people at three different socioeconomic levels in Mumbai
(Source: video.ft.com)
Posts tagged with spending
The Equation of Life
s/rent/mortgage/ors/rent/landowner's share of tenant's crops/- et cetera, et cetera, mutatis mutandi, et ceteraaaa, et ceteraaa
hi-res
Since 1970, by contrast, the explosive growth in consumer credit has had the opposite effect, helping consumers fall prey to their lack of self-control when it comes to borrowing. In recent years, one-third of [American] holiday spending is still not paid off two months after Christmas.
Joel Waldfogel
(Source: Slate)
—chalked on a sidewalk at my college, years ago
I was reading economics at the time, so it made a lot of sense to cast the preference in terms of isoutility curves. As long as the level curves of 𝓤 over (consumption, leisure) space are sufficiently close to parallel the consumption axis, the above suggestion is rational, even optimal.
In terms of partial derivatives, ∂𝓤 / ∂leisure > ∂𝓤 / ∂consumption at many points in (consumption, leisure) space. More to the point, the directional gradient along the budget constraint points leisureward even at the expense of consumption, for a meaningfully large fraction of the segment.
