New winter tyres were fitted this morning, with the timing being "pretty good" this year, as it is expected to be the 4 degrees colder than average for the start of November, and snow is going to fall tomorrow. It was -8C (17F) last night already, but it warmed up to -2C when I was driving this morning.
Have you ever thought how silly Fahrenheit is and how clever the metric system is? For the Americans who may be reading. Water freezes at 0 Celsius and boils at 100C. But, it doesn't end there. At the maximum density (at 3.98C), one gram of water is one cubic centimeter. One liter is 1000 cm3 and weighs one kilogram. One meter is 100 centimeters, one centimeter is 10 millimeters. One kilometer is 1000 meters.
You get the idea....
Oh, the tyres are made by Nokian Tyres and are called "Hakkapeliitta" which has its own Finnish history that dates back about 500 years to a light infantry brigade and their battle cry of, Hakkaa Päällä, which effectively means Cut them down, though the straight translation is "Beat on them". They carried broadswords and two wheellock pistols.
What was interesting, was when I ordered the tyre change last week, I thought I was going to get last season's model, the Hakkapellitta 9s, as the price was "lower" than expected. But once fitted, I was surprised to find they are the 10s. The Finnish maker of these also has the largest chain of tyre stores, and exactly the same model is 22% more expensive there. I knew it would be a bit cheaper at this place, but that is ludicrous. It was still more than I wanted to pay.
Is it ever less than wanted to pay?
That might be an interesting question to explore, because it may require evaluating what we are actually paying for. For instance, most people will complain about the cost of healthcare and believe nurses should get paid more, yet the same people will not bat an eyelid at a sports star getting a 300 million dollar, five year contract. That is about the average salary for over 700 registered nurses in the US. Is one player worth that?
Supply and Demand.
We essentially want to pay more for nurses when we believe that they should get paid more, but at a practical level, we won't actually pay more. We'd rather be entertained. For instance, the average NBA player gets about 11,000,000 per year in salary, and with 450 players, that amounts to 4,950,000,000 (4.95B) in a year. If the average salary of a registered nurse is 90K (it is quite a bit lower in reality), the NBA salaries cover 55,000 additional nurses. The average age of a registered nurse is 52, and there are almost 200,000 job openings per year in the US.
But obviously, it isn't just about nurses, as there are a whole lot of positions that probably should be better paid, but aren't, because there just isn't enough money to pay them. Which is kind of interesting to consider, isn't it? Because, using the NBA salaries as an example, the consumer isn't paying that directly, so it doesn't come as "entertainment budget".
$288 on Entertainment
There are 131M households in the US, which means that 452 billion dollars is spent on entertainment each year. However, how much of the food is entertainment related, how much of the apparel and services? For instance, digging a little deeper, the "Food category" can be split into groceries ($475) and takeout/restaurants ($303) - meaning over a third of the food could potentially be considered entertainment. 80 more is spent on alcohol ($49) and tobacco ($31) - are they entertainment too? Personal care products and services ($72) could also include potential entertainment and leisure activities, though I will give that a pass as self-care is important.
But adding these up and being generous, around 14% of the monthly income is spent on entertainment in some form, whilst only 8% is spent on healthcare directly. Remember though, taxpayer funded healthcare is also paid for through salaries. This means that healthcare costs are subsidized, so they are actually higher.
While entertainment is important for our health, I wonder where the balance is in what we are willing to spend, against what it is costing us in other important areas, like our own wellbeing. Can there be a state of too much entertainment to the point that it has a negative impact on us?
I believe so.
And it isn't just in the monetary costs, because it affects us at every other level also. The more we consume entertainment on average, the less creative we become, the less motivated to act, the more sedentary. We think less, we move less, we aspire to less. Not only is it a money spinner, it has the added benefit of drawing and controlling attention in a way that degrades the audience, making us less able to change course. It is an attention capture machine, and we increasingly become a captured audience, with few tools and even less will to escape.
Pets.
Over the years, I have found the conversation around "value" from different perspectives very interesting, as many people seem to have some kind of intuition as to the worth of something, but they haven't necessarily thought explicitly about it. This likely means that we have been conditioned to value something higher or lower, even if we would be better off valuing something else instead.
What that "something else" might be is a personal decision, but as a group, all of our decisions move towards trends, and those trends are both influenced by the suppliers in the market, as well as jumped upon and encouraged to generate even more demand. It doesn't matter if it is in our best interest to turn our attention to something else, because the people who make money from our attention, are incentivized to draw us to where they will make the most.
Entertainment is a fantastic industry for generating wealth, because it is compelling due to its nature of not requiring us to do much, and in large enough quantities, will degrade us in multiple ways, meaning that it will spin into generate income in other industries too, like food, apparel and especially pharmaceutical. It is a brilliant monetary model, and not only this, it is built to be the platform for all of the advertising that influences us to consume more of it, as well as the other industries that get the indirect benefits of us getting worse.
