Posts Tagged ‘economics’

Bud Light and the Jon Sable Rule

Posted: June 8, 2023 by datechguy in culture, economy, Uncategorized
Tags: ,

Jon Sable: I get twenty five percent of anything I recover

Sherman: That’s kind of steep isn’t it?

Jon Sable: Depends on how you look at it. I figure 75% of something is better than 100% of nothing

Jon Sable Freelance Issue 8 1984

I’ve been watching headline after headline over the last several weeks about Bud Light’s sales down 10, 15 25% or more and for a lot of conservatives like me I find it very satisfying. The hit they have taken and will continue to take has resulted in headlines that are even more important, like this one:

In interviews with various executives, it is made clear that these companies are calculating all the costs and benefits of speaking out on a given topic. At least one company “uses an internal scoring system to determine if, and when, it makes sense for the company to comment on matters that may offend some of its customers and employees or affect its brands.” In light of recent events, though, this company “reexamined an older evaluation process.”

This is all to the good and if your goal is to stop companies from jumping onto the left’s bandwagon it’s a welcome development.

But if you are thinking this is going to cause Bud light to apologize or actually go under, forget it.

There is no way they are going to do so because they rightly figure all this will do is bring down the wrath of the left establishment who while smaller are relentless and supported by traditional and social media.

Secondly they’re not sure that this will get them back the customers they’ve lost. Bud light has become a symbol of something a vast swath of the population hates and too much time has passed for this to change.

But the third reason is the biggest one, and that’s the math.

Let’s assume that Anheuser-Busch is selling 25% Less Bud light then they did a year ago, that still means that they are selling 75% of the beer they were selling.

Now that 25% drop is a big deal when all that beer is already in the loop, but now enough time has passed so AB could cut production so you don’t have 1 out of every four bottles of Bud Light going bad.

Does that mean less profits, well sure. When you sell 75% of what you were selling a year ago that hurts your bottom line. Particularly if you’re producing 25% more of a product then you need.

But if you’re selling 75% of what you were a year ago and PRODUCING 75% less then you’re still making that profit on that 75% and not taking the loss on excess production and labor.

Would they rather be selling what they were before? Sure they would , but I think these guys aren’t going to take chances and let’s face it there are plenty of companies who would kill to have the level of sales that 75% of Bud Light’s former sales are.

Yeah we’ll still have fun headlines and even great stories like this:

The cousins founded Appalachian Mountain Brewery (AMB) in 2011 in their early 20s. They entered a partnership with the Craft Brew Alliance and eventually became part of Anheuser-Busch’s craft beer portfolio. AMB became known as the first brewery in Boone.

Recently, AMB became the first craft brewers to ever buy themselves back from Anheuser-Busch in a move that signals a win for the little guy in the beer circuit and another step forward for the state’s beer scene. Asheville has one of the highest amounts of breweries per capita in the U.S.

But the reality is that Bud Light as a brand isn’t going to die, it will be smaller and make less than it did, but it will still be alive and make a profit, just not as big as they used to.

As Ace Rothstein said at the end of the Movie Casino:

But in the end I wound up right back where I started. I could still pick winners and I could still make money for all kinds of people back home. So why mess up a good thing? So That’s that.

If only NY and Mass. had ended celibacy they would not have lost seats in redistricting

Posted: December 22, 2010 by datechguy in catholic, congress
Tags: , , , , , , ,

A few weeks ago a column by Bonnie Erbe to nobody’s surprise who is paying attention (PBS on their online site actually refers to her as “non-partisan” which says more about PBS than it does about her) noted church closing in the East and painted it as a result of the old church orthodoxy:

Dogmatic, dictatorial churches do not resound with today’s spirituality, and young people are not clamoring to join them. So sending a message that says, in essence, “Follow my rules or go to hell” might be a good way of retaining older parishioners used to such harsh boundaries. But as elderly parishioners die off, they take the church’s message with them.

I live in a city where 4 Catholic churches recently closed and it is a shame to see churches close in NY and other urban areas, yet lets look at Dave Weigel’s column today about redistricting which links to this rather good 8 decade chart at the NY Times and what do we see? We see a flight of people not from the church but in general from particular states.

