Just imagine...
 |
| Save 'em all up until you're sure you have the $214.00 profit! |
If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you will have $33.00 today.
If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you will have $0.00 today.
But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling refund, you will have received a $214.00.
Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle. It is called the 401-Keg.
A recent study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year. That means that, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!
Makes you proud to be an American!!!
Really? I have to chime in on this one.
1st off, I think that 900 miles per year is too conservative. That's only 2.4 miles per day.
22 gallons of alcohol is slightly less than 2 ounces per day. Also rather conservative, dontcha think.
Based on a study that I read when I was about 12 years old, the average American walked about 10 miles per day. I would generously cut that in half, due to reverse inflation. You know, more driving, less walking. Nevertheless, I would also conservatively increase the alcohol intake to a full 5 ounces per day. The average American would then consume 46 gallons of alcohol and walk a total of 1825 miles per year for a miles per gallon productivity level of only 39.6 miles per gallon. Not too bad, but certainly not great.
The calculation which rendered the $214.00 profit is more difficult to follow since certain stipulations important to the process are not given. There are several questions which would have to be answered before a perfectly correct answer could be generated. Such questions would be: What is the average alcohol content of beer across the country? What is the average price of a six-pack across the country on a day to day basis? It seems that the stipulated presumption is based on beer contained in aluminum cans, a very volatile market that is difficult to baseline accross the country. The other question that I have is, are we sure that all the beer sold in aluminum cans is packaged in cans that are manufactured by the same provider? Are they all of the same gauge aluminum, of the same density? I have further difficulties about the $214.00 profit. If the recycler came to the point of consumption to buy the aluminum, would the profit still be the same? If the consumer had to drive to the recycling outlet, what would be the negative impact on the profit?
You see,friends, serious economics require a lot of deep, gyrating thoughts around gratuitous statements that are floated into cyberspace without sufficient preponderant evidence.
As for me, I am grateful to have had these two exercises in comic futility because this is the closest I have come to a can of beer or alcohol of any kind, drinking or otherwise, in over one year. I thank you all for the opportunity to try out my sniveling, underhanded "Beltway" sophistry on you all, dead sober as I am at the moment.
I'll get more serious tomorrow.
All of this struff made me think of a question that I asked in school one day: "Does the shadow of an airplane go as fast as the plane does?"
Go ahead, get even with me for that one.
No comments:
Post a Comment