Cruising Abundance

Over the last 50 years the time price of a Caribbean cruise has dropped over 70 percent. Blue-collar and unskilled workers now get 3.4 cruises for the time price of one in 1972.

Jul 02, 2024

Entrepreneur Ted Arison launched his first ship, the Mardi Gras, on March 11, 1972. At the time cruising was considered an expensive luxury for older rich people. Over the past five decades Arison’s Carnival cruise line made this high-end experience affordable for everybody - plumbers, school teachers, and college-students. The Mardi Gras sailed for twenty years and created the market we enjoy today. It even gave life to a popular TV show, The Love Boat, which aired from 1977 to 1990. Carnival cruise line managed to grow from a one ship line to the largest cruise company in the world. The first Mardi Gras cost $5 million and accommodated 1,248 passengers on 10 decks.

You could book a 7-day cruise from Miami to the Caribbean for $240 to $595. Blue-collar workers at the time were earning around $4.59 an hour in wages and benefits. At $240, a cruise would cost them 52.3 hours. Unskilled workers were earning closer to $2.14 an hour, making their time price around 112.2 hours.

In 2021 Carnival launched their new Mardi Gras. This $950 million ship accommodates 6,500 passengers and approximately 2,000 crew members. It hosts “Bolt” the world’s first shipboard roller coaster, along with a water park and a sports center. This ship is powered with liquified natural gas (LNG). The quality of the experience has vastly improved in 50 years with better food choices, entertainment, comfort, and safety. The new Mardi Gras weighs 180,000 tons, around 6.6 times more than the 27,284 ton original. This larger size dramatically reduces sea sickness.

Today you can book a 7-day cruise from Carnival’s new $163 million, 188,000 square foot terminal at Port Canaveral to the Caribbean for $549. Blue-collar workers are now earning around $36.15 an hour in wages and benefits, putting their time price at 15.2 hours. Unskilled workers are earning closer to $16.51 an hour today, making their time price around 33.3 hours.

For these workers the time price has dropped more than 70 percent. For the time it took them to earn the money to buy one cruise in 1972, they get 3.4 today. Cruise abundance has increased 240 percent. If you “upskilled” from an unskilled worker in 1972 to a blue-collar worker by 2022, your cruise abundance increased by a factor of 7.38, or 638 percent. Everybody floats first-class now.

We also note that the larger the market, the more affordable things become for everyone. Adam Smith wrote about this back in 1776. From 1972 to today, U.S. population increased 131 percent from 208 million to around 340 million. Every one percent increase in population corresponded to a 1.83 percent to 4.87 percent increase in personal cruise abundance.

It’s visionary entrepreneurs like Ted Arison that take on enormous risks and create whole new markets and then get fabulously rich by making luxuries affordable for everyone.

We explain and empirically demonstrate why more people with freedom means much more resource abundance for everyone in our new book, Superabundance, available at Amazon. You can read more at superabundance.com. There has never been a better time to create more life.