I like the Freakonomics podcast quite a bit, and if I could choose a new friend, I think I’d take Steve Levitt, an economist and co-author of the Freakonomics books, who loves golf and McDonald’s and seems to share my disposition.
Every time I hear him speak, I think that we would be fast friends.
Yesterday, I was listening to an episode on flying when I heard Levitt’s co-author and producer and host of the podcast, Steven Dubner (who I also like a lot), open the show by saying:
“It is nearly summertime, which means that you, and just about everybody you know, will soon be getting on an airplane.”
Either Dubner is making an enormous assumption about his audience demographics, or he is living in some kind of bubble where everyone in his world flies to exotic locales during the summer.
While I have friends who are flying places for vacation, I also have friends who have never set foot on a plane once in their lives.
I have friends who can’t afford to take a vacation this summer.
I have friends who don’t have paid vacation as part of their employment.
I have friends who can’t afford airline tickets for their families to fly this summer.
And I will not be getting on a plane this summer, even though I might like to. I’ll be working quite a bit — teaching, speaking, and writing — and we simply can’t afford the four airline tickets to whatever destination we might choose.
“Just about everybody” whom I know is not flying this summer, either. Some are. Some are not. Perhaps this reflects the economic diversity among the people I know, but I don’t think so. I suspect most people who aren’t living in a bubble have friends like mine.
Some of the greater and some of the lesser means.
I love you, Dubner, but that was not a good sentence.
This Post Has 0 Comments
When listening to that same podcast, I also had that same response to that assumption, Matt. So glad I’m not the only one outside of that demographic bubble.