Calculations involving prices, markets, taxes, debt, inflation, and economic intuition
We build up the cost of one Incheon–Los Angeles flight line by line, then split it by the floor area each seat actually occupies. How many of the 269 seats have to sell before the airplane breaks even — and does business class really cover the flight on its own?
How much does the same Hyundai Elantra (the Avante in Korea) really cost over five years — bought new, bought as a 3-year-old used car, or on a 60-month long-term rental? This piece breaks down exactly what the lease's ₩49,021 (≈$34) monthly premium over buying new actually buys — depreciation uncertainty, breakdown risk, upfront capital — and finds the new-vs-used race, a ₩1.27M gap in cash terms, closes to a mere ₩9,193 once real financing rates enter the picture.
A car's sticker price is just the opening bid. Add in fuel, insurance, registration tax, maintenance, and resale value, and the total cost of ownership (TCO) tells a very different story. We run the numbers on a Hyundai Tucson in gasoline, diesel, and hybrid trims plus an IONIQ 5 EV — and the cheapest car changes not once but twice as ownership length and annual mileage shift.
We reverse-engineer harvest dates for grapes, peaches, citrus, and persimmons using GDD, plus a calculator that tells you which variety is actually at peak season right now.
Van Gogh sold exactly one painting in his lifetime — The Red Vineyard, for 400 francs. A century later, Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold at Christie's for $82.5 million. Three conversion methods (gold standard, CPI, wage-indexed) put 400 francs somewhere between $3,300 and $11,600 in today's money, a 3.5× spread that is itself the point. The tragedy multiplier runs from 7,100× to 60,000×. Then the counterexample arrives: Picasso died with ~$750M, and Damien Hirst grossed $200M from a single auction — while still alive.