After settling down and coming back to reality, I began to mentally wonder about how this newfound “affordability” is going to impact our goods and services… products whose prices were raised to account for massive transportation and manufacturing costs incurred by the exponential energy price increases. Will I see the price of food go down? Will I see the price of our trash service go down which has increased by almost 25% because of “fuel surcharges?” Will I see a direct benefit by the drop in energy costs due to the drop in oil other than cheaper prices at the pump?

Highly unlikely is my guess. I’ve already seen price estimates coming from the food sector which said that food prices will remain “sticky” even with lower oil prices. What that means is that you and I will continue to pay for the increased costs associated with previously high “energy” costs incurred by manufacturing and production. Why is that so? Shouldn’t we see a drop in costs because the sellers can effectively remove all of the recently added surcharges due to oil price increases?

If the American people altered their buying habits, yes, the prices would drop. However, everything is relative. When prices first started increasing, the public was shocked and appalled at paying more money for the many staples of life. But, there was nothing we could do about it. We either pay the price or we do without. So, as a whole, we chose to pay the price. After months of “paying the price,” we have now formed a habit and a baseline of perception as to the “new” cost of products in our lives. Food costs x amount of dollars now to survive and that’s just the way it is.

It doesn’t matter that in that x amount, there is an overcharge now for the energy costs of our recent past. That x amount is not going to change according to the industry reports. Will the American public be just as shocked and appalled at not receiving the new “discounts?” Or, will we continue paying the overly inflated prices and deal with it because we are so “happy” that our fuel costs have declined so greatly? The safe bet is that we will continue to pay the higher prices because we have been trained to do so. The price of gas, for whatever reason, hordes all of the attention when things are out of control and when they return to normal, it still hordes the attention and people have a sense of relief both in their wallet and psychologically.

What we should be clamoring for is a retreat in all goods and services which have increased because of the oil prices. We should not be satisfied with gas alone dropping and thus soothing our overextended budgets temporarily. We should alter our buying habits and buy products that allow us to reclaim our “stolen” wealth and force the manufacturers who are unwilling to lower their prices on their own accord, to lower them by our purchasing habits.

That is the way it “should” be but I know it’s not the way it’s “going” to be. We will pay more or do without while enjoying our “affordable” gasoline. However, I look at it this way (with a bit of conspiracy theory thrown in). The reasons why we will not see a price decrease in most goods and services is because the manufacturers “know” that energy will be going back up in price… either due to OPEC cutting production or by the returning growth and boom of currently sluggish global economies. They “know” that oil will be heading back up the price charts and they are banking on that being soon.

Rather than “lose” some of the profits in the middle while oil has declined in value, they are going to keep their prices frozen and make a little extra and when the oil prices do return to exorbitant amounts, they will raise their “cheap” prices and make even more in the future. If you don’t believe it, you’ll believe it when oil returns to $100+ per barrel and the manufacturers once again start tacking on “energy surcharges” to compensate them for their newly increased costs of operation.

Basically, this bill is aimed at national restaurant chains and not the mom and pop restaurants or local “mini chains.” While this bill makes sense in a logical way, does it really need to be a law? Are our citizens so mentally challenged that we cannot rationally understand that a triple cheeseburger with a large fry and large soft drink is bad for us? Is a law requiring caloric counts of foods seriously going to deter the eating habits of our society?

Sure, some people will see the numbers and alter their decisions and parents may even make better choices for their children when bringing home the quick dinner. But, the problem is in the food itself. Chain restaurants are notorious for having unhealthy food. Do you see people on a healthy food regimen eating at the local fast food stops on a regular basis? Of course you don’t. Do you see people trying to eat healthy ordering a small fry, rather than large, because they saw the calorie counts on the menu board? Well, maybe for some who aren’t metabolically challenged, but for the most part, healthy eating in no way or form includes eating fries from a fast food restaurant.

In the end, this law is a gentle reminder law. What you order may be bad for you. It’s a warning label similar to other warning labels on things that are bad for us. Problem is we already know fast food is “bad” for us. However, it’s cheap, fast, and satisfies hunger. We don’t need a law to tell us this “new” information. What we need is more time at home so we can effectively make healthy decisions about what we eat. We need more time to cook and prepare healthy meals for our family.

