The Water Dev

The average cost of a new automobile in the USA is currently $47,542. If rice is consistently available at $0.58/lb, and you spent the value of that car on rice, you'd be able to purchase 81,968lbs of rice. At 1,656 calories per cooked pound of rice, 81,968lbs would yield 135,739,008 calories. Assuming 2,000 calories per day, the manifest value in that brand-new automobile could allow you to survive for 67,869 days -- that's 185 years -- on rice alone. Expressing the numbers more realistically, we could halve that to 1,000 calories a day and that 81,968lbs of rice would be a 30-YEAR SUPPLY for a family of SIX. Of course, you cannot survive on 1,000 calories of rice per day -- but let's assume you also buy some meat with all the money you save on the expenses associated with owning that brand-new car you chose not to buy. The average American spends $3,017 on car insurance in a year, spends $1,475/yr on maintenance, and spends $2,148/yr on gasoline. That's $6,640. If the new car would've lasted 10 years (this is the average), that's $66,400. With a national average of $5.58/lb for ground beef according to the BLS, the total value of gas and insurance for that car could purchase 11,899lbs of beef. If beef averages 1100 calories per cooked pound, thats 13,089,605 calories in that 11,899lbs of beef, and if you eat 1000 calories of that per person per day, that's a 13,089-day supply of beef, or about 35 "beef-years." For a family of 6, that's a 6-year supply of beef. All of this is to say that the $113,942 ten-year total cost of an automobile and associated operating expenses contains a tremendous amount of manifest caloric energy. It could allow a family of 6 to sustain themselves for a period of 6 years, and a single man to sustain himself for a period of 35 years at the maximum. There are obviously many holes in this exact schema, but you get the drift. As a general rule, I always try to think of major purchases not in terms of dollars (which is fairly abstract) but in terms of RICE, BEEF, and additionally, potential caloric subsistence over time. And I ask myself -- is this purchase worth relieving myself of money enough to remain alive for X number of months or years? When you start thinking in these terms, the answer is more often "no" than "yes."