The Crossed Pond has long been one of my favorite blogs. Here’s a recent post I liked a lot:
I belatedly realized that I needed a calculator today so after quick stop by a gas station to try my luck, I ended up in my local Walmart. I was in a bit of hurry so I asked a very nice lady where I could find the calculators and was pleasantly surprised when it was much closer than where I would have gone if I didn’t ask. I made my way to the aisle and pondered my options. Because it looked to be a familiar style, I grabbed a Casio that was priced at $4.97 and was just about to double back to the registers when I noticed something on the top shelf that had exactly the same features like memory recall but was priced at a mere dollar. I quickly exchanged the one that was priced five times higher and headed out.
As I sat admiring my new purchase a few minutes later, I was struck by just how amazing this little piece of hardware really was. It’s about 20% bigger than a credit card and is encased in a rather attractive translucent case. This translucency allowed me to notice the interior guts of the calculator and got me thinking. Within the price point of a dollar, this little device had somehow managed to include an eight digit liquid crystal display, a little solar panel, a battery, a pcb board with attached cables from the buttons to the board and from the board to the screen, a system of buttons and a backing for them that transmits their signal and of course actual calculator microchip itself. It doesn’t have the largest of screens or the biggest battery and the whole device is only about half an inch thick at the thickest point. Yet it’s got nice soft buttons that do things accurately on the screen when I press them. Yet somehow, this marvel was able to be sold to me for a dollar.
That dollar includes all of the hardware physically inside of it. It also includes the cost of all of those who handled this device on its journey to me. Aside from manufacturing and the initial assembly, portions of that dollar were spent on transporting this all the way across the Pacific and then inland from container box to semi truck to the back area of Walmart where someone actually unpacked it and put it on the shelf for me to buy. This was all done for less than 100 pennies. Think about that for a moment.
Ain’t modern life grand?
Now, when people on the left hear me say things like this, they often seem to conclude that I must be speaking in code.
What I must be saying — truly, deep down — is that the poor should be happy with what they have. That all great concentrations of wealth are held justly and should be preserved as national treasures. That ours is the best of all possible worlds. And that you should all vote Republican.
Surely this is the most probable interpretation, right? I mean, what else could it be? Pocket calculators are so pedestrian. They’re not grand. They don’t make big explosions. They don’t last forever. They don’t even impress the neighbors. Pocket calculators are the most non-monumental objects around.