Jun 27, 2013

Small Businesses are Losing. Why? My thoughts...

     It would be preferable for people to start up a small business than depend on a larger business to hire them. Instead, all of our preparations in life focus on getting hired by someone else. Why enforce the idea of smaller businesses?  It would create competition within that niche of the economy which will typically reduce prices, increase innovation and would reduce the chances of a monopolies and/or cartels (even though they sometimes exist). Also, businesses that produce goods/services locally have a lower overhead cost when it comes to transporting their goods/services.
         More than likely, the competition created would allow for better customer service to increase their customer base. Mostly. This would explain the differences between "mom and pop” shops versus large businesses/corporations. They both intend and are in need of your money to increase their profits, however. How would they survive if you didn’t buy their goods/services?
     All of us need a profit. A lot of people, when they think of profits, instantly think of rich people on boats, hedgefund managers smoking cigars, or robber barons. What these people do not see is that your profits also include paying for your operating costs like your supplies, workers, their healthcare and rainy-day funds.
Otherwise, why bother working or doing anything? So, why are smaller businesses so hard to start? Why do these excessively large businesses still exist, “pushing” the smaller ones out of business?
Why do our most influential institutions (school/college/media) hardly impose the values of entrepreneurship?
I understand that some of you have instantly thought of the topic of business ethics versus gaining a profit, but I think all of these questions are equally important.


Thoughts?

New Immigration Bill

For those of you freaking out about the newly passed immigration bill: it doesn't grant anyone the "insta-citizen" status.
They still need to wait 10 (?) years for citizenship after they have passed a background check, paid all outstanding taxes and all of this, of course, with a worker's visa. This does not grant citizenship in the manner of simply granting them citizenship automatically. Whether you like it or not, I don’t blame anyone for leaving their countries that have a worse economy than ours (yes, even if ours is bad, it’s mostly bad for us but still better than most other economies) and coming over here to actually make some sort of living. I don’t blame them one bit for coming here. This is an excellent country, in my opinion!
I imagine my conservative friends are a little p****d off at me but I really don’t give a ****. Here’s why: they still need to go according to the newly formed law and get a visa. They still need to pay their taxes. They still need to go through the process of getting their citizenship. How could we kick them out when they have lived here for this long already? Also, the increase in border security will hopefully prevent more people from getting here illegally in the first place….I hope it reduces it.
Why? It is very unsafe to get here illegally. Many people die along the way. Also, not to mention the massive influx of drugs, etc; that come across the border…illegally of course. This might slow a lot of this down…
It’s not perfect. Listen: I would PREFER that people would move here legally and/or get a visa to work here. That is perfectly fine. I do not like the concept of people fleeing their country and not even attempting to get their citizenship when they get here. Undocumented or illegal, it’s the same meaning and I don’t really care about the terms being used.  Regardless, people need a little help in these matters.


I am hoping that this helps alleviate the problem but only time will tell. 

Jun 21, 2013

Paleo-Diet: don't do it!

First, go to this website that explains the Paleo diet: http://thepaleodiet.com/  
Ok. For those of you that have had training for nutrition and have done some general research, you will notice that there a lot of good ideas from this. For example: don't eat processed foods, refined sugars, layoff the sodium, increase potassium, eat the "good" fats (like from fish, for example), etc; etc;
Yes, there are some good points. I understand this. 
Newsflash: the good stuff off of this "diet" comes from myplate.gov and/or the food pyramid. 
Don't eat salt? Duh.
Don't eat refined sugar? Duh.
Don't eat processed foods? Duh.
Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables? Duh.
Then it tells you must omit dairy, legumes and cereal grains.
This means you can never eat a bean, piece of cheese or a bowl of whole-grain cereal. Ever. 
 No more bean burritos with cheese. Hell, no bean burritos. Period. Hell, you can't even eat the whole-grain tortilla if you wanted one. 
If you don't know what a legume is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legume   I normally do not condone using wikipedia but at this point, I'll just say that it's actually right about legumes.  
What about dairy? Even lactose-free dairy? Nope. Can't have that. Never mind that it has decent amounts of potassium (that the paleo wants more of) and of course the calcium and etc; etc;
But you cannot have this, if you're on the paleo diet. 
What about grains? What about the people who have a gluten allergy? This is unfortunate, awful but at least it's rare. Plenty of people have allergies and it may be due to several reasons (GMO's, pesticides, genetics stuff, etc).  This doesn't mean that the other 99% of the population should omit grains. 
Again, wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereal    "In their natural form (as in whole grain), they are a rich source of vitaminsmineralscarbohydratesfats, oils, and protein. However, when refined by the removal of the bran and germ, the remaining endosperm is mostly carbohydrate and lacks the majority of the other nutrients. In some developing nations, grain in the form of ricewheatmillet, or maize constitutes a majority of daily sustenance. In developed nations, cereal consumption is moderate and varied but still substantial."
In other words, eat the whole grain.... unless you're on the paleo diet.
Follow www.myplate.gov and this should be a better start for you. 
The paleo diet is crap but still have a few good ideas in it. However, the USDA and myplate.gov are the correct choice here.

Scheduling Issues

A pet-peeve of mine is disorganization and with scheduling issues. I am currently at a private school doing some specific training. Already working, going to school full-time and then more training? It's not that bad. The bad part is that this training facility makes no mention of their schedule changes until the first day of class, after you've already scheduled your work/school stuff for the next month. Yeah. Now, it's frustrating when you soon-to-be professors imply that you should "switch to an online class" right before the term starts. Impossible at this point! It looks like my grades will suffer in this class because I have to miss over a 1/3 of the classes.
Gee thanks.