Call me optimistic if you wish, but as the title states, the numbers simply don’t add up in my books. By this, I mean the recession. Let’s take a look at some facts.
Apple
Apple announced their fiscal first-quarter earnings Wednesday and beat out analyst’s estimates. Net income was $1.61 billion in the three months that ended on December 27. Compare this to $1.58 billion the previous year.
“Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history,” Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs said in a statement.
It seems clear to me that Apple has chosen not to participate in the recession.
Video Games
Strangely enough, the video game industry recorded its best year ever during the midst of a recession, pulling in $21.33 billion in sales. According to this article, the Nintendo Wii sold 2.15 million consoles in December. The DS posted a record month with over 3 million units being sold.
Nintendo wasn’t the only one to set records this past year. Microsoft did very well for themselves with the Xbox 360, recording their best year ever for the gaming console. Microsoft sold 8 million consoles in 2008, bringing its total 360 sales up to 28 million since it was released three years ago. Microsoft’s online system, Xbox Live, netted more than 17 million members in 2008. At roughly $50 for a year subscription, that’s quite a bit of money.
Sporting Events
The 2009 BCS National Championship Game set a record for attendance in Dolphin Stadium with a crowd of 78,468.
Pay-per-view fights also did very well in 2008. The top North American PPV was Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao on December 6, which pulled in 1.25 million buys. Coming in second was the UFC’s Brock Lesnar vs. Randy Couture on November 15, which saw 1.01 million watchers.
The Super Bowl is just around the corner, and I’d be willing to bet tickets are hard to come by. Oh, and those insanely priced 30-second commercial spots? Yeah, they are still planning to sell out this year.
Presidential Inauguration
Last but not least, we have the presidential inauguration that took place just a few days ago. I read a bit over at How I Save Money which actually gave me the idea for this blog post. Lulu reported that the inauguration was going to cost upwards of $160 million.
It wasn’t this figure that got me to thinking so much as the sheer amount of people that attended the event. And just how many people attended?
“Today’s Washington Post analysis of the inauguration of President Barack Obama contains an estimate of the crowd on the National Mall — 1.8 million people … The National Park Service does not contest the crowd estimate and will use the figure of 1.8 million attendees when we refer to the inaugural in the future.”
This clearly beats the previous record of 1.2 million for Lyndon Johnson’s inauguration by a lot. Now, I understand that people have their various reasons for wanting to see the inauguration of Obama in person… but, surely it must have cost a lot of money for each person to attend. Grated you didn’t already live in D.C. or a nearby area, you would have to shell out bucks for airfare, hotel and food, not to mention the lost wages from taking off work.
Wrap-Up
So what is my point with this post? Again, I remain firm that things aren’t as bad as the media claim. How could all of these records be set in a year of a recession? And these aren’t even necessities, they are all entertainment! One would think if this was the worst economic time since the Great Depression, American’s could find more productive and lucrative things to do than buy iPhones, play video games, attend sporting events or order expensive pay-per-view events.
