I’m sure you’ve heard it, such and such a social good can be had for “less than,” “only,” or “little more than” the price of a cup of coffee a day.((Of course, the price of a cup of coffee has gone up a lot since those pitches started. A Cup of Coffee Costs Almost $5 Now. Blame Inflation, and the Weather. (businessinsider.com).)) This is a form of time-unit argument, such as a personal injury attorney’s appealing to a jury to think of each day of the plaintiff’s pain and suffering.
Of course, those making this pitch do not expect that you will actually cease spending that money on a cup of coffee. (Do you hear the sigh of relief from the Starbucks of the world?) Instead, the idea is that the audience will see it as a small cost (or perhaps be shamed into thinking that if they can spend that much on a cup of coffee they should also be willing to pay it for the social good). By slicing the cost into daily increment, it is meant to seem lower.((It would be lower still of the increment were hourly or shorter, but there is no familiar hourly cost for comparison and it would rapidly get ridiculous. No, daily is the sweet spot.))
But just as the jury must multiply each day of pain and suffering by the plaintiff’s life expectancy to arrive at a verdict, the social appeal audience must multiply the “price of a cup of coffee” by the length of the relevant pay period, or month, or year, to understand the impact upon the household budget. An annual cost of $1800 is probably more daunting.
Jay Bohn
May 18, 2023