Robert J. Stonebraker, Winthrop University
The Joy of
Economics: Making Sense out of Life
Robert J. Stonebraker, Winthrop
University
So Much to Do, So Little Time
Nobody sees a flower really -- it's so small -- we haven't time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
.....Georgia O'Keeffe
Vacations are exhausting.
My wife and I take a red-eye flight to London. We try to sleep on the plane, but it is long past midnight when we slide into an all-too-brief slumber – just before our flight attendants, now on London time, are rousing us for breakfast.
We land. Barely conscious, we drift through customs, exchange dollars for the requisite British pounds, drag our luggage onto the subway for central London and find our hotel. Sleep? There is no time for that. There is too much to do.
Quick, buy the theater tickets. My wife considers drama an indispensable ingredient of any London evening.1 During the day it’s museums. See the crown jewels and Henry VIII's armor at the Tower of London. Check out the costumes in the Victoria and Albert Museum.2 The British Museum easily can consume three days, but we can allot only three hours. The National Gallery of Art suffers the same fate with a quick gallop past the highlights. After all, we still must tour the National Portrait Gallery around the corner and the Rothko exhibit at the Tate Gallery across town.
The pigeons in Trafalgar Square are a must, and a walk by Buckingham Palace and Big Ben. Go to Bloomsbury and find the former house of famed economist John Maynard Keynes.3 Shopping? How about a run through Harrod's and Liberty of London, and a hurried stroll along Carnaby Street? What about day trips to Greenwich or Oxford or Stratford or Stonehenge or Windsor Castle? Out of the question. No time.
Flying home offers no relief. We are greeted by an avalanche of newspapers, magazines, and assorted mail. There are bills to pay, e-mail and phone messages to answer, grass to mow, gardens to weed, friends and relatives to visit. Life went on without us; we must catch up. Hustle bustle. Huff puff.
The role of wealth
In the words of economist Staffan Linder, my wife and I are members of the harried leisure class.4 We are always on the run, always busy. Even our vacations are hectic. And, it's all because we're rich. No, we are not rich in the Bill Gates or the Jed Clampett sense. But with two professional incomes, we are comfortably among the top twenty percent of U.S. households in terms of annual earnings.5
The activities that keep us on the run are expensive. Flights to London, theater tickets, museums; these are not cheap. If we were poor we could not afford such a vacation. We would stay home and smell the roses, assuming we could afford a yard in which to grow roses. No money, no play.
Economic growth certainly has its "up" side. We can purchase more and better food, more and better health care, more and better educational and cultural opportunities, more and better recreational activities. But all this consumption involves a hidden cost: time.
Consumption requires time. We cannot "consume" a London vacation without spending time in London; we cannot enjoy a round of golf without spending several hours on the course. Even savoring an especially succulent Nathan's hot dog takes time. Economic growth creates more goods and services, but it does not create additional time for us to consume them. Time is the ultimate scarce resource.
How valuable is time? It depends. In a modern world with endless opportunities, it is precious. Yet if there is nothing to do, time is worthless. When no alternatives are available, the opportunity cost of idleness, what must be sacrificed or given up to consume it, is zero. Linder notes that cultures with a surplus of time can be found among the poorest citizens of the poorest countries, regions with abysmal productivity and employment and recreational opportunities.
Such cultures have no great need of precision and reckoning of time. We find there a manana attitude, with no detailed planning for either today or tomorrow. In fact, what we in rich countries mean by time is a concept difficult to translate into the languages of these cultures.6
On the other hand, growth has created unprecedented prospects for work and play in more prosperous nations. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunities slip through our fingers with every moment of sloth.
Punctuality has become a virtue that we demand from those around us. Waiting is a squandering of time that angers people in rich countries....People are dominated by their awareness of the clock. They are haunted by their knowledge that the shining moments are passing without things having been done.7
Economizing on time
Cramming more goods and services into the same amount of time requires imagination. One path is to pack each available hour as tightly as possible. We multitask. We watch TV and read simultaneously; we tune to our favorite radio station while jogging. We talk on the phone while surfing the web. Students even cram for 11:00 a.m. exams during their 10:00 a.m. class.
More interestingly, we consume different types of goods and services. We give up time-intensive pleasures (those that swallow large amounts of time) and substitute commodity-intensive pleasures instead. For example, we buy more books but read them fewer times -- if at all. My shelves are littered with once-read novels that I vow to pick up again. I do want to read them again; one cannot truly absorb good literature in a single reading. But, when push comes to shove, I always choose a new novel to re-reading an old one.
Other casualties include good cooking, and good eating. Dumping frozen foods in the microwave may not constitute gourmet dining, but it's convenient. Dining out? Haute cuisine has not vanished, but it has lost market share to Taco Bell.
Holidays have been transformed. Quiet, stay-at-home family days have been supplanted by hurried jaunts to the local water park or theme park where non-stop activity is the order of the day. And sports. While inner-city youths might still spend all day shooting hoops in a T-shirt with a ratty $3.98 basketball from the local thrift store, affluent suburbanites have gone high-tech. They head for the slopes, loaded with $700 skis and $500 boots; they head for the Bahamas outfitted with the latest scuba gear. Yuppie closets are crammed with expensive, yet rarely used, equipment of every stripe.8
Increasingly scarce time cramps human relationships as well. Relationships take time. Intimate one-on-one discussions are nice, but cocktail parties that allow the simultaneous consumption of food and multiple guests are more popular. Increasingly scarce time cramps human relationships as well. Relationships take time. Regrettably, when we economize on time in this way we end up with many acquaintances but few friends. Even love can be threatened. The painstaking development of a long-term marriage can offer unmatched psychic rewards, but casual sex is quicker.
Should we abandon economic growth? No. But we should acknowledge that time will be increasingly scarce.
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Notes:
1. No, I don't consider theater to be an essential activity every night, either. However, my wife is a costume designer and such compromises are a critical component of wedded bliss.
2. No, the Victoria and Albert costumes do not excite me, either. See note #1.
3. Payback for every-night-theater and the costume exhibits.
4. Linder, Staffan B., The Harried Leisure Class, Columbia University Press, New York, 1970.
5. In 2004, an annual income of $88,000 placed a household among the top twenty percent in terms of annual earnings. See What's Fair is Fair for more details.
6. Linder, op. cit., page 17.
7. Ibid., page 24.
8. The cost of time will vary across individuals. Yuppie attorneys earning $200 per hour sacrifice relatively more per hour of leisure than do busboys at local family restaurant. That means that attorneys and other high-wage earners have the greatest incentives to avoid time-intensive commodities. See Lazear, Edward P., "Economic Imperialism," Quarterly Journal of Economics, volume 115, February 2000, pp. 106-107.
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Testing Yourself
To test your understanding of the major concepts in this reading, try answering the following:
1. Explain how economic growth can increase the opportunity cost of time.
2. Explain how we economize on time and how this impacts the types of goods, services, and relationships we choose. Give examples.