Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Value of Obama's Words 2008 to 2014: A Supply and Demand Analysis

Supply and demand analysis is the economist's tool for explaining changes in value over time. Below is a S&D chart helping us understand what happened to the value of the words uttered by President Obama. 

In 2008 the President's words had high value as shown at the intersection of the Supply of O-words in 2008 with the Demand for O-words in 2008. 


The chart shows that the demand for O-words remains unchanged in 2014 but the change on the diagram is the large increase in his spoken words in his many speeches -- as shown by a rightward shift in the O-Supply Curve in 2014.

The result is a glut of words and therefore a drop in the value of his words. If my quantitative estimates are correct, the O-Supply Curve shifted enough to drive down the value of his words into negative territory.

A negative word value means that the President would have to pay people to listen to him. This puts him in the same league with Mel Gibson and your mother-in-law. I think that people of both parties agree with this analysis.

6 comments:

  1. However, his value of words goes up when you connect the ability to create a distraction from the real issues....and so does the cost of traveling to cool places with his family in the name of making yet another speech and distraction.

    Change....but little did we know what that really meant.

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    1. I disagree James. It is simple economics. If you flood a market with goods relative to demand, the price goes down. :-)

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  2. A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. Obviously, his words ain't fitly spoken because they ain't golden and silver.

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    1. I prefer supply and demand but I think I git yer drift Fuzz.

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  3. This comment is from CHARLES not from Larry

    Dear LSD. Products/services of better quality will/should be more competitive in the price/value spectrum relative to offerings of lesser quality even a lower prices. The drop in Obummer’s oratory value is unsurprising because the quality of his oratory is less than low—it’s negative—and decreases in direct correlation to the increase in volume. Lies and lying do not qualify as quality oratory. He is a bold-faced, unabashed, prolific, and prolonged liar. Apparently, the graph shows that folks don’t want to hear his BS anymore.

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  4. Charles,

    Your point is made diagrammatically by shifting the demand curve down in 2014. That results in an even lower negative price as well as a smaller quantity bought and sold.

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