Most of these topics are in the book, "Thoughtful Living", temporarily named "God Gave You a Brain; Use It! The Guide for Thoughtful Living" on account of a publisher dispute, but saw no justification to overload the reader with much of the additional material below, especially since I wanted the book available as soon as possible. These latter items would be a work-in-progress that would be free extra material. A few items would be incorporated in a future edition of the book. Some items are outdated, particularly government salary information that was being accumulated from the early to late 1990s when living in California and contemplated running for a vacant San Mateo County Board of Supervisor position. I previously showed scores of salaries with specific names but felt some might get mad even though it’s all public information so I removed this information. The running platform was to be lowering the salaries of the county workers by an average of 30%, including the very same position I’d be in. At that time, Americans were too busy living their fancy lives and would not be able to stand behind me in the quest so I knew it was pointless in trying to obtain the needed support. Even with many years passed by, the quoted government salaries are still excessive to today’s salaries in the private sector. I hope with the recent economic turmoil, people would make the excessive government compensations an issue and not just dwell on CEO compensation but from my experience, people generally fixate on the most popular discussions and don’t consider enough of other similar maladies. I have faith that this type of tunnel vision will change in the near future.
I will be editing this document periodically. This is part of ongoing thoughts and four years of accumulating notes on top of letters to the media and government offices.
Additional topics:
Bankrupt USA (suppressed facts and figures)
Meeting the Needs of this World to Effect Prosperity
Proposed Solutions
Unified Equitable Wage Determination
Unified Equitable Home Price Evaluator
Stock Market Realities
Free Ideas To Society
Cultural Discussion
Gossypol: Male Antifertility Agent
Dating and Mate Selection
Antioxidant Comparison
Brief Philosophical Essay On IQ Tests Plus A Sample Test
Personal sites:
Qualifications [to lead]
Sample of some handiwork
Before venturing off to the Philippines in search for something that has become rare in this country, I felt I was directed to make a contribution in helping out the country through writing a pamphlet. It is on sale at the lowest price possible at the following link:
CONTENTS
1. Addition to Behavior Section
1a. Family Planning
2. Addition to Finance Section
3. Addition to Health Section
Much of the following are discussions on various topics that are additions to the Proposed Solutions Section, however, certain key topics are presented on a separate site, Proposed Solutions.
4. Education Issues
5. Ancillary Government Services
6. Economic Issues
7. Employment Concerns
8. Environmental Issues
9. Drugs
10. Advice for Americans (extension of last chapter on Globalization)
11. Primer essay on money
12. Miscellaneous
1.ADDITIONS TO BEHAVIOR SECTION:
Throughout history there have been countless travesties that were a result of incompetence (ill-qualified persons in authoritative positions) and selfishness. These include murder, rape, torture, war, enslavement, improper placement into in mental institutions, medical experimentation on unknowing victims, and other such purposeful transgressions against people. Some harm was done by medical practitioners with no intent of wrongdoing, however, some of these instances would be from incompetence yet with no absolute certainty for all questionable cases. Other times, there has been detrimental effects as a result of bad sanitary practices, unscientific medical treatment, improper use of medicine or medicine improperly approved, death/illness from food ingestion not attributable to sanitation, etc that is based on a lack of education or slow advancement in human understandings, selfish monetary motivations, or just outright incompetence. I barely touch on any of these highly important topics. However, through reading my book, I hope that the reader would have opened his/her mind to a better way of life, a life that is more fair, more respectful to both animate and inanimate objects and through spreading of my various proposed improvements, much of these heinous travesties would be reduced to rare happenings. Everyone of us who has the ability to make a positive change should do so. Some are born unto this world in terrible circumstances that they have no control over and they depend on those who can make a difference. If you even have access to this, you are probably far more fortunate than a billion people on this planet who are hurting as a result of others in society failing them, either through incompetence, selfishness, and this may even include their very own parents if irresponsible to have far more children than they could adequately afford. Humans have been on this planet for thousands of years and apparently, sanctity of the lives of all humans falls way short of what could be at this time. The learning curve of humans has been too slow and I assert it need not be this way. I encourage everyone to get all that can be gotten from my book, this and my various other websites, insightful material from sources beyond what I provide, and really begin to take action like you’ve never done so before.
Lies: Lies are done to help prevent personal discomfort and may additionally involve money or strategic manipulation with other people. In being strong and not prone to worldly desires, there would be much less impetus to lie. I strongly encourage everyone to live as humbly as possible and not seek gains through deceit for it is absent of truth, and to admit wrongdoings in as much as possible. The truth is usually admired even if emotional pain is experienced at the same time by any of the parties involved.
A small addition to my talk on communication. Much communication over the internet is done without regard to respect and for those who are not content with themselves may elect to needlessly verbally assault others in order to augment their egos. Although there is more looseness with internet communication, it can be appreciably more problematic if done in actual encounters. In the book I gave a serious of statements that ranged from direct inflammatory attacks to softer statements that focused more on an issue rather than personalizing. Humans can be frail when corrected but we should not if done with a little tact. Some will be offended no matter what but that is something they need to work out. Here are a few examples of speech relating to correcting another person. You will often see or hear the first statement made and this sort of thing needs to end as it is unproductive and can result in illogical physical harm. I say illogical because words on their own, no matter how bad they may be, can never be considered a rightful course of action since it would be based psychologically, not in imminent harm, and even courts coincide with this. The two statements that follow are less threatening, with the last statement removes the other person to make it even more peaceful.
“You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I can’t believe you are saying that.”
“Well, I really think [so and so, offering your differing opinion].”
We all slip into some unwholesome desires but the effort to minimize the preoccupation should be constantly put in check and not be made as a lifestyle.
The fallacy of having a business to become rich. At first glance this sounds strange but there is a reason why I am putting this topic in the behavior section. As you see, people often start businesses to enable greater earning potential. When that earning is so great from profiting so much off of other people, it becomes a situation that by whatever means, fairly or unfairly done, the end result is unfair as it pertains to grabbing more than what's needed out of life out of the detriment of others. Running a business should certainly offer perks of independence and accordingly greater control over the direction of a company and be allowed wages, but it is the owner who decides once plenty of wealth has been accumulated to maintain a lifestyle of some reasonableness to then cut the profit margin to not take so much from others while at the same time enjoying the occupation or to keep pushing ahead to desire more and more money without considering how it affects society. There is a usual notion that whenever someone says they're a “business-owner”, provided it's not obviously of a trivial business, that it's assumed that the owner is profiting dearly. People often do not feel satisfied being fortunate to have all the material things they need and then keep grabbing more without bound. I would hope that those who have businesses show some gratitude to those who enabled the business to prosper by cutting profit margins. Corporations should do the same, and as I said before, they should become privatized as well to not take advantage of a large supply of money that comes from those who think they are investing by buying shares of the corporation. Greed must ultimately be cured by the people themselves and only relying on government to help steer thought in the direction of fairness.
In the behavioral part of the book where boxing was mentioned, there could still be a sport of boxing whereby no person would sustain traumatic injuries except for rare cases if headgear and appropriate gloves would be worn. The technique of hitting/connecting and blocking could then be scored. No knockouts would ever be awarded but in the case of a knockout or other significant debilitation lasting at least momentary it’d be simply registered as a win. There is no point in a human being physically or mentally damaged voluntarily or of a human with intent to hurt another. By cleansing the sport, it could be appreciated more for the skill rather than for the excitement of gore.
While on this planet it is unavoidable to encounter human behavior that interferes with a peaceful pursuit of happiness. Thirst of power supplants righteousness.
Air-conditioning and heating…I’ve seen people overcompensate…such as heat a house at a higher temperature than would tolerate in the summer.
Suppress idolatry and obsession of human body, particularly of women bodies by boycotting beauty pageants. Superficial enjoyment overemphasizes female body (and male body to lesser extent) to produce power via sexuality and helps to cause greater problems between genders.
Poor use of resources: movie awards, trophies, giving flowers, gift cards, wasting champagne after a car race, throwing rice at weddings.
Sex trade
Men, by being unwilling to pay more than the equivalent of the price of dinner (socially acceptable), for example, it encourages women to be “better”, by disassociating significant money with sex. Legislation to limit the price of prostitutes to 1X restaurant dinner cost but allowance up to 2X, based on most local statistic of median cost. This government regulation would discourage the sex trade.
Higher minimum age for participants in sex industry, say 21 and no longer 18 to allow for added maturity to assess suitability. This is not to say to end it, though highly suggest boycotting it, however, while that is immediately not practical and significant legislative curtailing of the lower end of ages involved would be helpful for society and those directly involved as even age 18 does not necessarily implies the realistic mindset to truly determine a decision, and not even 21 but a line needs to be drawn even if one authentically is of such a strong mind to emphatically state otherwise of their competency…I say this would be fair to determine competency in most ordinary professions, but not in sex industry.
Side-note on prostitution: if [excess] money is available to afford a prostitute, there would be a way for that money to be earned by the person who prostitutes in some other salient way if there wasn’t selfishness or some other deserving attitude of those who earn much money to have the ability to pay for a prostitute. Basically, if people earned what is needed to live and little extra for frivolities, there’d be no source of money to support prostitution. With greed put into check on one-side, cost of living would be lower (this can be explained) to enable survival with much less consideration of using the body in a salacious money-making way, AND more money would be in the system to pay for others to lower the unemployment rate.
Pornography – it exists in a major way because there are many who put value to this, predominantly men. Of course it's hard to turn down the imagery as it does excite, however, if everyone gave much little value to this, the vast majority of pornography would not have gotten to the state where it is today. The pornographic material, since it already exists, will not go away, and so we now have to live with its existence. If the value of such material was never considered as having a monetary value then the pornographic industry would never have gotten to 1% of where it is today - it'd be comprise of erotic art form and a few only who push the limits without desiring monetary compensation. There are many today who are actually willing to expose themselves for free but this is because the internet over just 15 years' time dramatically relaxed views on modesty. Even though pornography is alluring, it causes much more harm to the relations between men and women and would be best avoided for the benefit of society. While the internet is filled with pornography, if one is weak, there is a vast amount of free material available, and while I do not suggest taking part in this, at least if this were taken advantage of and never ever willing to pay for it, the major impetus of creating pornography would be eliminated.
Related to DRUGS:
In our culture and which is somewhat mirrored throughout the world in seek of substances to alter moods, coffee is consumed at the rate of about 400 million cups per day! That's over 1 cup per coffee per person per day based on a population of 315 million. Being around 80% of people here drink coffee, the average becomes about 1 2/3 cups of coffee per day per coffee drinker. Note this does not include the many caffeine containing energy drinks, common caffeine containing soda, tea, chocolate drinks, chocolate candies, etc. It's incredible how much emphasis is placed on ingesting mood-altering substances not just in the illicit market but of the massive amount in the legal market. Caffeine, or "Christian crank" as one fellow once remarked to me which I thought was mind-awakening, will be with us forever. I am not saying caffeine should not be ingested but rather, I find it amazing that so much is consumed.
Related to DRIVING SECTION:
Studies indicate driving while drowsy is worse than if intoxicated. Apparently the lower level of response from being sleepy poses a greater risk than having an impaired judgment, but for practical knowledge these should be considered comparable. It’s a scary feeling momentarily falling asleep while driving and there is no way an accident could be avoided while in this state. The great prevalence of alcohol in our culture attributes the high number of roadway deaths and thus it far overshadows the much more dangerous situation of driving when drowsy. Most, if not all drivers, at some point while on the road suffered from sleepiness but continued on driving for there being few safe places to pull over or from being obsessed in getting to the desired destination. Nissan Motors developed a number of sensory equipment to alert the driver when it detects drowsiness. Being under the influence of alcohol exhibit some of the same symptoms as of being tired and so sensory equipment for drowsiness may be useful for alerting an intoxicated driver so that the technology developed around measurement of alcohol in exhaled breath might not be crucial and moreover, there may be ways to defeat the sensors.
As part of my suggestion for pedestrians in being unselfish in preventing harm to cars (car tires specifically – though possibly an accident could occur as a result), there may be objects in the roadway that should be removed. Of course one would have to be careful to not get hurt in the process. As an example, one just one sunny day on about a half mile stretch of road, I obtained the objects shown in the photo below. The lead tire weights I will melt down and sell at a good price to those wanting it (for making fishing weights or whatever), the dime of course I wouldn’t let stay, but the disturbing massive find was amazing. Now, this was an extraordinary day so this isn’t average, but it still shows that for me to find so many objects on such a short stretch of road, pedestrians are not being diligent to pick up the hazardous objects! We need to all work together to help make this world better – we cannot just look out for our own selfish desires. Still, surprising is that there may be a weak connection between a pedestrian seeing the hazards and relating to possibly when they are driving or perhaps a friend or family, that such objects may HELP them, and if not these objects specifically, perhaps objects elsewhere that others could have picked up to prevent costly damage. There is so little excuse in not picking up such stuff.
Hierarchy of actions including nervous ticks and addictions. This was devised some years ago with original notes destroyed in thinking it wouldn’t serve any purpose but decided that in relating to drug use, it could provide a trifle bit of comparison with other actions. Items at the top would be considered the hardest to conquer as they involve no money to serve as additional awareness and are seemingly involuntary. Those at the bottom have many more facets to serve as awareness of action being undertaken, notably the greater use of money.
1.Swallowing, eye-blinking and other such actions that are compulsive and requiring no use of hands.
2.Use of hands for compulsive nervous ticks such as pulling hair, scratching skin and as a subset or following just beneath this are pacing and masturbation that requires more energy and awareness.
3.Eating of food in a compulsive manner – requiring energy to walk to kitchen and obtain food, possible preparation, active chewing and grocery shopping. Just beneath this would be drinking of alcohol and use of tobacco products (and soft drinks) as these items if done in a compulsive manner are usually exhausted requiring more frequent trips to a store, usually costly, especially considering they serve no great nutritional purpose.
4.Illicit drug use – requiring active seeking of drugs, usually having a high price, may have to be in uncomfortable situations and with shady characters, uncertainty as far as identity, quality, and potency that may pose additional risk.
I would like to note here that I normally do not heat my living space until the temperatures falls to below about 60-64 degrees Fahrenheit (16-18 Celsius), and can withstand a temperature up to about 105F or about 40C until which time I would turn on a fan or air conditioner if available. I would use an air conditioner very sparingly, to remain strong and unspoiled as well as to avoid extra expenditures, and only when available as I have no intention of ever owning one. When living in the Philippines, my apartment owner tried to rip me off on the electricity charge claiming that it's impossible for anyone using as little as I did. I spent far less than typical natives having the same appliances as I had. The false claim caused all sorts of problems culminating in the owner unlawfully disconnecting my water and electricity service. Some people are unable to expand their mind to allow for an outlier situation and have a need to mollify their ego with causing trouble.
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1a. FAMILY PLANNING
Early sex education prevention of teen pregnancy - have girls and especially boys learn about menstruation. For many boys, the thought of blood would be scary and it might set them back a few years from wanting to engage in sex. This may sound crude but could be studied for effectiveness.
Irresponsibility pays to have a baby; make girl stay home w/ parents (barring extreme cases of violence), with no government benefits! If private charity groups want to help that would be their choice.
