Words from the SoapBox

There are many problems with society today. The economy is in poor condition and may not improve soon enough for many, myself included. As I see it, much of the problem is with the corporate mentality.

A business needs capital to grow and prosper. The major corporations depend on selling stock, shares in the company, as a major source of the needed operating capital. This plan is good. It can raise the capital that the company needs to expand their operations and grow the business. It can supply a steady source of income for the investors if the company is well managed and produces the desired results.

There were many great advances in our society that were funded in this way. The railroads, production and distribution of electricity, and the telephone system are all examples of industries built through investments of private funds.

The problem that I see with this is that Corporate America has lost sight of the real purpose of the stock market. Instead of issuing stock to raise capital for a specific purpose, using the capital for that purpose, and then retiring the stock corporations look to their public offering to raise capital and depending on how much they raise they then make plans on how to use the money.

When a corporation issues stock they have a duty to the stock holders to perform and to make money. Many corporations make decisions based on how much money can be made in the short run instead of taking the long view and building a lasting economic base. Much of this is due to the speculation in the stock market. If a company does not produce immediate results on a significant scale their stock will not sell well.

There are many ventures that are started specifically with the hope of bringing them to the point that they can make and IPO. Many of these ventures do not fulfill a specific need. Their only reason for existence is to make enough of a splash to attract investment capital. The person or group that pulls this off successfully will reap great financial benefits at the cost of society.

I believe that the free enterprise system is the best social and economic system. I think that it is time to return to fiscal responsibility and follow the basic tenets under which this country was founded. Speculation should not be a driving force of our economy. The corporations need to recognize that they have the responsibility to be good citizens as well as being profitable. If this means that the margin profit is a bit lower so be it.

Some Other Ideas

• Make money for your investment in a lifetime benef
• Corporate Mentality
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• Suspension for demand/supply law for base metals « Contrarian …
• Instead of issuing stock, many museum of website design businesses …
• Advantages of Issuing Stock – Benefits of Issuing Stock – Why …
• Scoop Business » Pike plans $50M stock issue, bond sale
• Day Trading Online Stocks – Stock Market Help for 10-17
• Function And Purpose Of Stock Market
• True reasons of the world economic crisis | 9DOWNSOFT Finance
• Before Short Selling-Know These Shocking Facts : Business …
• Stocks Behind The Scenes | Selling Stock
• Good Stock Ideas Are Found In The Least Obvious Places | Selling Stock
• Shocking Stocks Short Selling Facts! | Chillicious.com
• The Beginner's Guide to Penny Stock Trading | Selling Stock
• – Stock Exchange Trade
• Stock Trading Strategy: Using Options to Enhance Returns
• How to Buy and Sell Stocks in 2009 > Stock Market Basics …
• U.S. Unemployment Rate Steady at 9.7% | FavStocks
• Long term investment | Get Money Rich

The landing page for the World SoapBox site is now an article directory. All of the older material is still available and linked from the article directory page.

The site was established as a place to post articles on things of interest to the posters. There were a few articles submitted and published, but the site was still low on content. I ran across this script that promises to populate the site with articles. I installed the script this evening. Now we will have to wait and see if there is any result.

I have news feeds on some of my sites and get hits on occasion from people searching for something what was indexed from those news feeds. I hope that this works at least as well. Only time will tell.

Check out the Article Directory and tell me what you think.

There was a trend started long ago by the candy companies. The candy companies had some fixed price points that they need to hit. When the costs of doing business began to rise they needed to keep their expenses in line with their costs, but they couldn’t really charge six cents for a nickel candy bar. They chose to make the candy bar a little smaller so that they could maintain their profit margin at their fixed price point.

There currently a trend for many manufacturers to try the same trick. These more recent examples are not trying to maintain a fixed price structure. The first of these that I noticed was the coffee makers. The one pound coffee can now comes with 12 or 13 ounces of coffee. I recently picked up a three pound size can at the supermarket. The three pound size now has two pounds and one ounce of coffee.

I have watched the traditional half gallon of Ice Cream go to one and three quarters quarts and now down to one and a half quarts. My most recent shock was to buy a five pound bag of sugar. I thought that the bag looked a little smaller than it should so I checked. My five pounds of sugar had eroded to four pounds. I am sure that there are many other examples of this trend. While the philosophy is probably the same as with the candy manufacturers, the situation is completely different.

This trend is probably designed to prevent sticker shock. When costs increase the expense must be passed down the line. But I think that this trend is the wrong approach. I am not fooled by paying the same amount for a lesser quantity. That is still a price increase.

In these days with thought given to resource usage and depletion, and with landfills that are full beyond capacity, is this a waste that we can afford? Each of these units of manufacture require nearly the same expense for packaging. Therefore, the smaller the quantity of product the higher percentage we are paying for packaging and handling. We not only get a bit less of the product that we purchase, but a greater percentage of the purchase price must pay for the container and the handling.