It is not that all entertainment is bad, but like anything, there is a balance point. I believe that many of us have crossed that balance point willingly, without realizing the costs it is having on our culture, communities and personal wellbeing. But, instead of investigating the true value of what we spend our attention on, we have endless opportunities to distract us away.
Hakkaa Päällä
We are being beaten. We are being cutdown.
And we are paying for the privilege.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
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Your reflections about entertainment are quite interesting. We tend to check prices at the grocery store before purchasing one brand or another and then we spend all those "savings" going out for dinner one night instead of having dinner at home. If we only consider food costs, it makes no sense, but adding social entertainment completely changes the equation.
I live in a relatively small town and for the yearly city fest, the council spends lots of money when there are other city needs that could be covered, some of them may be more important than entertainment but how do we measure importance? is that a good local government policy?
Or for a car. Penny pinching on which butter, putting 60K into a new car. Senseless. There is also convenience to factor. For instance, paying for a lunch that is 2€ more, because not wanting to walk 100m down the road. Convenience costs.
Perhaps if the governments did better jobs at managing policy, we could pay for ourselves? :D
As said, it isn't that all entertainment is bad and I would definitely support entertainment that builds community - but most of what we consume doesn't do much of that.
As someone from the Philippines this makes me shake my head a bit and chuckle. With our temperatures normally in the high 20s, with highs of 30s [summer], and lows of low 20s [rainy], this is insane. I've been to snowy places, but I can't imagine living with this amount of cold for a long time.
I do agree that the pay difference for those in the entertainment industry and nurses/healthcare is egregious. But there are some points that I don't quite agree with. You mentioned Supply and Demand, that we would want to pay more to be entertained, than to pay nurses more. The thing is, the pandemic showed us that isn't the case. There were less movies, no live games, and people weren't indulging in entertainment, but the entertainment people were still getting paid well. Nurses, hospital rooms, medicines were in demand, but their salary didn't change. There was an inverse in supply and demand but not a lot changed.
Where I think supply and demand can apply though is in the number of people that actually do those jobs. You mentioned that there are 450 NBA players. But there are more than 5M nurses. Sure there are a lot of nurse openings [the population is increasing, more hospitals opening, lots of reasons], but there is theoretically more supply. The number of basketball players that are good enough to play in the NBA is significantly less, so there is a lack of supply.
I will also have to say that comparing nursing pay with NBA players is always going to get skewed. A nurse is a generic job; there are nurses in the US, Finland, Australia, Philippines, everywhere. But the NBA is the top basketball association in the world. Almost all basketball players from around the world want to play there, and are not able to. There is the NBA G league where those that don't make it to the NBA play and receive lower salaries. Then there are smaller leagues. Each country has their own leagues. Nurses in Luxembourg earn 100k Euros gross, while nurses in Turkey earn 12k Euros gross. If you want to compare Nurse salaries with basketball players, it would be better to use regular league salaries. To be fair, specialists in the healthcare industry do get paid more. Neurologists, Cardiologists, and really good surgeons get paid a lot. Not NBA level, but a lot.
But in the end, a lot of jobs are underpaid while some are overpaid. As consumers we have a bit of power, but not so much. People are willing to pay for quality and it shows. The NBA who employs stars like Steph Curry and Lebron who are considered generational talents has the best quality, and their salaries reflect that.
This made me laugh!
I think if you were to ask most Americans we would be just fine using the metric system. We are supposed to get our first bit of snow tomorrow as well. I don't think it will be too much, but then again snow is snow I guess. Back when my wife and I were living in tighter financial circumstances I used to have a separate budget line for entertainment. We didn't remove it, but we scaled it back quite a bit to focus on the other stuff.
It gets used in the military, doesn't it?
I used to be very bad at knowing where my money was going, but I have been trying to improve in this area a lot. It isn't easy though!
Yes, I believe so. Also some auto applications. I have a set of metric and standard sockets and wrenches, but the sockets all connect to ratchets with standard measurements.
Entertainment has value to the overall balance in our lives. Yet, too often entertainment is the first to be cut or dropped due to budget concerns. Our culture suffers and so do each of us. Where have all the bands gone and the piano bars? Folks used to take an instrument in school now few do. And the mom and popper cafes and restaurants are fast declining to big business. Bowling alleys, skating rinks and so many venues have gone by the wayside. But we have the Karaoke guy and an occasional dueling piano or comedy club for those in larger metro areas.
I think entertainment has changed though. It used to be active, signing, dancing, music, building - now it is passive consumption, just sitting back and watching. Has it the same value?
Snow? It is 23C right now here and if you walk outside before sunset, you get sweaty. By the way, I prefer using Fahrenheit temperature scale 😄 I don't think there is a special reason for it, but I think it represents the temprature change in little numbers than Celcius scale.
I heard something funny today where someone said about fahrenheit that it works in percentages. 20 is 20% cold. 40 is 40% cold, 60 is 60% hot, 80 is 80% hot - 100 is hot.
