Stay In Bed, You Fools

November 22, 2013
iPads were a luxury item even in the 1930s

iPads were a luxury item even in the 1930s

 

This year we’re giving you a week’s notice before you camp out like a masochist. Today’s rhetorical discussion question: Is your time worth anything? Anything at all? If Black Friday represents something other than an unmarked holiday for you and yours, an opportunity to do nothing that’s normally required of you, a day on a par with Veterans Day and Christmas, only without an official designation of its own, shake yourself. Here at CYC we don’t underestimate the pull of the mob and the temptation to embrace and be a part of overarching cultural fads (hell, it’s gotten at least one President elected), but thinking with the crowd often makes no sense. Sometimes it can get you trampled to death for your troubles.

Maybe you like retail shopping as recreation, which we can’t quite understand but to each her own. Still, shouldn’t the shopping itself be pleasurable? Leisurely? Not only is Black Friday inherently frenetic, it’s senseless. Literally senseless. It makes no sense. There is no reason why you should be going out of your way to be at a mall on by far its busiest day of the year.

We have this thing called Amazon now. It’s been around for a while. You can buy our book there, but that’s not the point. You can buy millions of other items there too. There’s also eBay, and for those of you less concerned with fraud protection, Craig’s List.* What, are we explaining this to our great-grandparents? How do you not know this? (More rhetorical questions, although not for discussion.)

How much time does it take to purchase anything on any of the above sites? Negligible. You don’t have to lose a night’s sleep, or freeze, or engage in the continuous hell that is associating with other people. And good luck finding another personal finance site that modifies Jean-Paul Sartre quotes. Maybe DQYDJ.net, but that’s it.

Not only do people never learn, it only gets worse from one year to the next. If you work in local news, congratulations: on the last Friday of every November you have a ready-made feature for your highlight reel, until you finally escape to a bigger market and get out of your current hick town forever. Hey, who’s going down to the post office on April 15 to film the last-minute tax filers?

Here’s a quote from one of 2012’s Black Friday imbeciles, courtesy of South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel:

Orlene Thomas of Palm Beach said she came to Town Center when the mall opened at 6 a.m. because she wanted to soak up the spirit of the holiday season. She bought a few things at Macy’s, but said she wouldn’t think of missing Thanksgiving dinner to wait in line, as many people did.

“I would never do anything that crazy,” she said. “Thanksgiving Day is for family and friends.”

It’s good that she has a sense of perspective, then. Think about your own Thanksgivings past, and honestly assess whether spending the day fumbling for conversation topics with your in-laws and drunk cousins is more or less crazy than waking up early enough on a holiday to wait in line at a mall at 6 a.m. In Palm Beach, no less. Why was this woman doing anything other than spending the day frolicking in the sand and surf? It was 78° that afternoon, with no precipitation. Ms. Thomas might not even be the dumbest person quoted in the article:

Michelle Esteves, 28, of Boca Raton arrived at Town Center at 6 a.m., hoping to beat the crowd at clothing retailer Hollister. It didn’t help. She and her friend waited in the checkout line for an hour and 40 minutes.

“It was horrible, but last year we waited in line for two hours,” Esteves said.

That’s 3 hours and 40 minutes of this woman’s life that she’s never going to get back, assuming she never did this in previous years and won’t do it in subsequent ones. She could have knitted her own chiffon skater skirt in less time than she waited in line.

Things you should wait in line from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. for:

  • North Korean exit visas
  • Emergency surgery
  • Space Shuttle flights
  • Eternal salvation

That’s our entire list, and yours shouldn’t be much longer.

You’re familiar with the following mental exercise, right? (We probably featured it on the site once, can’t remember where and are too lazy to look.) The store next door is selling dress shirts for the regular retail price of $50. It’s an ordinary weekday, not Black Friday or anything. However, another store across town is holding an 80% off sale! Mildred, load up Junior and the girl, we’re taking the Oldsmobile to Marshall Field’s!

Meanwhile, the Bass Pro Shop down the street is selling Nitro Z-7 sport boats for $39,795. But the boat dealership 30 miles away is selling them for $39,755. Are you going to attach the hitch to your Delta 88 and drive to the other side of the county so you can save .1% off the price of a boat? Of course not, you’re not insane. (No one should own a boat, not when you can make friends with someone who already has one.)

Of course, the point is that a $40 saving is a $40 saving, and if you’re going to inconvenience yourself for that amount of money once then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do it twice.

And this is just depressing. Same article:

Saul Gelin of Plantation got in line about 6 p.m. Thursday looking to score a 32-inch HDTV for $97.

(By the way, it appears that Mr. Gelin is black, not [likely] Jewish, so don’t accuse us of reinforcing stereotypes about frugality.) There was a publicized limit of 6 TVs available at that price, and incredibly enough, Mr. Gelin later discovered that he was no better than 7th on the list.

(Dammit, now we inadvertently reinforced a stereotype about black people being late. There’s no winning with you, is there?)

