Daniel Gross has proposed the Starbucks Theory of International Economics. In his online Newsweek column, Gross postulates that "the higher the concentration of expensive, nautical-themed faux-Italian branded frappuccino joints in a country's financial capital, the more likely the country is to have suffered catastrophic financial losses. "
This page is intrigued, and wonders if Gross' theory might not be expanded to cities which aren't financial capitals. Vancouver is Canada's hub for Asia-Pacific trade and had its own stock exchange not so long ago. Every industry in British Columbia is reeling, from forestry and mining to tourism and film & television production, as commodity demand falls and the dollar rises. The credit crunch is biting down on chunks of local real estate from condominiums to ski chalets. For those of you scoring at home, Metro Vancouver has 135 Starbucks locations and counting...
2 comments:
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What the hell is that all about?
Interestingly, fivethirtyeight.com uses, among other state demgraphic profiles, a statewide starbucks:walmart ratio. Anything over 2:1 trends toward Obama. I think possibly there's overlap between these two strange facts: the more Starbucks you see, the more likely there's a population of young and well-to-do people around - the same sort of people who might, for instance, be involved in real estate speculation and buying weird securities in larger proportion than the rest of us, who might be a little more financially conservative with our retirement investments. Likewise, you might find the sort of young urban voter who would be in that same Starbucks, whereas the older and more rural might be at a lunch counter in Wal-Mart.
Does Wal-Mart have lunch counters? I can't rememebr the last time I was inside one. Gosh, guess which demographic I fall into? Other than the "young" part. Or, at heart, the "urban" part. But other than that....
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