IT has been a few years since Levitt and Dubner first published Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Courtesy of their number-crunching, readers learned, among other things, who is likely to cheat at work (anyone given enough of an incentive) and why prostitutes earn more than architects (supply and demand).
There are no end of mysteries in the modern age. Take home improvements. The past 20 years have seen a boom in luxury kitchens. At the same time, the consumption of convenience foods has gone through the roof and obesity has mushroomed. Conclusion: kitchens are not being used for cooking. What are they being used for you ask, sitting there in pristine splendour among your glazed units and wooden worktops? Storage. Householders need more cupboard space, or rather back-of-the-cupboard space, to stash all the expensive and ultimately useless gadgets they buy.
Which is why this week's hot consumer news - never mind the Budget - is so depressing. According to Mintel, the retail analyst, the latest must-have is a state-of-the-art coffee maker. Sales of machines that can make cappuccinos and macchiatos have doubled to 1.2 million in the past five years. By 2010 there will be two million, or enough to satisfy Robbie Williams should he ever pop back to Britain for his espresso fix.
A Mintel spokeswoman attributed the increase to what might be called the Starbucks effect. The consumer has become so used to professionally-made coffee from machines that go whoosh, spurt and gurgle that they demand the same thing at home. A machine to sit on the worktop can set a buyer back anything from a couple of hundred to upwards of £3000.
It doesn't matter where the thing sits initially because sooner or later it will be shoved into the darkest corner of the cupboard. For this year's coffee machine read previous years' sandwich toasters, juicers, breadmakers, food mixers, tabletop vacuum cleaners, electronic peppermills, water filter jugs and digital scales. That's just the kitchen. Crammed into bathroom cupboards are more scales, electric toothbrushes, hair clippers and tongs. Lurking in the bedroom, ready to connect with your big toe in the dark, will be an exercise bike, a set of dumbbells and a gym ball. When the amount of stuff reaches the point where it can no longer be stuffed into cupboards there's nothing else for it but to move house.
Some bravehearts, sickened by their acquisitiveness, resolve never to buy another gizmo. Children of the sixties are especially prone to crises of consumer confidence. There are few sadder sights than an old hippie clutching a digital wine thermometer and wondering where it all went wrong. They wanted to change the world, man, not ensure the Chablis was the right temperature. It's not easy to give up the habit, though. One glimpse of a smooth aluminium surface, a touch of a nicely engineered switch, and you're back at the checkout with something that needs 24 hours of charging before first use.
It's a cruel joke. Gadget freaks convince themselves that this or that device will save time, money and effort, generally enhancing the quality of their lives. Coffee machines are a perfect example. Feeling guilty about spending £3 every day in a coffee shop, the gadget-freak buys her own machine. To go with it she needs an insulated mug and coffee beans, both available from the now hated coffee shop, together with a CD for that full Friends experience. For the first few weeks everything is grande latte. Then it becomes tiresome to dismantle the machine for cleaning. The coffee grinder breaks, the CD grows wearily familiar. A month on and the fancy machinery is beginning to gather dust. Then another gadget comes along requiring counter space and it's into the cupboard with the old one.
Gadget buyers shouldn't be judged too harshly. As well as keeping millions in work, they are investing in an idea, a dream of themselves as better, healthier, less stressed, more sociable individuals. Have coffee machine, have friends round for dinner. Have juicer, be Dame Kelly Holmes. If only happiness did come in a pod or with a plug attached. The simple, boring truth is that the finest cup of coffee in the world is the one poured from a battered old flask at the top of a hill just climbed. The most delicious toasties are the ones carried to your sick bed by a loved one. And feeling the need to check the temperature of a bottle of wine before serving is really God's way of telling you to get out more.
Lovely sentiments. I'm sure they would have been more elegantly expressed if the writer had a better laptop. Or her tootsies were soaking in a foot spa. Or her chair had 27 massage settings and speakers in the armrests, pumping out soothing whale songs. Time to fire up the Gaggia and spend a cosy evening on eBay.
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