Equinomics, bag fees, and leftover campaign dollars

Airlines maintain high baggage fees because they are more lucrative than ticket sales, taxed at lower rates, and rarely influence a traveler's initial purchasing decision. While some passengers avoid these costs by checking bags for free at the gate, carriers rely on the data-driven demand for convenience to drive revenue. In the equine market, a decades-long decline in horse breeding reflects the sensitivity of luxury goods to shifts in disposable income and inflation, though such niche trends serve more as personal economic barometers than reliable indicators of an imminent national recession. Political campaign spending primarily flows into advertising, fundraising, and professional consulting, shifting capital toward media companies and the professional class of the election industry. While these expenditures stimulate local economies through temporary hiring and ad buys, they represent a reallocation of consumer spending rather than a net creation of new economic value.