Category Archives: Making sure you know I read the Economist so you know I’m not dumb, just obnoxious

The Ice Cream Index

Earlier today I learned of these numbers today from Mature Landscaping:

Salary of retired US Presidents ……………$180,000 FOR LIFE
Salary of House/Senate ……………………..$174,00​0 FOR LIFE
Salary of Speaker of the House …………….$223,500 FOR LIFE
Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders …… $193,400 FOR LIFE
Average Salary of a teacher ……………….. $40,065
Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN AFGHANISTAN $38,000

 

I had been feeling unsettled by a gnawing sense of guilt and shame ever since. That’s probably why when we caught a glimpse of the evening news, I suddenly blurted out,

Did you know how much a soldier that is currently fighting in the war is paid? A year? $38,000. That’s how much!

The boys immediately were feeling just as outraged. “That’s not a lot of money right?” The Teenager got a bit emotional. “And they are risking their lives over there!”

8-year-old Mr. Monk got up on the coffee table and pontificated as he’s wont to.

You know what? What we need is for the economy to get better!

I swear I have no idea where he got this (or any others). We seldom watch TV, let alone news. I wonder whether this has anything to do with his endless viewing of The Simpsons. In fact, he watches The Simpsons so much he’s able to quote some of the episodes the way The Husband is able to quote The Princess Bride.

You know how you can tell the economy is getting lower?

(He is, after all, only 8 years old…)

The free ice cream at ______ Burgers is now so small that you only get the bottom part. It used to be as big as the Dairy Queen’s!

Hold the thought while I contact The Economist about the Ice Cream Index idea.

Slow News Day

Have you ever seen mean comments left by irate YouTubers for people who videotapes the television as a show was going on and uploaded the footage of that onto YouTube?

“Hey loser. Why are you taping your own TV and then put that on YouTube?!”

 

I am a loser so I take pictures of magazines that I read and I post them on the Interweb…

 

Rarely did I take one look at The Economist and burst out laughing...

 

 

The Economist can be raunchy, and it has a sense of humor. Who knew?!

 

Hey, at least they refrained from using the picture of the now famous "bulge"... The ending of this article titled, The Weiner War, (of course), once again showed The Economist can be raunchy, IF they want to.

 

"THE earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that struck Japan three months ago have revealed something important about the country: a seam of strength and composure in the bedrock of society that has surprised even the Japanese themselves."

“THE earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that struck Japan three months ago have revealed something important about the country: a seam of strength and composure in the bedrock of society that has surprised even the Japanese themselves.”

To me, this picture chosen by The Economist to accompany this article, says so much about what is quintessential and unique about Japan. From the “light-hearted” (as much as one could in this situation) reference to the ubiquitous 7 Eleven, to a quiet, subtle display of the much-vaunted attention to efficiency, adaptability, cleanliness, orderliness, and personal appearances (Notice how the mother looks much more put together than I am on a daily basis, and in such chaos and under such duress…)

And then read these two stories of exemplary spirits:

24-year-old Miki Endo, who used the loudspeaker system in Minamisanriku, a fishing port close to the focus of the 9.0 earthquake, to urge residents to do what they could to escape the incoming tsunami. She drowned at her post. Television footage shows the rising sea approaching, with her haunting voice echoing over the waves…

One fisherman tells of the four days he spent clearing the wreckage of his village, with no knowledge of the whereabouts of his eldest son. When his son eventually appeared, walking down off the mountain after a long cross-country trek to reach his parents, the two wiped tears from their eyes but did not say a word to each other. The son did not wish to disturb his father’s toil.

 

All the world is watching, holding their breath, especially their neighbors in Asia, because, as some commentators in the news media in China, India and Taiwan have said, If the Japanese people, with all their disciplines, their perseverance, their technological know-hows, their attention to details and rules, cannot pull through, we are all doomed when the same thing happens on our soil.

Money Money Money

I LOVE the smell of money.

I am being 100% serious here. Have you ever held a brand new bill in your hand? Rubbing it between your thumb and forefinger and feeling the intricate texture on it? Taking in a deep breath of the intoxicating smell that is so much better than the new car smell?