Saving money is great. We highly encourage it, so you can purchase assets with your savings. Which will position you to free up more of your time in the future. But spending time, ridiculously long amounts of it, to garner piddling savings? This is no different than the Goldbergian process for making Trent Hamm’s laundry detergent. Wake up late next Friday, fix some breakfast, visit Amazon and start shopping. And be grateful that you live in a society where the kind of nonsensical hyper-commerce your mouth-breathing inferiors are engaging in is not merely tolerated, but encouraged. They’re keeping the internet tubes clear for the rest of us.

 

*It’s a possessive followed by a noun. Spelling it “Craigslist” is for illiterates. 

Filed Under: Bad Examples, Healthy Living Tagged With: ,

Your Indignation Is Moronic

October 9, 2013
The Age of Dorks continues unabated

The Age of Dorks continues unabated

 

Ender’s Game is a forthcoming movie adaptation of a book written 28 years ago by Orson Scott Card. Like most major studio releases, the movie is the collaborative effort of dozens if not hundreds of people. As to Card’s involvement in the movie, Ender’s Game lists 8 producers and one director, and the screenplay was written by someone other than Card. Any of those producers might favor a flat tax, and the head location scout could well be a big fan of racial profiling. We’re not sure. Here’s the totality of what the public knows about the political views of people associated with the movie:

Card’s insufficiently inclusive views have made him the subject of criticism, and the movie itself the target of protests that may or may not materialize. The message is unambiguous: “The views of one person tangentially involved with the production of this commercial enterprise are so offensive to me that I refuse to pay the $12 to patronize it, and will encourage others to follow suit.”

There’s short-sightedness, and then there’s posturing. Combine the two and you get a mental condition that defies classification.

The last major purchase we made at CYC headquarters was a new submersible well pump. Including labor, it ran around $3000. Which is cheap, given that the alternative was to not have running water. Then we’d be looking at dysentery, diarrhea, maybe even brucellosis, not to mention the stares and sniffs that go with appearing in public without ever showering. The crew who handled the job spent most of the afternoon digging into the earth’s crust and left us with the peace of mind that comes with knowing we won’t have a similar pump problem for decades. We gave them a check and thanked them.

However…what if the company founder (who’s also the chief technician) expressed a political view we disagreed with? What if his primary passion in life, other than the replacement of faulty well pumps, was getting Islam recognized as the U.S.’s one official state religion? Or even something less jolting but still damaging, such as providing billions in subsidies for wind energy companies?

You know what we’d do instead? We’d thank him for his time and, depending on how good a job he did, recommend him to people.

A similarly expensive recent purchase was a big-screen TV, which had more hands in its creation than the installation of the well pump did and perhaps as many as Ender’s Game did. We don’t know the political opinions of Samsung’s chief technology officer, and even if he ran for the South Korean national assembly on the pro-natural disasters platform, it wouldn’t have affected our decision. The moral stand of people wanting to make a statement about Orson Scott Card’s rejection of homosexual marriage does nothing to benefit anyone or anything, save the ductile psyches of the statement-makers.

Buy what you want, on its own merits. Not those of the mostly faceless people responsible for its creation. It’s a financial decision, not a moral one. If you can’t enjoy a movie because you think the guy who wrote the book upon which the screenplay was adapted is looking for modern-day Matthew Shepards to hang from trees, then best of luck leading an economic life free of taint. It can’t be done but selectively, which is to say, hypocritically.

The CYC principals’ principles require us to treat animal abusers with disdain at best, and seething hatred most of the time. The Philadelphia Eagles pay millions of dollars to a sociopathic quarterback who not only did unspeakable things to innocent dogs, but has yet to show remorse for doing so. In other words, Michael Vick’s net contribution to the universal grand total of unjustified violence, bloodshed and evil is far, far, greater than anything Orson Scott Card can proffer an opinion about. Our opinion of an organization that would grant a lucrative lifeline to Vick is only slightly less uncharitable than our opinion of Vick himself, regardless of how many respectable people the organization might employ. Thus we’re never going to buy any Eagles’ merchandise, nor ever go to a game, which is easy to accomplish seeing as we don’t live anywhere near Philadelphia (thank God.) Our involvement with the Eagles will remain at the level of cheering for their opponents every Sunday and praying that Vick gets paralyzed.

And you know what? That stance doesn’t make a bit of difference to Vick nor to Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie. The boycott is a way to feel better about ourselves and nothing more, although at least we’re self-aware enough to admit it. If we’d found out that the guy from the drilling company was a dog murderer, we’d have worked a little harder to find a competitor. Same thing with the Samsung executive, maybe. But tabulating and assessing the opinions and thoughts of everyone associated with the creation of every good or service we purchase would create only one thing – inertia. Standing up for what you believe is swell. Making self-defeating financial decisions because you’ve appointed yourself the supreme magistrate of opinions (not even actions) one, two, three degrees removed from the subject at hand is stupid. Henry Ford made cars for the Nazis. Bayer aspirin is manufactured by a former subsidiary of the company that synthesized Zyklon B. Chase Bank froze Jewish customers’ accounts during the occupation of France (and stole billions from American taxpayers.) And at least a couple of the pennies you spend here will doubtless go toward something you disagree with. Get over it.

