....LMB: ""Time is Money" is Clever PR"....
May 30, 2002
I noticed yesterday that several news websites had picked up a story with a strange mathematical formula at the top:
I ignored it till a friend forwarded me the whole story. The above formula is new equation by ecconomist professor Ian Walker, of Warick Univeristy in England. The "W"= your hourly wage, the "t"= your tax rate, and the "C"= your local cost of living. Plug in the numbers and you can calculate "V", how much an hour of your time is worth in hard currency. Gleeful news editors could now print this press release verbatim, with cute headlines like "Time Really Is Money".
This whole story baffled me. First of all, the formula doesn't exactly work (it presumes that all money paid in taxes is lost, when most folks do receive some return on their tax money in the form of public services). But more importantly, why was this story getting printed at all? This is not new scholarship, it's a simple economic principle called "opportunity cost." I learned about it in junior high school. At any given moment, you could be out making money, or doing something that won't make you money. Simple as that. So why is this news?
After a bit of digging (especially in non-American sources), I found out another angle on this formula. If you read the CNN article above, you'll notice a "How much is your time worth?" link. The link takes you to a simple web form that will calculate how much your time is worth per hour and per minute, how much it "costs" you to brush your teeth and make dinner.
And of course, the telling thing is where the calculation site is located: the website for Barclaycard, a UK-based credit card line offered by financial conglomerate the Barclays Group. And if we look at our UK news coverage, we learn that Barclaycard commissioned Prof. Walker to come up with the formula in the first place.
The whole thing appears to be a news hook for a new Barclaycard ad campaign that focuses on "helping you make the most of your time." Like I've said, half the job of public relations is to disguise advertising as news.
And the other half is to make "unpleasant" news disappear altogether.
As someone whose life has been turned upside down by credit card debt ($18,000 accrued in six years, across six cards, now all closed and currenly undergoing credit counseling and monthly consolidated payments) this makes me ill...but not the least bit surprised.
These people's financial well-being is directly tied to your ignorance of basic mathematics and statistics. No surprise that they're turning out a "formula" for the value of your time: they know that no one they are actually targeting as a consumer for their product (i.e., someone who would never use credit cards) will actually apply it.
Sick.
Posted by: michele at May 30, 2002 05:51 PMDear Michele,
Like you I could not calc this formula.
I am starting to question this formula..
How is the (cost of living) C derived.
Please let me know if I can speak with you on this formula.
Maybe, I forgot my Algebra ; I don't know ??
Best,
Micahel Perry
Las Vegas, NV.
702-434-6728
