What defines us, what makes us who and what we are? What makes us good or bad? Is it our actions, our thoughts? Is someone who kills others better or worse than someone who only thinks about it? The courts make a distinction between premeditated murder and homicide. It’s somehow worse if you thought about it before hand. What if you plan it out but never follow through? In the eyes of the law you are a better person if you don’t take action, but do you feel better? What about say pornography and fantasizing? In most places that’s either frowned upon or a crime, and it most definitely is if it involves children. But it’s more of a thought crime than one of action. The person isn’t committing the act’s they fantasize. Is that any better?
We all wish someone would die from time to time, usually as a fleeting thought. I feel safe in saying few people would condemn you for that, so where is the line in our minds that once crossed moves you into the territory of being a “Bad Person”?
We consider soldiers to be good people, yet they kill people. What makes them different than a murderer? Is it because it’s for a cause, or because they don’t like doing it? Are you a bad person if you do “Bad things” but don’t want to, or don’t like it? Are you a good person if you do good things but think, “Bad thoughts”? What is the line, the convergence of thought and action that defines who we are? If you can do all the right things for all the wrong reasons, can you also do all the wrong things, for all the right reasons, and if so where would that leave you?
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Extended cost
Extended cost or cumulative cost, how much do we spend on small things over a month or year? How much are you really spending on coffee at starbucks, drinks at the bar, or cigarettes. How much are we spending on our habits?
Let’s start with coffee drinkers. According to http://www.e-importz.com/Support/specialty_coffee.htm “Over 50% of Americans over 18 years of age drink coffee every day. This represents over 150 million daily drinkers. 30 million American adults drink specialty coffee beverages daily; which include a mocha, latte, espresso, café mocha, cappuccino, frozen/iced coffee beverages, etc.” Let’s say you’re one of those 30 million, and you buy a grande mocha from starbucks every day. In Seattle that will now run you a whopping $3.91. After buying one every day for a week, you’re looking at a cost of $27.37. By the end of the month you would have spent $109.48 and by the end of the year your total would have risen to $1313.76. That’s a lot of money.
Ok then how about smokers. In a 2003 survey smokers age 12 and up smoked an average of 13 cigarettes a day on the days they smoked and the same age range of smokers, smoked an average of 23 out of the last 30 days. 13 cigarettes every day for 23 days is 299 cigarettes. In the US, a pack of cigarettes has to be at least 20. So at 20 per pack, the average smoker will smoke about 20 packs in a month. Tobacco Free Kids.org lists the average pack price at $5.26. Multiplied by 20 packs a month and you find you will be spending $105.2 per month and by extension $1262.4 every year on your habit.
God forbid you smoke and drink coffee daily, at which point you would be spending about $2500 annually on your habits.
Next, going to the bar? Let’s assume you go out on the town on Friday nights and drink moderately, having only 2 to 3 drinks. If you like mixed drinks you’re paying at least $4 and probably closer to $6 for a drink, so one night on the town will run you $12-18. Though I expect that’s probably on the low end. If you go out every Friday for a month, you’ve now spent $48-72 and if you go every Friday all year long, $624-936. Not as bad as coffee either but this is assuming you drink moderately.
How about other monthly expenditures, like cable tv, or Netflix? Comcast’s digital preferred service is $39.99 for the first 6 months, after which it jumps to $56 a month, so a year of cable TV costs $576. Netflix basic subscription of 3 movies at a time runs $16.99 a month or $203.88 a year. A movie once a month at $7 a ticket, $84 a year.
Fast food lunch every day, at minimum $5 a meal each day of a 5 day work week, $25 a week, $100 a month, $1300 a year. Gym membership at 24 hour fitness to work off the weight you put on by eating fast food every day, $30 a month, $360 a year.
