{"id":134,"date":"2006-09-09T15:14:20","date_gmt":"2006-09-09T19:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/?p=134"},"modified":"2006-09-09T15:17:55","modified_gmt":"2006-09-09T19:17:55","slug":"911-and-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/?p=134","title":{"rendered":"9\/11 and Economics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s WSJ has an interesting page 1 article: Economic Fears After 9\/11 Proved Mostly Unfounded<\/a>. It begins as follows:<\/p>\n

\n

After terrorists attacked the U.S. five years ago, many worried that the economy would lose its hard-won vitality. Companies would need to hire security staff instead of production workers, build up costly inventories and face delays as goods moved across tightened borders.<\/p>\n

This is what has happened instead: The number of security guards on business and government payrolls has declined, companies are holding less inventory, and the amount of freight moving though the nation’s ports has soared. Not only has the economy grown, it has become more efficient. And office construction in downtown New York and Washington has continued.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know that I, as a consumer, feel the economic warm-fuzziness, but that’s most likely a result of other personal factors — two of us are driving much newer vehicles than we used to (and four of us now drive, as opposed to two, pre-9\/11), we began about then the practice of taking the family on a big ski trip every year, and we’ve now taken on college costs for one child.<\/p>\n

Oh — and I quit my job about midway through the last five years. Freelancing is a wonderful thing, but it requires a couple of disciplines that a “real job” does not: finding work, and getting used to the fact that paychecks do not come on certain days (or even certain months). Actually doing <\/em>the work has never been a problem, since I just take on the kinds of work that I enjoy doing to begin with.<\/p>\n

The WSJ piece points out that one of the mitigating factors is that US businesses have invested in technology for a number of years, which enabled them to embrace the philosphies of agile manufacturing and just-in-time delivery.<\/p>\n

U.S. businesses, on average, held inventories equal to a bit more than 43 days’ worth of sales in mid-2001, just before the terrorist attacks. If businesses had decided to build up stocks as a buffer against supply disruptions, the ratio of inventories to sales would have risen. Instead, it fell to under 38 days by mid-2006, as companies used new technology and new business practices to hold less on their shelves for every dollar of sales.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That much is evident to me, even as one lowly and budget-conscious consumer.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I ordered a new laptop, as mine is now nearly four years old and is a bit slow in operations requiring a lot of processing power (high end graphics editing is the best example). The new machine features the brand-new Intel Core 2 Duo processors (30% faster on half the power), along with the usual complement of features that are now standard, like a memory card-reader built-in for my camera, an internal pre-n standard wireless card, DVD writable drive, etc.<\/p>\n

The whole package cost a couple hundred less than the one I’m using now, despite being lighter, faster, and with more features. The online order was confirmed by Dell at 12:16 yesterday afternoon, and when I checked this morning, they’d already finished the custom build and the box is in testing. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have it by the end of next week.<\/p>\n

That means Alpha gets this one, which is entirely fast enough for the limits of her needs for this year. The ancient Sony Vaio she’s now using will go to one of the younger kids (who also have a fairly new and fast desktop when they need it).<\/p>\n

We really have improved efficiency in the face of financial, political, and security uncertainties. We’re going to be just fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s WSJ has an interesting page 1 article: Economic Fears After 9\/11 Proved Mostly Unfounded. It begins as follows: After terrorists attacked the U.S. five years ago, many worried that the economy would lose its hard-won vitality. Companies would need … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}