If poor, how is it good to have a baby and not enough money to feed? Do you want to make a baby and have it suffer? Is that being responsible? Is that enjoyable? Do you think just because you are capable of producing children that you should be able to have as many children as you want, even if you can't afford to have them? As unfair as this sounds, but while economic systems are in place that do not compress the divergence of wealth, the poor should be having less babies than the richer people – if the richer have more children, the accumulated family wealth per person decreases. Moreover, even though the world population may be able to increase with an ample food supply if following some of the guidelines I set forth in the Food Chapter, it will become increasingly more difficult to maintain a high standard of living. Other world resources will be greater strained and the impact of pollution, including human waste will add to a general worsening of the quality of life, even if some of my proposals to mitigate such are implemented. Thus, it makes sense to be mindful of the impact of not just the life of the child but for everyone in the area of making babies. Temperance is so crucial and governments and NGOs should be pushing ads regarding this if the public can’t figure it out on their own. Some countries have cultures whereby the parent expect the children to be supporting them when retired yet this is counter-productive when the parents try to produce as many babies as they can. You can see the result in Philippines, having the highest birth rate among all Asian countries, with a high nearly 10% of the population as overseas workers to help support their families since no way can any country keep up with producing as many jobs as babies are being born if there is no constraint. In Philippines and other similar countries, prostitution and scamming and/or marrying foreign men helps serves to bring in money to families but this shouldn’t be happening to such an appalling degree. They bring upon so much poverty and bad lifestyles onto themselves, not to mention having to endure the added cruelty of exploitation from the wealthy in their own country.
Many countries have excessive childbirths causing poverty. Poverty is then further exacerbated by employers being able to pay lower wages because of the demand for work from the large available pool of workers. Furthermore, the cost of living increases for the poor because of the increased demand for housing, allowing the rich to charge higher prices for rent. Globalization must happen to unite all people and as part of a worldwide effort, child birthing will have to become restricted and the diversity of wealth compressed dramatically.
As an extreme example, consider the situation if all poor people stopped having babies and only the rich did. Would all the poor be eliminated or would the poor be redefined as having so much but still less than even greater advantaged people? Certainly, the poor in this case would be far from the poor of prior. This is purely theoretical but was introduced to consider the non-social engineering result by people choosing to apply their thinking ability to understand that the poor need to have fewer babies than the rich. Several things would then occur:
1) The rich would need to divide up their money among more people.
2) The poor would be able to have a greater amount of wealth per person by having fewer additional persons to support.
3) The poor would be able to secure greater wages by virtue of there being less people willing to do certain occupations.
Equilibrium shifts to a compressed distribution of wealth when those who are less advantaged choose to have fewer offspring. The rich would not be so rich on an individual basis and the poor would not be so poor and be able to enjoy a higher standard of living. Also, self-sufficiency and avoiding rent, even if it means having many people in the same household also accomplishes this. The more products that are consumed will yield corporate profits that the wealthiest take the overwhelming chunk of. The wealthiest also make money by parasitically living off those who are less advantaged through rental property. Governmental programs still need to be enacted to cause social calamities regarding vastly different wealth that could never be attributed merely by a well-reasoned objective analysis of one's contribution to society but in how luck and seized opportunities.
One argument regarding abortion and using problem-solving principles:
If 90% of those born were dramatically deficient in obvious qualitative measures before birth would society be able to absorb all this and moreover accept it? This is theoretical, perhaps a new congenital disease crippling our world with an overwhelming majority of birthing of babies that are destined to die within days to months only, or separately having such deformities through whatever longer extent of life requiring intensive care 24 hours per day. Would it be best to try to replenish the world with known good fetuses and if some happened to not be spotted at least accept these and not purposely do any harm to them when out of the womb? I leave you to ponder this. From an example of this nature it has got to be clear that there has to be some reason applied to abortion. This example would not reveal anything regarding fetuses that would appear healthy, however, but still addresses one aspect of why an abortion might want to be elected and argues against the all-encompassing view that abortion should never be done. Besides the easier to accept concept of deformities serving as a basis for abortion, the impact on population especially if there is a lack of means to support a new life should also be addressed. Should women be FORCED to carry a baby that she views as highly discomforting? A pregnant woman undergoes so much hormonal changes, affecting the physical body and even mentally so if a woman cannot handle these changes, would it not be like law-imposed torture? If women were forced to carry babies to full-term, must society always absorb the impact on population? Should we instead of focusing on abortion as the primary approach, make it secondary and education primary? Unfortunately, education in this area has been ineffective and so novel approaches need to be investigated such as giving males oral contraceptives.
As far as a female dictating on her own what she does, whether fasting or horseback riding that could cause spontaneous abortion, current law does not forbid such activities while pregnant and enforcement would be impractical. In as much as some would like to retain a narrow view of abortion as to prohibiting it from adhering to a belief whether based in emotion or religion, sometimes as in this subject, applying reasonable principles thwarts what some would LIKE to be the case. My personal stance on this subject is actually MOOT even though I think it’s irresponsible to have sex and not take good safeguards. However, in fairness to the desire of a woman wanting, in her eyes, to avoid an agonizing predicament dictates that no one else's personal stance can or should be applied to her plight. From a strict religious stance on this topic, some would say that abortion should not be performed, with few to no exceptions, but if even having such a strong view, why can it not be known of the stance and still allow another to exercise their own free will and be later accountable BY GOD and not by humans? Where are the fanatic Christians when it comes to gluttony or sexual manipulations by church leaders? Even though education hasn’t been productive, it needs to be the primary means to prevent the episode of an abortion and it will be ineffective as long as parents don’t play a major role in the lives of their children. Concomitantly provocative sexual images both on the internet and television along with disgraceful sexual messages in songs need to be confronted to make any education work and this means for adults in the entertainment industry to understand the effect they have and not just be motivated by profit. It makes much more sense to prevent the problem of pregnancy from occurring in the first place instead of mindlessly engaging in sexual activities and then rely upon the procedure of abortion to cure the problem.
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2.ADDITIONS TO FINANCE SECTION:
Paid financial advisers. Much of financial planning should be done without needing outside help. He basics of money management should have been learned by a young age, but if not, getting as much from what I and many others contribute for free or should be sufficient. There are at times complications regarding financial planning because Congress purposely made taxation far more complicated than need be. Consulting the IRS, obtaining specific publications from the IRS and studying the few important issues needed should be able to avert the need for a paid adviser. Like with most everything else, putting your mind to work and figuring as much out on your own not only equips you with more knowledge to do things on your own, if a so-called “expert” is required, at least you’d be familiar with lots of jargon and some of the specifics to streamline the process and help prevent from being taken for a ride. Being that Congress is the main culprit of complications regarding financial planning, if you have the energy, you could be playing the important role of pushing sensibility onto members of Congress so that there may be positive changes done to the tax code.
The use of coupons for brand-named products. Don’t be fooled by what appears to be a bargain with the use of a coupon. There may still be a non-brand name product being sold for considerably less. However, even without coupons, a name-brand item may have a sales price LESS than that of a non-brand named item, and so always be alert to the deals.
In finance section: Buy before you need it! Especially for toilet paper! Planning can save money and stress: 1) avoid higher price at convenience stores, and perhaps even be able to buy at a discount when available and buy more at that time 2) avoid inefficient trip to store 3) lessen stress by avoiding panic situation.
Any large purchase-do not buy upon first notice. Give thought and return at a later time.
Some people spend a large amount of money on expensive food items that tout for example an antioxidant effect. Suppose that a berry extract that claims to be 100 times more potent than vitamin is sold for $20/50g. Suppose also that the price of vitamin C is $2/50g. What is the better value based on the antioxidant effect? Well, this could not be ascertained unless the product mentions the percentage of the active ingredient in the extract and this is what manufactures casually omit, not allowing consumers this important information. Suppose there is in the berry extract, 5% of it is the antioxidant, how then can the values be compared? Simply by taking the $20 price and multiplying by 20 to reflect the 5% active ingredient, then dividing by 100 to reflect the relative strength compared to vitamin C to yield $4. Since the $4 exceeds $2 for vitamin C, the product is 2 times too expensive relative to vitamin C. Had the weight of the respective products been dissimilar, this would have to be taken into account by a simple conversion.
Try to spend no more than $1 per pound for manufactured cereals and half this much for raw cereals and grains. Companies will always be trying to push high prices on consumers that make no sense as far as the actual cost of production so it’s up to the consumer to shop for deals.
Men’s colored underwear: A big scam on consumers. White underwear may cost $0.70 each but for colored underwear it’s about $1.60 each. What’s more surprising is that the white underwear may actually contain more material as the cut size is now found to be larger than for colored underwear. So why should the colored ones be twice as expensive? Does the 5 to 10 cents of dye translate into an added 90 cents extra on the retail price? Obviously this makes no sense but for those who want colored underwear, they don't have much of a choice because for men’s underwear, unlike for women’s, there are very limited brands to choose from and this phenomenon seems to exist across all brands.
As far as clothing goes, I've been spending under $100 per year on clothes including shoes. This is far under the average for persons in the United States though higher for many in third world countries, but I do note that mildly poor persons in third world country still spend more than I do on clothes! I do not buy on fashion. I wash clothes by hand, though I may use a manual wash machine in time, and generally take good care of my belongings. It does pay to respect everything.
I have always known that potato chips cost more than corn [tortilla] chips, however, I didn’t make a deeper connection until the beginning of 2011 that I am sharing here. Potato chips cost perhaps around 30% more than corn chips yet the price of corn that goes into corn chips costs significantly more than potatoes! This tells you food manufacturers are ripping off the consumer because of the high demand for potato chips, not because of the cost of manufacturing. To make a potato chip, potatoes are sliced and dipped into hot oil, turning 20 cents per pound into about $4 per pound. The poor value makes it so I am stuck comparing potato chip prices for several minutes until which time I leave without buying any unless I see a price reduction that sadly would still be very highly priced that I might still pass up.
Macaroni and cheese. It amazes me that for so many years the 14.5 oz box still costs so much more per quantity than the smaller, 7.25 oz box. A recent trip to a store had the prices at $1.50 and $0.50, respectively. Three boxes of the smaller size could be purchased for the price of just one larger box, and yet the larger box is just 2 times more. This is an example of the type of scam that happens when people are so use to thinking that larger sizes MUST necessarily be bargains compared to the smaller sizes.
How could toothbrushes be listed at $3? The materials including packaging and handling costs should be able to yield a profit at even just 30 to 50 cents each.
Sacrifice some internet speed for lower cost. The cost differential to internet service providers is minimal in offering of different speeds but it is able to charge much more for faster speeds because it appears justified to the consumer and the companies take advantage of this fact. Consider if you moved 10 bags of concrete from a truck to someone’s home with the two different scenarios, the bags of concrete are 90 pounds, and the other case, they are 60 pounds. Sure, a little more work involved moving the 90 pound bags, but the time would essentially be the same and as long as you can adequately carry either one without much problem, was carrying the 90 pound bags be worth 50% more? Hardly, as the total time involved would dictate the same charge,
Stop smoking aids, $35-40?? A supply for just a week or two? It might be cheaper to continue smoking (without considering long-term health effects)! Why begin smoking in the first place? If people would just have the strength to live without the crutch of smoking, imagine all the cost savings!
Acetaminophen – not just brand name but also by subtitle of product eg menstrual –buy based on chemical, not the title of the medication of what it says it is good for. Same with household chemicals but requires education. You can have fewer products since some have multiple functions and manufacturers make fools out of unknowing consumers.
Conserving on energy isn’t only a matter of saving money but also decreases on the use of planetary resources. In addition to solar power that could be used on residential buildings, whirlwinds that are in a horizontal position could be adapted for generating wind energy and not need to have tall vertical propellers protruding atop roofs.
I probably wasn’t clear enough in my book about restaurants so I shall make a short note here. Almost every food item that is purchased at a restaurant is a poor value. While some values are respectfully decent, the overwhelming majority is not and sometimes it is bewildering that some people are willing to pay exorbitant prices but this may be part of the behavior section where people flock to where they can show off in how much money they can throw away. This also has great ramifications on the dating process as men invariably must pay for restaurant food to show he’s a good mate to his hopeful woman date. If restaurants cannot be totally avoided, laying down the rules and hoping the woman accepts his stern manly stance might be one path to take. Such rules may be something on the order of:
1)not being fooled into going to restaurants with alluring décor,
2)not being fooled by the apparent low cost of such things as french fries at a fast food restaurant with the “low” price of $1 per serving when the potatoes are worth only 5 cents,
3)not being fooled into buying “low-cost” refreshments when the major ingredient is water and the remaining ingredients add to perhaps only 1 to 5 cents,
4)Searching for the best values of the types of food enjoyed should be done, AND
5)Coupons are special deals should be taken advantage of and not avoided in thinking the man is cheap. Being wise with money should be a favorable trait in men and not viewed as the opposite.
Although the book went into the topic of credit cards, the following can be generally spoken of for any type of loan and includes bank loans. Loan-sharking is a particularly dangerous and having an exorbitant rate of interest and should be avoided entirely and whatever the motivation for contemplating getting a loan from such unscrupulous operations should be given some really deep thought. Borrowing must be considered a very last resort. Sometimes though, there exist situations via government programs or short-term specials by lending institutions that enables a means to arbitrate, that is to negotiate lower interest rates than currently paid on an existing loan OR that the loan is at a rate lower than an investment is currently paying. Even when it comes to investing in one’s self to start a business or to expand a business, borrowing should still be a last resort that would dictate saving more money first, unless of course some means of arbitration exists or that the rate of return from business activities are almost assured to maintain a financial healthy status to deal with a loan with great comfort. In so many instances, however, borrowing is a gamble but few see it this way and instead fool themselves in believing they can handle the loan. Not many people are really financial savvy, or in my words ‘mature’ enough to handle borrowing and this view is founded in the obvious data showing home foreclosures, business failings, and bankruptcies. Unless you know with certainty that you are the type of person who is extremely financially responsible, taking out a loan is very dangerous. Of course there are some lucky persons with fanatical stories of borrowing and then becoming rich (something I again say should never be the focus in life) but hoping for the same is truly of a gambler’s mentality. For those who are actuated by emotion and are lacking in money management skills, discussing the desire to borrow with friends and family might help to avoid a devastating problem.
In noting higher costs of things that are related to conveniences, food at movie theaters, theme parks, and sports arenas are notorious for charging astronomical prices. If allowed, bring your own food or eat heavily before the venture. There may be an item or two that are particularly tasty that you may decide to breakdown and get but try to stand strong and don’t go wild with purchases. In time, if people refrain from buying so much convenience food, a new equilibrium would be set whereby the food becomes better priced. Hopefully everyone has a good idea what fair is to bring the food prices down to acceptable levels.
At the end of April 2010, a popular web portal presented a headline story about the use of detergent for washing clothes. In the story, it was claimed that the major cleansing action was due to agitation and not soap. A few small studies were conducted to show that washing with no detergent was effective which pointed to the testing of the use of half the recommended amount of detergent and apparently there was no difference with using the recommended amount. Of course if there's oil in the clothes, some soap would be needed. I mentioned the use of soaps at the end of the financial section even though it probably has more to do with environmental issues and hence behavior in regards to caring for the environment, nevertheless, the topic fit well in the miscellaneous category. In continuation, this news story reinforces my view of the overuse of detergents. Instead of using half the recommended amount of detergent, I’d experiment with the soap used (taking note of not automatically buying the most expensive brand) and see just how much can be used to maintain at least some soap suds.
