The bane of my existence

Gift certificates.

I'm not going to concoct some boring lecture about logical fallacies and the like, but let's at least try to create some convention concering this commerical charade.

Call me old-fashioned, but where I come from a gift certificate is called a check or a fifty dollar bill; and, in the case of the bill, it is backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States government."--not Geoffrey the Giraffe or one of Sam Walton's silver-spooned grandkids.

So, let me get this straight, faceless commercial organization: I get to pay you fifty dollars for fifty dollars worth of credit to give away to someone else so they can be pigeonholed into buying that amount of overpriced merchandise from your outlet?

Gee, thanks.

And people actually take you up on this offer? It would make sense, economically speaking, were the transactions handled a bit differently. For instance, if I paid fifty dollars for sixty dollars worth of credit. That makes sense.

Like most everything in life, it's a tradeoff. I would get ten dollars worth of extra credit to give away and the commerical entreprise still gets it's money and would still maintain some semblance of a profit margin. In this way, they would be giving you a 20 percent incentive to do business with them as opposed to going elsewhere or, perhaps, just giving money--money that, realistically, could be used to buy sixty dollars worth of crap from another business.

But, in the absence of such an arrangement, what sense do gift certificates make?

What if someone has no interest in accumulating more "stuff"? What if the best gift someone could get is money to pay a bill?

"Here, I know you have that outstanding medical bill to pay off, but how do you feel about fifty dollars worth of bargain DVDs from Target?"

My sister is having a baby shower soon, and apparently no one in my family or her husband's has taken an entry level micro or macroeconomics course.

My sister flew in from North Carolina for not one, but two showers and she will, undoubtedly, be burdened by a bunch of "stuff" that she will have to find a way to taxi back to Charlotte. I don't think there will be room for a "baby bouncer" or a Disney mobile in the overhead compartment of an Airbus.

Just a hunch.

Why bother registering with Target or Kids 'R'Us? Why not register with good old Uncle Sam? Just send money. You can still have a baby shower, but instead of bringing packaged gifts bring stacks of green.

One of the keys to understanding market economics is this: Transportation costs dictate the size of a market. In other words, it makes more sense to get sugar cane from the Dominican if you live in south Florida than it does to get sugar beets from the Thumb of Michigan.

But, I digress.

Let's stop this silly little charade and start acting like saavy consumers.

Next time, instead of going to Target or Best Buy, go to Western Union.