The Unintended Economic Consequences of a Daily Arriving Newspaper

Here's my question of the day for you, dear diligent reader - Can the decline in newspaper subscriptions, in the last few years, be responsible for the several quarters of economic growth that the US has enjoyed? What else could explain the growth that the US has had despite an extraordinarily inept administration with a one-tone economic policy ("lowering taxes brings growth")? And conversely, if the economy slows does it make sense to stop your newspaper subscriptions?

Here's where I'm coming from...Sometime late one night, in the last week of March, my fingers hovered over my keypad. Frozen by indecision. Or by the magnitude of the decision they were about to type-off on. I was on the NY Times subscription page - about to fill in the details of my credit card to allow the dead-tree version of the newspaper to start arriving at my doorstep on a daily basis. I was nervous that if seen to be complacent under the assumption that I had cut frequent travel from my life for good (as symbolised by a daily subscription), I'd be served another huge dollop of it by fate.

I'm still getting used to the changes - drastic ones - in my daily schedule, wrought by my recently changing jobs. I actually get to sleep in my own bed, for most of the week, a lot of weeks; can work from home ever so often and actually generally start and finish at reasonable hours. So much so that, actually reading the newspaper no longer feels like an achievement. Procuring it, however, still seemed like solving a daily linear optimization problem - run to the nearest C-store or starbucks to buy a paper before the first call in the morning while also trying to maximise sleeping time. Not easy.

After several minutes of hesitation I decided to tempt the gods of mischief and sign up for daily delivery for the next three months. A few days after that fateful March night, on April Fools Day, to be precise, the NYT started arriving at my doorstep. And its been doing that regularly ever since. Everyday. Day after day. And after nearly a month of this, I've started noticing some rather surprising, unexpected changes that I think may be exacerbating the recent slowing down of the US economy. Its caused me to stop and think - and I shamelessly borrow stylistically from Carrie Bradshaw here - Can gaining a daily NY Times subscription lose me my monthly salary?

Here's three ways in which a daily subscription have lowered my contribution to economic growth:

a) Bringing my coffee consumption down to a trickle: For the last two years I've been spending an average of $150 per month at Starbucks' ubiquitous cafes. No more...I no longer have to start my day running to the nearest Starbucks to pick up the NY Times and also picking up a caramel machchiato and a random flavour of reduced fat coffee cake. Now that I get my paper at home, I've been to a Starbucks maybe 3 times in the last one month. The savings pay for the subscription many times over just on that one count but obviously aren't helping our consumption driven economy.

b) 'Zen'ding my spiritual upliftment costs into limbo: Now I don't have to deal with the stress of finding my daily Times-fix. Combined with the improvements in my work-life balance thats caused me to indefinitely defer my plans to rejoin meditation classes at the SF Buddhist Center. Thats another $100 per quarter saved - even on a sliding scale contribution system! btw I'd highly recommend the Center for non-subscribing NY Times readers :)

c)Tightening my spending on reading material: On days when I was running late for work, I'd have to skip my Starbucks-NY Times stop in the mornings. By the time I got to a news-stand or cafe later in the day, half-crazed by my paper-news withdrawal symptoms, I'd end up buying more than just the Times. The beneficiaries of my addiction ranged from the Financial Times to (I'm ashamed to admit) the right-wing rag WSJ and once even the Spanish language version of People magazine (I thought it would help me practice my rapidly rusting Spanish). Now of course, those medical emergencies don't occur - saving me $10-15 every month (I used to run late quite often :) And this doesn't even include the 50% discount for 3 months I got for the NY Times subscription itself...a $75 hit in NYT's revenues.

There will undoubtedly be sceptics who scoff at whether one person's reduced spending could impact something as large as the US economy. I would respectfully suggest that they read up on the history of the First World War. It took one shot in Sarajevo to start a 4 year global conflict. So if you're in a job that's easily outsource-able in a recession, my suggestion would be cancel that newspaper subscription already! Of course, buying a new house with savings you probably don't have, would help too.