Is a fast food chain with a menu of salad going to make it? Nope. Is a fast food chain with only healthy yogurt and fruit drinks going to make it in mainstream America? Nope. Even then, the so called “healthy” menu items aren’t really all that healthy at times. The pyramid of nutrition has been around forever as far as I know (yeah, I exaggerated). We are all taught that we need the basic staples of nutrition to live healthy and we even have a general idea of how many calories it takes for us to survive each day. But, we just don’t have the time to focus upon one of the most important aspects of living.

Preparing a healthy meal takes time, something we don’t have an oversupply of. We can continue to sign into law “tricks” to help society make better decisions, but the root of the issue is time in my opinion… time with the family and also time to prepare healthy meals. I’ve not even gone into the issue that the “healthy” items in grocery stores are generally more costly to purchase. Adding a law requiring calorie counts makes us feel better and more informed, but it doesn’t change the fact that we are still faced with the underlying problems of why we are at the fast food restaurant in the first place.

Maybe we’ll see a new law from California in the coming months requiring Californians to drink their eight glasses of water per day. Or maybe we’ll see a law fining people who don’t have their tire pressures at maximum efficiency. How about a law requiring people to take a daily vitamin in the morning? I could go on forever. Yes, we want to make things better and we need to eliminate the obesity problem our country is facing, but rather than focusing on the calorie counts on menu boards, how about focusing on the ingredients in the food itself? Make the FOOD healthier or remove it and give the family more time to prepare healthy meals while making healthy foods affordable.

I’m optimistic though. Eventually, with enough time, money, and breakthroughs in technology, we will find an alternative source for a major portion of our demand for oil. Until then, we are going to have to find a way to decrease our daily utilization of oil by becoming more efficient, finding short term solutions, and basically, deal with a little bit of heartache which will allow us to climb out of the grand canyon sized hole we have dug ourselves into. One of these short term solutions has turned up in the form of retrofitting vehicles with electric “engines.” I ran across an article focusing on a man who turned his gas guzzling vehicle into a battery powered green machine. Let’s take a look at his story and then I’m going to run through some numbers which will illustrate some of our short term pains in the hopes of easing the future.

Larry Horsley, a self described do-it-yourselfer, converted his 1995 Chevy S-10 pickup truck into a battery powered truck. Yes, he did it himself and he says you can do it too if you have any mechanical proficiency at all. However, it did take him about 3 months to complete the conversion with most of the time spent waiting on parts arrival (leads me to believe this is not a one stop shop kit). The conversion involved removing the entire gas powered engine, radiator, fuel injection system, and yes, the exhaust system. As we all know, a battery powered vehicle doesn’t have any emissions to worry about. Great, it saves on gas and also helps out our environment. Everything up until this point sounds perfect. Assuming we have some tools and know how to use them, any of us can convert our car/truck given enough time and effort.

But is it really a cost savings? It hurts each and every time you go to the pump and put upward of $50 in your tank when it used to be $25. It sure would feel good if you had something you could drive which would put an end to that wouldn’t it? The vehicle Horsley has made allows him to do that. He never has to purchase gas for his truck ever again. Horsley states that he has about $12,000 in the truck, including the cost of the truck. Dealers say this is about standard cost. Well, that doesn’t sound too bad considering all of the newer vehicles coming out on the market with high mileage ratings and hybrid technology are well above that. Used vehicles running on battery power aren’t all that big of a deal since the engine wear and tear associated with older used vehicles is non-existent. Basically, go buy any vehicle in good shape structurally and convert it, you’re good to go.

This is where my numbers machine kicks in. I see the costs and the savings and I began to think are we really saving any money? We are all looking for ways to save money right? Since the price at the pump is the primary issue here (we really don’t care how much oil we use, just the price of it), we should be looking at the actual cost of the conversion. Information was not given on the complete cost of the conversion to battery power, so let’s utilize some basic guesstimates. Horsley says the $12,000 includes the cost of the truck. It’s a 1995 S-10 so the cost of that should be fairly minimal considering this is 2008. We’ll give him a generous figure of $6,000 for the truck. That leaves us $6,000 as the cost of conversion, including batteries.