My love for the feel and smell of brand new bills stemmed from all the wonderful memories during Chinese New Year and the money we were given inside those good-luck red envelops. It is important to use only GOOD CLEAN CRISP, preferably brand spanking new, bills in the red envelops. Every year right before Chinese New Year, the government would print out new notes in anticipation of people waiting in line at banks to exchange their old notes for NEW and CRISP bills. As I am typing this, I can remember seeing my dad coming home with a big fat envelop filled with the CRISP NEW bills he just exchanged from the bank,  and I can also vividly recall the feeling of rubbing a $NTD 1000 bill between my fingers and my heart starts a-fluttering. The smell of new money wafts in from nowhere. Kinetic memories FTW.

The first time I tried to celebrate Chinese New Year with my children here I walked in and asked to withdraw $100 in $1’s. The bank teller was not amused but she obliged. I stared at the pile of old and dirty dollar bills in dismay.

“Don’t you have NEW dollar bills?”

“Hm. No.”

“But it’s Chinese New Year!”

I was baffled by how she was baffled by all this.

Because of my childhood, I could understand when Mr. Monk first started receiving allowances, he asked for actual, physical money and not some “virtual money” registered in our family Quicken account the way his older brother does. Every Saturday, he goes to the family change jar and takes out 8 quarters ($1 for each grade you are in). He counts them. He rearranges them. He puts them in his wallet, takes them out again and then puts them all back in. He would beg me to walk to Walgreens across the street with him so he could buy something with his own, actual, money in all its physical glory.

The idea that money in the modern world, for the most part, is virtual not only sounds  ridiculous to him but seems to insult his intelligence.

“So you mean your money is just numbers inside your bank’s computer?!”

Nowadays, like many people, I do not carry a lot of cash nor do I pay with cash unless absolutely necessary. I use my credit card for everything and for any amount. Yes, I stopped feeling guilty a long time ago for using my VISA to pay for a small soda. Hey, I figure, at least I am not using my AmEx which would cost the retailer at least 2% more in processing fee. So I am actually being nice. But I miss being awed by the sight, smell and feel of crisp new bills which, in my experience, are extremely hard to come by in the U.S.

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Despite my nostalgia for the smell of crisp new bills and my persistent discomfort with the idea of virtual money (Think: Stocks. Think: Bernie Madoff. Think: Facebook valued at $50 Billion), I listened to a story on NPR, twice, of how a “magical” idea of virtual currency by four economists fixed the inflation problem in Brazil and saved the country. I was flabbergasted and can’t stop thinking about it since.

Long story short: Brazil suffered inflation since the 1950s when the government decided to print more money in order to fund the building of a new capital. They had not been able to get out of the vicious cycle and things got so bad in the 1980s that the inflation rate was 80% per month. Can you imagine that? Per month!

In 1992, the new minister of finance as well as the president asked for help from a group of four economists and what’s more, they promised the economists that the government would go along with whatever crazy idea they came up with and the economists would have total reign. The plan was not only to slow down the printing of money but more importantly, to change people’s behaviors and mentality. For the plan to work, the Brazilians needed to have faith in the stable value of the currency, after suffering years of crazy inflation rates. “People have to be tricked into thinking money will hold its value.”

What followed was nothing short of brilliant and fantastical, and the plan, however insane it may sound at first, actually made sense in theory and worked in real life.

The four economists wanted to create a new currency that was stable, dependable and trustworthy.  The only catch: This currency would not be real.  No coins, no bills.  It was fake. [It was] called it a Unit of Real Value — URV… It was virtual; it didn’t exist in fact.

People would still have and use the existing currency, the cruzeiro.  But everything would be listed in URVs, the fake currency.   Their wages would be listed in URVs.  Taxes were in URVs.  All prices were listed in URVs.  And URVs were kept stable. What changed was how many cruzeiros each URV was worth…  after a few months, [people] began to see that prices in URVs were stable. Once that happened, [the four economists] could declare that the virtual currency would become the country’s actual currency. It would be called the real. — NPR Abridged Transcript or Full-length Podcast

Imagine that: economists as national heroes. Virtual money that saved an entire country from inflating itself out of oblivion.

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Speaking of those who are in the business of money printing aka the Federal Reserve in the U.S., of course you know who Alexander Hamilton is. The dude on the $10 dollar bill. Yes! He who had the good fortune of being the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. But I did NOT know that he was born and grew up in the West Indies, an illegitimate child whose father abandoned them early on and whose mother died of a fever when he was 13.

