It is so nice that people are looking out for us like this.
Well-meaning types or alternatively people who are trawling their own products and services have long been coming up with little aids so that we can estimate the consequences of our actions.
The banks offer us a loan calculator that allows us to determine how large a housing loan we could be paying off monthly if we were owning a place rather than paying the landlord rent on it.
Then there's the instant loan calculator that tells us the real interest to be paid on that SMS-loan we punched in with wobbly fingers just before the bar called last orders.
The calorie calculator helps someone on a diet to follow how much he or she is allowed to eat. The BMI calculator in turn says how much we have to reduce our love-handles in order to bring the body mass index into line with the accepted national health norms.
A quick glance at the coronary disease calculator on the other hand warns us of how much we need to adjust our living habits in order not to go out with a bang and a massive heart attack.
The carbon footprint calculator provides us with a handy reminder of how much each of us is speeding the process of climate change and global warming with our behaviour.
And now we have a new barometer to tap. The recession calculator is here.
The advertising agency Bob Helsinki has dreamed up a campaign under the heading of "Don't Feed the Recession" that includes a handy little programme that advises us of what damage a little bit of personal penny-pinching can do to the national economy.
Let's see what will happen if I were to give up my traditional Friday latte, priced at EUR 3.75. For the sake of argument and simplicity, we'll call it a spending-cut of 15 euros a month.
The answer comes back in a flash: "You are saving 180 euros a year because of the recession. If everyone did as you are doing, this year the Finnish economy would be short by EUR 396,000,000. This equates to the average annual salary of 13,200 Finns. This generates a vicious circle in which the savings made by salary-earners hit companies and the cost-cutting measures by companies strike back at employees."
Certainly.
But it would be even handier if there could be a parallel device alongside the recession calculator - a boom calculator perhaps - that could tell me right away how much the economy would be bucked up by my having a latte on Thursdays as well as Fridays.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 11.1.2009