Statistics for his vehicle shows that he can go a total of 40 miles between charges (there are 20 batteries in the system). He can travel up to 60 miles per hour and there is no air conditioning installed. He mentions that people only drive about 20 miles per day on average so the 40 total miles is good enough on average (I don’t know where he got that number but we’ll go with it). Now, we have enough data to find out our savings. Let’s say on average, a gallon of gas costs $3.75 (national average is right there at the moment). $6,000 in cost of conversion divided by $3.75 yields us 1,600 gallons of gas in immediate costs. If we use his 20 miles per day number, an average American will drive only 7,300 miles per year (much lower than the 12,000 I’ve normally heard). Using an average of 21 miles per gallon, at 1,600 gallons, that totals 33,600 miles that can be traveled on the costs of conversion. 33,600 miles divided by 7,300 yearly miles gives us 4.6 years of travel.

The cost savings aren’t really there according to the numbers given. If we utilized 12,000 miles per year, we are still close to 3 years of travel time paid for up front. Horsley mentions that he estimates that he has “saved” about $700 in gas costs in 4 months while driving his converted truck. Working the numbers out, that equates to him driving about 12,000 miles per year given $3.75 per gallon gas and 21 mpg. Even at that rate, he still spent 3 years worth of gas costs up front to “save.” He also mentions that he no longer has to pay for oil changes or tune-ups which would add to the total savings. Agreed, so over 3 years, that saves about $400. However, in all of this, he has left out the cost of electricity to charge the vehicle. Energy costs are high so that must be accounted for.

Is he really saving any money? Sure, after about 3-5 years he will, but is that what we need when we are looking for an actual costs savings immediately to help our budget and wallet? As I said before, our intermediate issues are going to “cost” us more than what we are trying to replace. But, the future will be cheaper. Think of it as “biting the bullet.” Horsley chose to bite the bullet and lay down money up front rather than be nitpicked on a weekly basis at the pump. As we migrate away from foreign oil, we will most likely ALL face similar choices. Pay upfront costs for a better future or continue to be held down by the thumb of bubbling crude. One thing to keep in mind, as more and more people switch to battery power, our electric demands will go up and how does electric get produced? We must be careful on switching demands onto something that will increase its costs to a similar state of peril. We might save ourselves gas money, but end up spending that savings on electric bills.

Citation: http://www.cnn.com/

Through the years, I have been through all the incarnations of movie rental. When I was a young kid, my family began by renting a VCR and movies from a local video store. Yes, back then, you could actually rent the player because the technology was just taking root. You could purchase memberships to local video clubs which allowed you to easily rent movies and enjoy whatever movie you wanted to watch at that time without having to own a complete library. Video stores popped up everywhere. The ability to rent a movie and bring it home was a major advance in entertainment because during that period of time, cable television was not everywhere, satellite television was in its infant stages and for the most part, people only had a few channels available to watch. Video rental was an entire new arena for home entertainment, and affordable.

Over the years, DVD took over as the format of choice for video format and rental. Laserdisc was in there but it quickly died. Thousands of “brick and mortar” stores arrived in the version of large retail chains and mom and pop stores. Hollywood Video, Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, and many others appeared in most every town, sometimes two or three. Along with the physical movie rental businesses, the online movie rental business eventually appeared. Netflix and Blockbuster are two of the most well known. Wal-Mart tried to enter the arena but chose to outsource their product to one of the established online rental companies. So here we are, 25-30 years after the appearance of VHS and the business of renting movies.

At this point, renting movies is a commodity and there is very little profit margin in renting a movie. The brick and mortar stores have long since been under pressure and their ability to turn profits has basically been disappearing. The mom and pop video rental stores have long since disappeared and left only the large rental chain companies. Even the large chains have realized their time is limited. Renting a movie has become far too simple and easy and there are limited additional services they can provide outside of renting movies from their stores. People still want to rent movies though, the question is, how are they going to do it?

With the internet reaching almost every household and high-speed internet reaching more and more of our society, eventually rentals of movies will take place via the internet and delivered via bits and bytes to the persons home and stored on a hard drive for viewing. We are currently in a transition. We still need the physical disk rental sites in the meantime to allow for home entertainment. Storage may not even be an option in the future as streaming video may be the rental of choice. But, that’s the future, where are we now? This is where the RedBox comes into play. People are creatures of habit and they are always looking for ways to save time. What happens if we place a kiosk of newly released movies at business sites where people frequent on a regular basis? On top of that, make the price appealing and create a product with ease of use in mind. That is the RedBox.

Most people may notice the RedBox kiosks at their local McDonald’s. However, Wal-Mart has recently signed an agreement to place these kiosks in nearly every one of their stores. Wal-Mart and McDonald’s are two of the most trafficked businesses in our communities. That is a great target for their product. No longer do you have to have a membership to a store or make a special trip to the video store. No longer do you have to wonder if the video is available because you can check and rent online. The process is so simple and easy. While you are out and about eating or shopping, stop by the kiosk, pick out a few movies, swipe your card and off you go. You can’t get any simpler than that.

