Issue 23, Fall 2002

William A. McEachern, Editor

The Evidence File

How do bloggers support themselves? A few are hosted and paid for by a larger site. For example, Mickey Kaus writes the Kausfiles, which appear in Slate (http://slate.msn.com). Some sites accept voluntary contributions through one of the online payment systems, such as PayPal and the Amazon Honors System, which takes payments of as little as $1.00 (Amazon charges the site 15% of the total contribution plus $0.15 per transaction). Some bloggers promote their own books and some sell T-shirts and other stuff with the blog's logo. Blogs with enough visitors can advertise. For example, Andrew Sullivan, a pundit and former editor of The New Republic, has banner ads on his blog www.AndrewSullivan.com. He also accepts donations and says that the 230,000 people he reaches a month have put his blog in the black (he reportedly averages $6,000 a month in contributions). Most bloggers appear to earn nothing for their effort, other than the publicity and the satisfaction from spouting off.

In 1945, at the end of World War II, the price of gasoline in the United States averaged 15 cents a gallon and milk, 62 cents a gallon. So gas was less than a quarter the price of milk. Gas now averages about $1.40, and milk $2.50, so gas costs more than half as much as milk. Compared to its 1945 price, gas now costs about nine times as much and milk about twice as much. By way of comparison, the consumer price index (1982-1984 = 100) has increased tenfold from 18 in 1945 to about 180 today. And the minimum hourly wage increased thirteen-fold from $0.40 in 1945 to $5.15 today (though it's higher in some states).

It's always heartening when other disciplines employ economics. The Journal of Economic Entomology focuses on the economic significance of insects, with titles such as "Efficacy Tests and Determination of Optimal Spray Timing Values to Control Nantucket Pine Tip Moth Infestations" and "Economic Injury Levels for Western Flower Thrips on Greenhouse Cucumbers." Tables of contents for recent years and a selection of articles can be found at http://esa.edoc.com/0022-0493/.

Finally, in the there's-no-disputing-tastes department, here are some ice-cream flavors sold in Japan: fried eggplant, horseradish, miso (soybean paste), cactus, ox tongue, chicken wings, octopus, squid, crab, shrimp, eel, and saury (a saltwater fish). Details and packaging can be found at http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/japano/0207/ice-cream/1.html, the site for the Mainichi Daily News, the English language site of the Japanese newspaper.

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