I'm not at American, but what I see about your country is that it's huge and varied. Given this, it's hard to think of things as American qualities.

I generally disagree with the post. I think fountain pens and fancy notebooks are are a waste of time, though I've been through phases with both. For me - cheap pencils, cheap graph-paper, cheap folders, and a system to keep order.

There are often ways to be smart that don't involve spending money. There's an idea of people who have more money than sense who go with an expensive option because they're hoping that this increases their chance of getting the thing they will want/need.

I have a digital watch. It has a lap timer in it, and shows the full date, cost less than USD100 and far more reliable than the swiss watch I have.

But there is some truth in the article - if you're just frugal all the time out of principle it sends bad signals.

I think the moral of the story with this post is, "buy nice things for stuff that matters." I don't think $100 pens are important to most people who post here, but $2,000 mac laptops or cinema displays are. I spent $100 on a Timbuk2 bag because I use it nearly every day when I go to work and don't want to buy a $40 Swatch laptop bag from Target that will last me 6 months to a year before it breaks while going through security at Seatac. It's just not worth it.

"Frugal", almost by definition, cannot be used as a pejorative. When it's taken to excess, like the author is complaining about, the noun is "cheapskate" or "miser" and the adjective is "cheap" or "penny-pinching".

You're missing the point. The author has nothing against saving money or being frugal. He is just pointing out that for a variety of reasons, people who can afford better alternatives that would make them substantially happier/healthier/more productive choose cheaper alternatives for cheapness' sake.

It's a word trick. He's using a word that's most commonly a pejorative to draw people in, and then as people read the article they see that he just means that someone's exhibiting the literal meaning of loser (as in a 2 player game when there isn't a draw and there's a winner and a loser).

> The strange hate for people who are "cheap" is one of the more bizarre about Americans.

I also find strange the stigma attached to being a "loser".

Isn't it at least a little bit bad by definition?

I think this depends on the definition. If you define it as "Given any competition with n competitors, where n>1, then n-1 of the competitors are losers", and you find 0 persons who have won all the competitions they participated in (which I think is a likely result), then everybody is a loser. Why should I think this is "bad"?

Only when I have to split a $10.55 bar tab with them and we're doing math.