Sunday, October 12, 2008

Fitness Clubs

Fitness Clubs and spas, which most people consider a luxury, are generally the first businesses to suffer during an economic slow down. This is a well known phenomena.

Derreck read my last snide post as a defense of AIG, when it was meant as a defense of AIG's sending execs to a spa after the bailout.

The reasoning behind a bailout is that it reduces the hardships of all the businesses in a supply chain. Apparently, AIG had been sending execs on junkets on a regular basis. Resorts hosting these junkets were part of AIG's supply chain. The Monarch Beach resort is likely to have a lousy fourth quarter as people cut their spa expenses.

I don't get this thing where we are supposed to be filled with rage about a bailout doing what a bailout is supposed to do.

If we are mad, we should be mad at the bailout in general, and not the fact that AIG sent some execs to a spa.

On the wealth envy side of the equation, has anyone else noticed how Democrats lavish themselves with bath houses? That God-Awfully ugly structure at Kimball Junction is county owned health club. I suspect that 90% of the patrons of the club are socialist leaning Democrats. The fitness facilities at new public high schools put Gold's Gym to shame.

If you add together all of the publicly owned golf courses, fitness facilities, aquatic centers, etc.; you would find that the public sector outspends corporations on spa type perks several fold. Yet we have been trained by the intelligentsia to ooze with wealth envy when private business spend money on fitness related services, even despite the fact that such money is a drop in a bucket compared to what the state spends on its publicly owned facilities.

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