So what you say? Everything you choose to do, eat or drink costs money. Not exactly a new idea, but each of those expenses means you have to make more money to support your lifestyle. This may mean working more hours or working harder, which in turn means you are tired when you get home. If you’re working hard to pay for entertainment, but are too tired to enjoy that same entertainment is it worth the cost? How much do you value your free time, time with family and friends? What is time worth to you? Is it worth a cup of coffee or, your cigarette? And this analysis isn’t even considering the physical effects that some of these habits have on your body. Time has value and is becoming a commodity in our increasingly busy lives. Take some time to think about the choices you are making and the extended costs of things in your life.
Let’s start with coffee drinkers. According to http://www.e-importz.com/Support/specialty_coffee.htm “Over 50% of Americans over 18 years of age drink coffee every day. This represents over 150 million daily drinkers. 30 million American adults drink specialty coffee beverages daily; which include a mocha, latte, espresso, café mocha, cappuccino, frozen/iced coffee beverages, etc.” Let’s say you’re one of those 30 million, and you buy a grande mocha from starbucks every day. In Seattle that will now run you a whopping $3.91. After buying one every day for a week, you’re looking at a cost of $27.37. By the end of the month you would have spent $109.48 and by the end of the year your total would have risen to $1313.76. That’s a lot of money.
Ok then how about smokers. In a 2003 survey smokers age 12 and up smoked an average of 13 cigarettes a day on the days they smoked and the same age range of smokers, smoked an average of 23 out of the last 30 days. 13 cigarettes every day for 23 days is 299 cigarettes. In the US, a pack of cigarettes has to be at least 20. So at 20 per pack, the average smoker will smoke about 20 packs in a month. Tobacco Free Kids.org lists the average pack price at $5.26. Multiplied by 20 packs a month and you find you will be spending $105.2 per month and by extension $1262.4 every year on your habit.
God forbid you smoke and drink coffee daily, at which point you would be spending about $2500 annually on your habits.
Next, going to the bar? Let’s assume you go out on the town on Friday nights and drink moderately, having only 2 to 3 drinks. If you like mixed drinks you’re paying at least $4 and probably closer to $6 for a drink, so one night on the town will run you $12-18. Though I expect that’s probably on the low end. If you go out every Friday for a month, you’ve now spent $48-72 and if you go every Friday all year long, $624-936. Not as bad as coffee either but this is assuming you drink moderately.
How about other monthly expenditures, like cable tv, or Netflix? Comcast’s digital preferred service is $39.99 for the first 6 months, after which it jumps to $56 a month, so a year of cable TV costs $576. Netflix basic subscription of 3 movies at a time runs $16.99 a month or $203.88 a year. A movie once a month at $7 a ticket, $84 a year.
Fast food lunch every day, at minimum $5 a meal each day of a 5 day work week, $25 a week, $100 a month, $1300 a year. Gym membership at 24 hour fitness to work off the weight you put on by eating fast food every day, $30 a month, $360 a year.
So what you say? Everything you choose to do, eat or drink costs money. Not exactly a new idea, but each of those expenses means you have to make more money to support your lifestyle. This may mean working more hours or working harder, which in turn means you are tired when you get home. If you’re working hard to pay for entertainment, but are too tired to enjoy that same entertainment is it worth the cost? How much do you value your free time, time with family and friends? What is time worth to you? Is it worth a cup of coffee or, your cigarette? And this analysis isn’t even considering the physical effects that some of these habits have on your body. Time has value and is becoming a commodity in our increasingly busy lives. Take some time to think about the choices you are making and the extended costs of things in your life.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Cost of Entertainment
Ack, it’s been way too long since my last post. So this one’s probably going to be short but it’s an interesting idea, the cost of entertainment and what we are willing to pay. With the cost of movie tickets slowly rising, I’ve started to limit the number of movies I go to. Tickets are just about $10 non matinee where I live and I’ve heard they’re up to about $20 in big cities like LA and NYC. So a dinner and movie, for two would run 40 for the movie, and as little as $10 if you went to fast food. Assuming your date would let you get away with that, so about $50, for a cheap date. That’s getting a bit nuts, and makes me glad I don’t live in a big city.