I would much prefer to pay a bit more for a good measure than to have the prices remain the same but get less of a product. If the manufacturers want to provide an extra sku for a smaller quantity so that people do not have to purchase the larger quantities they should be allowed to do that, but not at the expense of giving a good measure of their product for those that would use it. It is proportionally less expensive and less wasteful to package larger quantities of a product.

I think that this is a trend that needs to come to a halt! Have you noticed this trend? How do you feel when you notice that your traditional buying quantities for a product have been cut?

Some Other Ideas

• godonyc.com » Blog Archive » Dylan's Candy Bar
• How Sweet it is to Give Away Candy Bar Wrappers
• Nokia C5 pairs candy bar form with S60 « Boy Genius Report
• We Can't Fix Obesity One Candy Bar at a Time | Sustainable Food …
• Alayam: Candy from Sweet Potatoes « CandyProfessor
• Kinds Of Coffee Maker Explained | Free Article Directory
• Mr. Coffee SL13 Home Café Single Serve Coffee Maker, Black | Tea Maker
• Buy Cheap Chemex 10 Cup Coffee Maker
• Selecting the Right Features in a Coffee Maker | For All the …
• Grind Brew Coffee Maker – Things You Need To Know When Choosing …
• Best Coffee Maker « test wordpress
• How to Buy Coffee Maker Without Offending Anyone! | alvaro zraalv blog
• Coffee Machines: Making the Perfect Cup | A1 Recipe
• #@! Espress Coffee Makers Tips » Blog Archive » Why One Cup Coffee …
• Learn How To Lose Pounds Fast, Do Away With Fat And Reduce Belly …
• 3 day diet Melt it Off with Mitch Gaylor | Beauty Match
• Check Out Buttermilk Pancake Mix (large two-pound size)
• Only Here for the Food » Blog Archive » Extreme Sticker Shock …
• Drive Green, Avoid Sticker Shock – Earth911.com

This blog was established to provide a billboard for rants on current themes. I welcome guest bloggers to post here if they have a good current topic. A blog of this type is best if there is a community effort. Commenting on the posts with meaningful, insightful comments is a service to the community.

There are a multitude of plug-ins available for WordPress that are designed to reward commenters. I have chosen to install the KeywordLuv plug-in with a Do Follow plug-in. The KeywordLuv plug-in reformats the name field. You put your name with an ‘@’ and your keyword text link for your page, like yourname@yoursite. The plug-in outputs the format of yourname from yoursite. The Do Follow plug-in strips the no follow attribute from the link. All this means that a commenter on this blog is rewarded with a nicely formatted keyword link that is a do follow link to their site. This link may eventually show up as a backlink to your site.

In order for all this to have meaning there needs to be interesting, quality content on the site and in the comments. I have the blog set to moderate comments at the present time. I will approve quality comments. I will not approve obvious spam comments or those that add no value to the site.

Do you look for blogs offering the KeywordLuv plug-in?

If I Were a Rich Man… by Carl Hampton

Many Americans living in the lower, middle, and even upper middle classes now more than ever before believe that they are striving for wealth that is unreachable. They believe that they will never be truly wealthy, only perhaps maybe with a little more luck they just may be a little better off than they once were, or better yet, better off than the people next door or that guy down the block.

Do the celebrity images put forward by the media exemplify true wealth? If that is the case then maybe most of us will never be truly wealthy.

This struggle with what real wealth should, especially during this recession, bring to light many questions, what is wealth? Is it the size of the house we live in? Is it flashy cars and jewelry? Is it were we take our vacations? Realistically the most important question should be how is wealth defined for the average man-that lower, middle, and upper middle class family that makes up the bulk of the American people?

Many Americans define wealth by the size of the income they earn. How much income per year defines wealthy? Depending on where you are starting form your opinion may change. Is it a “triple digit” income? Perhaps $75,000 means wealthy in your book?

Well, according to Kiplinger Washington Editors if you made at least $35,000 in 2008 you are more prosperous than over half of all of taxpaying Americans. According to the Department of Agriculture, in 2008 nearly 50 million Americans struggled to put food on the table. With these figures along with figures from the US Census, that is roughly one sixth of the entire population of the United States. One sixth of the United States had a hard time feeding themselves and their families.

I find that statistic staggering. Never the less, that puts that $35,000 into some kind of perspective– that is a lot of money. In fact, if you were to be able to make a little less than twice that, $66,000, you would be in the top twenty five percent of all wage earners in the US. That means realistically that you would be more affluent than 75% of the American population.

So, what’s my point? Well, if you are fortunate enough to fall into these categories, why do you not consider yourself of considerable wealth? Why do you not see yourself as having the opportunity to be even more prosperous? Should so many of us define wealth by outward appearance, showy cars, perhaps a boat or private schooling for the kids?

Why not define wealth, in these times of recession, as the ability to be without debt, have food on the table, and perhaps being able to invest some money into a future for your family, whether it be college funds for the kids or a strong stable plan for retirement?

Wealth can also be measured by what you do with your money and how you make it work for you, after all it is easier to save money than it is to make more so why not make it work harder for you?

About the Author

“Your Money Matters” By Carl Hampton Author of “From Credit Despair To Credit Millionaire” http://CarlHampton.com

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