“Businesses are beginning to face the challenge of producing adequate supplies of goods and services — whether of lumber or of cold beer — to satiate that resurgent demand.” — in NYT
Oh no! Not beer!
Tag: Economics
On being poor-ish
Here’s a quote from a good post on the difference between “feeling broke” and “being broke,” that also touches on tactics for getting by when you’re pretty close to that latter category—topics I wrote a lot about for Wise Bread.
What made me want to comment is a bit right near the beginning where the writer talks about the discontinuity in housing prices: Down to a certain price point you can pay a little less and get a little less space and slightly downgraded amenities, but there’s a breakpoint where that quits being true:
That’s the drop-off you experience at the lower price levels – there’s nothing between “This is a tiny but acceptable apartment” and “Slum apartments in stab-ville”.
On The Experience of Being Poor-ish, For People Who Aren’t – Resident Contrarian
The point I want to make is that this is only true in general. If you had to find 100 apartments that were cheaper-than-basic but not in a slum, you’d probably be out of luck. But unless your job is to find apartments for poor people, that doesn’t really matter. For your own household you only need to find one apartment that’s cheap but not in a slum, and across your city there’s probably several of those. (Maybe a small apartment building that’s not part of a complex, maybe a three-plex or four-plex, maybe a duplex owned by a retiree who is looking for a very low-maintenance tenant, maybe a big old house that was cut up into apartments, etc.)
The author is clearly aware of this—he goes into some detail on applying similar thinking to furniture (where you only need to get a great price on a great dining room table once and it’ll last the rest of your life). Applying it to apartments is different for various reasons (mostly having to do with urgency and risk—you can’t just wait indefinitely, because being homeless is different from eating off a TV tray table while you look for a great deal on a dining room table), but it’s not completely different.
For the first decade after my former employer closed the site where I’d worked, Jackie and I did a lot of that—looking to satisfy each need we had with one instance where we could get something of very high quality at an especially good price. It’s a tactic that works great, but only in a narrow range of circumstances. It’s not so good for people working long hours at a difficult job, because they lack the time and energy to do the search. It’s also not so good for people who are really broke (not just broke-ish), because these sorts of deals often require that you have cash on hand to close the deal immediately.
Here’s one of my old Wise Bread articles applying this thinking more broadly: How to have an above-average life for below-average prices.
2021-01-10 09:36
This from Forbes is actually a pretty good start. All media outlets should commit to such a policy:
“Trump’s liars don’t merit that same golden parachute. Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie… Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.”
Source: A Truth Reckoning: Why We’re Holding Those Who Lied For Trump Accountable
2020-09-25 15:01
On one of my top-two issues when it comes to means-testing benefits, @interfluidity gets it just right:
“Requiring demonstration of inadequate means up-front, rather than on the back-end, creates at best a delay between when a shock is experienced and when it can be ameliorated. “Delay” can mean your kid skips meals, you start rationing your insulin, or your family is evicted from its home. It’s a big deal.”
2020-08-19 12:49
Today’s mail included the most recent issue of The Economist. Less usefully, it also included the previous issue, and the issue before that.
I blame Trump and Louis DeJoy. #SaveTheUSPS #SaveThePostOffice
2020-08-17 09:01
Lawless acts in violation of international norms will end up harming our country. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-16/the-u-s-brings-state-sponsored-piracy-into-the-21st-century
“the concept has altered little in 440 years — we still have one of the world’s preeminent naval powers passing its own laws allowing it to seize treasure from its enemies in the ocean.”
2020-06-30 12:42
Sitting on the patio, drinking a beer and reading The Economist. Jackie is nearby, and expected to return. Kindle on standby for when Economist runs out.
A long wait for my brolly
Way back on June 9th I ordered a fancy new umbrella. The vendor created a shipping label that very day, and sent me a tracking number. For reasons (perhaps among them, as they claim on their website, precautions in the warehouse against COVID-19), it was six days before they actually handed the package over to the shipper.
As soon as I’d ordered it, I looked ahead at the weather forecast, wondering if there’d be some rain to use it in, but it looked like a full week of dry weather. Of course, after it took a week to actually ship the package, things had changed. Happily, the package was on-track to arrive Saturday—I’d have my new brolly in hand just hours ahead of forecast thunderstorms!
But then the package followed a mysterious path on it’s way from Wisconsin to Illinois:
- Jun 9 2020 Shipment information received
- Jun 15 2020 Shipment tendered to UPS MI BELLEVILLE, WI
- Jun 15 2020 Package received for processing Avenel, NJ
- Jun 16 2020 Package processed by UPS MI Avenel, NJ
- Jun 17 2020 Package transferred to dest MI facility Avenel, NJ
- Jun 19 2020 Package received by dest MI facility Kansas City, MO
- Jun 20 2020 Package enroute to USPS for induction Kansas City, MO
- 20 Jun 2020 22:29 Shipment Acceptance at PO Hazelwood, MO
In what way is this a sensible?
I mean, I’m willing to cut the vendor some slack for taking six days between sending shipment information and then actually tendering the package. I’m sure precautions against COVID-19 reduce their efficiency in shipping things out of their warehouse. But sending the package from Wisconsin to Illinois via New Jersey and then Missouri? They spent 5 days getting the package to a different adjacent state, to a city only 72 miles closer than where it started!
Now that the package is in the hands of the post office, I figure it will actually get here in a couple of days, just about the time the wet weather ends and it gets sunny and dry for a few days.
2020-04-16 08:32
This article makes a good point:
“Ultimately, we the public will decide when the economy reopens, not the government.”
If people decide not to fly, not to stay in hotels, not to eat at restaurants, and to wait and see how things work out before making major purchases, it doesn’t matter if the “stay-at-home” orders are lifted or not.
2020-04-10 11:43
Always true, just now laid bare by the pandemic:
In transit conversations we often talk about meeting the needs of people who depend on transit. This makes transit sound like something we’re doing for them. But in fact, those people are providing services that we all depend on, so by serving those lower income riders, we’re all serving ourselves.