Sitcoms and Learning

I checked out Parks and Recreation this week. It was pretty good. My favorite element is the setting of the show and getting little details about how local government works. Or, I should say, imagined to work.

On a similar note, Freakonomics discusses the microeconomic issues in the latest Office episode.

How I understood the problem in the episode: The Michael Scott Paper Company was not paying a "variable cost," because they were doing all the deliveries themselves - and they were all salaried employees. However, if their volume went up, they would no longer be able to do all the deliveries and would need to hire a delivery guy. But at the low prices they were charging, the cost of the delivery guy exceeded the profit they were making on the paper. Hence, they were going broke.

What doesn't make sense about this scenario: they couldn't have been making money PRIOR to their volume going up. Or, at the very least, they were paying themselves at less the rate of an average delivery person...which is to say, not very much.