Editor: Crass Cash
The average American watches 5 hours of tv per day. You might be thinking that your cost in your household for TV is simple the cable, the actual TV, maybe satellite, and even electricity. However, you'd be wrong.
The biggest cost to you and your family is this economic principle known as opportunity costs. I've written on this before, but here's a quick refresher. Opportunity costs is simply what it costs you to do one thing vs another. So it costs you money to watch tv because it prevents you from doing another job. Or starting a home based business. Or acquiring new skills.
About 200,000,000 people in the USA are of working age (between 18-65). 200,000,000 x 5 hours a day x 365 hours a year means that Americans waste over 365 billion hours a year watching tv! That's an astronomical waste of productivity! Imagine if those people were learning a new language, acquiring new skills for another job, spending quality time with family, reading, exercising, etc. How much of a better world this would be if we took that time for better uses??
So how much does this really cost you on a yearly basis? When you figure in a $100 cable bill, electricity, a $500 tv depreciated over 5 years and a minimum wage job that you could be working instead. It comes up to the whopping amount of $16,812.25 per year. Span that over working life and you come with a compounded amount of $5,534,920! And folks that's in today's dollars (adjusted for inflation). They call it the boob tube for a reason people. Because the people that watch it the most are fucking stupid!
The biggest cost to you and your family is this economic principle known as opportunity costs. I've written on this before, but here's a quick refresher. Opportunity costs is simply what it costs you to do one thing vs another. So it costs you money to watch tv because it prevents you from doing another job. Or starting a home based business. Or acquiring new skills.
About 200,000,000 people in the USA are of working age (between 18-65). 200,000,000 x 5 hours a day x 365 hours a year means that Americans waste over 365 billion hours a year watching tv! That's an astronomical waste of productivity! Imagine if those people were learning a new language, acquiring new skills for another job, spending quality time with family, reading, exercising, etc. How much of a better world this would be if we took that time for better uses??
So how much does this really cost you on a yearly basis? When you figure in a $100 cable bill, electricity, a $500 tv depreciated over 5 years and a minimum wage job that you could be working instead. It comes up to the whopping amount of $16,812.25 per year. Span that over working life and you come with a compounded amount of $5,534,920! And folks that's in today's dollars (adjusted for inflation). They call it the boob tube for a reason people. Because the people that watch it the most are fucking stupid!
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