The Homa Files

There are a lot of indicators bandied about to ‘prove’ how well or poorly the economy is doing.

There’s GDP, unemployment, CPI, and many, many other metrics.

Sometimes they provide a consistent view of the economy … sometimes they contradict.

Well, I’ve stumbled on the Ultimate Economic Indicator. An indisputable measure of economic activity …

Ken’s UEI: the number of days that it takes a “ships free” order from Amazon to arrive at my door.

Here’s the logic: When placing an order, Amazon projects that  a “ship free” item will be delivered in 7 to 10 days.

Hmmm.

Since I’m a cheapskate, I’ll always take the free shipping option and trade-off fast delivery for free shipping.

Then I started to notice that when the economy  is doing well, the shipments do take a week or so.

But, when business is slow, the shipments arrive 2 days after the order is placed.

Makes sense, since the ship free packages are – in essence – flying standby.

When the economy is steaming, planes and trucks are full and standby packages may hang on the shipping dock for a couple of days.

When business is slow, there’s plenty of space on the planes and trucks, so the standbys catch the first flight.

These days, the press is a steadily improving economy.

But, I’m getting my ships free stuff the day after tomorrow.

Tells me that business is still slow.

Try it out …

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This entry was posted on July 15, 2013 at 6:59 am and is filed under Amazon, Economic indicators, Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.