"Bar-onomics"

[Update: Fixed source--New York Magazine, not The New Yorker]
[Note: I have simply copied and pasted the entire article (go here for original) from New York Magazine because it is so short.]

So you want to open a bar, huh? A profitable bar? We asked four experts to run the numbers on a make- believe, 1,000-square-foot neighborhood pub in the East Village.

• By Beth Shapouri
• Published May 17, 2009

Start-Up Costs
Rent for six months while waiting on a liquor license: $49,800 (assuming $8,300 a month)
Liquor license and fees: $9,000
Equipment, construction, and demolition: $60,000
Signage: $1,000
Décor and glassware: $21,000
Training for six employees: $858
Initial liquor order: $6,000 (45 percent on beer, 40 percent on liquor, 5 percent on wine, 10 percent on mixers)
Sound system: $1,000
Emergency funds: $50,000
Misc.: $2,000
TOTAL . . . . . . . $200,658

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Ongoing Monthly Costs
Rent: $8,300
Booze: $10,000
Insurance: $500
Misc.: $1,900
Staff pay: $1,720 (assuming 100 hours a week at $4.30 an hour)
Utilities: $1,320
Taxes and fees: $1,000
TOTAL . . . . . . . . $24,740

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The Markups
Draft beer: $3.59 a pint
Bottled beer: $3.85 a bottle
Well liquor: $4.65 a pour
Top-shelf liquor: $3.35 a pour
Wine: $3.48 a glass

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Break-Even Point
Amount you’d have to gross in 18 months before you start turning a profit: $645,978 (monthly expenses of $24,740 for 18 months, or $445,320, plus start-up costs of $200,658)
Number of customers required per night to reach $645,978 in 18 months (assuming $5 per average drink and 1.5 drinks per person): 160

killing time at work

I really liked this article, which is basically a roundup of thoughts on how the recession is affecting New York.

The parts I found especially interesting are about how the negative psychological effects of being laid off are carried with you for years to come, and that being laid off now hurts your income potential 10 years from now. From personal experience, I can tell you that while I’m in a MUCH better place emotionally than I was during my three months of unemployment, the depression I felt then still sorta hangs with me (the article calls it “scarring”). The piece also discusses a study revealing that kids who graduate college during a recession have a lower earning potential throughout their entire careers than those who don’t (great). In the end, though, you get to read about John Sexton being verbose, creating absurd acronyms, and – one can only assume – hugging the reporter.

A few quick links.

Let's get the blogging week started with a few interesting pages to check out:

• Nate Silver's writeup of "So Just Who Did Vote For The Bailout?" - A lot of interesting stuff in this one, including a statistical analysis of factors contributing to voting patterns on the first bailout bill last year and a brief discussion of the implications of writing one's own definitions of terms like Progressive.
• The Daily Beast - "The Best of Blago" - He is not only crazy; he has the ability to take legitimate literary quotations and warp them to suit his purposes. Wonderful spin, Rod.
• Bit.ly - An alternative to the Tiny URL service, Bit.ly has all of the same features, but is also copying (in their entirety), cataloging, and organizing all sites that users create shortened URLs for. It will take a while or the benefits to pan out (beyond the link-shortening, that is), but it should be interesting to see what researchers can pull off with that amount of information.
• Red Bull Snowscrapers - On February 5 a bunch of professional snowboarders will be jumping off a 90' ramp built in East River Park. Carly and I drove past this last week and saw the main ramp being built. The ramp is pretty cool, with the main support being provided by stacked shipping containers (see photo below). I kind of want to figure out a way to see this from afar so I don't have to hang out with a bunch of snowboarders to see one person jump this. Check out this site for more pictures of the actual ramps.
  

• Update: I also meant to include the fact that Texas dealt a blow to creationism in a recent schoolboard ruling.
  

Gillibrand

Thoughts?

I don't really know anything about her (I have a new goal to become a little more informed about NY politics), but she seems qualified - which is more than I could say about Caroline K - and this article endears me to her a bit - the partisan flexibility, the "Sunshine Report," etc. Do you guys know more about her?

Go Away Charlie Rangel

We already knew that he sucks (tax evasion as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is tough to explain) and now he's reintroducing legislation to reintroduce the draft. It'll never pass, but he still sucks.

A new sin tax

To begin: "A study by the Centre for Science in the Public Interest showed that soft drinks were the single biggest contributor to calories in the American diet [...]"

That's right, soda beat out meat, starches, grains, fruits, and vegetables; it beat candy, cookies, and cakes. That quotation makes me feel uncomfortable drinking a soda, even if I am able to ignore the various environmental reasons for avoiding the drinks (e.g. creation of plastic bottles and draining of aquifers near bottling plants, particularly in impoverished areas in other countries (e.g. India)).

Now it seems as if Gov. Patterson is trying to change this frustrating/disgusting consumption pattern. Under Patterson's new budget plan for 2009, "[...] consumers will have to pay an 18% tax on non-diet sodas and sugary drinks." Obviously this faces resistance from drink companies and the American Beverage Association, but I am all for this policy. Sin taxes are (or at least should be) designed to discourage behavior that has a demonstrable negative effect on the person or a negative spillover effect on the community as a whole (e.g. soda leads to obesity which raises all health care costs). I think that taxing what largely amounts to a luxury good as a manner of both improving the overall level of health in the community and as a budget deficit filler is a fantastic idea. I would love to see the price of soda skyrocket to the point where it becomes as unappealing to consumers as its lasting effects are to those who actually study these effects.

Also, I have no qualms about the fact that this policy is regressive. Poverty is highly correlated with (and sometimes causally linked to) obesity, which is also causally related to soda consumption. At this point soda needs to be made a less appealing option so that money spent on calories is directed at the (slightly) healthier available alternatives as economic pressures force people to buy cheaper foods. I know that the healthy foods are the expensive foods, so it is all the more important that we push people toward the healthier end of their available consumption spectrum as their available spectrum shifts to a lower dollar level. We can take this recession and use it as a tool to shift preferences so that they take into account the true cost of the decision to drink soda. Basically, if we can get poor people to make healthy decisions we will be taking a lot of the burden off our health care system, which helps everyone and will hopefully create a positive-feedback loop that leads to lower levels of poverty (as, say, total time out of work due to poor medical treatment declines).

In the end I am actually also just happy to have another, better excuse to quit drinking soda. I hope that was coherent; I am very cold and it is pretty early.