Who’d have thought that Alexander Hamilton would make a great subject for Hip Hop and Rap and jam poetry? The Tony Award winner, Lin-Manuel Miranda did. Watch him do his Alexander Hamilton Mixtape at the White House. Really, history has never been so hip. Andrea, this one is especially for you, you High School teacher and Economics Geek you. 🙂

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How much is the Pulitzer Prize worth?

I was surprised to learn that the Pulitzer Prize is only worth $10,000. I guess you really need to be in this field for the love of the game.

PrizesFinalB

Now with the doom and gloom not just predicted but realized in numbers for print journalism, and the difficulty in turning online content into actual dollars, we should be concerned about the future of journalism. I enjoy reading a good blog and all, but without the investigative RIGOR that comes with good, solid, journalistic practices, we should be worried. Really worried.

News print circulation drop

Balloon Boy Brouhaha immediately comes to mind.

p.s. Does the number for USA Today include the not-so-free copies they leave outside your door in hotels across the country? The same USA Today for which the hotel charges you $0.75 a copy unless you CALL the front desk to deny the delivery? And you have to CALL, you cannot just TELL THEM when you check in? The same USA Today that every morning when you leave your hotel room you actually step over because you don’t even bother picking it up to read it even in the taxi on your way to your meeting/office/client’s site?

People in Germany need to have more sex. Or keep their clunkers. According to the Economist. Well, kind of.





People in Germany really need to start having more sex.

Otherwise they are really going to need Death Panel for Grandmas, you know, when there are no more young people to take care of the old people.

That was my first thought when I saw this chart.

On second thought, sex does not necessarily lead to pregnancy, unless you are having it in the back of your parents’ car. Or your very first beat-up old clunker. Even better if you are drunk.

So my revised word of advice:

Germans need to have more drunken sex in the back of their parents’ car, or get more clunkers.

Then I saw this other chart, comparing government sponsored “Cash for Clunkers” programs in several countries:

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Hold on a second, while I take a mental note…

Note to self: Great cocktail conversation tidbit – “Do you know the U.S. is not the only one, and definitely not the first one, to come up with the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program?”

Note to self, again: Scratch that. Someone is bound to say, “Exactly. Those are all socialist, or Facist, countries, or whatever, European! countries. That’s why we should object to it loudly. Preferrably bring a loaded handgun with you to town hall meetings.” And then the cocktail party, if I were ever invited to one, would go downhill from there… So, NOT A GOOD IDEA! Ok. Fine! Scratch the entire Note to Self 1.

When I saw this second chart about Cash for Clunkers program in other countries,

Eureka! I thought.

See how the government in Germany spent $7.1 billion on their “Get Rid of Clunker” program?

There you go, my friend. That is why the birth rate in Germany remains the lowest.

Which countries lead in Teenage Drunkenness? Note to self: Do not move to Denmark…

This Daily Chart from the Economist solved it for me: have been agonizing over whether to move to Denmark since we love Legos so… Now I know with two impressionable boys, this is a country we should keep away from during their teenage years…

Denmark and excessive drinking? No surprise really, if you have seen this vid:

From The Economist: It’s not 42. It’s 148. The magic number for social networks.

Even on the Interweb, we cannot escape our evolutionary past. According to The Economist article: “Primates on Facebook”, some of things that we do to/for each other on the social networks over the Internet can still be defined as “Grooming”: you need to ping your peeps, follow up on their status, read their Tweets, comment on their Tweets, reply to their Wall because they have left something on yours. These all take time. So does monkeys’ grooming each other.

A while back ago, Dr. Robin Dunbar concluded that our brains simply cannot support a social network with unlimited size: think of having to memorize all the names! Probably only Mr. Monk will be able to do that, but of course, he probably has the tiniest social network known to man… Irony, isn’t it? Anyway, Dr. Dunbar suggested that the magic number of network limit any animal will be able to maintain is: 148.

Even though in the virtual world, it seems that we can grow our social networks indefinitely, to a certain extent obviously (say, like, 6 billion, the number of entire population…), the average number of “Friends” on Facebook turns out to be 120. And the number of Friends with which Facebookers interact with on a regular basis by leaving comments on their “Wall” is even smaller: 7. That’s it. For men. Women are more social, 10.

