What’s Ferrari got that other car companies don’t? What is it about Ferrari that allows them to build fantastically expensive and completely impractical cars just to end up with a waiting list of buyers, some who go years waiting for their vehicles—if they come at all?
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Archive for July, 2007Since the 1970s, economists have been observing the dropping costs of everyday items such as clothing, electronics, and food. Lower costs for these kinds of items are usually considered the spoils of globalization due to free trade and technology innovation. For the past two decades or so, we’ve also heard more and more about the implications of all this easy access to daily necessities: overly materialistic kids, a “throw-away” culture, and epidemic health problems from too much junk food. In his recent book, The Challenge of Affluence, Avner Offer, a professor of economic history at Oxford University, suggests that chasing affluence creates a ‘hedonic treadmill’ or ‘rat race.’ Offer explains, “If these rewards arrive faster than the disciplines of prudence can form, then self-control will decline with affluence.…New rewards are compelling, while their costs are not yet known.” |
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