Well, the online rental companies seem to be easier don’t they? Maybe easier in the fact that the movies show up in your mail, but not as cheap. I was a member of the online rental companies for a while and overall, it was a great experience. However, there was no way I could rent enough movies to make the price of the movie $1 plus 6-10 cents in tax over the month due to the membership fees. At the RedBox, EVERY movie is $1 whether you rent 1 or 30. The RedBox has the ease of use of online rental plus the fact that it’s cheaper. How can you beat that? If the online company cannot beat that model, how can the brick and mortar companies beat it? They have to pay costs ranging from employee salaries to building leases to utility bills. How can any competing movie rental business possibly compete with the RedBox model?

They can’t. Over the near future, the brick and mortar video rental companies will have to alter their business plans and you have seen some of them already doing so. They have a brand name established so that’s a plus. These companies need to find new services to offer which will replace their losses in store video rental and membership fees. To quote some numbers from VideoBusiness.com, for the 12 month period starting in June 2006, 11 million movies were rented from RedBox locations. With the arrival of thousands more RedBox kiosks throughout the country, that number has been far exceeded now. The simplistic nature of the kiosk has completely revamped how physical video rental is done at this time. Of course, it will eventually be replaced by other forms of delivery removing the physical nature, but currently, it is the best video rental business model available.

I’m sure there are other product lines where new business models can effectively change their entire market. Can you think of any potential methodology changes resulting in cheaper prices and also create time savings for the consumers involved? Think about where people spend the majority of their time and I’m sure there is something in that model that can be changed to become more efficient. How do you think most service companies get off the ground? They find an issue in a consumer’s life and exploit the issue by saving the consumer time and effectively charging less. Valvoline anyone?

However, as I mentioned, would this be any different than what we see today in our lives? The answer is no for the most part, but there is an issue. While we do pay “per-use” fees on products such as water, electric, gas, food, and other various consumables, paying a fee based on your weight is not something that can always be changed. Yes, our country has the label as being overweight. Yes, the vast majority of those overweight can choose to alter their lifestyle and lose weight and thus receive a theoretical cheaper airline ticket. But, a genetic difference between people complicates the basic formula and creates a tax upon individuals who fall outside the normal data range.

Is that a fair solution to the energy crisis facing our airline industry? On first look, the suggestion appears rational. But wait, aren’t there other “taxes” on these people who fall outside of the genetic “norm?” Yes. People who are tall pay more for their clothing. Large people pay more for their clothing. People with large feet may pay more for their shoes. Large or tall people must pay more for personal transportation because a compact car is too small. Even in our current system, larger people are being forced to pay a “tax.” Is that fair? Larger people require more of everything involved in their lives. They require more water, more food, more material for clothing, etc. The “fat” or “large” tax is already in effect in our current system and nobody seems to have a major issue with it. Extra large and under is basically the same price, but anything over, expect to pay more.

Well isn’t that fair? People who are genetically different and “punishing” them by requiring them to pay more for their goods and services while everyone else receives a lower fee is generally thought of as not being fair. Our business methods have settled on this particular system though. With economies of scale at work for the majority of what we produce, businesses are ok with the tradeoffs in the XL and below classes. They win some, they lose some, but on average, they are coming out ahead by charging the same price. However, for the “special” market, they must charge more to compensate their costs. That’s both fair and rational in the sense of business. Taking this thought process to the airline industry I can see them at some point assuming such a price break could be fairly and rationally instituted. Charge everyone under X amount of weight the same price while charging people over the limit, more.

The airline industry would of course be slammed by bad media just as they were for requiring extra large people to purchase two seats. However, that has since passed and people have accepted the fact. I believe the airline has the right to begin charging people based on a weight class. Would it be a popular decision? No. Would it help the airlines cover their costs of transportation? Yes. Would society fall into disarray because people are being charged for their actual consumption? No. In a per-use charging method, there will always be subsets of society who are “unfairly” taxed because of some reason. However, a per-use charge is the most fair and rational method we can settle upon. I would rather pay for what I use than a flat rate which includes every cost associated with the product in small portions.

