Talk Is Cheap, but Cost of Laughter Is No Joke

It’s no laughing matter--the law of supply and demand has raised the cost of humor. It takes 3% more money this year to get a good laugh than it did in 1995, thanks to an increase in the Cost of Laughing Index.

Rubber chickens, one of the components of the index, rose to $66 a dozen, wholesale, from $60 a dozen last year. That’s due to “supply and demand. . . . They get thrown on the ice a lot at hockey games,” said Malcolm Kushner, a humor consultant in Santa Cruz who compiled the index.

“I think this makes more sense than the cost of living index or other economic indicators,” said Kushner, who has been compiling the index for 10 years.

It’s based more on real life, he said.

Among other items in the index, the newsstand price of Mad Magazine rose 28% to $2.50 from $1.95 last year, and the average price of a comedy club ticket at 10 clubs across the country rose 1.7% to $11.31.

The minimum fee under the Writers Guild of America Basic Agreement for writing a half-hour TV situation comedy rose 3% to $11,209 from $10,883.

The price of Groucho glasses, at $15 a dozen wholesale, and arrows through the head, at $6 a dozen wholesale, remained the same because “they don’t get thrown on the ice at hockey games.”

Kushner, who was an attorney and now lectures on how to work humor into business presentations, said “a 3% increase is no laughing matter. It means we’re paying bigger bucks for smaller yucks. That’s less net mirth in your net worth.”