I spoke this morning to a friend of mine who's really sharp on matters financial, and we were talking about budgeting tools. He told me of some customer research he'd heard where people fell into three categories:
People who hate debt of any kind and generally only hold mortgage and car debt.
People who are okay with limited debt. They'll carry a balance, but they pay things off within six months.
People who are okay with lots of debt, but they don't see their balances as "debt." As long as they're making minumum payments on things, they see it as just payments - not debt.
And here's the trick: the majority of folks fall into the last category.
I'm floored that they don't see this lifestyle as debt-ridden. My friend went on to tell me that a good portion of these folks have good credit. It's not that they're bad or anything, but rather that they choose a lifestyle of minimum payments for everything - to "afford" as much as they can. When it all gets too much, they take out a debt-consolidation loan and keep on going this way. They don't see the debt. They don't feel the debt. They only know the payments that they can afford to pay each month - never mind that everything ends up costing them three times more than it would if they'd simply saved up for it first.
Given that, is it any wonder that so many people don't see a problem with the government paying for everything?
One of the women who stood up for Mike Huckabee at the Iowa Caucus cited her need for her children to inherit a great America as a primary reason for her choice. Her choice of Pastor Mike was an act of love for her kids, you see.
If we really love our kids, we'll pass them as little debt as we can. People who go to the grave paying minimum payments on everything give not an inheritance to their kids but the burden of things unpaid.
If we really love our kids, we'll stave off government programs that only promise to bankrupt their future with extraordinary taxes to pay for the programs.
But I think people aren't trained to see it this way. For the majority, it's not debt, that government program. No, sir. For that government program, we get to make responsible minimum payments. Why of course we can afford that program - it's for our children.
Despite George Bush's half-hearted attempt at it, I still want the Ownership Society.
A model of society promoted by United States President George W. Bush. It takes as lead values personal responsibility, economic liberty, and the owning of property. The ownership society discussed by Bush also extends to certain proposals of specific models of health care and social security.
But that's not what we're getting in this campaign. Instead, it's a race to the bottom to see who can give the most stuff away. For the children, you know. (My ass...)
If you really love the children, you want the smallest government possible. Because children deserve to be free... and not shackled with minimum paymentsdebt that helped their grandparents retire comfortably.
I live in Des Moines, Iowa, home of "hand-raising" lady, Carolyn Washburn, editor of the Des Moines Register. I hearby nominate this guy, Ezra Levant, to take her place.
Amen brother. Asked why, in the video, he published the Muhammad cartoons in his magazine, he gives this answer:
"I published the Muhammad cartoons because it's my bloody right to do so!"
He gives wonderful, thoughtful, serious answers to the PC questions asked of him. Bravo!
Can we please have a libertarian candidate stand up who is not a whackjob?
Fer cryin out loud...
Many libertarian ideals are fantastic. Liberating, even. Of course Ron Paul's supporters get excited about his platform - many of the proposals he makes are spot on!
But this whole denial that he never knew the racist spiel in his own publication that carried his name is ridiculous on its face.
I agree completely with Ed:
People wonder why this matters, given Paul's fringe appeal. It matters because we can't allow this kind of hatred to get legitimized in mainstream politics again. This kind of rhetoric used to be mainstream, and not just in the South, either. Republicans [and Libertarians] cannot allow [themselves] to get tainted by the stench of racism and conspiracy mongering. If enough of us don't step up and denounce it, strongly and repeatedly, we will not be able to avoid it.
Today, 119 people will receive an invite to go to the web site I've worked on. The first leg of the shakedown cruise begins! Here's to a weekend of debugging :)
Hopefully, it turns out better than some excursions...
ETC: It's working just fine... no hiccups at all. I love a bug-free weekend!
My kids want this, a new car made in India that sells for $2,500.
From the article:
This is the People's Car, the world's cheapest car at a starting price of $2,500, or the equivalent of a DVD player in a Lexus.
Why the hell isn't Detroit doing innovative stuff like this? This is the perfect student car, and with a 2-cylinder engine, it'll get great gas mileage.
ETC: Chris and PR make the great points that this Bella-christened Shrinermobile obviously lacks safety features that American laws require. Yep, I get that. But if the entire car is doable at $2,500, can't we throw, say, another grand or two of innovative safety features to bring it to American standards? I think we could...
Laptops for $100. Cars for $2,500. Now let's focus on livable homes that get below $50,000 and I think we're solving real problems.