65% of overweight/obese people in America by one study claims it costs $117B/year. This figure probably does not count the extra cost for food to maintain the high weight-so there is a direct cost besides ancillary costs that a person should be watchful of. So, obesity must also be considered as a financial issue since not just possible costs related to obesity may occur but also it is very likely that the cost of food involved to become obese would be greater than if maintaining a reasonable size. It is known that when exercising, there may be a greater food intake, may on par or exceeding what may be needed to become and maintain obese but this would be considered more of a necessity than a abundance, based on providing the body with nutrients to recover from expending energy.
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3.ADDITIONS TO HEALTH SECTION:
Amendment: Vitamin D3 is only formed in animals via UV light but very recently it has been discovered that Vitamin D2 (apparently similar in benefit as Vitamin D3) can be in mushrooms, also formed via UV light. In fact, mushrooms could be fortified by purposely exposing to UV light, especially with the gill side exposed to the light. This is an amazing finding in that just a few minutes of UV light exposure on a handful of mushrooms could provide several times the recommended daily requirement of Vitamin D. Among mushrooms, Shiitake and Maitake are by far the richest sources of Vitamin D2.
The internet can contribute to health problems. From sitting down for a long duration without periodically exercising the legs, it is possible to develop a blood clot. If the head barely moves for a long period of time it could appear "locked" and so the head needs to move on occasion to prevent this. Eye strain can happen for which extra supplementation of beta-carotene or eating of raw carrots would be useful. Bags under the eyes could form as well which necessitate massaging periodically. Massaging the face, especially under the eyes with the aid of warm water several times a day could be useful to mitigate eye bags. Vision can become impaired so you should force yourself to go outside or up to a window and focus at distant objects. Excessive typing or the use of a mouse can cause muscle strain, possibly even to the point of causing carpal tunnel syndrome. Switching hands with the mouse may be useful to allow one hand to rest.
Eat more raw fruits and vegetables to help set teeth.
Other considerations for deciding on eating animals: for greater profit and for competition, animals today are commonly not given enough space to move around and as a result are more prone to disease, and are often fed growth hormones and antibiotics. Eating the prepared cuts of meat found in stores separates the consumer from the realities of the meat industry and so to properly make an assessment, one should really see in person the quality of life of the animals and the slaughtering process. The meat industry would not want people to view this since it could change people's views on eating meat but it really would serve as meaningful information from which a good decision could be made.
Suggest decision-making process for food to be in the order of NUTRITION then PRICE then TASTE. In other words, find the most nutritious foods, then determine the best price per the amount of nutritional contents, and then among those eat what is most palatable. This is much different than simply going for taste first or even what I see many into health do and that is to focus on the healthiest foods and pay exorbitant prices without considering if there's a less nutritious alternative at a much better price (see the chart of antioxidants in the finance section for example).
Suggest no eating on one day per week to allow body to cleanse itself. Perhaps done on a Sunday or a certain day off, perhaps only during daylight hours, and perhaps allow drinking of juice for at least some instant energy. Reasonably would also lessen colon cancer and give the stomach a chance to decrease in size so that being “full” would be accomplished with less food to counter the overweight problem. There are another good side-effect from abstaining from eating for a short period and that is allowing the taste buds on the tongue to reset which would enable foods to taste better.
Although I didn’t specifically mention in my book since I didn't want to personalize it so much, I do follow my simplistic diet plan consisting of predominantly peanuts, beans, carrots, oatmeal with bananas and a few other foods. I am human and so I will succumb to occasional variances of comfort foods. More specifically, I choose pinto beans for their lower costs compared to other beans. I normally prepare a large pot of re-fried beans, with the addition of oil and some spices including cumin and/or curry, black pepper, garlic salt, and sometimes jalapeno peppers provided I get them at a good price. Sometimes I will add a small amount of cheese or salsa on top of an individual serving of the re-fried beans. Other times I will make a bean soup with carrots, tomatoes and/or squash. If not in a soup, I eat carrots raw and I wash them with only water with lightly rubbing the skin with my hand. I normally cook oatmeal in a microwave oven with the addition of raisins and cinnamon, sometimes with half of a chopped apple, and sometimes with a small amount of molasses or honey. Bananas are usually priced reasonably and so I don’t worry about waiting for a sales prices. I typically eat bananas raw but if they are starting to go bad, I will mash and use in oatmeal. I use to make banana bread with older bananas but not recently. I have, however, recently been making oatmeal-molasses bread with walnuts in a deep frying pan. Manufactured breakfast cereals are pretty much limited to shredded wheat and wheat bran flakes with raisins. I eat these "breakfast" cereals at any time of day not with milk but with cold water and actually can appreciate the taste of the cereal without a competing flavor. I eat tuna from a can at times but do enjoy it in the not so healthy, yet not so bad macaroni and cheese dinner along with soy sauce and dried red pepper or canned jalapeno peppers. I may add mixed frozen vegetables, spinach, peas, broccoli, or squash in macaroni and cheese. Just like during my college years of turning ordinary ramen noodles into something different, I've prepared macaroni and cheese a hundred different ways. Here’s a couple photos of using the cheese packet and without. Sometimes I will use just half the packet:
At the current price of 36 cents for a 7.25 ounce box it is a fairly good value. UPDATE: 3-18-2012, the price for the same box of macaroni and cheese went up to 42 cents a few months ago to 50 cents just a few weeks ago, thanks to Ben Bernanke killing our country with his wealth-dividing inflation so I will be forced to buy ordinary cheaper pasta and I don’t care what shape it’s in. If I find salmon on sale, I will buy it but it has to be an extraordinary sale like $1-2 per pound and not $7-8, otherwise I don't see the cost/nutrition benefit. In order to get a better price on salmon, you'd have to wait for the deal to happen and seize the opportunity and don't expect it to be a fillet as it will likely be whole salmon that would require more effort to prepare. I eat some other fruits like plums, peaches, and cantaloupe if on sale. I do not understand why cantaloupe is normally priced so high as it’s a melon that grows rampantly. Perhaps because of the known highly nutritional content, sellers command a higher price. I would buy buckwheat and amaranth if sellers would reduce the prices of these as well -there just lacks a reasonable basis why these can’t be available for much cheaper. The vegetables I buy are usually tomatoes and squash but not limited to these as I will sometimes get broccoli or a green leafy vegetable. Split peas, 11g protein per 45 gram serving that is nearly 25% protein, rich in vitamins C and K, and high in manganese (I wish I mentioned in the book, especially since people allergic to peanuts could use this to augment their diet), is yet another good source of protein and I will add squash to this and simmer in water -it's delicious! I now will buy frozen peas that unlike split peas that are dried, contain water and will cook by itself with minimal water and spices or add to pasta. Drinks are limited to 100% fruit juices, containing no artificial sweeteners, typically a berry variety or vegetable and must be on sale. I will drink the fruit juices watered down then immediately drink water with swishing in my mouth to remove much of the sugar from my mouth. Probably 90% of all liquid intake is water alone, drinking juice sparingly. I normally do not drink alcoholic beverages except when a useful medical purpose arises such as to relieve anxiety. I might have a single beer in back-to-back days which is not so common but more often a span of a month or more will occur between alcoholic drinks. For snacks, I will eat oatmeal cookies, ginger snaps, cheese flavored crackers, or graham crackers (to which I add peanut butter and dip in hot water) and I only buy when on sale, otherwise I will just wait it out. Since chocolate prices are much higher than they should be, I don't eat so much of it but will binge on occasion when I stumble across a good deal. I like ice cream but regardless of this, I usually buy it just a few times an entire year. I rarely go out to restaurants - when there was a Mexican restaurant that had decent prices I would frequent at least a couple times per month but since it raised its prices, I stop going. I made the decision to get a large one-topping pizza for $5 as my only restaurant expenditure now. The pizza is from a popular restaurant chain, namely Little Caesar's. I would normally not mention the name of any place but since I feel they provide a fair deal, I figure it's best to pass this information on. I feel so ripped off if I pay any more than $5. I did contact the company and asked if they would lower the price more and name it the "depression special" for the economic turmoil we are in. Of course I may eat a few other items not specifically mentioned above, but truthfully, this IS about it! There are two companies that I do not mind sharing as I feel they are offering a great service of passing on low prices – these are both on the West coast, which are Grocery Outlet and Cash & Carry. Cash & carry offers great prices on oats, pinto beans, and molasses. Overall, my diet consists of far less variety than that of most people but I feel it’s plenty and concentrated more on the side of healthy than not and also so important, my food bill is consistently under 50% of the Federal government allotment for full food stamp benefits. Being the cost of living is likely only to go higher, notably with the price of food as a large contributor, the guide I show above could be modified to suit your needs and much could be saved – the only question is, do you want to have more control in your life to make a little sacrifice?
UPDATE: June 30, 2013:
Peanuts and peanut butter are very pricey now. A 16 ounce container of peanuts may be $2 on the low end to $3 or more! Per weight, tuna is now about the same price. This is outrageous. Not only is the price so high but manufacturers of peanut butter are more commonly removing the peanut oil and substituting with partially and even fully hydrogenated vegetable oils just so they can sell the peanut oil separately to make more money. What a travesty! And so this leaves needing to substitute peanuts which although some have an allergic reaction to, they are filled in the American food culture. Peas and other such high protein vegetables would be a good substitution but we would also need to seek out other foods to get the vitamin E that peanuts have.
Whereas the topic of obesity is partly a health concern, it can spill over into behavior and finances as well. There are a number of issues that do not normally get spoken of and some are as follows:
1. Wear out carpet padding, car seats and padding, sofa cushions, mattresses and shoes sooner
2. More prone to breaking chairs; greater chance of loosening bolts securing toilet to floor
3. Worse gas mileage and possible lugging of engine when going up hills not just for own self but as a passenger in someone else’s car that could cause embarrassment and annoyance to the other person.
4. Increased gas consumption for air travel (this one item gets some media play)
5. Take up more room in an elevator, possibly take up adjacent space wherever there is close seating such as in a cinema or public transportation.
6.
Danger in eating mammal brains (perhaps from eating the entire duck or chicken that is contained in an eggshell, monkey brains, and from other animals). Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease, could result.
UPDATE: February 20,2015
Because of more reports on tuna containing high levels of mercury in addition to the Fukushima reactor putting radioactivity into the ocean, affecting large fish including tuna and salmon, I am now having to avoid fish. This would necessitate greater use of supplementation with vitamin B-12 and occasional iodine pill ingestion to counter the deleterious affects of the air-borne radiation.
With weight-lifting, particularly for men who get bulky for ego sake, it should be stressed that unless lifting is part of a job, the extra muscle serves no great purpose and that only a reasonable extra muscle for appearance that requires little effort in maintaining makes sense, otherwise it becomes a compulsion. The compulsion would not be so bad except that it does take away from time that could be devoted to others, particularly a loved one or children, it does require more food and perhaps a huge extra cost in additional supplements, more sleep time to recover from the stress, it could cause injuries and arthritis, and no matter what a man thinks of his intentions, others may view a freakishly large body as a means to cover up insecurity. So, having a nice body is certainly nice, but going too far has many downsides.
Deodorants and other sources of dangerous aluminum accumulation in the body
Deodorants take away the normal odors that even though may be displeasing to today’s standards, at least in some cultures. Natural sex pheremones from armpits are masked or otherwise rendered less effective in mate attraction. It is amazing that some deodorant products are advertised as augmenting sexual attraction but without their use, the natural pheremones would be present and would cost nothing.
If deodorants are preferred, caution should be exercised when choosing since most products on the market today also contain antiperspirants. Typically the antiperspirant is an aluminum based compound that may not be suitable for long-term health since there is a strong relationship with aluminum and Alzheimer's disease.
Deodorants without antiperspirants can be found but to be certain as to its contents, careful reading of the product label is required. If one chooses, a simple deodorant can be made at home at a fraction of the price using baking soda, water, possibly a small addition of zinc oxide as an anti-fungal, and a thickener that could be aloe vera gel or cornstarch. I’ve been using my own concoctions for 15 years.
Other common sources of aluminum introduction into the body are soda and beer cans, food serving pans, aluminum cookware, antacids and baking powder. Aluminum is a soft metal and because of this, abrasion such as scraping an aluminum kitchenware with a spoon can release aluminum. Aluminum has some resistant to some common acids, but not completely, and so some leaching of aluminum will invariably occur even from soda cans. Cooking rhubarb, apples, and citrus fruits can be hazardous since the respective acids, oxalic, malic, and citric, reacts with aluminum. Sometimes aluminum foil or aluminum serving trays when used with foods will show a dramatic reaction such as holes in the aluminum or gray to black discoloration of the food, and this can even occur with breads. Much of the rice cookers on the market use a soft aluminum bowl and this poses a big risk since everyone who's used such bowls know that they are reactive and easily abraded. Aluminum stovetop pots particularly pressure cookers since most of these are made of aluminum as well as aluminum grilling plates and cookie sheets should be avoided similarly. There are plenty of safer alternative materials such as ceramic, glass, stainless steel, iron, and copper and so even if the aluminum version of cookware is cheaper, the long lifetime of cooking ware warrants paying the negligible additional price per use. Tough aluminum alloy cookware is more resistant to leaching and abrasion but to be safe, even these should be avoided. A wise manufacturer should jump on the opportunity and make available stainless steel or copper rice cooking bowls to avert the risk associated with typical rice cookers. Why aluminum must be in antacids is a big curiosity. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) must be fully aware of the danger of aluminum and so it can make one wonder if there is truly a conspiracy of the government to somehow dumb down people for controlling the populace from aluminum poisoning by allowing salts to be in antacids and baking powder. The reader can make his/her own conclusion about the government's role but while pondering this over, the use of aluminum that has been taken for granted for so long should be avoided.
It was brought up in the book in how whole house fan systems may be the choice economical alternative to air-conditioning. It should be noted that such a system could prove beneficial in removing radon from within a home. Lung cancer can occur from high exposure to radon in homes. Radon exposure is greatly dependent on the soil that a home is on, with granite containing soil a major contributor. Radon may enter the home through gaseous seepage from the ground or into well water. Guarding against seepage into the home would be the first order of safeguarding radon exposure. A bypass system could be constructed by having a continuously running fan drawing air up from the basement through a pipe out through the roof to evacuate radon from under the home. If a well is used and radon has been shown to be beyond the allowable concentration, then various water treatment systems should be investigated such as a carbon filter or aeration system.
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4.EDUCATION ISSUES
Let me say a few things about our high schools and education in general:
1) Teachers ON AVERAGE do not teach WELL and accordingly rip-off educational services are proliferating. (check under “tutoring services” in a phone book).
2) I’ve been tutoring over the past 15 years because teachers do not teach well. I tell my clients that it’s a shame they need to pay for me because school teachers are ineffective. If you want to relate this item with my mention of rip-off services, I do my job and do it well and always insist that I am used as little as possible even if I end up making less money.
