Caveat: Thresholds

There's an article at the new online journal called The Ümlaut about something Tyler Cowen calls the "threshold earner." This is defined as someone who, rather than trying to maximize income, instead chooses an acceptable level of income and adjusts his or her life to stay at that level – i.e., if earning more than that threshold level, he or she can work less hours, or better yet, he or she can change to a less lucrative or maybe more rewarding career.

The article goes on to discuss how this niche of threshold earners is being marketed to – which I find both interesting and uninteresting, depending on which hat I decide to put on. In an older personal incarnation – as a corporate marketing data analyst – I do find it rather fascinating. In my current incarnation – as a half-unfulfilled threshold earner myself – it's depressing and dull to find myself lumped in with Trader Joe's and Uniqlo consumers.

Tj2Hey, now that I think about it… I admit I shopped at Trader Joe's more than a few times when I wasn't a threshold earner, yet now that I am a threshold earner, I don't shop there. Hmm, I wonder, do they really have their demographics right? Or am I just a freakish outlier, regardless of what hat I'm wearing? Or is it just that they don't have Trader Joe's in Goyang, so now I shop at Homeplus and Costco?

Google is amazing. In one minute, I can find a photo (at right) someone posted somewhere of the exact Trader Joe's in Eagle Rock (Northeast Los Angeles on Colorado Boulevard) where I used to shop. It always reminded me of a sort of for-profit coop grocery store (and I yearned for the real coops that abound in Minnesota's Twin Cities or my hometown in Northern California), and that seemed to be the demographic: gentrifying hippies and privatized libruls – and I guess I was one of them.

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