Even for Facebookers that have more than 500 friends, the number remains relatively low at 17 for men, and 26 for women.

Here is a nice way of explaining this:

“[P]eople who are members of online social networks are not so much ‘networking’ as they are ‘broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle’… Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.”

This also concisely explains what a “social network” such as Twitter represents for a lot of its users, or Tweeple, as they call themselves. Only that it is even beyond the “outer tier of acquaintances”, all the way into the nether.

Latest Poll: Less than 40% of Americans believe in Evolutionism… Wonder whether Canada fares better

as they have more Democrats and Liberals than we do?

This is the latest poll by Gallup this month, in honor of Darwin’s 200th birthday, an update from the Economist Daily Chart that I posted a week ago: data for that chart was from 2006, and at that time, less than 50% of the Americans believed in Evolution…. What happened??!! We all collectively took the stupid pill?

Well, I am not sure what an “honor” the result would be. Darwin is probably turning in his grave.

Summary of the survey findings:

“On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, a new Gallup Poll shows that only 39% of Americans say they ‘believe in the theory of evolution,’ while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36% don’t have an opinion either way. These attitudes are strongly related to education and, to an even greater degree, religiosity.”

What bothers me the most, or surprises me the most, is the fact that only 86% of the people holding a postgraduate degree correctly answered the question: “Can you tell me with which scientific theory Charles Darwin is associated?”

One can argue that whether you believe in Evolution is a matter of heart, which is subjective, and should have nothing to do with how many books you have read (esp. if you have been reading all the wrong books… and the definition of “wrong” varies by which side you are on…) But the theory with which Darwin is associated? This is basic knowledge, people! If you cannot answer this question correctly, you should march back to your alma mater and give them back your diploma!

Fewer than 50% Americans believe in the Evolution Theory… How many of the rest believe in aliens?

Numbers (or Bars) speak louder than words. Draw any conclusion based on your own bias and convictions. And don’t send me any hate mail, but this visual impact is too much for me to bear. I feel dizzy. Would be interested to see how this affects the government’s and Bill Gates’ professed belief and vowed actions to improve science standards for education in the U.S.

Seriously, if you have any gripes, sign in to the Economist and post your comment there. As of now, there are 161 comments: obviously this is a topic that is close to home, to people’s hearts and brains. (But if you ask me, it is obvious which side has more brains than the other…)

Now that I have a few moments to calm myself down from the initial impact, come to think of it, the number is not that surprising considering that this is the land that proudly hosts the Creation Museum as a historical and scientific institution. Let’s be thankful that we are still behaving better than Turkey! Woohoo!

Courtesy of The Economist‘s Daily Chart (February 5, 2009)

The Lipstick Index: Myth Busted?

The first time I heard about the Lipstick Index was from a Mary Kay rep: I learned from her that the three recession-proof products are lipsticks, alcohol, and cigarettes. It is not difficult to understand why alcohol and cigarettes are recession-proof: if you are addicted to something, you are going to get your drink on, in good times or hard times. (The same can be said of drugs and “purchased sex”, then? I imagine a flat line across the chart for these addictions?)

Above is the Daily Chart from The Economist on January 23, 2009, comparing national GDP to lipstick sales from 1989 to 2007.

The term Lipstick Index was coined by Leonard Lauder, the chairman of Estée Lauder, in 2001 during the recession. Lipstick sales in the US jumped by 11% in the 3rd quarter, (and more excitingly for the would-be theorists, the sales increased 25% for cosmetics during the Depression). The common theory states that lipsticks is a relatively inexpensive luxury for women with tighter purse strings. But statistics shown here does not show an obvious trend to prove this theory.

In my view, there will always be people who can purchase luxury goods when the rest of us are forced to “eat cake”. The retail anecdotes for this past Christmas season tells an interesting story: when stores were saddled with unsold inventories, 3 (relatively) big-ticket items were hot hot hot, couldn’t keep them on the shelves: Nintendo Wii, Uggs Boots, and Amazon’s Kindle.

Go figure!

Now if anyone could explain to me the attractions of those Uggs Boots…