Financial Freedumb and Brownie

“Imagine for a second, you’ve lost your job. The economy is in a slump, no one is hiring, or so the media and rumors say. You’re sitting at home contemplating what to do next, and the thought of welfare comes up.”

I started off saying that in my post earlier about welfare. And it’s kind of something that deserves more though than I gave it originally–that’s a problem with being a sort of extrovert. I say before, I think. In this case, I write before I think.

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Imagine for a second, you’ve lost your job. The economy is in a slump, no one is hiring, or so the media and rumors say. You’re sitting at home contemplating what to do next, and the thought of welfare comes up.

In doing some research on welfare, I found this interesting discussion on it…In it, forbidnfruit_420 says, “i dont and thats because i wasnt a screw up and can provide for my family…and i know who my babys daddy is.” Blunt and harsh, but that really is the stigma that gets attached to collecting welfare isn’t it?

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Some of them anyway.  First take a look at this article posted on msnbc.com.  Then come back.

It’s a familiar story for me because, in Hawaii, the subject of homelessness is constantly on the news.  Homeless living on parks.  Homeless living on beaches.  Homeless living under freeways.

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I was living in the Bay Area.  Everything seemed normal before going to bed, but little did I realize how different things would be when I woke up.

It was probably around 6:00am when I “realized” what I’ve been hearing on my radio alarm for the last 20 minutes wasn’t a dream.  It was real.  I quickly grabbed my remote, switched on the TV, and my jaw dropped.  I ran out of bed, knocked on my roommates door, and said, “Holy Sh*t!  The World Trade Centers got attacked!”

He replied half awake, “What a robber or something?”

“No man!  This is serious…get up.  Hurry up.  Take a look.”

We both ran out to the living room and watched TV.  The first thing that ran through my mind was, “Do I know anybody in downtown New York???”  I was lucky…the answer was no.

“Can you believe this?” I asked my roommate.

“No…holy crap.  I can’t believe it…”

Images of people running out the Trade Centers and people falling from windows will ALWAYS be in my mind.  I couldn’t even fathom being trapped on the floors with no escape routes, helpless.  The decision of whether jumping xx number of stories would be a better than taking my chances waiting for help running through my mind.

I did end up going to work.  That drive to work was one of the oddest events of my life.  It was like I was on autopilot.  I don’t know why I was going, but I did.  Every single thought was about NY.  When I got into my office, I can’t remember one person actually working.  Everyone was in front of TVs, chatting with coworkers, crying, pondering.  It was a sad day, but the events that followed the following days after the event held just as much meaning for me.  Never had I seen such a demonstration of solidarity across our nation.  Suddenly all our differences seemed so small and meaningless.  I literally was ready to signup for military service that morning.  Screw everything else, raw emotions took over and I just wanted to fight back.  I can’t remember a single time I was as proud to be an American.  Even as I’m writing this, I feel some of the same emotions running through my body.  Five years later!

How I wish we could remember those days without the tragedy of 9/11.

God bless all the people in the world who stood by us and our great nation.

Jim over at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity posted up a great link to an article that is framed as a letter To Those Born After 1982.

I don’t know much about this blog, it’s brand new to me…but after reading Jim’s post and the original, I had to write about it.  A little off topic, but I think it’s interesting…I hope you do too.

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Just went down to get coffee, and on my way out, a woman in what looks to be her late 30′s asks me for a couple bucks because she wants to buy food.  A couple bucks?!?  I know inflation is the trend right now, but come on, what happened to asking for some “spare change”?

I ended up giving her my $0.29 cents of change I had in my hand.  I actually rarely give to panhandlers who ask for money.  I generally feel more inclined to give when they don’t come up to me.

And did you hear about the panhandlers/street performers-entertainers in places like the San Francisco can make around $40k–tax free!  Maybe I should consider a switch in profession.  Although I have to admit, I did see some pretty entertaining stuff in Santa Monica…One performing group must have took in about $150.00 considering the amount of people watching.  I’ll admit I gave him a dollar.

I realize that people have beliefs, I have them too, but when the potential exists to help millions of people, I might have to reconsider putting my beliefs aside, just for a second, for the greater good of humankind.

