This is going to be an unpopular note but . . .
IMO NBC News is right, and the commenter is being histrionic.
Like it or not, but we live in a society that uses money (this is not a strictly capitalist thing). If you recall your microeconomics class you might remember that currency is a unit of measurement (like Celsius or inches). The original story is making a point about how disruptive the eclipse was to our “normal” lives. What other universal way is there to measure changes like that? Utils?
NBC (headline) didn’t say it cost $700M and it was bad. Nor did it say it cost $700M and it was good.
The tone of the article probably went where we think it went.
You could talk about man hours worth of enjoyment or recreation. Or if you want to stay in the money realm, the amount of tourism it generated. Or travel, hotel accommodations/revenue, or related merchandise.
The framing of “it cost us” inherently implies a negative. Cost implies liability.
I’d still disagree.
The core premise is that average worker productivity on eclipse day will dip by 1/24th (assuming 20 mins of “eclipse break” on a 8 hour workday).
And that’s BS on several fronts.
For one, many people have taken days off (PTL or similar) or move their break to the eclipse, which is already accounted for in the averaged productivity statistic.
Second, people in positions they can’t just leave (factory workers on an assembly line, cashiers etc.) will often have to skip on the eclipse.
And people who can leave (I’m thinking of white collar desk jobs here), are often spending a similar amount of worktime off-desk on other days, too, for a myriad of only indirectly productive reasons (networking, thinking on a thorny problem over a smoke…).
The formula assumes
- that all of the American workforce spends every minute of their 8 hour day actively working on their desk/station/etc.
- that every minute they don’t, is “lost”, work-wise.
- that all of that workforce is on the job during eclipse time, but will take a paid break during the actual eclipse
All of which are questionable at best.