More and more of the faithful youth are fleeing high tax liberal states and settling elsewhere as Michael Barone writes:

Texas’ diversified economy, business-friendly regulations and low taxes have attracted not only immigrants but substantial inflow from the other 49 states. As a result, the 2010 reapportionment gives Texas four additional House seats. In contrast, California gets no new House seats, for the first time since it was admitted to the Union in 1850.

There’s a similar lesson in the fact that Florida gains two seats in the reapportionment and New York loses two.

This leads to a second point, which is that growth tends to be stronger where taxes are lower. Seven of the nine states that do not levy an income tax grew faster than the national average. The other two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, had the fastest growth in their regions, the Midwest and New England.

I suspect that if you want to see where the church is growing and thriving just follow that electoral population.

My oldest son is a solid Catholic who is going to college on a full academic scholarship. As soon as he graduates he plans on getting out of this state and I can’t say as I blame him.

So Bonnie rather than your argument concerning the empty churches I would refer you to Stacy McCain’s explaining the demographic facts of life and Ed Driscoll who says this:

And it seems rather difficult to build an emerging Democratic majority when two of the most prominent “liberal” cities in America (very much in name only, given the mammoth regulatory mazes and bureaucratic armies these cities come equipped with) have such poor future demographics. Or as Mark Steyn, who inspired our headline above with this classic 2006 article, wrote about Europe’s similar (and not at all coincidental) demographic woes, “what’s the point of creating a secular utopia if it’s only for one generation?”

As even Illinois, which is among the democratic states losing a congressional seat, is learning you can’t vote the dead if you oppose them being born.

As someone who spends a good chunk of his day visiting small business door to door…

Posted: December 17, 2010 by datechguy in business, DaTechGuy on DaRadio, economy, employment, examiner columns, local stuff
Tags: , , , , , ,

I can tell you for a fact that yesterday killing of the Omnibus spending bill will be cheered by almost every business I’ve talked to as I stated in my Examiner column today:

I submit that if a congressman, state rep or MSM reporter came with me for a week door to door; they would not dare advocate the taxes, spending and regulation that they do.

Read the whole thing as they say.

Why DaTechguy says DaTaxDeal is an excellent political move for the GOP

Posted: December 14, 2010 by datechguy in business, economy, opinion/news, politics
Tags: , , , ,

It’s not often that I disagree with Rush Limbaugh AND Sarah Palin but it is my opinion that the Obama Tax deal is an excellent deal for the GOP and the right, particularly on the political side.

1. The two-year tax cut deal as I’ve already said gives us the ability to constantly bring up a vote to make the tax cuts permanent and put Senate Democrats and the president on the spot again and again and again. (If it passes we get credit, if it fails it becomes a political issue for 2012)

2. Democrats, by extending unemployment save the republicans the tough issue of refusing to extend them. As for paying for it, there is nothing to stop congressional republicans from allocating tarp funds etc to pay for said benefits AFTER Jan 3rd. Also by not including or demanding additional benefits for the 99 week guys it takes it off the table (even liberal democrats didn’t want this extra spending).

3. The individual pork pieces in the bill can be attacked by individual bills during the next session, forcing the left to defending them. Each time the left defends said pork, it becomes an issue for 2012.

4. Thanks to Bernie Sanders filibuster an actual unapologetic socialist is now the iconic image of the left…

4a. …And of course it shows the intransigence of the whole bunch of them in attempting to block this, making the lie over the “compromise” issue. This firmly establishes the idea of democrats unwilling to compromise, (particularly to those who have voted for them in the past whose unemployment benefits are on the line) that we can play up over and over again in the next session. It will be an excellent counter to the media goes that will try to make GOP intransigence an issue. We will answer: “Oh it’s the democrats being just as uncompromising as there were with the president in December.” It shatters the media’s template built carefully over decades.

5. And finally I’d rather have the actual tax rate in place than to simply have a football to kick democrats with. Why give the economy a hit when we don’t have to.

Ted Kennedy was always smart enough to take a piece of what he wanted and then amend it over time. We may have disagreed with Sen Kennedy over issues but tactically we should be just as smart.

Older Entries