That being said, I really am dissappointed that President Bush has decided to veto expanding embryonic stem cell research. No matter what we decide, other countries will move forward, leaving America in the dark.

Sorry my fellow citizens, this is a blow to the future of health sciences in America. Looks like we’ll be on the sidelines as the next leap of health science occurs right before our eyes.

Those who stand with President Bush, are you not going to use the health advances discovered when cures tied to stem cell reasearch are found? What would you do if your father, mother, son, daugther, aunt, uncle’s terminal disease could be cured? Would you put your beliefs aside then?

There was an interesting news clip on TV awhile ago on privatization and how it benefits the world. In essence, privatization equal ownership, ownership equals taking care of whatever it is being owned. Ultimately, this creates a sense of responsibility for the object being owned, and thus a better world.

Students of this high school were given one cup of Hershey’s Kisses that “reproduce.” For each Kiss left, you get one more at the end of each “round.” In the first part of the experiment, each student group had one cup and told to take freely from the cup. In the end of the first part, there were no Kisses left or sometimes one or two–generally not sustainable. In the second part, a student in a group was given their own cup and told to take as many Kisses as they want and to give them away, half of the Kisses were left in the cups–sustainable.

The point of this exercise was that privatization helps because people/owners take better care of something they own, rather than land owned by a group or the public. I thought it was pretty interesting. What do you think? Should more parks and public places be owned by a private group?

Laws of Finance does it…SingleMa does it, and I do it. So why doesn’t everyone do it? I’m not sure. Hard to break old habits I guess?

I love change–for the most part anyway. The idea of a cashless society intrigues me, almost as much as national sales tax.

The reasons are many, but here are some I’ve thought of. It would have a huge impact on society, a positive one I think. Of course we eliminate some evils, and we introduce some new ones, but hey nothing is perfect. We just strive to be.

PROS
+ Imagine all those tax dollars saved because we no longer have to print out money. Nor do we have to save, store, destroy old currency.
+ It will probably reduce petty crime. Stores can no longer be robbed for money. Drug deals would have to become more sophisticated. Prositution would be a little awkward. Illegal purchases made by younger kids could be automatically declined. Couterfitting will probably be eliminated, uhhhh, since there’s no money to counterfit!
+ No more handling paper money means a much more hygenic society. Money has traces of bacteria, drugs and a host of other germs. Take a look at this…Dirty Money.

CONS
- Government/Companies running cashless systems would have a tremendous amount of information on individual habits.

NEUTRAL
- Affects on industries could be huge. Banks could change dramatically, retail would be simplified, coins would no longer have to be counted. The list can go on for miles. Society will change drammatically. This could be a pro too, but the impact on careers will be mixed.

We can dream can’t we? Bold moves like going cashless, a national sales tax, green cars, smaller portion sizes at restaurants, smokeless society, changing to metric, investing in medical research all takes, as SingleMa points out, vision. I hope I get to see a few of these introduced before I die. So pick something folks and go for it!

Image credit:  http://www.csmonitor.com/

What if our cars told us how much each mile costs us almost like a taxi cab meter? Would that make drivers more conscious about how much they are driving? Right now, our cars tell us how many miles we’ve traveled. The fancier cars tell us how many miles per gallon we’re getting, but we don’t necessarily associate the cost per mile unless we actually take the amount we spend on gas and divide that by the miles traveled. Even then, we don’t see maintenance costs, insurance, etc. added to the picture.

What if, our car’s console told us how much each trip costed? For example, if we knew:

Gas = $3.00 / gallon
Car’s Fuel Efficieny = 20 mpg

Then cost per mile = $0.15/mile

If we took a 20 mile trip, that would be $3.00. Add in the return trip, and suddenly your little outing becomes a $6.00 venture. Would that make you think twice about driving?

Throw in maintenance and insurance costs, and suddenly cost per mile goes up. I personally would really love to see manufacturers start doing this. It would make everyone much more sensitive to how much they are driving. Of course car manufacturers would have to figure out some way of allowing drivers to input the cost to fill up each tank. Pretty simple fix to raise awareness I think.