3) Homework IS NOT necessary (ordinarily). If the student FULLY UNDERSTANDS each type of problem through doing JUST one to a few problems of each type, excessive work demanded would lead to hatred of the teacher and/or school system. It is up to the teacher (though without finding so much fault with the teachers themselves
4) It requires a credential to teach. But how does a credential show the ability to teach as opposed to simply answering some questions correctly on a test? As you see, the job responsibilities and the testing are only very loosely related.
For myself, I test at around the top 1% of the population (and surprisingly I am pretty much unemployable but that’s a different discussion as opposed to one narrow aspect spoken of here), and yet I am suppose to take a CBEST test to prove some worthiness? So I took the ridiculous test though still protesting if how senseless it is and of my time and money spent for it, all so some highly paid persons in the government run educational system make it appear as though their positions are required. Though my writing skills are nothing like that of a romance novelist, I do know how to write and so I on the writing portion I chose the essay topic of how incredibly inefficient our school system is, knowing both that it could irk the readers and also that I wouldn’t commit any major errors to prompt them to reject me.
In an efficient system, to be able to teach, one should only have to have had taken the courses which they will teach and mastered them (or done by petitions for those who are self-educated and I do know what that is like as I sought to learn without the frivolous formalities), LOVE to help others and are able to transmit course material with patience and using different approaches whenever possible and when needed. READ THIS OVER AGAIN and tell me whether this would suffice to you! What’s the point of a CBEST test then? What’s the point of taking MORE courses than the ones you would be teaching? And, moreover, why would obtaining a master’s degree or PhD degree mean you should get paid more? Don’t be the narrow-minded type and say “well, a person went to school more and so they should get paid more”, as such a statement is baseless! If you get a higher degree and want to be paid more, go into an occupation where it really materially matters. Getting a PhD to teach fifth graders is overkill and does not translate into teacher effectiveness!
The present school system is so filled with top-heavy administrators. I am one who takes in my surroundings and cannot handle being put into a situation that is crazy from the standpoint of logic and reasonableness. I wouldn’t even be comfortable in accepting an extremely high wage realizing taxpayers are footing the bill for it! I’ve instead offered to be an on-site tutor, putting in just as much time but wanting perhaps 1/2 to 2/3 of a regular teacher. You see, some people can go over the same topic over and over again and then there are those others whose specialty is troubleshooting, where if there is a failure with the teaching, the student, or if it’s just a matter of getting someone up to speed from being out of school for an extended period of time, it’s like being challenged and I love to be challenged.
Schools, like most jobs, require prerequisites before being accepted. Throughout my thinking years (sometime around age 10 or sometime after) I’ve been fighting this mundane routine...from challenging teachers to challenging employers. And it wasn't because I enjoyed disputes for no reason at all, it was about striving for rationality and what I encountered seemed so disparate from what made sense. I was an inventing scientist and self-learned in chemistry and outperforming PhDs but couldn't stay employed because I lacked the proper credentials. It reminds me of a superintendent of schools in Santa Clara who lied about his credentials yet apparently performed well in his job. Once it was discovered the superintendent lied about his master's degree, he was immediately terminated. Of course lying shouldn't be upheld, but doesn't effectiveness count for something? Having the 'correct' credentials does not imply ability to perform!
BOTTOM-LINE: As long as one graduates high school, and can demonstrate to a committee that he/she can teach, then this should be all that is required to teach! NO CBEST, NO CREDENTIAL. And, all teachers should perform, otherwise they get fired, with no tenure or other teacher union protection.
I’ve said it before and I continue to say it, having a title of ‘teacher’ does not imply having a good ability to teach. Just like in any field there are plenty of so-called ‘professionals’ that can make you wonder how they were ever hired. This will always be the case, however, the standard based on teaching ability can improve. It’s terrible for the very good teachers to be earning the same or even less than ill-performing colleagues, and not to say they should be paid much higher, but that the system is filled with those who are not effective. This is not just about money either as it must be frustrating being part of a system and seeing how some can’t carry their own weight that can set back the education of students. Some teachers with great knowledge and having the best of intentions still does not translate into talent.
I’ve tutored children and adults over the past 15 years with great success and more effectively than what is done in our schools. Upon request I will send to anyone a 2-page letter showing my offer to instruct in high schools at the rate of 1/2 to 2/3 the rate of typical teachers. I would start at 12pm and work until 6pm and assist in personal tutoring, provide a safe haven for students to be upon being picked up by a guardian, and would offer instruction on classic board games. Within the letter I state my qualifications from scoring high on standardized tests, placing 1st in my high school in the national MAA contest, was math team captain, informally studied at the medical and chemistry libraries at Stanford University beginning at age 16 investigating a wide variety of topics involving chemistry. I took far tougher courses than required for a degree in mathematics, and could have minored in chemistry and psychology if I chose to take a few more courses, plus I have the capacity of having numerous PhDs if time and money permitted - I just do not need to show off by possessing such a certificate to prove my thinking ability, especially when such credential should have no bearing on teaching performance, and accordingly should especially have no bearing on receiving a higher salary to teach simple subjects to children. I've also taken a good amount of psychology related college courses. Now, why do teachers demand more money so often? Are they in the profession for the right reasons?
You wonder what teachers want: more money. Some of the dumbest people I know are schoolteachers! Middle school and high school teachers around here are no longer earning only $18-22K/yr as a starting wage, but now around $32-36K/yr! (and even more if you are a bilingual teacher!) Starting out at 0.8X the local median income and ramping to 1.2X the local median wage after 20 years’ service seems reasonable, not up to 2X like how it is in many areas of this nation. The occupation of being a teacher is obviously an important one, and there are plenty of good educators who’d accept a much lower wage for the love of the work that are not presently teaching because they realize the system is corrupt/filled with ineffective teachers who are more concerned about their wages. The lowest spending per child was in Utah and Iowa and these states had the highest standardized scores of the nation. So, anyone saying that money is the answer for quality education is making an unfounded claim.
I have an ad in front of me wanting to fill several school administrative positions: Principal: $84,895-$92,580; Director of Fiscal Services: $71,253-$79,217; Dir. Student Services: $74,902-$82,587. You can call (415) 945-3740 to verify. On top of this we have all the superintendents earning upwards around $130,000!
So much money going into the school system, yet little effectiveness! I wish the lousy California Education System would make school more streamlined. They believe that longer time means greater learning but it doesn’t translate so neatly as they’d like to think. They believe only those possessing advanced degrees are capable of teaching! A PhD degree carries some weight but the intelligence behind it is often more important and there is no known correlation between teacher educational level and teaching effectiveness to warrant higher salaries. The school system is a full of self-serving peons who can’t get a job in the real world! (harsh wording)
Intelligence to me is having the ability to formulate solutions from questions of forms not formally exposed to in the instruction/education process. I help my clients with this, yet I don’t see enough instruction in schools augmenting intelligence through exercising critical thinking skills.
SPECIAL INTERESTS CONTROL ESL PROGRAMS
Schools make themselves look ‘nice’ by appearing to help non-English speaking people.
High School ESL teachers earn $10 to $15,000 more in starting annual salary than ordinary teachers (40-50K compared to 30-35K).
1.Decrease school administrators
a)This applies to all public schools, not just for K-12. Note that there are an excessive amount of University of California Board of Reagents who “earn” a quarter a million dollars per year. I say we could eliminate 75% of such persons from the State payroll, and also cut the pay by 60% for those who are left. Failing K-12 school districts as well as not-so-bad districts often have a THICK LAYER of administrators for which there is little need. The end is now for the $130,000 administrator salaries, $90,000 principal salaries and $70,000 vice principal salaries. (I will speak of schoolteacher salaries separately). I believe 1/3 of administrators of K-12 schools can be eliminated and those left behind should take a 40% pay cut. It is senseless to allow the top-heavy system to remain as it is.
2.Demand qualified teachers
a)It is sad that so many teachers in lack the ability to pass competency tests that is expected of students. We need a whole new way of deciding on the qualifications of teachers. For starters, I say we can eliminate the CBEST test which basically tells of nothing the GRE or SAT tests couldn’t already tell. (Myself, I fought taking the CBEST test, though when I finally took it, I passed it effortlessly, but I thought it was such a waste when I already tested at the top 2% of the population in both the SAT and GRE tests. To me, the CBEST doesn’t indicate any ABILITY TO TEACH!). The teacher credentialing process KEEPS MANY QUALIFIED PERSONS AWAY FROM TEACHING as it is an insult to the smartest of individuals to learn how to use a projector for instance…some like myself when as students had to take over teacher duty and operate such equipment.
b)QUALIFICATION FOR TEACHING, A NEW (ACTUALLY OLD) APPROACH. No longer should it be required to have teachers take courses in subject areas well in excess of that which will be taught. There should be no reason why a person should take a topology course in college if all he or she will be teaching is basic math or algebra. To require years of school beyond that of the course material to be taught serves little if no purpose except in building a system that is self-serving. Delineating the qualifications that should be employed is as follows:
1.Graduate school at a minimum of 12th grade for grades 2-12 with a GPA of 3.0, GPA of 3.25 for single subject teaching, a minimum of 10th grade education for kindergarten and 1st grade with a GPA of 3.0. For college teaching, a similar approach should be employed, but degrees and or degree equivalencies at or below the subjects being taught, with similar requirements of GPA.
2.No CBEST test required.
3.Qualifying factors shall include GPA as a demonstrated proficiency in coursework, personal research, extracurricular research for school, work history, teaching/tutoring experiences. A system could be devised to rate prospective teachers for competitive purposes, such as a 100-pt scale giving 15 X GPA (60 max), demonstrated personal research outside of school (8 max), demonstrated school related research (8 max), work history related in a non-superficial manner (8 max, perhaps 1 pt. for each full-time year), teaching/tutoring experience (16 max. perhaps 4 pts. for each full-time year, based on 20 hours/week as full time). This system will enable those who are enthralled in a subject to transfer knowledge beyond that of a simply “schooled” individual and thus can bring an important dimension into the classroom. The present system emphasizes coursework and coursework beyond that which would be taught, with very little exception.
4.There is no better way, beyond the cursory demonstrated proficiency of course material, to foretell whether one has the ability to teach than to actually be placed in a position of teaching. For this reason, the aforementioned point system has a heavily weighted teaching/tutoring factor. The prospective teacher should then be given 6 months of probationary teaching work for both the person and the school system to assess (perhaps the person feels he/she is ineffective or loses interest). For the school system to assess, there’d have to be standardized testing beforehand so that when scores are available for comparison, there should be no lower than a 90% of past average scoring for students of the novice teacher (mind you, this same method can be used for transfer teachers). The 90% figure is semi-arbitrary, but allowing a 10% negative variance in an average is actually great statistically, so even if there is an aberrant set of students for which the teacher proffered, it would take a great lack of effort or ability to obtain under 90% of past average scoring. A teacher could be taken off the probationary period after successful demonstrated teaching, however, the future possibility of obtaining TENURE should be abandoned! Tenure simply allows abuse.
c)Though separate from teacher qualification, the salary structure should change noticeably. The present system allows great salaries for continuing education in excess of subject material being taught. This is obviously being abused. I personally know of a California teacher who “earns” $65K/yr as a middle school teacher, and in part, that pay is augmented by the fact that she has a PhD. Whoever thinks having a PhD materially impacts the teaching ability of the teacher lacks sound reasoning or is a cog in the abused system. For this reason, continuing education should NO LONGER allow greater pay. IF ANYTHING, increased pay could be given to teachers who perform well beyond the norm, based on student standardized testing. Pay normally goes up dramatically with years of experience (though hardly noticeable if no continuing education was performed, evidence that the system is presently a system unto itself), though I believe it could be tempered somewhat, making a slightly lower ceiling for pay and a modest decrease in starting salary for a job that lasts 9 to 10 months a year. As a contrast, I can tell you that as a scientist, I started at a lower salary than teachers, I invented, and worked 12 months per year, and my final salary if I stayed in the field for 20 years would definitely be less than that of a teacher. Teachers, firemen, and police are in a pot that elicits tears whenever there is any adverse action against these professions, but that has to end. Besides pockets of the health profession, teachers, police and firefighters have had salary increases well beyond over professions. NO LONGER should teachers be given special treatment in home buying, as this wreaks of favoritism, a favoritism that is unfounded in any underlying reason. In San Mateo County, a location which I recall salary structures of K-12 teachers, starting wage is about $34K and maxes out at $65K. I believe the taxpayer would be better served by having the above range from $30K to $60K. This should not be construed as anti-teacher or anti-education, for the authentic educators who truly enjoy their work WOULD DO IT FOR LESS and I will make it clear that I would teach full-time in a public school in California for less than what the current system allows. Perhaps we can get rid the teachers who are in it for just the money.
Make stringent yearly standards for students in each grade. Teachers would no longer need the ridiculous CBEST or credentialing which DOES NOT IMPLY teacher effectiveness. If there isn't a predominant percentage of citizen children passing the tests, the teacher is put on probation. If the teacher does not have a predominant percent of students passing in two consecutive years, the teacher would be banned from teaching for 5 years. No amount of teacher education could be used as a reason to get back into teaching if in bad standing. Only English shall be taught!
Teacher salaries should be set to starting at around the 40th percentile of the local country salary distribution for the less than full-time occupation, and no higher than the 50 percentile depending not so much on years of service but on effectiveness of teaching! Do away with tenure! See my website regarding fair wages where I explain why there are times when some persons do deserve higher pay within their field: Fair Wage Determination. Administrative salaries also should be set at a minimum of 45 percentile to no more than the 55 percentile of the county salary distribution. It’s a government job, even if it’s a lofty position. If they can’t accept a fair wage for what little they really do, they can find a different job that doesn’t allow them so much freedom – plenty of people would accept the reasonable pay and take the job seriously. Watch those Oakland California School District Administrators squirm if The Governor of California wants to make prudent strides in pushing for fairness!
Don’t assume one with a title is smart
College education does not necessarily provide a better life – many blue collar jobs pay more than white collar ones, particularly if in a union job. Moreover, the time in school delays income that could otherwise enable buying a home at a lower price.
Education related:
MBA, what’s the purpose? The work of MBAs can be performed without the education…nothing special involved but they happen to be involved in processes where large amounts of money is moved so they can skim money all the time at the detriment of society.
In continuation with the above, other professions including that of librarians could be performed by anyone who's spent years in libraries doing a variety of research and who did not acquire an MLS degree that for some reason is rewarded too highly with a fat salary. Pharmacists are also extremely overpaid and if trained appropriately, it could be done in 3 months' time, thus negating their stance that their time spent in school demands being overpaid. I could say the same of many other professions for I have analyzed what is involved in many professions but the public is made to think there is more involved with their profession than what is reality. This is not communistic and I must say this because too many are guarded against any ideas of fairness. Most occupations require little training on the job just as it was done decades earlier but the structure of society has people locked into tunnel vision and I wish people would think more independently and not be scared or offended if proposals that would affect their lives out of personal protection as they should think outside of themselves and realize when they are getting either more or less than what's fair. Many will often cite they were never overpaid, and that's likely preposterous. I can say that for myself, if I wanted to compare with the abilities of many others that my salary never compared fairly with coworkers who performed at a lesser level, however, that is different from attributing a good idea what is fair compensation for the type of work performed that must always be considered along the vast number of other types of occupations. For example, if I was paid $18/hour as a scientist who actually invented and then seeing those at the same company employed as quality control chemists being paid $25/hour and doing much simpler routine work, that is one aspect of salary comparison, but removing one's self from the topic and then consider what should be appropriate salaries for various chemist to scientist relative to other disparate occupations. There must be admittance when one is really overpaid: If I made $200/hour as a statistician, and knowing a great number of analytical occupations involving numbers may be around $25/hour, I'd have to say I got much more than what is reasonable. Even if I felt if all my abilities were being utilized for society and felt that the upper 1% would be appropriate, I wouldn't simply say I'm worth $50/hour but realizing also that no one person is really is worth so many times another, the spread of salaries ought to be more compressed than what it is at present which is around $8-50/hour for 98% or so of all the jobs, to more like $8-25/hour or so I'd say I'd be worth around $25/hour. One simple salary comparison within a company or type of occupation is not enough, since it excludes most other jobs.