I'm struck by that $1000 a month for transportation! wow.
As for healthcare, since healthy ought to be the norm, but illness is the current norm, I wish people were spending even less on healthcare. We could be well! We should be well as a default state.
Nice buy on those tires.
I do know and appreciate the metric system, but if I try to tell someone a dimension in metric in the US, I just have to restate the measurement in the systems that are used here, so I no longer bother. At least I know them.
I think it is on car repayments for financing.
Or more on preventative healthcare. A lot of Europe has higher spending on preventative than the US.
Australia changed over in the 60s, but weirdly when I was a kid at least, person height was still in feet and inches. Many cars like my granddad's VW was in mph
In the end, whatever you do at a certain point in your time, you will leave the ship; you, me, we all will. To be more practical in this life is to live it to the fullest, that you spend money on fun-recreation is unquestionable, since everyone values their time according to their own criteria, according to their needs, according to their economic availability.
In general, I do not comment in publications of this community, since finances are a game of life and although I live, I do not like the playful activity that does not leave a teaching of value; everything in life is not money.
Everyone adopts the measurement system that best suits his or her needs. I do not share the idea that the Fahrenheit temperature scale is silly. The Fahrenheit temperature scale was developed in 1724. Originally, Fahrenheit established a scale in which the temperature of an ice-water-salt mixture was fixed at 0 degrees. The temperature of an ice-water mixture (without salt) was set at 30 degrees and the temperature of the human body at 96 degrees. This temperature scale is the basis for all other -original- temperature scales.
Do you believe that people should spend as they choose?
Do you believe that people who don't have enough should get taxpayer-funded social security?
Living in a cave was not silly either. Should we all live in caves still? :D
One has nothing to do with the other. Human ingenuity is and should be valued, especially that which gave rise to new ideas, as was Daniel Fahrenheit.
There are millions of examples. Should we keep burning fossil fuels in combustion engines?
We are double standards: on the one hand, we criticise the use of fossil fuels, but we don't get out of our cars, we continue to use heating and air conditioning in our offices and homes. We pretend to be conservationists and we continue to hurt the nature that shelters us.
So, where is the line? Should we just keep superseded tools and concepts because we can never change? Should we be hoarders? Or, when better options are available, we start to make the change, until better again comes along?
As said, the Fahrenheit has been superseded. Not only that, it is actually wrong, as body temperature is not a static, and the baseline is incorrect. If you have a look into the way they measured to create the standard for human body temperate, you will find it was far from scientific.
It is crazy how you didn't later buy at the price that you wanted to pay
Things are extremely expensive
I just hope that we survive these hard times
Entertainment is good because sometimes people just need some time to relax, but I agree that it only works with a balance.
As for the prices, it's hard to balance between wages and prices. I don't think there will be any great solution to that because both sides both want money but they also don't want to pay more either.
I do not know if you have heard of him, but check MrMoneyMustache's website, you gonna like it.
Too much of anything is bad, as I am observing more and more.
Whenever someone is being overly optimistic, I tend to counterbalance that with outlining the risks or challenges. Not to encourage them not to try, just to be prepared for the bumps in the road on the way to achieving it. Not getting bucked off.
Same with negativity. I know the negative narrative that runs in the back of many or our minds and how of us simply harness the power of that and figure out how to leverage it for success.
In each of those extremes, too much of anything bad or otherwise is not good. Except maybe Vitamin C. ;)
It's a reality and I think we must manage the budget according to our wills we have to decrease it sometimes anyhow hoping best for the coming days ... Winter is on its way that's a great news
I strongle believe entertainment that can provide some sort of postive value where learning happens is good for society.
The $1000 travel budget makes me feel a lot better about my travel choices. I probably spend less than $100 a month on my subway fares and I don't have any rideshare apps on my mobile. Again for housing, I pay only $1150 for my rented room in a 3bd apt in Brooklyn, so I'm only spending 60% of the average on housing too. Gosh, that chart sure makes me feel a lot better about some of my choices and how cheaply I am getting off in the long run.
I probably spend double the amount on food, since there are just too many tasty gourmet places to try around NYC. Like you alluded to in your article, my main expenditure is on entertainment (traveling to music festivals). While I have been getting most of my tickets comped recently due to my writing and editing coverage of the events, festivals often require air travel, camping, and buying merch so everyone knows I was there!
All that being said, I would estimate my monthly budget is btwn 2k and 2.5k, so I'm coming in well under the average US household, only spending about 33 to 40 of the mean. Gotta say that is pretty spectacular considering I live in one of the most expensive cities in the country. I sure do feel a lot better about my fiscal choices after reading this article.
Oh and by the way, for our Halloweekend here in NYC we had abnormally warm weather, reaching 75F (24C) during the day and in the high 60s at night. It was fantastic as it allowed all thr ladies to wear their absolute sluttiest costumes without worrying about being cold. chef's kiss 🥵