The Economy From The Ground Up


I saw some pictures this weekend taken with one of those fancy 5D or 7D Canon cameras. They are amazing. One could shoot a feature film with such technology and save millions of dollars in labor costs. This could also be translated to many future film crews having no work. It points to an ongoing theme about employment and technology that I like to explore and upholds my theory that we actually do not need people to labor anymore. Our society basically only needs 20% of our people to work and they can provide enough goods and services for everyone else to get by just fine. This presents a horrible social problem because employment is crucial to ones sense of self worth and well being and usefulness. Our current economic predicament is the early warning sign of this future disease - high unemployment is a mega-trend - something beyond cyclical or structural. And what's worse, no one wants to discuss this issue because it doesn't pay to. Politicians do not want to tackle a problem they cannot solve or blame the other party for political advantage. Citizens do not want to believe it because it is scary and puts many of their life long investments - career, savings, values - into question. But...instead of being such a naysayer and doomsdayist...I thought I'd try to look from the bottom up about ways we could find stuff for people to do.

In that spirit, I thought we start by looking at what I, a 33 year old single male living in Los Angeles, spends money on. This will show where there is room for economic growth and improvement (the dumbest thing we can do - but what we waste our time doing - is thinking about what our "passion" is or what we like to do for work as it that possibly translates to money or growth).

Without further ado

Yearly expenses:

Taxes (including car registration, etc)
Rent
Investments
Debt Service (including mortgage, car loan, student loan, etc)
Gas and Electricity
Cable and Internet
Housekeeping
Car Insurance
Health Insurance
Additional Health Expenses: Copays, Contacts, etc
Food/Drinks/Coffee/Etc
Movies
Books
Music
Clothes
Entertainment - non-movies - drinks, etc
Car Repairs and washes, maintain
Gas
Rare Big Purchases - one time things: Computer, Car, Bed, Furniture, Record Player, TV Set, etc.
Office Supplies and random business expenses
Parking
Exercise Facilities, ie soccer league, yoga, gym, etc
Donations and Gifts
Travel

I don't spend much on anything else outside of these categories. I'm sure people with different needs spend on a few other things, especially things like childcare and school expenses, but the idea is still the same. In order to suss out where we might find some growth, we need to break down these categories and see where improvements can be made in the things we buy. I will do this bit by bit over the next week or so.