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5.VARIOUS TOPICS ON GOVERNMENT
On the topic of freedom of information to curb corruption in government, as much information needs to be freely available on the internet without needing to make written requests. Government has long kept much information private or hard to obtain. If for example, a taxpayer wants to know the gross salary of a person in government whom they are indirectly paying their salary for, it should already be readily available on the internet without wasting time in going to a government office and also to not waste the time of government employees to process such requests.
Government workers committing driving infractions – a method to report them easier? From having to endure many instances of obvious driving infractions such as police not stopping at limit lines, police not using turn signals for making left-hand turns, speeding, buses going through red lights, or otherwise just wanting to question where a particular government vehicle is suppose to be, there is always a cover-up as government workers protect each other. I’ve seen where it appeared as though government vehicles were being used for pleasure such as for going to dinner, or as noticed in San Francisco a vehicle with a few workers or family members with Alameda County government license plates visiting the beach.
Ask private companies, churches or other groups to erect Christmas decoration and keep government workers out of the unnecessary process that has nothing to do with government operations. It is not the government’s responsibility to involve itself in religious holidays. This is a clear-cut separation of church and state issue.
From living in different areas I can say that 1/3 to ½ of all libraries could be removed. Deemed proficient managers of finances in government were in actuality not suited for their jobs and from mismanaging money, libraries are cut out entirely in some areas at the time of this book being written. No need to have credentialed librarians, no need to have magazines that can be purchased from a store and no romance novels, no checking out of materials at some or all branches and be open on weekends and two days of workweek should be sufficient. So much research can be conducted on the internet so libraries matter less…though nice to increase internet capable computers. No ref librarians needed either – usually there are knowledgeable persons present as customers who could lend a helping hand—so no need for more waste as government is the master of.
Cost of innovating – how about reducing patent application fees to $100 instead of $500 and share w/ government 10 times more than $500 fee upon first $10K made on the idea? Or another option is to allow one free patent application per life for those earning less than $10K per year. Innovation is hampered by keeping good ideas suppressed by making it difficult for the poor to participate in the patent process.
Visa extensions beyond the limited allotted time means people must vacate the country before returning again. While the usual system was intended to keep stays limited, the obvious way of getting around it is to simply fly out of a country, hang out at an airport until the next flight to return and airlines benefit at the hassle of the people and accomplishes NOTHING for the country. The obvious answer to this is to have people pay an amount to keep staying in a country beyond each interval of maximum stay at some proportional amount to the cost of such a flight or to double (or some other factor) the normal cost of visa extensions. It’s hard to believe that this has not been addressed in before (or if it has I am unaware of it).
Regarding visa extensions: most countries allow for only a limited time for tourism by non-citizens. The system of limiting stays is counterproductive to governments (and countries) since a person can usually just exit a country for the specified number of days and then return and it benefits mostly the airline industry. Unless government is the owner of the airlines, it serves no good purpose to limit stays for tourism. Governments could enact new policies of charging more to extend visas so money would be in the government’s pocket instead of the airlines.
In recent times, people are not even expected to save money on their own except through government programs such as tax-deferred retirement accounts. Individual retirement accounts are a joke! I have devised a couple of methods to extract money from these types of accounts or even add to them beyond what lawmakers allow, and it would all be legal. For instance, having a non-retirement account and retirement account, each trading stock equities in opposing fashion such as one short-selling and the other buying long positions, the only risk is if the direction of the stock goes in the direction not anticipated - money just flowed the opposite way and no loss of money. Another way is to go long in each account and begin buying a safe position of a stock index or similar exchange traded fund (ETF) in the account you don’t mind decreasing (but possible it could increase as well for obvious net gain) and then make lower priced buys in the account you want to increase. When the stock price goes up, sell positions that are at least mid-way between the buying price of stock in the account you want to increase and sell the stock in the account you don’t mind going lower at least the same price, maybe higher if by chance it happens. Do the brilliant minds who make multi-million dollar salaries in the banking business tell clients of these methods?
Elevators in federal government buildings for wheelchair access accommodation, alter to have services on ground floor
Government salary cuts-contemplated by Puerto Rico, a commonwealth of US, by reducing the total workweek hours but not rate of pay. This is not as good as reducing the rate of pay but at least it is a move in the right direction and more than what is being done to deal with the high cost of government workers in the United States.
Lottery waste. There is a more direct way of funding without more government costs involved that has to come from the populace. Furthermore, if a lottery is allowed, having only the original game and no longer having scratch-offs and Keno would make enforcement issues smaller and also capital expenditures less (not to mention waste of materials for something that contributes so little to society).
Government CAN operate as a business…as long as there aren’t great protections to prevent from being terminated. Additionally, to prevent abuse, there’d need to be a means whereby government employees can be reported and maintained by a non-governmental agency and given an over-riding power to deal with such matters. And, no longer shall they be overpaid the way they are now---they need to be paid just slightly less than those in comparable positions the private sector since even though some meaningful means to monitor performance will finally be conducted, the public oversight would not compare to that of a private company having a great concern over profitability.
Politicians pardoning their buddies in crime. END the practice. Have it so one web site devoted to petitioning and president chooses among only the top, say 20 names.
Drop the penny and half dollar coins. Make coins of denominations $1 and $5 with the $1 much larger than recent designs yet smaller than the current half dollar, and the $5 coin just larger than the current half dollar (no need to make either of these nearly the size of the Eisenhower dollar). The paper analogues of $1 and $5 could be eliminated thus saving much money since even though the cost of producing coins are greater than paper money, coins have significantly longer longevity in circulation that more than offsets production costs. In ridding of pennies, items can still be denominated in 1 cent or even less increment and simply tallied and rounded up to the nearest 5 cent multiple to arrive at a final price. Propose 70% Copper, 10% Tin, 20% Nickel for copper-clad coinage. Government should get out of business of marketing coins and stamps – have fewer designs. Some loss from collectors would occur but collecting is not essential to life and it would still overall cut government expenses from doing away with excessive designs and workers involved in the designing.
I am for some social engineering though as far as the most important area where people are able to do so little and live off of other people and that is in real estate ownership and the direct implication it has on rental property -–greater restrictions encourage people to actually work for a living and from this, wealth disparity would be compressed dramatically. Some social engineering would likely have to be in effect to encourage the poor to have fewer children since it’s not expected that all of them understand fully the ramifications both present and future and the simplest would be to offer money or monetary equivalents for choosing to be responsible. The “Responsible Fund” as differentiated from “Social Security” could be the name of the administration for this and other similar programs where good choices are awarded when culture promotes irresponsibility.
Corruption, Anti-laundering laws. Greater transparency…have websites and newspapers devoted to all the accounting of government. This could be the major use of newspapers in the future as opposed to normal news. This type of information would have a greater impact in hard-copy form.
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6.ECONOMIC ISSUES
Demise of capitalism is upon us. The thought was nice and is justified to a point, but a power structure persists in families over generations and when abused it takes away opportunities from others. Capitalism – efforts are suppose to produce money but not always so. Not clear as the mantra indicates. Be a rich person’s kid and have connections. Be a brilliant person and still cant get anyone to buy inventions. Once a sufficient amount of money is saved or when enough property is owned, a person could sit back and relax, counting all the money coming in and never have to work again…and possibly go on for generations. Surely, this takes away from the rest of society by taking more than giving to society.
Democracy is essential, but not capitalism. Socapitalism, a tempered capitalism, akin to socialism is the key with proper governing with checks to curb psychological want for power. World economy will have an averaging effect. When the world economy matures, a smearing around of industry should pervade those places currently lacking such and equality will happen slowly, AND less need for migrant workers (but consider middle east where migrant workers may be persistent).
Business efficiencies - easy credit makes for an unstable economy. Look at those who believe are brilliant minds regulating money supply creating the stock market and home price bubbles - the stock market can never be brought down to fair valuations as the game of propping up stock prices to benefit the extreme rich at the expense of everyone else is the primary objective. Those in charge always seem to think rising stock prices and home values are wonderful regardless if valuations are reasonable and that is a ludicrous….this one-sided view always focuses on who already is the owner but not the buyer. Stock prices that are in excess of a price per earnings greater than 10 or so can be viewed as overpriced by conservative measures yet what is normally encountered is a vast number of stocks priced at about 20-40 times the earnings, sometimes 100 times with only a few temporarily under 10 and it may be from insiders knowing of dangers that common investors are shut out from knowing.
Contrived currency valuations.
Should currencies be allowed to be traded or should there even be the present system of different currencies for each country? See my discussion on this topic in my book. Money could be ‘made’ without limit via arbitraging using triplet pairs of currency equivalents. Consider for example, 88.29JPY=1USD, 130.00JPY=1EUR, and 1.4725USD=1EUR. Starting with 100,000EUR then converting into Japanese yen, then into United States dollars, and then back again into euros, about 1,000 euros could be ‘made’! A 0.1% return in only the amount of time it takes to enter the orders! Doing it 100 times, or about once every 4 minutes to make $1,000 in each instance can amount to a gain of 100,000 euros! Imagine if a computer program searches for the best triplets of currency pairs then repeatedly making trades while certain criteria still hold true of making money that exceeds the price spread and commission costs! The money ‘made’ would be without bound in a short period of time.
As of the start of 2011, we have an unfunded liability of $112 Trillion, $50 Trillion total debt including a national debt of about $14.0 Trillion (I formerly had the figure of 9.5 Trillion that was only a few years ago to demonstrate just how big it got in such a short period of time), not to mention budget problems in about every state. It has been long overlooked about the impact of government salaries on our economy, but once it is clear to all voters that more government equates to more inefficiency in a society and their compensation is exposed, we could get this country back to a strong status as it was a couple decades ago. See Bankrupt USA
Former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, is first in line to take blame for the economic crash of 2007. He's also first in line behind the stock market crash of 2000. Greenspan could have raised interest rates in the late 1990's to put a curb on the excessive growth but the FOMC in recent years puts growth ahead of price stabilization - the very thing they are suppose to maintain. There was no way we could have such large gains in the stock market without a major fallout. House prices were also soaring but it was all good as people were not complaining, at least those who owned them. Greenspan was the guiding force that determines how businesses and people behave in terms of use of credit, not that they have to follow blindly but the masses often will follow in just that fashion. Of course no one forced banks to lend money to those who could not afford based on historical measures but it didn't matter as the FOMC encouraged it and people who took out the loans didn't care from all the exuberance Greenspan initiated. Bernanke followed suit by making piddly 1/4 point increases in rates when he should have ramped them up faster to prevent this mess from getting so out of hand but he, like Greenspan, is in the pockets of those who drive Wallstreet and thus he didn't want to disrupt it and instead opted to allow inflation to get out of hand while catering to Wallstreet. Being the Federal Reserve Bank controls the banking system in this country, the it could have also imposed higher capital requirements to put a damper on the stock market and housing bubbles. It is truly amazing that the bubbles were allowed to get so big. A bright 16-year old trained for just 2 weeks of basic monetary concepts could have done a better job than these adult "professionals".
It's actually really simple and if Greenspan would write me, I'd have a nice discussion with him. I made my contacts with the FOMC plenty of times but they are driven by a force that is contrary to their mandate.
As can clearly be seen, to support a lofty yet seemingly typical corporate revenue growth, personal indebtedness would ensue.
The additional two columns showing what the "other expenses" per person would have to be in order to continue the initial savings rate or to have a zero savings rate demonstrates the pressure put on consuming in other areas to maintain a high corporate revenue growth.
Copyright 10 Feb 2008 by [me]
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/10229/Greenspan-Dont-Blame-Me-(Either);_ylt=Ag4EtG0Fl2fwmV4aNC9mfchl7ot4?tickers=BSC&comment_start=101#comments
Fallacy of non-profit organizations
Profit is simply that revenue that is in excess of all expenses. A company does not need profit to maintain a healthy standing. Non-profit and profit businesses are essentially the same, one just returns the profit to one or more people, and the other just applies the revenue in such a way that it covers all the expenses. A non-profit company could have a CEO earning a million dollars per year and that would be legal. A for-profit company is able to offer higher salaries to the top management because people justify in their minds that since there is profit, the management is even more deserving of a high compensation whereas the work involved may be no different than what would be expected of the management of a non-profit organization!
Bailouts in auto industry? Why couldn’t they have lowered wages?
FOR POLICY MAKING:
What makes for a low cost of living?
1)Natural resources, including that of energy.
2)Exploitation of free energy.
3)Recycling (pertains to wise use of resources), better quality goods and construction so less need in new construction of materials and labor spent. Use items longer to extend life before replacement.
4)Weather-related: some places are affected negatively more than others but whatever can be done to minimize bad effects of weather should be done since it should be more efficient to use resources in combating than to use much more resources in dealing with greater destruction, not to mention the non-monetary concerns of people would benefit from less turmoil.
5)Population maintenance.
6)Health maintenance – a healthy society means less assets has to be apportioned to hospitalization and drugs.
7)Minimizing government to the amount lowest practical while still supplying needed services
8)Setting government compensations with indirect compensation at a fair level, comparable with the private sector and not around 60% greater than the private sector as is the case right now. This with item #4 directs for lower taxes and thus more money to those who produce.
9)Lessen military…this cannot be done without real globalization. Many will fight against globalization in thinking it is the act of evil, but the end result can have many positives including peace, ease of movement from one place to another, better law enforcement tracking, sharing of natural resources and technologies and more.
10)Lessen the number of non-producing jobs (ie, restaurants, and thus restaurant workers, travel industry, money pushers, etc), but this is largely driven by a change in behavior by the populace to strive for greater self-sufficiency in being better with money and to use it more for necessities. When not just a few, but most all of the populace are able to enjoy extra money from better efficiency, then these other non-producing industries could flourish but not while there is a great disparity of wealth, particularly when there is so many struggling poor.
11)Reasonable medical care, without hospital administrators, doctors, nurses, support staff being overpaid as they are now in America. Comparing with other countries, those in the medical profession do no think of themselves as gods to think they are deserving of 3 to 10 times the common worker. The salaries need to be kept in check even if it means government having to make it happen. Additionally, lawsuits need to have a practical upper limit to lessen medical costs based on insurance burden and in concert with this, there must be a means for patients to freely inspect doctor history of malpractice and deaths involved to assess whether it is higher or lower than the norm AND better hiring to exclude insufficient trained or otherwise insufficient mental capacity (in America, it doesn’t matter if smart or not, as long as a graduate in any field, it is assumed that person is proficient but that is far from the truth….very few excel in any field, the bulk are just adequate, and still some others could be looked at and wonder how they even were able to graduate), AND lastly, other peripheral workers including lawyers need to have reasonably lower compensations.
