Paid subscriptions

Time to pay the piper

This is the announcement that you have all been dreading. The good news is that I plan to have an annual subscription rate of only $30 for those who subscribe before April 30th. After that, new subscribers will pay $40/year, but existing subscribers will be grandfathered in. Even if a few years from now I bump up prices by 10%, the early subscribers would go to just $33, while the late subscribers would pay $44.

After providing many thousands of free posts over the past 17 years, I’ve decided to add a paywall, although some posts will remain entirely free. In this post I’ll discuss my motives, and then add a few thoughts on money illusion.

Here are some reasons why I have decided to charge for subscriptions:

Replacement: I have recently stopped posted at Econlog and lost a valuable source of retirement income. I wish to partially replace it.

Greed: As Danny DeVito once said, “Everyone needs money; that’s why they call it money.” Who can argue with David Mamet’s logic? Seriously, I’ll be charging significantly less than what people who understand these things tell me is the profit maximizing fee, so greed is not my only motivation. I place some weight on having a broad readership. Given the effort I put into this time-consuming project, the entire enterprise would make no sense if viewed solely as a profit-making opportunity.

Curiosity: I’m curious as to what sort of revenue I could earn. I believe it’s unlikely that I’ll fully replace my Econlog income, but who knows? Inquiring minds . . .

Feedback: During the first 18 months of my new blog, I put a lot of effort into the posts and I feel like I provided a useful service. Paid subscriptions are a sort of test as to whether I’m doing anything valuable. If very few people sign-up then I might conclude I’m wasting my time putting so much effort into the blog.

Quality: At least for my upper middle class and wealthy readers, a small annual subscription fee may be less of a negative than all of those obnoxious ads that TheMoneyIllusion had. In addition, the revenue will motivate me to subscribe to more high-quality publications and other Substacks. Even my current level of subscriptions (NYT, FT, Economist, Bloomberg, Reason, plus a few Substacks) is a bit pricey, and this will motivate me to add more Substack subscriptions. And did I mention the cost of Criterion Channel? NBA LeaguePass?

I waited a year and a half to start charging for several reasons. First, I hoped to build up an audience. Now I have about 9000 free subscribers. (I’m told that only a small portion generally opt for the paid version of a blog, around 5% to 10%.) Second, I didn’t want to be under pressure to post frequently, as I’m supposed to be retired and I do a fair bit of traveling. At least in my own mind I can now tell myself “I’ve already given people more than 18 months worth of free stuff, so if I run out of ideas then people can at least feel that they’ve already gotten something for their money.” Less pressure.

Joseph Conrad once told an interesting anecdote:

“If [his agent Edward Garnett] had said to me ‘Why not go on writing?’ I should have been paralyzed. I could not have done it. But he said to me, ‘You have written one book. It is very good. Why not write another?’ … Another? Yes: I would do that. I could do that. Many others I could not. Another, I could. That is how Edward made me go on writing. That is what made me an author.”

That’s how I always feel about blogging. At any given point in time, I feel I can come up with one more post, but after that I’m out of ideas. But then a few days later another idea pops up into my head. It would have been too intimidating for me to start charging from the beginning, as I would have felt pressure to deliver the goods to all the people who paid their hard-earned money. I’ll still feel some obligation, but having already done 130 free posts certainly lessens the pressure.

Part 2: Money Illusion

Back in the mid-1970s, a friend and I bought about six dollars of gas (a whole tank at the time) at a small independent gas station in Madison. We handed the owner of the station a $20 bill, and he immediately started yelling at us—complaining the bill was too big. “Don’t you have anything smaller! We smiled at each other, understanding that this old guy was a product of the Depression, and thought a twenty was a big bill.

Fifty years later, I’m like that grouchy old guy, suffering from money illusion. But it isn’t just me, the whole of society seems to have trouble adjusting to the change in the purchasing power of money. Consider:

1. In 1900, the smallest coin (the penny) had the purchasing power of 38 cents today. But in 2025 the penny is still our smallest coin. Yes, it’s being phased out, but in 1900 we somehow got by with nothing even as small as today’s quarter.

2. Back in the 1960s and 1970, I recall $10s and $20s as being the smallest currency notes that circulated widely. But that’s sort of true even today, when the CPI is ten times the level of 1966. There are lots of $100s “in circulation”, but they are rarely used for ordinary transactions. I suppose it reflects the fact that most larger purchases are migrating to credit cards.

I find relative price changes to be confusing. When I was young, I put product categories into different mental boxes. The price of a lunch was single digits, shoes and clothing items were double digits, major home appliances and color TVs were triple digits, Cars were four digits. Houses were five digits.

Today, lunches, cars and homes are far more expensive, but clothing is still often double digits and home appliances are still often triple digits. My wife and I occasionally go to an elegant restaurant where the bill is a few hundred dollars, and I’m always confused as to how a restaurant meal could be in the same price range as a home appliance. It makes no sense to me.

As a favor to my long-time readers, I’ve decided to charge $30/year to people who sign up during the first few months, and $40/year for those who sign up after April 30th. If you are an affluent reader that wishes to support my project with a “tip”, please sign up for the $5/month option. Or better yet the $100/year “Founding Member”. If you are Elon Musk, then feel free to put one millionth of your total wealth into the Founding Member box, to support this valuable public service.

For all you older boomers like me, think about the fact that $30 or $40 is no longer a lot of money. In California, you can barely buy a decent lunch for $30, at least if you also get a beer and add tax and tip. Don’t be like that grouchy old guy at the gas station back in 1975. Don’t be fooled by money illusion. (You are already benefiting from my own money illusion, as I still can’t stop thinking of $100 as a lot of money.)

PS. Years later my friend got revenge, buying that same gas station and turning it into a bicycle shop.

PPS. Unlike those other bloggers, I don’t pretend to be a fortune teller.

You won’t get economic forecasts or investment advice, beyond “the market forecast is best.” Instead, I’ll offer analysis. Thus I’ve been preaching that while nationalists claim to be patriotic, real world nationalism almost always ends up supporting authoritarianism, militarism, xenophobia, protectionism, corruption and dishonesty, in much the way that communists promise the warm embrace of collectivism, and end up giving us Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot and Castro.