We pay for the total gallons of water, kilowatts of electric, gallons of heating oil, gallons of gas, quantity of food, and most everything in our life based upon how much we personally use. Yes, there are some flat rate costs in our lives and some of us are coming out ahead and some coming out behind. I don’t see any reason why the airline industry could not or should not assume a similar charging method. I’m not saying this because I’m someone who would benefit from the change, I am saying this from the standpoint that it makes sense to do so as a business and society already follows these guidelines in most everything we do. Why would we get so upset about an airline charging more for larger or taller people? Of course it takes more money to transport larger packages. The same rule applies to people.

What I see as the basic problem for the dissenters of such a change is that everyone (when money is involved) wants to be treated equal in all manners of life when in fact, we are all very different. We promote individuality on one hand and on the other, we want complete similarity. Our mindset is that we want to be an individual when it personally helps us the most and we want to be similar when being the same is the cheapest and most effective way to keep money in our pocket. Problem with that mentality is that we cannot have both at the same time. Either we are going to be individualistic or not.

I believe we should all only pay for what we use, on everything. There should be no flat rate on anything we purchase. True fairness is to pay per-use. Flat rates are a way for businesses to exploit their economies of scale and purchasing power to achieve their profit margins. Per-use fees on everything of course will never materialize because it would just be too hard for businesses to keep up with appropriate inventory and costs with each product line. We will continue to pay the same price for everything under X size and pay more for size X and up. I’m just using the clothing example here but it applies to many other products and services. Pay the basic amount until certain X level and then you must pay more.

What I boil it down to is the old standby, the 80/20 rule. 80% of the people will fall into the normal category and 20% will fall into the “taxed” category over time. It’s the simplest, most rational, and most fair way to charge without using the per-use methodology. As for my support and stance on Jeremy’s suggestion, I say sure, let the airlines charge more for larger people. Its part of life and larger people require more so being fair, they should pay more. Even if we moved to the fairest method of all, per-use, they would still be required to pay more. Currently, without charging for large people and charging a flat rate, we are effectively taxing the 80% for the 20%’s cost. Is that fair? No.

While reading this article, I immediately began to think about 100 possessions I “need” to live a normal life with. In this statement, the word normal shows up. Are we currently living normal lives? Would past generations look at how we are living and think we are normal? I don’t really think so. Normal has become equivalent to excessively normal. The American mindset it to move forward, gain more, own more, make more. More… more… more… Have you ever heard anyone truthfully just lay their lives out on the table and say they are satisfied with their situation? While it’s possible, it is very highly unlikely. There is ALWAYS something MORE to do or have. Satisfaction is rare and very short lived if ever experienced it seems.

Let’s take a look at our “normal” lives. The average American family has multiple vehicles, multiple televisions, multiple computers, multiple this, multiple that, multiples of everything. Sure, there are rational arguments for everything just stated, but are they necessary? If you went through your house 1 item at a time and decided if it were absolutely necessary for your survival and happiness, what do you think your house would look like after you were done? Would it be barren? Would you be able to fill a small (or even large) house with the stuff you have deemed unnecessary from this exercise? Are you thinking about what you have right now? It’s hard not to. 100 items don’t go very far. I can probably fill the 100 in a single look inside my DVD cabinet of must have movies. Or, I could look in my bookcase and probably pick out 100 must have books. Is must have or important equivalent to necessary though? No.

We have all fallen prey to the desires of more in our lives. We NEED more. Without it, we are falling behind. Our society and media pushes the “desires” upon us as we grow and live. We are trained to want more and we are rewarded for having more. We believe we are successful with having more of everything. However, the years of excess and more are taking their toll on our lives. We are damaging our environment by consuming more and replacing less. Our lives are over stressed from the pursuit of more and clutter invades our home lives. The family finances are being destroyed by the pedal to the metal approach to having more. When did our society go from satisfied by having a healthy and loving life with family to one where satisfaction is never obtained and also runs our personal worlds dry in the attempt to reach the pinnacle of more?

I believe that our past generations would view us as having an insane need of more. They would literally shake their heads in disgust at how we live our lives. They survived happy lives with maybe 5% of what we have at our disposal. Sure, their lives were physically harder than ours, but is that a bad thing? I think physically making your way is the ultimate way of obtaining satisfaction. You physically EARN your living. Our world of mental labor is not true to our human nature. We are built to be workers. We are built to use our hands. Our mental ability is an added bonus. The American way is to find a nice job where physical labor is nothing but a minor portion of activity. However, while our unfocused minds are multitasking, we are often thinking about more of this or more of that. We are defining action plans about how to get to the next this or that. How do we obtain the next possession? We spend our time continuing to think about more.