12)Reasonable housing costs AND this was covered in the book showing how for example, housing costs could be on average 2 X less if there was no private ownership….currently private ownership with boundless potential of rental income puts a great burden on the less privileged and these well-off land-owners are able to extract much money from others relative to the amount of work involved…this practice needs to be lessened or eliminated to effect greater fairness relative to work put into the world and thus money could be kept in the hands of those who are deserving from their toils to afford living.
13)Reasonable food, energy, and clothing costs (the necessities), and this all hinges on technology and fairness in compensation by those in higher levels of the fields not taking so much to allow for better retail prices.
14)Competition among business is required in more than what is addressed in item 13 above as far as compensation of workers but also in what is a fair amount of profit.
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7.EMPLOYMENT CONCERNS
Jump through the right hoops, not intelligence.
Do not need “qualified” persons from foreign countries. It is a falsehood and only to drive down wages and continue in widening the gap between rich and poor.
*Job requirements didn’t keep many people out of a job..it is the people behind the job requirements!*
Licensed Contractors compared to non-licensed (a joke on the public)–10% premium so give 20 or even 30% premium for work performed, but we see often 200% more and not anywhere near 30% which would be more reasonable. The premium should be related to ability and insurance…the ability is not always predictive but the insurance is and accordingly this game of contractors demanding high prices is a sham
Why are lawyers treated differentially when dealing with litigation or possible litigation? Why can’t people view others with the same importance? Lawyers would be largely unnecessary if people choose to be peaceful and rational.
Doctor migration to Britain might decrease
Regarding nurses/doctor strike..could even apply in other fashion, regular workers to executives for example.
**
Yikes! 80% of Employees Can't Do This
Fully 80 percent of employees at almost any company or retail business are ineffective at doing their jobs, reports Glasgow's Daily Record of a three-year study conducted by the employee aptitude testing company Cognisco. How do they get away with this? They don't know how incompetent they really are and neither do their bosses for the simple reason that the employees are adept at not making huge mistakes that would put their companies at risk.
Cognisco tested 40,000 employees in 35 countries in a variety of workplaces that included banks, stores, and call centers among others. Some of the surprising findings:
--Only 18 percent of employees reached the most basic level of being able to perform jobs.
--40 percent of skilled staff, such as engineers, sales personnel, and business managers, are so hopeless they can't master even one key element of their job, do not reach the basic standards required by their company, and make frequent mistakes--but since no one has ever told them how bad they are at doing their jobs, they are the most confident of all employees in their abilities.**
CEOs earn 262 times pay of average worker
Wed Jun 21, 2006 5:45 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chief executive officers in the United States earned 262 times the pay of an average worker in 2005, the second-highest level in the 40 years for which there is data, a nonprofit think-tank said on Wednesday.
In fact, a CEO earned more in one workday than an average worker earned in 52 weeks, said the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
The typical worker's compensation averaged just under $42,000 for the year, while the average CEO brought home almost $11 million, EPI said.
In recent years, compensation has been a hot issue with shareholders who have been bombarded with news stories about chief executives who are given multi-million dollar bonus and pay packages even if shares have declined.
For example, the chief executives of 11 of the largest companies were awarded a total of $865 million in pay in the last two years, even as they presided over a total loss of $640 billion in shareholder value, a recent study from governance firm the Corporate Library, found.
In 1965, U.S. CEOs at major companies earned 24 times a worker's pay. That ratio surged in the 1990s and hit 300 at the end of the recovery in 2000, according to EPI.
CEO pay is defined by the sum of salary, bonus, value of restricted stock at grant and other long-term incentives. Worker pay is hourly wage of production and nonsupervisory works, EPI said.
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8.ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
Stop bunk science. Ethanol from corn and beets - sounds wonderful (superficially) but public has been swindled again. There continues to be progress to make the conversion energy efficient but as of the time of this book it’s far from cost effective. Reword-effective.
Global warming. Who’s to say people are the largest contributor? MORE vegetation!
See the fun video on this subject at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11TAWkx8o6w&feature=related
There is also a very informative video located at (it’s longer but if you want the crux of what controls the surface temperature on Earth, concentrate on the 33-36 minute portions of the video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov0WwtPcALE
Carbon dioxide contributes an insignificant effect on global warming. Global warming is attributed primarily from the Sun.
CFCs on ozone: pretty much debunked recently yet researchers’ mistake caused the mandate for non CFC refrigerants as a result and some are extremely expensive. Consider the power of the sun putting out UV creating ozone: humans are probably making an insignificant impact on the ozone layer.
Burning leaves – harvest bugs instead!
explain. Large deposits of low sulfur coal (such as in South Dakota). coal burning power plants could be made cleaner.
Oil is natural – oil spills can at times be hazardous, especially in water, but since it is natural, some minimal exclusions could be set for underground contaminants that won’t affect humans.
MUST see above and check out on estimated forest fire contribution! So-called “environmentalists” love to have entire forests burned down, losing valuable resources and causing pollution. Humans were given the ability to think and should realize that intervention is needed while the world population keeps increasing. If the world population was half of what it is now, and it could happen in time if people decided to care for the world, then allowing natural destruction would be fine, but that is not appropriate at this time!
Record high temperatures in the 1800’s-why if global warming the records have not been broken? If there is global warming now, then there must have been global warming prior to 1900 which is also prior to the use of automobiles? So is CO2 the cause? If so much CO2 is being added to the environment from motor vehicles and industries, why aren’t the global temperatures climbing higher and higher? Average global temperatures have been falling over the last 10 years which debunks the fanatical view that humans are the main cause of global temperature fluctuations, especially of the specific claim of warming.
Humans emit CO2, [30 x less than by nature*]—check...maybe just 13%
Humans contribute just 3% of air pollution If we were able to reduce contaminant emission into the air by 35%, we’d be emitting 2%, not much of a difference relative to the total emissions and the cost involved appears to make little sense-though no need to just allow it – of course make changes, but realizing the planetary impact is minimal and thus efforts in other things might be more prudent .
Oceans have dissolved carbon dioxide. There is a link between global warming and carbon dioxide but erroneously accepted as the causative factor and not the effective result. The motivations of such is likely due to new-age thinking that humans are bad, nature is good, and thus humans should just wither away….
Coal burning emits carbon monoxide, thorium, more radiation than all of released radiation of nuclear energy plants (verify this). How could so many people overlook this? Simple, incompetent teachers are not playing their role in teaching facts. Liberalism that holds emotional views can occlude rightful thinking just like those seeking profit at no concern for anything else. The two must be balanced.
Natural air pollutants:
Methane (swamplands, cows, termites)
CO2 (forest fires, cows, termites)
Dust/ash (meteorites, volcanoes, forest fires)
Sulfur compounds (geysers)
Volatile organic compounds (foliage)
Environmentalist really are not.
Changing diets of cows.
Termites, methane – I made a termite harvesting container but landowner disallowed my project from continuing. I aimed to see if perpetual harvesting could be accomplished. Methane gas could be generated from contained colonies to contribute to energy stores. I am willing to sell it for the cost of materials, not counting labor if one wants it for research and am willing to disclose the plans to anyone interested.
Thinning trees for forest management so less widespread forest fires would occur. Less CO2 generated and wood products would be gotten.
Large pipeline to Saudi Arabia for water.
Drill in Alaska (Anwar) and build more hydroelectric power plants. Abundance of oil from Shale. Oil from harvesting from algae is very promising.
A matter of national security, imminent domain - not a problem like false announcement of satisfactory air quality in area of the twin towers collapse of 9/11 and other places within reason.
Recycle spent rods as done in other countries but disallowed in USA.
More reservoirs, for water supplies, small impact on lessening hysteria of rising ocean waters if done to a large scale, and for power generation. Some environmentalist will argue about anything made by man as harming the environment but to that, one could also state that the so-called environmentalist is harming the Earth by being alive…the survival of humans should come first but of course also to be more mindful about consumption and pollution and this points to awareness, respect, and population maintenance.
Wash machine bike that uses only human power. Perhaps 15 minutes of actual bike riding would be sufficient to wash clothes. Laziness has come about from the invention of the automatic washing machine but there can be convenience to a lesser degree that would include human effort to a lesser amount than by washing clothes entirely by hand.
Levee breaking- incredible, to me it’s no excuse and instead have reservoirs. New Orleans – dredge. Still can’t master levees - simple technology.
Make houses much stronger to withstand bad weather so that materials do not have to be consumed as much in repairing or rebuilding. Additionally, homes should be made much more energy efficient in all the current technologies, when reasonably priced. This should not have to be orchestrated by government to offer incentives as homeowners are generally more well to do than non-homeowners and so it does not make sense for those who have less money to subsidize those who have more.
Less centralized sewage: 1 to 2 septic tanks (highly dependent on demand…do what makes sense of course) septic tanks per city block, placed under easily escavatable areas like mini parks or better yet communal gardens of just fruit trees.**
Asbestos, benzene, radioactivity receives so much attention yet MTBE, a gasoline additive that is partly soluble in water receives so little attention. Being it is partly water soluble, the impact it has on underground water upon underground gas tank leakage far exceeds that of non-water soluble gasoline components since the plume size is proportionate to water solubility. Fluoride ion is 40 times more acutely toxic than benzene yet hysteria surrounds benzene. Asbestos naturally occurs in 3 forms, only one of which poses respiratory risk and comprises of only 5% of the total asbestos used, so why the hype again that scares the public and forced restrictions that came about from unscientific policy decisions?
Apologetic when speaking of carbon footprint as if we have to answer to “environmentalists” they are the authority? They often rely on junk science!
Nuclear waste-spread over inhabitable mountainous areas, low concentrations premixed in dirt.***
Radioactive waste: it is concentrated and put into bunkers, above-ground enclosures and at least in recent past, were placed in barrels and deposited in the ocean. The problem with these methods is that the hazard is great by design as concentrating is the number one factor influencing the danger. It would be better to dilute immediately and spread upon uninhabited locations so that there is only minimal increase in radiation that naturally occurs from the ground.
Electric cars continued: until wind, solar, tidal, increased hydroelectric, nuclear, biomass and other energy sources are better developed, they’ll still be a drain on natural energy resources and thus no improvement made since the energy going into producing electric cars has to be gotten from somewhere! The primary good of electric cars is to be able to use them in highly populated areas so that the energy used to produce the electricity causes pollution where less impact is made upon humans.
MTBE
For the acceptable concentration for MTBE in water, 20ppb seems reasonable. Accordingly, the concentration of benzene in drinking water should go from 1ppb to about 8 ppb. These figures are hypothesized by myself through relative toxicities.
I remind you that toothpaste contains ~0.2% w/w sodium fluoride, and is twenty times as toxic as benzene.
The taxpayers of California already spent 6 BILLION dollars on underground gas tank monitoring of leaks. The amount would be less if common sense logic was applied to put in respective relative toxicities, such as having the acceptable concentration of benzene at higher than 1 ppb in water.
By allowing a higher, but safe concentration of MTBE in drinking water would save the taxpayers BILLION DOLLARS when the MTBE is dealt with by the EPA.
I believe the best solution for this MTBE and Smog Check II program is to FIRE all California EPA decision makers! And then ban the use of MTBE. Even the suggested alternative ETBE (ethyl tertiary butyl ether) will not have any significant difference in physical properties to warrant testing.
Just for your info to show how EPA is screwed up:
Toothpaste (sodium fluoride) is more toxic than benzene
- Sodium fluoride has an LD50 orally in rats of 0.18 g/kg vs. 3.5 g/kg for benzene. Based on these values, benzene is 20 times less toxic than sodium fluoride (or 40 times less than fluoride ion [without associated sodium ion]).
If you ingest as little as 1 gram of ordinary toothpaste having a fluoride ion concentration of 0.1%, the quantity of sodium fluoride ingested amounts to 2.2 mg.
- Since benzene is twenty times less toxic than sodium fluoride , the toxicity of 2.2 mg sodium fluoride is comparable to 44 g benzene.
- In order to ingest 44 g of benzene from minimally impure water having a benzene concentration of 10 ppb (ten times the allowable concentration) you would have to drink 4,400 liters or 1,150 gallons. The average person drinks less than 100 gallons of water per year.
-CONCLUSION: ingesting as little as 1 gram of toothpaste contributes as much toxicity as drinking water contaminated with 10 ppb of benzene over the course of ten years!
All bananas are radioactive merely because potassium is naturally radioactive BUT it doesn’t mean they are dangerous!
Nutmeg contains toluene and safrole (known carcinogen) yet EPA doesn’t worry about it.
Why wasn’t there a free-for-all fishing fest at Lake Davis before the fish were poisoned?
Fax to a radio station: Sorry to bother you, but is it possible to incite listeners to call the NAZI Bay Area Air Quality Management District to monitor BEAUTY PARLORS releasing toxic fumes from nail polish and hair permanents? The BAAQMD is worried about such things as ethanol emanating from bakeries. These workers must be inept!
ELECTRIC CARS/BOATS: They consume more energy than gasoline actuated counterparts….imagine the potential lead and cadmium contamination from insurgence of battery use….especially on roadways…just how many affirmative action/white weasel (including everyone = not racist) governmental environment health specialists at the wage of $60,000/yr will need to be involved in traffic accidents involving hundreds of pounds of lead, cadmium, and sulfuric acid? An unintended consequence of using batteries in place of gasoline that can be REMEDIED by better education on chemicals to prevent undo scare that gives government and specialty contractors a means to command higher wages/prices.
Lead: much greater chance of ingestion comes from leaded glassware, not in paints.
Oil: You could be cited for dumping a quart of oil on your own property but if you use a chainsaw, spitting out 2 quarts of oil, but dispersed on the same property, this is not considered harmful. This is so strange.
Fluoride is considered toxic and I notified the scientifically challenged personnel at the County Environmental Health Office by telling them I aimed on dumping fluoride in the concentration of 0.1% onto soil where I lived. They promptly forwarded the information to the District Attorney’s office. I was told not to do it but when I told them the form was in toothpaste, they considered it not harmful. Now, I am curious, why would it matter if the concentration were exactly the same whether it is in toothpaste or some other medium? Preposterous!
Particular to SF Bay Area:
Point to traffic report seen on TV in the mornings…always shows back-up at the Bay Bridge toll plaza, and shows the few cars utilizing the diamond lanes. At that area you have about 7 lanes going into 16 lanes and then down to 5 lanes on the bridge…can’t our bureaucrats figure out this lane structuring along with the toll plaza is a bottle neck inviting minor accidents and POLLUTION from idling cars impeded from travelling at a normal speed? We could have 7 lanes going simply into 5 lanes! LESS STRESS from government regulating at toll plaza, LESS MONEY to go to government, LESS POLLUTION, LESS TIME to get to work!
Diamond lanes create gridlock. Gridlocked traffic produces about 2 times the NOX contaminants, 6 times the carbon contaminants and 6 times the reactive organic gases per mile than produced by traffic operating at peak efficiency.