Filed Under: Bad Examples, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

Yeah Economics!

September 11, 2013
Control Your Cash has long been an advocate of celebrating methamphetamine culture in all its forms

Control Your Cash has long been an advocate of celebrating meth culture in all its forms

 

The California TV industry has decided that it would rather do business anywhere but at home.

At one time, just about every show on the 4 major networks was filmed in California. Today just 40% of production takes place in California, down from 47% in 1997, and that percentage continues to drop as more states offer tax breaks to production companies.

45 states (and several countries) have some kind of film or TV production tax credit. Often this takes the form of a tax rebate, and sometimes the rebate is even transferable. Say a production company faces a $10,000 state tax bill and receives a production credit of $15,000. The production company can sell the remaining $5000 tax credit to a resident of that state. Of course, the buyer isn’t going to pay full price. The more tax credits on the market, the cheaper they’ll be. If the production company can get 80¢ on the dollar, it’ll receive $4000 and the buyer will save $1000 in taxes.

Is this corporate welfare or just good business? New Mexico state senator John Arthur Smith (D-Deming) thinks it’s the former:

I watched the Oscars and I have a difficult time with this, watching actresses wearing $35,000, $40,000 dresses and then we ask the taxpayers to help pay for it.

(People of Deming, your male state senator watches the Oscars and knows how to price women’s clothing.) In 2010-11, 39 movies and 3 TV series were filmed in New Mexico, including AMC’s Breaking Bad. Albuquerqueans, especially the business owners, might disagree with Senator Smith.

  • Over 7 years and 62 episodes, the production of Breaking Bad has contributed $70 million in economic activity exclusive of actor, writer and director salaries
  • The production has employed 120 people, all but 12 of them New Mexicans
  • 2 of the show’s stars (Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul) have bought homes and lived at least part-time in area.
  • The city will use its newfound notoriety to lure tourists long after the show has gone off the air.

Massachusetts hosted 25 movies and 9 TV shows in 2010-2011. The state Department of Revenue studied the economic impact of its own production credits for 2006-08 and concluded:

  • Most tax credits went to non-residents
  • Most of the jobs created were part-time, lasting a few days to a few months
  • It cost about $88,000 in tax credits for every full-time equivalent job

Massachusetts’s tax incentives mostly take the form of straight cash payments, no or few strings attached. New Mexico tied its incentives to local investment. If you’re a production company, you can’t take full advantage of New Mexico’s incentives unless you build facilities in the state and/or hire New Mexicans.

This company that brokers tax credits for the film industry confirms that Massachusetts’s credits are more generous than New Mexico’s. That’s great news for production companies, not so much for taxpayers (nor for state residents who want to work in the film industry.)

New Mexico’s incentives include:

  • 25% rebates for any TV production company that shoots at least 6 episodes in the state and has a budget of at least $50,000 per episode. This percentage increases to 30 next year.
  • 30% rebates for feature films that use resident labor in a qualified production facility.
  • 25% rebates on all other direct production and post-production expenditures subject to New Mexico taxes. Movies must shoot at least 10 days in the state for budgets under $30 million, 15 days otherwise.

The state makes $50 million of taxpayer money available every year. Unused money remains in the fund for subsequent years.

Here are Massachusetts’s incentives:

  • 25% payroll tax credit (and sales tax exemption) on any project that spends more than $50,000 in state.
  • 25% tax credit on any project that spends most of its budget (or films most of its principal photography) in the state. This includes out-of-state purchases and equipment rentals.
  • No residency requirement.
  • The credits are transferable. If you can’t sell them, the state will buy them for 90¢ on the dollar.
  • Credits can be used for up to 5 tax years.

Did you catch that penultimate one? Why is the state in the business of buying back tax credits (at a premium to what the market would bear, no less?) Massachusetts wants to get companies to film in the state, without giving a thought to long-term goals like supporting ongoing production. The aforementioned study argued that the program was a failure, and cited incentive money being paid to non-residents as proof. Hard to imagine why, seeing as the program has no residency requirement. Two other things Massachusetts doesn’t have? Production studios and local talent.

If a state doesn’t use its tax incentives to create an environment that will bring production companies back, that state will just compete with every other state for a smaller piece. What would happen to the money if every state eliminated its production incentive program? Would taxes decrease, or would the money just be spent elsewhere?

Offering incentives without a plan is stupid. Throwing cash (other people’s, no less) around indiscriminately is no way to achieve results, largely because it makes no mention of results. Think about that the next time you give money to your kid. Or a charity. Or a street urchin.

Filed Under: Bad Examples, Economics Tagged With: , , ,
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