But that’s just me.

I know I’m one of those weird journalists who isn’t afraid of math and enjoys economics and computer science and all those taboo subjects, but someone is going to have to explain the economics of this to me.

Let’s say we have a product, product n. Product n isn’t doing so well. In fact, less and less people are buying it and revenue and profits are in a free fall.

So, the most logical way to make up for lost revenues and falling demand is to up the price? Right? Surely, more people will buy a product if it just costs more.

Well, that’s that kind of voodoo economics a lot of newspapers are employing right now. Let me get this straight: demand is falling, so in order to increase demand, we’re going to raise the price?

Why don’t we just spit on every copy of the paper while we’re at it. I’m sure that will increase sales too. That’s what the Boston Globe is going to try do at least.

The Boston Globe will soon announce cutbacks at the newspaper, including hundreds of layoffs, and an increase in the per copy price of the paper to 75 cents as of Feb. 1, according to several sources inside and outside of the paper.

The Globe saw a nearly 7 percent decrease — from 386,417 to 360,695 — in its daily circulation between Sept. 2006 and Sept. 2007, according to numbers released in November by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That report showed the paper’s Sunday circulation down about 6.5 percent.

Good luck with that. Let me know how that works out for you. I’ll bet the year over circulation declines for the Globe will be even higher next year.

But at least you’ll have charged your few remaining loyal customers more. I don’t think I could voice my dismay any better than Marc Andreessen can:

When you have an obsolete, inconvenient physical product that nobody wants in an era of universal online access, the appropriate strategy is clearly to raise the price.

Here is what really gets me, the Globe is cutting jobs, thus producing an inferior and less thorough product. Yet, the Globe wants to charge more for that inferior product. That’s really a losing strategy.

The Washington Post is also upping the price of single-copy sales to 50 cents, from 35 cents. Although paying 50 cents for the far superior Post seems like a much better deal than dropping 75 cents on the Globe, and the Post has not announced any job cuts to go along with the price increase.

Yet, the majority of the Post’s circulation declines have come from single-copy sales. I don’t think raising the price will help that in any way.

Post daily circulation peaked at 832,232 in 1993. It now sells an average of 638,000 papers Monday through Saturday.

Newsstand, or single-copy, sales account for 18 percent of daily sales of The Post. The bulk of its lost circulation in the past 14 years has come from a decline in single-copy sales.

If newspapers insist on raising the price, they least they could do is make newspaper racks easier to use. How many of us carry around large amounts of change? A lot of days I would not have enough change to buy the Globe.

I always laugh when I see the Sunday New York Times on sale for $3.50 or so in a newspaper rack. Like I honestly have 14 quarters in my pocket. Ryan Sholin suggests that newspaper racks should accept $1 bills and even consider having a credit card swipe.

I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to buy a newspaper, only to realize that I don’t have enough change. Yet, a lot of times I have dollar bills on me. Of what era are these newspaper racks from anyway?

Obviously, they come from an era when someone could buy a newspaper for a nickel, dime or even quarter. But now even the cheapest newspapers are some weird amount like 40 cents, while others are at least a dollar. I agree with Sholin that if newspaper racks accepted more forms of payment, they would do better.

And what do you know, someone does make more modern newspaper racks. This industry needs some fresh ideas, like having easier-to-use newspaper racks. Cutting staff — again — and raising the price of newspapers — again — doesn’t cut it as innovative thinking.

Ben Franklin once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

What is the industry honestly expecting?