Eliminate ALL gasoline additives mandated by government:
MTBE and other petroleum by-products are absolutely unnecessary as additives. Additives imposed by government may have SOME good intentions, however, I believe there was a lack of analyzing beyond the whimsical thought that oxygenating fuel could PERHAPS be better for the environment. Well, the fact is, some component of vehicle exhaust is improved by oxygenates, but others are negatively impacted. The net effect weakly supports the use of oxygenates. Considering the cost to the consumer for oxygenate addition, it makes no financial sense. Most importantly, when considering the water solubility of oxygenates, it makes ZERO sense to have additives: leaking gas tanks exhibit definable plumes, normally drifting no more than 200 feet from the source when confined to non-oxygenated fuels, but when oxygenated fuels enter the soil, it combines with water to effortless flow miles from the source. Albeit oxygenates may have on the order of toxicity about a third of that of benzene, its presence in the environment for us to drink or breathe is on magnitudes greater than for benzene, hence oxygenates have the unintended consequence of necessarily polluting our environment. The negligible improvement in vehicle exhaust can in no way offset this million-fold negative factor of polluting our environment.
Gasohol, or gasoline with ethanol added should not be used for a different reason than above. The toxicity of ethanol is insignificant when compared to petroleum distillates. However, vehicle performance decreases with ethanol, and that means more polluting with lesser horsepower vehicles (especially when ascending hills), and greater consumption of fuel per mile driven. If one cared to do the math, one would come to the conclusion that the addition provides no meaningful positive effect until which time it costs less to produce ethanol than gasoline and engines would need to be altered to deal with the lower energy of ethanol. Noting that gasoline is cheaper for the consumer when gasoline is all of the same type over large regions, it makes even less sense to have one area demanding a type of fuel different than another (unless of course there was a material improvement by the use of a certain additive, but as of now, there exist NO ADDITIVE that magically cleans exhaust at a reasonable cost, has no potential of primary or secondary pollution, and which doesn’t decrease performance).
Improvements in carburation can do more than any improvement in gasoline additives, and the experts know this. People should push for carburation improvements and compel the abandonment of the additive program.
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9.DRUGS
I see no reason why “drugs” can’t be made legal…just prosecute more heavily offenses while under the influence of drugs….I further state that having alcohol in one’s blood while driving should not be a reason for being fined by police officers, but only when a crime against someone has been made…in this instance, charge the offender an exorbitant amount of money and prison time.
The fact of the matter is that everyone does drugs in some form or another: nicotine in tobacco, caffeine in coffee and cocoa, theobromine in cocoa, arecoline in betel nut, ecgonine derivatives in coca, ephedrine in ephedra, cathinone in Khat (Kat or Qat are other spellings), eugenol in cloves, elemicin and myristicin in nutmeg, tyramine (sic) in aged cheese and some wines, and of course alcohol.
What I’m about to say will not will please certain conservatives, but holding onto a stance that drug use is criminal without well-founded principles is foolhardy and that is also the position of the government. I do not cater to any political affiliation but am instead directed by reason. What must be considered primarily is what is the harm one person does to others while under the influence of drugs, not the actual using of a drug.
Doubling the punishment of any crime while under the influence of ANY drug including alcohol would encourage responsible use of drugs. If the person is also receiving governmental assistance, an extra penalty could be imposed such as donating time to society. The fair and equal justice under law, determination of “under the influence” would need to have specific guidelines met such as a modified sobriety test that also includes a few questions to ascertain mental fitness.
To those having an emotionally charged stance towards drug users, it should be clear that it really doesn’t matter at all if someone wastes his or her money on illicit drugs provided the person does harm ONLY to him or herself! There is no benefit to society to incarcerate drug users who commit no infraction over others. If medical care is needed, the burden of cost certainly is a concern but no one should be denied care if needed, even if done from their own doing. Note that even people having mishaps from not taking proper cautionary procedures or those engaging in particularly hazardous activities that cannot be made completely safe are doing on their own accord and so if these such things are accepted for medical care, so should accidental or careless use of drugs.
Which in a nutshell, I say legalize every drug and let there be a separation on Earth of those who choose to be responsible and those who choose not to be responsible. The crime rate would go down. There may be a few who’d engage in drug use if drugs were made legal but if the current laws prevented them before, the added penalty for irresponsible use as determined by harming others would keep them in check – for if they abided by the law before, it is expected they’d continue doing so. The penalty for irresponsible drug use would actually curb a good deal of drug use by current users and even though this is not primary, it would be a major accomplishment in reducing the more important aspect and that is the secondary harm to others.
The above applies to adults, not to those deemed as minors. Additional penalties would need to be applied to any adult associated with a minor taking any drug that has a high potential harmful effect on the minor and certain potentially harmful affect on others such as if driving.
Drug cartels in Mexico in early 2010 have been showing force in killing innocent people. This apparently is done to scare people who meddle in their business. I made it clear in my book that the use of drugs could be done responsibly, but not all are able to do it. Notwithstanding this philosophical point, people still need to be protected by drugs since most people cannot control themselves. While drugs are illegal, drug cartels will be able to inflict secondary harm that is not related in actual drug use and this is a most disconcerting problem that can only be addressed by changing the legality of drugs to lower the money involved. Even if twice the amount of drugs as used today would be consumed if there were downward pricing pressures, it is expected that the prices would go down 80-90% so that the overall amount of money in the non-medical drug industry would be lessened. Government oversight would also then be possible by knowing the manufacturers and distributors to help prevent killings by drug cartels.
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10. ADVICE FOR AMERICANS (extension of last chapter on Globalization)
Live more persons to a single home. Taxes must go higher, jobs will be fewer out of increasing business efficiencies and corporate access to foreign labor force abroad and in this country by way of H1 work visa holders, not to mention the many millions of illegals that politicians will not enforce the law upon since the rich benefit greatly from them being here.
Do not use an air-conditioner if possible since the cost is prohibitive. Instead, use a whole house fan system – the cost is reasonable, consisting of a large in-ceiling fan and a few ports for exhaust of air in the attic.
Once your water heater fails, buy a hot water on demand system. It will save lots of money.
Have 5.25% or similar strength unscented bleach handy always. You may need this to treat water. Normally 8 drops of bleach per gallon of water is sufficient to render the water safe. For 5 gallons, 40 drops would be needed but don’t bother counting drops in this case and instead use 1 teaspoon of bleach. However, if the water source is highly suspect, use slightly more but no more than two times this.
Buy 5-gallon water bottles and have them filled always with clean filtered water. The use of water filters with a trace of silver is good for combating bacteria. Mark the dates on the bottles and dispense for gardening or use for washing clothes periodically – I suggest adding half the recommended amount of bleach if replenishing the water once every month or two, provided the water was very good to begin with, stored in a cool dark place, and sealed well, otherwise use the recommended amounts stated above and store for no more than three months.
Dispense collectibles. Do not be shopping for fashion – be more judicious on clothes shopping. You should be able to fully clothe yourself for under $100 per year including shoes, possibly slightly more if the Federal Reserve continues to purposely devalue our currency. You do not need clutter. From now on, keep your life simple and meaningful.
Have cash at home at all times, very well hidden. Do not be buying gold or silver. If you already own these metals, sell some and buy high capacity rifles and pistols for self-protection against others who want to steal and in case police or military go crazy from Presidential command to round you up to be placed in holding camps. One household alone would not prevent this but when police will know that almost every household will defend themselves, the command will be rendered ineffective as it will affect the consciences of police.
Buy plenty of seeds for planting in advance. Use your monetary resources for those things that matter most: shelter, food, water, clothing, and after this comes communication and that means owning a low-powered radio, television and internet access (If applicable).
Avoid brand-name products unless there is no good alternative.
Have a gas-powered generator and keep 2 by 5 gallons of gasoline handy, replacing the gallon every month with transferring to a vehicle.
Use solar panels if you have the money to afford.
Wash machines should be simple to operate, nothing fancy. When times get tough, understand that washing by hand is not so difficult-I’ve been doing by hand for the last 5 years out of choice. You do not need popular brand soaps – the lowest cost should work fine and even with ¼ to ½ the recommended quantity. Corporations make profit off of consumers when products are consumed greater than need be.
Forget clothes dryers unless very cheap and affordable to use or if living in persistently cold/rainy/foggy weather. Hanging to dry outside if possible.
Do not buy pre-processed food except those that can be stored for long periods for emergency. Try to be as self-sufficient as possible and that means not even buying bread. Flour is much cheaper and it’s not that hard to bake bread. You will save lots of money in being more self-sufficient.
Stock up on non-perishables including dried beans and oats. Grow vegetables including tomatoes, carrots and squash. If building a greenhouse, consider making one with basic materials unless you get a great deal on a manufactured one. Orient the hothouse so that you could put up one side with a solid wall in the direction that the sun does not pass over. Consider also a solid wall on the first 2 to 4 feet to save on the more expensive Lexan plastic (other plastics may be substituted but if buying ¼” panels of this material, it will be durable and not so expensive if painted plywood could be used in those places where the sun really wouldn’t have an impact on growing. I myself have 20 pounds of dried pinto beans and oats, plus canned tuna and manufactured cereals with long shelf lives.
Buy your own dental tools and also have a bactericide such as alcohol handy. Learn to cut your own hair and/or perform on persons in your household. Picking teeth and cutting hair is not rocket science.
Expect crime to go up. Try to be outside of the home in daylight hours to safeguard yourself. If you used [expensive/illegal] drugs in the past, try the best you can in avoiding these things since money will be harder to come by.
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11.PRIMER ESSAY ON MONEY
Items of value: raw materials: lumber, metals including precious metals, oil, chemicals; food; man-made products not easily reducible in former two categories.
Money is an “IOU” which is in longhand, “I owe you”. A system based on IOUs is founded in trust: the IOUs entering the system must be rightfully accounted for and of such a form to be positively and uniquely designed for identification with measures against forgery. There need not be a standard such as a precious metal, precious stones, fossilized bones or any other substance of limited quantity to provide for human perception of value behind the vehicle of exchange – these are all psychological. In a separate essay it will be elucidated how even gold has practically no value but to tease the reader on the supposed intrinsic or real value that is bantered about relative to gold, if you were the only one on this planet, how much value would gold have compared to a fishing pole?
The net worth of all money in a closed system is NECESSARILY, ZERO. For each sum of money possessed, there is an equal amount lent. The owner of money is the borrower and not the lender. The borrowed money can be lent out to purchase a good or service and the “I owe you” can circulate in such manner without limit, provided upon mutual acceptance.
Any apparent wealth comes about from an imbalance of IOUs among people and other entities including corporations and government.
Greater wealth necessitates greater lending: the wealthy are the greatest borrowers.
If all things of apparent value were tallied, would it include only natural resources and items produced from such? Yes, but just as resources vary wildly based on how the financial health of the world, demand, and of course price manipulation, there are also items for which humans attribute an extrinsic value beyond that of value of goods and cost of manufacture, typically seen in real estate and this can fluctuate based on the financial condition of the masses. Real estate values, while no limits exist in ownership and child birth rates are not curbed, will forever slowly increase, excepting brief periods, since the availability of homes on the market will decrease on a percentage basis. This produces inflation and an unstable economy with the rich able to profit more and more off of the less advantaged. Government statistics claim that home ownership has gone up but if you are not analytical, you may be fooled by this statistic. Go to the basic Education Chapter above to see a short mention of this statistical fallacy.
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12.MISCELLANEOUS
Change the date of celebration for the holiday, Thanksgiving, to 1 or 2 weeks earlier (depending on the calendar). Main justification is to accommodate travelers with better weather. One week earlier could make a major difference, facilitating comfort, safety, and increasing commerce. An unintended consequence would be in increasing the holiday buying season.
Hot houses: consider alternative structures such as:
1. One, two, or some fractional amount of the total walls could be of conventional home/wall construction that is impervious to light but possibly having a reflective surface. This is for rigidity and for possible cost savings being that transparent plastic is expensive. The light-penetrating walls just have to be oriented with the path of the sun in the sky. Many people have gardens adjacent to one or two wooden fences that did not appreciably impede plant growth so it can be assured that all walls need not be transparent.
2. Covering over plants only, not for walk-in. For example, a wood, plastic, or metal boxed frame could be placed on top of a planter box and rigid clear plastic or bubble-wrap is secured to the frame. This may be the simpler, low cost alternative to hothouses being the cost of a hothouse can be exorbitant. This alternative could even be an adjunct to a hothouse for additional plants.
Inheritance: Limited to 50PLE would be a great start for any individual and would induce a parent to not accumulate large sums to then feed back into society. It would also serve to lessen the known fluctuations among generations of creating spoiled children by parents who try too hard in sheltering their children from financial difficulties.
Golden parachute of execs: The ones who don’t need the money get more and more. Lower salaried workers should receive the same perks of leaving a company, based on longevity only and not position.
Health care
Salaries of doctors, compare to other countries. The area of profession can at times give the sense of greater importance over others. Everyone who does what they can for society should be paid within a more narrow band since although there may be different skills involved, the time put into the work should play a major role in determination….maybe in time when people see the value in fairness of salaries based on time put into work, the factor time plays a role in salaries could go from about 5% as it is now to perhaps 50%, with the remainder determined by extraordinary accomplishments but in no way should one person be worth many times more than the average person.
Auto manufacturers, smaller selection,
Keep parts the same across models and year in as much as feasible to reduce costs.
Too much selection = greater cost
Media misinformation: “flammable oxygen tanks” as heard several times in televised news. Oxygen does not burn – it supports combustion.
PROFIT: It is customarily accepted that profit is fair. Of course there has to be a gross profit, but after all expenses are paid, including to the owners, there is what is called the net profit and this is something that does not really need to be present, or at least to any great extent. The net profit should be maintained at a level enabling some reasonable business expansion and insurance to safeguard business fluctuations and unforeseeable events such as bad weather. When the net profit is accumulated to a sufficient degree, instead of the money dispersed to owners, a more novel and noble method is to reduce the cost of goods or services.
Tipping:
It should be realized that food servers often earn at or in excess of the local median wage. Whose duty is it to pay the servers? Does a restaurant patron contract out the services of a person to wait a table? No. It is the responsibility of the restaurant owner to pay the food servers, not the patron. There may be showing off or feeling sorry for waiters to throw extra money at them, but is it really deserved?
Consider the following common scenarios:
1. If the waiter earns far more than the patron, should the patron be thinking “I work so very hard for what little money I have, but I will make absolutely certain that the waiter makes far more than me for bringing my food and fetching some catsup – that is such hard work that ought to be rewarded handsomely.”
2. Or maybe this is what goes on in the mind of a male patron: “I have this hot date with me and since women love to see a man loose with his money, I better cough up an 20% of the food bill, whether or not it’s related to the service.”
3. To a person not believing in tipping for there are plenty of people who work hard for their money and may make less than food servers, there may be a reluctance but the:
a. Guilt from knowing it’s expected that food servers are suppose to be handed more money whether there’s a basis or not as it’s merely an unspoken societal rule.
b. Realization that the food servers are imposed an income tax on the expected amount of tips, so the patron gives in to the nonsensical tipping-government revenue charade.
