemic "Pleasure Revenge" is accelerating consumer spending and a return to pre-Covid behaviors. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Americans are returning to gyms in big numbers; booking vacations and plane trips; rocking out at concerts; and going to popcorn-scented movie theaters to see Hollywood blockbusters such as Spider-Man. What the WSJ missed is that we see this same human behavior after every major shock to the national psyche, as well as the inevitable post-exuberance counter-trend...w hich brings us to Mark Twain, Faith Popcorn and Laird Hamilton. "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." Mark Twain told us this would happen. The national and personal sacrifice endured during WWI was followed by the Roaring Twenties. After WWII, the U.S. economy boomed as Americans bought homes, moved to the suburbs, drove the latest tail-finned beauty from Detroit, and had many, many kids. The economic malaise of the '70s ushere