An Observation from Curious George

Recently I had a class assignment to find a specific edition of a nameless business weekly. Unknown to me, it hadn’t hit the stand yet, needless to say after several stores, Tops, Wegmans, Walmart, Target, and a few others I gave up. At the last store though, frustration building and mumbling to myself, I noticed a pattern; there were only a few business and finance magazines on the shelf, compared to any other topic.

I started looking at the bulk of the magazines by topic. I didn’t do any real count but there were more fashion, and high end luxury magazines then any others, will accept maybe the numerous auto mags, though most of the cars on the covers were luxuries. There were women magazines with articles like, “How to make your man beg” or “Secrets your lover wants you to know”, ironic that these magazines started because of and during the women’s liberation movement. Most had one thing in common; the items were beyond the reach of the average joe, including the ways to “make your man beg”.

What came to me, not in a midsummer nights dream, was that the one topic that creates the possibility of acquiring these luxuries is business and wealth, yet those are the two types of magazines in the shortest supply on the racks. Now the stores only sell what the consumer wants, that in it’s self is telling, but I’m curious to the ratio in “rich” areas. I’d be willing to wager that there are almost as many business/wealth magazines as the other kinds.

I’m not saying there is any thing wrong with this, I just found it interesting, in a “curious” kind of way. Maybe it’s just a consequence of being named George.