Addressing a members-only lunch crowd at the National Retail Federation's 2008 event, Ben Stein — lawyer, economist, White House speech writer, Emmy-winning game show host and actor — praised the retail executives in the room for the work they do, calling them "the most important business group I've ever spoken to."
Stein, forever remembered as the prosaic teacher from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, took to the stage in his trademark outfit (coat, tie and sneakers) and opened with his trademark line ("Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?"). That out of the way, he launched into fervent praise for the retail sector as a whole, noting that it brings in more revenue than all federal and state government operations combined.
He said it will be another five months before we know if we are in a recession, but even so, he is not worried about retail.
"There has never been a recession where retail sales fell from one year to the next," he said. "It would be very, very unlikely that we'd have a fall in retail sales from 2007 to 2008."
He emphasized the psychological benefits of retail for shoppers, calling the need to be served an essential human need.
"Retail calms people down, retail makes people happy," he said. "It isn't what they walk out of the store with, it's how you make the customer feel."
His talk then turned to the economy at large, and his outlook remained guardedly positive. The sub prime lending fiasco was "a mess, but not enough to sink the economy." What does worry him is the resulting fear on the part of lenders to make new loans.
Unemployment is still a source of optimism, he said, as it is "still quite low by historical standards."
Stein veered into humorous territory with a few jokes before wrapping up with his two biggest concerns, baby-boomer retirement and what he considers a national "lack of community."
The impending boomer retirement "is going to be a crisis for you guys. If people don't have enough money, if they can barely pay their rent, they're not going to go shopping."
He shared several anecdotes about his volunteer work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, dealing with soldiers injured in Iraq and constantly being amazed by their positive attitudes — and how that attitude can be strikingly different from mainstream America, which he said has lost much of its sense of community.
"We just don't have much of a feeling that we give a damn about our neighbor," he said. "And that, by the way, is one reason why it is so satisfying to go shopping. It makes you feel like you're a part of something."