However, as the article stated, there are people who are trying to reverse this trend. Whether they are doing it in an effort to save the environment, or save money, or just to de-clutter their own lives, they are choosing to WANT less. They are making an effort to return to normalcy. Their lives are returning to a level of life that is satisfied with less “stuff.” I’m sure it is very difficult to reach a point where 100 items is satisfactory. However difficult it may be, is the tradeoff of destroying our environment, spending more money, and stressing our lives worth keeping more? I don’t think so. Personally, I know it would be VERY difficult to achieve a 100 item list of possessions in my life. I said difficult, not impossible. Our lives can revolve around less. Our past generations proved that time and again.

Can we start with a larger number so that this concept doesn’t uproot and destroy our current state of living? Can’t we ease into this type of living? Sure, as long as there is a path towards a return to normalcy. 100 is an arbitrary number, it is something to shoot for. Maybe the appropriate number for your family is 200. That’s for you to decide. But remember, look at stuff differently. Make decisions about buying stuff differently. Change the training methods we have all learned from society and the media. It will take some time, but it can be done. Begin to teach new methods to your family and children that having excess is not necessary. Teach them that satisfaction can be achieved. We are not competing with our neighbors to see who has more of everything. If we follow these new methods, our past generations can look upon us without dissatisfaction.

The one thing we should focus upon going forward is our family’s quality of life. Quality does not mean quantity. Quality means are they satisfied, are they fed, are they safe, are they cared for, are they properly clothed, etc. Quality does not mean do they have the latest video game console, the latest movie, the latest toy, the latest electronic gadget, etc. Those are all excess items and not truly necessary. I am not supporting the removal of every single thing in life so that living becomes unhappy or unsatisfactory. I am saying to actively think about the impacts of the purchase decisions that are made. Some additional, non-necessary items are ok. A household full of them is not. Can we challenge ourselves to try and come up with a list of items we must have? I am going to challenge myself, I hope you do also. Take the stuff that you find unnecessary and have a nice yard sale or donate it to a family that could use a nice surprise. Our lives can return to normalcy and this is a simple and also difficult way to reach that point!

Citation: http://greenopolis.com/myopolis/blogs/liv-greene/can-you-live-with-just-100-things

Most American families are blessed through the years to have the opportunity to go on at least one major family vacation throughout their childhood. However, over the years, this opportunity has dwindled from a potentially lengthy vacation stay multiple states away, to something closer to home and less time intensive. In past years, families would load up their vehicles and stock their luggage full of beach clothing, ski clothing, or casual wear. They would fill up their coolers with snacks, sandwiches, and soda in preparation for travelling miles upon miles between stops for refreshments or restrooms. It was a very large undertaking for families going on their summer vacation. Everyone was excited at one point or the other, more often than not though, at separate times. Family vacations were notorious for conflict and irritating conversations. Think about it. If you place people who already live together in a small and usually uncomfortable space, they will be irritable. It’s a basic fact of our humanity, we like our space and our personal bubbles to be large.

Well, that sounds great doesn’t it? Sure, it was and for some, it still is. But, like I mentioned above, the existence of the family vacation is fast becoming a story of folklore. Families that are together are rare. Families that are able to take enough time off together to go on a lengthy vacation is becoming rare. Access to the funding necessary for the family vacation is becoming harder to acquire. Sure, there are still ways to take a family vacation “on the cheap,” but the majority of vacations have become insanely expensive. Depending on the age of the family and the people involved, trips to the fun parks and the hotel accommodations are sometimes upwards of several months’ rent for most families. Even for the older families, the associated site seeing adventures are usually costly and with today’s fuel costs, there are not many “on the cheap” vacations. Fuel costs alone for any substantial distance can drive the family’s budget into the ground.

Is there a problem with this? Vacations are and always will be a luxury. There is no disputing that. However, I do believe there is a problem with the impending extinction of the American vacation. Families, even though they may often be irritated, grow closer together by going on the adventure. It is a very intense journey through relationship building. Also, the families learn a vast amount about the society in which they live. If we spend our entire lives centralized in our local vicinities, we fail to experience what the rest of the country has to offer. People on the east coast are much different than people in the south. The people in the west coast are much different than the people in the midwest. There are different ideologies, different opinions, and much different environments. If we never experience what the rest of our country has to offer, our points of view are very limited and skewed. We must expand our boundaries to include the great experiences our country has to offer.

