2 Comments

  1. Dr. Girlfriend
    August 6, 2009 @ 2:53 pm

    20.8 square feet does not equal a 2 car garage.
    You failed to mention the jobs the self storage industry creates.

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  2. Kyle Murphy
    August 7, 2009 @ 8:20 am

    Thanks for the catch on the data. I had put two sources together and not edited it properly. Regarding jobs, by dollar volume and profit margin the industry creates relatively few jobs compared to many other industries, and of the jobs it creates, most are low paying without benefits. If our economy was really just about creating jobs, we should get rid of mechanized farming and get everyone working in the fields. The jobs creation angle is generally a poor economic argument made for political and PR reasons, and doesn’t hold up to epistemological scrutiny. Natural disasters and crime create jobs as well, but that doesn’t mean they are good for the economy. A better argument would be for the storage industry to explain it’s value to the economic system holistically–on a whole does it add or subtract from the country’s economic well-being. I’ve yet to see any data that it adds to our economy significantly and indirectly, our country’s large-scale storing of mostly unused goods is a sign that we used our resources poorly.

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