I remember living in married student housing when I lived in Ames, Iowa, with my then-wife, who attended ISU. We lived in Pammel Court, a bunch of Quonset hut-style homes rented to us married folks for - get this - $85 per month. They looked something like this:
The school later raked them over and built shiny new housing that you can rent for about $500 per month.
Frankly, though they weren't pretty, they were quite functional and they helped a lot of starting families, particularly foreign exchange students. But there was big-time pressure to make ISU's northern entrance prettier, and so they were replaced.
Why do we allow communities and society to dictate to us what our risk tolerance should be? If we want to drive a Shrinermobile that would flatten us like a bug on a windshield, isn't that our choice? If we choose to live in lesser housing to help us stave cost, isn't that our choice?
If we're so concerned for the poor, why do we let our concerns for their well-being price everything out of their affordable range?
The cost to build and ship the houses is around $35,000 to $60,000, according to this guy. Read the link... it's a sad story of government "solutions" dictating "temporary" housing for the same cost that these permanent units would cost.
Mayor [Connie] Moran, who did the careful arithmetic with the architect, Marianne Cusato, learned that the cottages could be built for about $60,000, just about what the government pays to ship and set up a trailer. She asked FEMA to finance an 87-cottage pilot project on the east side of town.
FEMA said no. The law allows FEMA to provide housing only "on a temporary basis," and the Gulf Coast residents who qualify for one of the 10,000 trailers currently parked and going to rust and ruin on an abandoned muddy airstrip in Arkansas can have one for 18 months. So Ocean Springs will soon have a trailer park, with 600 trailers to replace the 700 houses destroyed by the storm. "FEMA," the mayor says, "is creating trailer trash."
Innovation stifled by the government. Of course.
Can we do more of this without being catalyzed by a national disaster? And I have a question - why does a 308 square-foot house cost $35,000 to $60,000 to manufacture? I might be naive, but that seems a bit high to me. By at least twice.
You know, if I ever make my wads of cash, I think I'd like to spend my time working on ways to make life more affordable for the poor. Non-government solutions, driven by innovative, cost-cutting, and functional measures. No hikes in minimum wage. Give me people who want to scramble upward in their life and I'd be glad to help where I can. I don't think life's necessities and access to credit have to be so hard to attain.
It's funny what papers you come across when you clean out and sort through old stuff...
None of this probably means anything to anybody, although I suppose you could decipher what's happening in each, but think of the things that happen each day of our life and what record we have of significant events. The things that happen to us, the things we attempt.
A few days from now, I'll post a link to the beta of the big project I've worked on for the last six months. About two weeks after that, it will go live.
Around dinner-time today, I wasn't seated at the table with the rest of my tribe, but was downtown sitting with a couple of VC's I know, and they invited a guy they know. They were taking a look at what I've created.
I'm never one to take someone's word for gospel, but the guy they invited would adopt my product tomorrow, if I let him. I have to study a bit closer what he wants from it, but he does business coast-to-coast, and it's likely that we'll end up doing business if his enthusiasm is any measure. What's more, he's well-connected. He wants to help me find more companies to use my product. "Hundreds" was his word. Nice word. He also said that what I've done is "efficiency-and-a-half" for his industry. [smile]
The VC's also want to use it, but for a completely different purpose. That would make three paying customers, and it's not even public yet. That's a good sign.
It's hard not to have visions of sugar plums dancing in my head. I've poured thousands of hours into building companies in the past, only to see marginal success. I hope this one soars. We'll see.
I grew up in a house where we used powdered milk because regular milk was too expensive. I was too clueless when I graduated from high school to have any idea about my future. (You mean mediocre bass guitarist doesn't pay well?) I married early and had kids quickly. I started college late and then dropped out. I divorced. Then married and divorced again. So on and so forth... the point of it is that if a schlub like me can slowly figure it out and work hard enough on myself that I can get there, I think anybody can.
In my opinion, it's all one foot in front of the other. Just keep going, work damn hard, improve yourself, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Don't stop. Anybody who did anything they set out to accomplish did just that. Resolve. Persistence. Belief. No matter where they were born, no matter what their circumstances. That's the formula.
If you could do anything, what would you do?
If that's not what you're doing today, what are you doing to get busy about making your dreams a reality?
Come on now... no excuses... get a move on... one foot in front of the other.
Last week, I sat down with Sherry Borzo of dsmBUZZ and she interviewed me. How cool is that? You can listen to it here.
Sherry's a good interviewer and very kind, and better - she's got some really good ideas with which she's moving forward and it's pretty exciting to ask her what she's up to. We had a great conversation.