The only way to experience what our country has to offer is to take adventures. The family vacation is the primary solution. Also, children are usually involved in the vacation and this is the best time for an educational experience. Young minds absorb so much information at a very high rate that a vacation is so much more than entertainment for them. It is a very interactive experience for the young people. If we cannot take our family vacations, what exactly are we replacing it with? Video games, movies, time on the internet, or some other time waster? Sure, children learn from all of these things, but it cannot compare to the real world experiences of a vacation. On top of this, there is another major issue with removing the family vacation from our families. Families need time to get away.

Time to get away, or better said, escape from our everyday lives. People are continuously living under stressful situations and their family pays the price. Our relationships are stressed, our families are stressed, our budgets continue to be stretched, and we fail to experience the greatness the rest of our country has to offer us. We NEED to get away. Our minds need to be released from the daily, weekly, and yearly responsibilities that follow us everywhere we go at home. Time off is not the same as a vacation either. Take some time off, but stay at home, and your mind has no vent, no release. We must remove ourselves physically from the surroundings that we know on a daily basis to truly alleviate the stresses of our local environment. I am not saying that we can forget or dissolve all stress by vacationing, but I am saying that by doing so, we can greatly diminish its place in our life. This stress also affects our children. Children’s lives are also impacted by the stress levels of the parents. Environment is a major component in anyone’s life and even more so in children.

Families should work hard at taking a true vacation as often as they can. Maybe not every year, or even every other year, but a vacation needs to be undertaken to ease the burdens we are all under. Yes, it is tough to make happen, but so is most everything in our lives. If we put enough energy in planning and saving for our family vacations, we can bring back the American vacation from extinction. Not only will our children reap the rewards, but our state of mind will also receive dividends from our vacation experience. We all need time to get away. Vacations are not only one of the most functional ways to do it, but they also allow us to physically experience the world and country we live in. If we never leave our boundaries, we might as well be living in a fish bowl. Personally, I’m an adventurer, not a fish.

Since the Industrial Revolution, our world’s society has focused on being more efficient. Produce more products to serve larger quantities of people at a lower cost per part. We need to lower the cost of manufacturing to increase the profit margin per item. We need to create high volumes of goods to compensate for the skyrocketing global population. How do we achieve this? Let’s take a look at farming. Everyone needs to eat right? So theoretically, we would need lots and lots of farmers to compensate for the increased growth of people in our world. Wrong. Since the revolution, our farming community has been steadily declining to a point where they are only a small fraction of our total workforce. How can this be, don’t we need more farmers to produce our food supplies?

That in itself is the basic argument for today’s article. Our past generations were in more physically intense jobs because there was no other way to produce a product. If you were a farmer, you worked hard to grow your crop or handle your herd. If you were a laborer, you worked hard because there were no power tools to make things easier. People worked HARD in past generations. They were using physical power to accomplish their tasks. Also, what they were physically creating was used in their communities or local areas. They were serving the needs of their neighbors, their families, and their friends. People depended upon one another to complete their tasks to keep the community alive and prospering. Everyone was inherently tied together for the common good of survival.

Then, the Industrial Revolution came. A transition began which helped people accomplish their tasks easier. But with this arrival, what has it cost us? Our farming community has dropped to about 2 million workers as of this year (only a little over half earn hourly wages). Think about that, our country has surpassed 300 million people and we have 2 million farmers. Past data shows that as late as 1930’s about 25 percent of America’s population worked in agriculture. We are a far cry from that. How can we possibly feed our country let alone export food to the 6 billion plus other people in the world? As stated before, don’t we need more farmers to farm the land to feed more people? No. The onslaught of technology and advancements in machinery has greatly increased the productivity of our farming community. One farmer can now serve many more people than he could without the advancements. But, that’s not the only thing that came along to “help” the farmer.

Technology in farming, what exactly can we do to help farming with technology? Go online yourself and do a bit of research about how the chemical companies are involved in farming. Find out how the genetic research firms are interested in food. Many companies are deeply involved in agriculture by the way of producing genetically altered food sources, hormone therapy for animals, and lab created food sources for our animals and our society to eat. Well, that’s all fine and good since the FDA has approved all the sources of food that enter our stores right? I disagree. Human existence has been around for thousands of years and only until the latest 100 years or so have we seen such an influx of “man-created” food sources. Due to our needs of higher production and more mouths to feed, we have relied upon the use of technology to increase our food sources. We need more milk, let’s find a way to make a cow produce what 3 cows could do. We need more meat, let’s design a food source that packs on the weight on each cow. We need more crops, let’s design a hybrid crop that produces more products per square foot than normal. You get the idea. We alter the equation to produce more at the source.

