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Any of you who were Friends fans (and who hasn’t been at some point in the last 15 years) will remember the episode where Chandler wants to ‘quit the gym’. The episode is a bit over the top with extremely attractive membership personnel who keep everyone from successfully canceling their membership. While this doesn’t really have any basis in reality (at least not in my experience), but changing Gyms is a bit of a traumatic experience.

About a year and a half ago I changed gyms. My old gym was a long time local establishment. Great facility, but it had it’s drawbacks, mostly in the service area. The pricing was a bit high, there were lots of days the facility was closed and the staff spent the last two hours of the day vacuuming and cleaning. I typically went from 8-10pm, which were always the hours they were cleaning. I finally got tired of paying a premium price to listen to vacuums and get sprayed with bleach, so I changed facilities.

My new Gym is a 24 hour facility, lower priced than the previous place, but it has it’s drawbacks. First off it’s small, only about 10 cardio machines and a handful of weights and machines. That’s not really so bad, but they also don’t have locker rooms. There are two unisex bathrooms, so if you want to show up without your workout gear on, you have to wait for one of them to be open. The other thing I don’t like, and this may sound funny, it’s not very busy. Back when I was working in an office, I liked it when the gym was quiet. Now that I’m self employed, work from home, and just hang out with the dogs all day long, I kind of crave human company. Not nearly as much fun to go to an empty gym.

So here’s my dilemma. The city I live in offers some very good facilities. They include a pool, great workout facility, basketball courts and locker rooms. Pretty much full service, and actually $5/month cheaper than my current membership. Downsides? I don’t know how busy they are. That might be annoying. Also, it is about 5 minutes further away from my house than my current gym. The other thing is it’s a public facility. There has been a recent debate about how the facilities are losing money and have to have tax dollars to stay open. So is it evil of me to join the cheaper, tax funded location than to support the independent (well franchised) facility? Is it fair to independent facilities when the city provides a better service at a loss so they can be cheaper than their competitors? Is it right that independent businesses have to compete with these publicly funded gyms?

I don’t know, but I think I’m going to change.

Popularity: 10%

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You may have heard, but the latest campaign issue is support of a summer “Gas Tax Holiday”. The idea is that the government would stop collecting it’s 18 cent a gallon gas tax for three months over the summer to help the common man pay for his fuel.

This was an idea that seems to have surfaced from the McCain camp, but has been wholeheartedly embraced by former First Lady, Hillary Clinton. She is supporting this ‘tax holiday’ on the premise that it will help the common man, the idea that taxing the oil companies is more intelligent and blasting Barack Obama for not supporting it. Barack is a little more reasonable and sees this for the bait and switch that it is:

“There is not a single economist or editorial that I’ve read that says that this is a good idea, and the reason is, is because it’s not being honest with the American people,” Obama said on NBC’s “Today” show. “People don’t need symbolic relief, they need real relief.”

It’s understandable that Obama’s opinion doesn’t carry much weight with ol’ Hil, but neither does any of the economists who say removing the tax will just cause the gas prices to rise and make the oil companies more money.

Why doesn’t cutting the gas tax this summer make sense? It’s Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied. Cut taxes, and all that happens is that the pretax price rises by the same amount. The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers.

Hillary, of course, has a witty response to this

Sen. Clinton has been undeterred by the outcry. “Well I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to put my lot in with economists,” she said over the weekend. “We’ve got to get out of this mindset, where somehow, elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans.”

Being the “man of the people” she is, she just isn’t going to trust all of those crazy scientists with their numbers, figures, calculators and such.

Hmm… so let’s take a look at this as your average guy who is NOT an economist.

In the last year US Gas prices have risen $0.559 to a nationwide average of $3.613 per gallon. The federal gas tax rate is 18.4 cents per gallon. This means that, on average, right now, even if we get a ‘tax holiday, and even if the price of gas doesn’t increase to absorb this tax, you and I are paying $0.374 more per gallon of gas than we did last May. In the mean time, the economy has been slow and we are not making any more money than we did last summer. If we DON”T go on vacation, and buy, say 15 gallons of gas a week, and we have a tax holiday, our summer is going to cost us $67 more than it did last year. If we don’t get the tax holiday, the difference will only be $33.12.

Remember, the average price of gas is $3.613 per gallon, reducing the price by $0.184 is only a 5.1% discount in price. Heck, I can get almost that much by using my Safeway card.

All of the math, figuring, analysis and speculation aside, what I really love about this is Hillary’s disdain for the educated people. The democrats have spent the last eight years for Bush’s alleged low intelligence, and generally ridiculing conservatives in general for skepticism about Global Warming, belief in Intelligent Design. Now one of their two chosen candidates, arguably an elitist intellectual herself, is telling us we shouldn’t listen to these elitist intellectuals. She’s saying that she, as a lawyer and politician, knows more about what’s going to happen than trained economists.

The whole thing reminds me of a joke from the old Soviet Russia days:

Why do policemen always walk the streets in teams of three?

The partners in the police team are always chosen in such a way that one of them knows how to read, the other how to write, and the third one, naturally, has to keep watch over those two intellectuals.

Thankfully, Hillary Clinton is here to keep us safe from those educated people.

Popularity: 9%

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Looks like Greeley has lost a couple more small businesses recently. Not sure how long they’ve been this way, but the signs are gone both from Young’s Cafe, just off 10th by Walmart, and Walrus Ice Cream in the King Soopers Parking lot off 35th Ave.

While I personally did not patronize either establishment on a regular basis (prefer the Wonderful Inn to Young’s, and really, who can go out for Ice Cream that often), but both were quality and I enjoyed their products when I did go there. Always tough to see Greeley any business, especially independent ones like these.

Popularity: 6%

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In the spring of 2006 the Indiana legislature forced the whole state to observe Daylight Savings Time. Up until this point, the majority of Indiana counties did not change their clocks every year.

This change in the states behavior was studied by University of California-Santa Barbara. Their conclusion? Last year the change COST Indiana residents over $8 Million in electricity bills.

As the Wall Street Journal article states, there is definitely more to the story of Daylight Savings Time. There may be social and other benefits, but the study does fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Turns out Daylight Savings is not an environmentally friendly activity, and is quite likely causing us to waste more energy.

Popularity: 6%

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“This is like deja vu all over again.” - Yogi Berra

The New York Times has an article comparing the late 70’s inflation to our current situation in 2008.

That got me to thinking, the 00s are a lot like the 70s, at least from a national perspective.

• Early 70s, the US was caught in a foreign war that was sucking the economy dry and causing civil unrest at home.
• 00s, the US is caught in a foreign war that is sucking the economy dry and causing civil unrest at home.

• 1979, unrest in the mideast caused oil prices to jump and created higher fuel prices/gas shortages.
• 00s, unrest in the mideast and global demand for oil causes oil prices to jump to over $100 a barrel.

• 1976, a country shocked by two tems of Republican incompetence elect a democrat to office.
• 2008, a country shocked by two terms of Republican incompetence will likely elect a democrat to office.

I could think of some more, but it’s interesting we haven’t really learned any lessons in the last 30 years. Looks like this country is repeating more of the same. The next president, republican or democrat, is going to have a long road. They will inherit a complete mess, and likely by demonized for issues beyond their control with the 2012 election rolls around.

Popularity: 8%

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