The Homa Files

Recently, I placed an Amazon order for a pair of shoes … checked ‘free shipping’ (not Prime) … and it took 10 days for the order to arrive on my doorstep.

Why is that important”

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 now rely on my Ultimate Economic Indicator (UEI). An indisputable measure of economic activity …

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

Here’s the logic: When placing a non-Prime 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.

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 1 or 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.

Well, it took 10 days for me to get my shoes.

That tells me that either (1) Amazon is really trying to sign-ups for revenue producing Amazon Prime, or (2) the economy is still steaming along.

My bet’s on the latter… warnings of a recession have been very premature.

Merry Christmas!

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This entry was posted on December 16, 2019 at 6:59 am and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.