I am willing to pay $10 for about 2 hours of entertainment. This has kind of become my base line. Video games at $40-$60 are a bargain when you consider I’ll likely get 60 to 100 hours from a game, if not more and a subscription game like World of Warcraft isn’t a bad investment at $14 a month for the nearly unlimited amount of entertainment one could get if that was all you did in your free time. But that’s measuring quantity of entertainment by the dollar. What about quality of entertainment. Going to a concert, or a play, will get you about the same length of entertainment as a movie, but will hopefully be better entertainment. Cheap tickets to see U2 in concert are $64. Assuming about an hour and a half to two hour show, that’s over three times the cost of a movie in LA and six times as much as one at my local theater. But there is an experience to be had there that you can’t get from listening to CD’s. Cheap tickets to see Wicked in San Francisco are $142, over twice the cost of seeing U2. You pay more for these kinds of entertainment because they are “Art”. You are paying for the talent of the performers and for the ability to see it live.
Can we expect to see the cost of movies continue to climb? I think so, will it get as high as a concert? Perhaps. Considering the ballooning cost of making movies in the US, I could see ticket costs continuing to rise. The trick is that movies were supposed to be a cheap form of mass entertainment. The first movies were in machines called Nickelodeon’s. They were short, a few min at best, videos that you hand cranked and they cost 5 cents, thus how they got their name. In 1932 the first real theater charged 3 cents per person. By 1967 the average ticket price was up to $1.22, 1977 it was $2.23, only a dollar more in 10 years, where as by 1987 it was up to $3.91, $1.72 more. In 2000, the price was an average of $5.39 and has risen to an average of $7.50 as of 2009. For a further break down go here. The average cost includes all ticket sales together, whether they be matinee, children’s, discount or normal.
I don’t know what prices are going to do in the future, but if they continue to rise at the rate they are, I’m not sure how much longer I will be willing to see a movie. For comparison the UN World Food Programme, estimates it costs about 25 cents a day to feed a child, or 50 dollars a year. That means if I see 5 fewer movies a year I could feed a child for the same amount of time. So then, what is the value of our entertainment?
I am willing to pay $10 for about 2 hours of entertainment. This has kind of become my base line. Video games at $40-$60 are a bargain when you consider I’ll likely get 60 to 100 hours from a game, if not more and a subscription game like World of Warcraft isn’t a bad investment at $14 a month for the nearly unlimited amount of entertainment one could get if that was all you did in your free time. But that’s measuring quantity of entertainment by the dollar. What about quality of entertainment. Going to a concert, or a play, will get you about the same length of entertainment as a movie, but will hopefully be better entertainment. Cheap tickets to see U2 in concert are $64. Assuming about an hour and a half to two hour show, that’s over three times the cost of a movie in LA and six times as much as one at my local theater. But there is an experience to be had there that you can’t get from listening to CD’s. Cheap tickets to see Wicked in San Francisco are $142, over twice the cost of seeing U2. You pay more for these kinds of entertainment because they are “Art”. You are paying for the talent of the performers and for the ability to see it live.
Can we expect to see the cost of movies continue to climb? I think so, will it get as high as a concert? Perhaps. Considering the ballooning cost of making movies in the US, I could see ticket costs continuing to rise. The trick is that movies were supposed to be a cheap form of mass entertainment. The first movies were in machines called Nickelodeon’s. They were short, a few min at best, videos that you hand cranked and they cost 5 cents, thus how they got their name. In 1932 the first real theater charged 3 cents per person. By 1967 the average ticket price was up to $1.22, 1977 it was $2.23, only a dollar more in 10 years, where as by 1987 it was up to $3.91, $1.72 more. In 2000, the price was an average of $5.39 and has risen to an average of $7.50 as of 2009. For a further break down go here. The average cost includes all ticket sales together, whether they be matinee, children’s, discount or normal.
I don’t know what prices are going to do in the future, but if they continue to rise at the rate they are, I’m not sure how much longer I will be willing to see a movie. For comparison the UN World Food Programme, estimates it costs about 25 cents a day to feed a child, or 50 dollars a year. That means if I see 5 fewer movies a year I could feed a child for the same amount of time. So then, what is the value of our entertainment?
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