Tipping is one unnecessary convention that ought to be eliminated. It adds stress to people’s lives. There’s enough stress in today’s society so ridding of the tipping system would enable some relief. If taxation is impose on waiters (or of other professions normally receiving tips) based on expectation of tips, then the law needs to be eliminated.
Now, let’s speak of an explicit example of how tipping is determined. If a server brings a plate of food to a table, how much is that worth? Is it worth $1, $2, or more? Oh, it's not determined by the actual WORK, but determined by the price of the FOOD. Now, how does that make any sense? If the plate of food cost $10, $20, or $30, do you really think the amount of energy to bring the plate was any different for each of the figures to justify a tip based on the price? Are we rewarding the cost of food or rewarding the work involved. Oftentimes there is an automatic 15% gratuity added to the bill when there is a party of ten or more. This surely has to be unlawful – if anyone cared to set precedence in suing a restaurant for imposing an added charge that does not go to the restaurant. I suppose, according to restaurant owners, that two parties of five are vastly different than a single party of ten, but I fail to see the rationale. You’d think that the restaurant (and servers) would be happy to have more customers to not single them out with a forced gratuity.
Some states pay the minimum wage and people still fall over themselves to tip. Oregon is one such state. In a depressed area of Oregon, a waiter may earn, in the right restaurants, $20-25 per hour while most others in the area earn just $8-12 per hour. A person could work hard at a lumber mill earning only one-half of a waiter yet helps maintain the high lifestyle of a waiter by providing with a big tip since it’s expected. I find this ridiculous. For the other states that pay less than the minimum wage to waiters, well, I suggest pushing legislators to enact rightful pay to guarantee a livable wage without having to psychologically shake down patrons to provide what the employer ought to do.
If the reader loves tipping and thinks what I am saying is nonsense, you are welcome to pay your car mechanic an extra 20%, pay the utility companies an extra 20% for providing with utilities, pay school teachers an extra 20% for teaching your child, and so on. Why is tipping expected in some occupations and not in others? The subjectivity is unfair. In opting for fairness, it would make sense to make all jobs based on tips or make them all based on wages. Obviously the wage only compensation system makes better sense.
Boycott the tipping process.
Boycott restaurants that are so inefficient that they can't serve food at less than 2 times the actual food cost.
Falling trees:
Still there is no meaningful legislation for trees that are so big that when subjected to natural forces such as wind or loose soil from excessive water, they fall and cause damage to property and lives. Additional legislation is also required for controlling fires, particularly in residential area but still doesn’t get dealt with. In my area in March 2011, I am noting here years after I made mention of this, that trees fell on structures and caused the loss of lives, NEEDLESLY. Why are humans so slow to learn? I could come up with some standards for tree regulations but feel legislators should be able to come up with something reasonable on their own, even if they need to resort to paying some of their buddies millions of dollars for their expertise (joke). Regulations could go something along these lines:
For structures built with metal welded frames and concrete or similar rigid or similar rigid materials, the height of trees and circumferences as noted below would be allowed to be factors of 3 and 2 times greater, respectively. An intermediate home construction type such as brick could be allowed to have height and circumference factors of 2 and 1.5 times greater than that for common weakly constructed homes. For typical building materials other than those mentioned above, specifically those building constructed with wood frame and thin metal framed building, trees must not be taller than 1.25 times the distance from the structure (rounded up to the nearest foot), provided that the circumference is greater than 24” (roughly 8” diameter), as measured 3 feet above ground. For example, if a tree is located 15’ from a wood framed home there would be no bound on it’s height provided the circumference is under 24” but once it meets this criteria, the height of the tree would not be allowed to be greater than 19 feet. If the distance was 2 times greater, the tree could be 2 times taller. The height factor of 1.25 allows for a taller tree than the distance from a structure on the basis that the top part of a tree is usually considerably smaller than at the base. Even though when trees get “topped”, the difference between the circumference of the tree at the top versus trunk becomes smaller, there would still be safety afforded based on the limitation of the tree height. If a wide tree continually gets topped to maintain the maximum height, in time the tree would get wider and wider and this could serve as a dangerous situation except that it would be expected that the tree would become ugly at some point of constant topping so that the owner would want to remove the tree based on looks alone.
Animals in captivity:
My stance is that unless domesticated and posing no threat to human lives, animals should be left in the wild. Animals could be in captivity for brief times for study and medical treatment. Zoos could still exist but on a smaller scale and structured around a purposeful need other than for entertainment. Even though it’s only occasional, people are still getting killed by animals that otherwise would not had animals were left to be in the wild. Certainly there is some enjoyment in watching animals at shows, particularly when “tricks” are performed, but the entertainment value needs to be countered with safety as well as freedom for the animal.
Legislators often falter on scientific issues. It would be in the public's best interest for those in high levels of government to not be merely a well-liked person who gives a good talk but one who has a high degree of integrity, a sharp mind, and possessing both advanced analytical abilities and creativity or at least an openness for fresh ideas. Furthermore, having a broad experience in many fields of employment and familiarity with different economic social classes. Sadly those in office, especially elected officials are quite lacking in these areas. Sometimes the public recognizes a well-rounded candidate and votes them into office.
From having experience repairing homes, most usually plumbing, I am offering some ideas via a home design that enables both efficiency in materials and allowing easy access for plumbing reparation.
And a 1-bedroom version, though less the bathroom plumbing fixture order is shown here:
These homes are about 1,150 sq ft for the 2-bdr, 2-ba, and about 675 sq ft for the 1-bdr, 1-ba. These homes could be situated on 1/8 and 1/10 acre, respectively to offer a reasonably priced starter home, or longer term for individuals or small families. I do propose many such homes would be built to accommodate the many people who are in need of a home that at present, are still too expensive by historical ratios in many areas of this country.
Pertaining to “shipping and handling” charges imposed by companies for mail order commerce. The handling charge should be part of normal business operation and thus should be disallowed. For the shipping charge, this should be handled differently within each country based on geographical situations. For the United States, an example limit on shipping would be the maximum charge based on the shipping method from the company location to the farthest area served within the contiguous states, with Alaska and Hawaii having their own distinct shipping rates. It would be nice for customers living closer to the company to have a smaller shipping rate but for some mass mail order companies, it obviously should be allowed to have pretty much a single shipping rate for the efficiency required of their business model. Exact shipping rates would be preferred when possible and it is foreseeable that in the near future with computerized billing software that this should be made available today, however, allowing a small time period from when this imposition is made by legislators until full implementation would be reasonable. But obviously, the handling charge is just a means to lower the price of the item to stimulate buying, but it’s an unfair practice to have a handling fee added that should be figured into the price.
Note on behavior of frequenting restaurants. In year 2010 in the United States, there was about 800K restaurants, or about 1 restaurant per 390 people. In 1955 about 25% of the money spent on food was at restaurant; today it’s about 50% which implies twice the reliance.
Consider when buying a house, it should not be treated as an investment. It just so happens that the past couple of decades were fantastic for home appreciation based on a huge influx if immigrants, government home-buying stimuli, and easy money, thanks to the Federal Reserve Bank making certain we have inflation. A house requires upkeep so it must be realized well I advance that unless you have plenty of extra money or have someone capable of doing the upkeep for essentially nothing, it is a costly and time-intensive occupation. Buying a house is really like buying an expensive hobby.
I wanted to order a small part to fix my chainsaw costing $5.01 and yet the shipping cost was to be $5.50. So I opted in not fixing it. Why should a little part weighing under an ounce cost this much to ship? Mind you the shipping distance was only a few hundred miles.
Package delivery costs are much higher than they could/ought to be. Much of this is because of powerful labor unions both in the private sector and public sector. Imagine going to college to work in a scientific field yet receive less money than a postal letter carrier. Yes, that's the sad reality. Some will neglect the cost of labor and attribute delivery costs mainly on the cost of fuel but that is just a minor portion of the expenses. Now, I propose, beyond breaking the power of unions to allow the public to not be stiffed (in much the same way that health care is too expensive by medical workers thinking they deserve so much money for their professions), is to limit deliveries to individual addresses by allowing the option to pick-up as "will-call" for a lower delivery cost. Certainly there would be less efficiency in this system for those entities that would otherwise not be on the road close to a package holding facility, however, for many, it would cause little hassle for the price saved. Many overpaid package delivery persons could be reclassified or eliminated, thus allowing a lower price of delivery to be passed onto those who pay for delivery services. An automated phone call could facilitate this system.
Why disparate hotel costs? I will consider ways to implement a system that evens out the costs. The system could be applied for airfare as well. It’s just so outlandish that 3 persons could enter a hotel within 15 minutes and yet be charged 3 different prices for the same type of room. Essentially the system would be to provide a rebate beyond a certain threshold to those paying more than others – a mathematically based system would not be difficult to construct.
A word about world population and land use:
The Earth comprises of about 150 million km2 of land. About 30% of this is habitable to humans. Forests consist of about 30% of land use, and for agriculture it's about 25%. The world population is about 6.9 billion. The planet could actually support another couple billion people but resources will get tighter, there would be increased pollution, congestion that negatively impact the quality of life and so on. The world population could slowly decrease to a more manageable 6 billion over the next few decades with mindful approaches to birthing without shadow government intervention of introducing toxins into the environment such as through aerial spraying or poisoning of water supplies or through forced administration of vaccines. Adopting common sense strategies to control the world population is greatly needed for the welfare of the common person. Now, getting back to statistics, people occupy about 12% of the world's land. Even if people occupied just 10% of the world's land, this would equate to 6,540 m2 / household of 3 persons, or roughly 1.6 acres (0.65 hectares). Thus we at present have plenty of land to allow people to have some space, however, the land is not very well distributed based on wealth. We could actually have targeted legislation to reduce extreme hogging of land by the few but concomittantly, we could also reduce the percentage of worldwide land percentage of deserts from 30% down to 20% through use of technology to increase habitable land. There is a need for more water containment that could be satisfied by dams with hydroelectric power. These damns would decrease forest land slightly but not impact greatly. Of the world's forests, we allow too much of it to go to waste, either through decomposition or through fires. We need much better active management of forests to provide this world with lumber while also being mindful of how it's conducted. In recent years, so-called "environmentalists" have been pushing their agenda too far and there must be recognition by the masses that good management of natural resources does not necessarily imply world destruction.
Optimal Economic System:
As much as I preach about saving money, it’s because we do not presently have the maturity level in sufficiently large number of people to enable a better system. There is so much greed exhibited in various ways, from wanting much without contributing, controlling much to accumulate wealth so as to live parasitically off the work of others, and in how personal ownership is emphasized.
Consider as a quick example: there are a vast number of boats docked yet are not being utilized. Much planetary and human resources went into them yet the utilization thereof is not optimized. This is the way resort homes were treated but at least there is the system of time-sharing, however there’s still the original owners and middlemen to reap profits than if jointly owned by the population (state owned if you will).
Consider how the economic system works today. Currencies have arbitrary values, based on the richest people who control valuation. Prices are not set merely by supply and demand but also from monopolizing commodities and even the housing market, prices can be kept inflated without regard to reasonable ratios. Employment is not based on ability but in the games involved with resume writing, interviewing, appearance, and with lots of judgmental factors that may exclude or even give better chances to (a male hiring manager is often swayed by a beautiful female applicant for example). Thus there is no fairness in which to partake in the fruits of life.
Now, realizing we need fewer and fewer people employed to supply all the goods and services required, the future of humanity will be tumultuous if we do not act swiftly in reducing the legal work week. Without this, unemployment rates will soar. It was less than a century ago that a majority of those employed in the United States worked in agriculture. Today, there is less than 2% farming in the US. Consider what will happen globally in this world economy when agricultural efficiencies in third world countries improve! Are we to just inflate the money supply and doll out welfare to all those not employed? In theory this would actually work, however, there would be a schism in financial markets trying to account for this. One solution that I’ve been hammering into our leaders is to have a reduced legal work week. In this way, we can have as much people employed percent-wise as in the recent past. In future years the work week would need to be reduced again and again.
While the above is a quick fix to enable some level of fairness, in haring the total number of hours needed to supply all the goods and services among a greater number of people, it still does not address the accumulation of assets by others to cause a great divide in the distribution of wealth. For this I say many things need to occur, such as anti-accumulation laws directed at soft and hard assets, with limits on the amount of homes owned, no personal participation in commodities markets, and the implementation of a new stock market system where investing would actually occur without middlemen taking from others. These would be crucial steps to creating a prosperous life on this planet.
It would, after the above has been implemented, be just a leap away from the optimal economic system to be put in place. This system would be based on supply being met by demand. There are plenty of resources on this planet to enable everyone a good life. It is imperative that overpopulation does not continue as this would thwart such a system, until at a later time it is found that an increased population could be supported. If a person needed a home, it could be built. And with what money? NONE? All on the honor system. So you see the limitations are based on humans becoming actualized. As you see, if everyone made an effort to be involved in HELPING as much as possible, and this would not even mean a 40-hour workweek, but perhaps more like 30-35 in the near future, or maybe 40 hours per week if we lower the retirement age considerably. Whatever supplies are needed for the house would be gotten without money, just having the request for the items to be manufactured. The manufacturers would also not need to pay any money for their raw materials. Those obtaining the raw materials would not charge for their services either and they’d also be involved individually and as a business in the sharing of HUMAN CAPITAL without regard to money. There would practically be no wealthy in such a system so there would be no room for the greedy. But the quality of life could be dramatically higher for most everyone in the world. The above would certainly work for all the things required for living, but it could also enable far more, in supplying wants, however, there would need to be practical limits placed on such. There could be a point system for example that could be accumulated to be able to afford the excesses of basic living such as for airplane flying. This system would need to be purposely simple and even for everyone, not anyone deserving more than others else the system would fall apart.
I could go on and speak of more pertinent details but I think it is clear what I am hypothesizing. There would certainly be the people who’d quickly say “IT WOULD NEVER WORK” but having such a negative sentiment just shows the unwillingness to have a system of fairness. It can happen. It just requires everyone to let go of greed and take a fair share of life commensurate of what was put in. F course there will always be some lazier than others and for those who choose this route, the most basic necessities could still be afforded to them, yet not even to the level we have in our welfare system today in the United States. For example, if shopping judiciously for food, you could spend $40 per month (yes, it is so, if buying oats, beans and other such foods as I outline in my book that supplies all the needed nutrition), or be given $160 by the government. Well, I’d say that the lower amount of $40 would be more in order if unwilling to put back into the system. So much could happen to create fairness yet so little is being done about it for the sake of keeping a relatively unchecked system of capitalism in play.
Those who are actualized will tell you they would work to give to society without receiving any money at all, as long as they had their basic necessities met, food, clothing, shelter, etc. I am one who has long had this sentiment. Capitalism operates from the standpoint of laziness that requires a dangling carrot to motivate. Having a mature mind does not require this game as one who feels they can contribute WILL, without the quest for riches.
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To be worked in later..
How are those $2 to #15 million basketball salaries and kids from an average of 5 different women (meaning some way more than 5)? I noticed a no-name guy would get a 10-day contract for $50K, so $5K is the minimum per playing day? Outrageous! Boycott until salaries go down to a reasonable level. It won't take long for a boycott until prices and salaries go down, if you choose to steer this society in the right direction. See the book "Thoughtful Living".