This answers the question why we don’t need more farmers to support our growing population. We are changing the equation of production. We don’t need to farm more land, we don’t need more people to run the machinery, and we don’t need more grazing ground to support more animals. Scientists have gone the other direction. We need less land to produce more products. We need less people to run machinery. We need less grazing ground because the food is altered to be more powerful. We have used our technology to completely alter the farming community and basically made the farmer an extinct ideal. Isn’t that a good thing? Now we have more people in the workforce doing other valuable things with their skills. I’m sure farmers like having better tools and products available to them to make their lives easier. Sure, both answers are true. But again, what is this costing us?

Data shows that our life expectancy has increased greatly over the last few generations. People don’t have to beat their bodies up doing physical work and sometimes very dangerous work. We have medicine available that helps stop major illnesses and helps limit the affects of many sicknesses. We have an abundance of food so malnutrition in our country is very low. I would say the Industrial Revolution then of course helped our society even if the farming community has been decimated right? Not completely. I’m a bit skeptical, it’s my nature. Yes, people are living longer than previous generations, but has quality of life increased? Your version of quality may be different than mine. Quality is not about living longer in terms of years or having more money or having more stuff to call your own. Quality to me is living a life of value, doing what serves your purpose, loving your family, supporting your community, and living your years on earth in good health. Living longer with 20 years of deteriorated health is not quality living.

What are the affects of this scientifically altered food sources? Do we know? No. A scientist or study cannot do a study with 100% accuracy, it’s impossible. Our world’s people survived for thousands of years on unaltered sources of food. We have less than 100 years of data for our “new” food sources. Step back, take a look around you. What percentage of people that you know is in great physical shape? How often are those around you sick? How many people do you know who have either battled cancer or are battling cancer? How do you feel every day? Do you FEEL physically healthy? I’m not writing an article stating that our altered food is the source for causing cancer, but I do think there are multiple issues that tie together that increase your odds of getting sick. We are the first generations of humans living off genetically altered food. We are the first generations that are living off lab created products within our food. We are the study group for future generations. Think about that and when you are at the store buying food, think of all the man-made preservatives and genetically altered sources that are in the food you buy and eat. Is the food we eat part of our health problem?

Citation:  http://www.csrees.usda.gov/ProgViewOverview.cfm?prnum=8826

In my experience, I have found that the Internet is most valuable in two areas. The first is learning about things outside of visiting your library or looking through books at a bookstore. And the second is doing valuable product research. Yes, there are many, many other things the Internet allows us to do as individuals, but the power in these two areas cannot be defined. You have the power of millions at your fingertips. All you have to do is spend time searching, reading, and learning. What I am getting around to is a new product becoming available as we speak. It has already hit some store shelves and is soon to be in a variety of stores. This product type may not be known to some people out there depending on how technically advanced you care to be. It’s a new, cheaper blu-ray player. It is made to be an entry level player to help people begin migrating to a new format for movies. Remember DVD as it came out and everyone had their VHS players? Same thing here, blu-ray is trying to replace DVD as the standard for home movies.

There is nothing at all wrong with that. Blu-ray is a better technology as it offers more space for additional features, higher quality sound, and high-definition movie playback. It also includes the ability to connect to the Internet for content in the future (several current blu-ray players lack this function as does this current product). This leads me to the crux of this article. Funai is a Japanese company that has manufacturing plants in China. They currently build over half of the DVD players in our country. Needless to say, they know how to manufacture this product. Great, they have the capacity and know how to do it, guess we won’t have to worry about inventory being a problem. That’s not the issue either. The issue is that this company builds the product for many different brands. Brand x has the product with their label on it. Brand y has the exact same product with their label on it. They may be different colors are arranged a little nicer or have fancy boxing and maybe some other little differentiating tricks. However, the product inside is the EXACT same thing, just a different skin on it.

Still, there is nothing to worry about here. That is until you see what the stores are doing with the product. Store x has the product from brand x available for $298. Store y has the product from brand y available for $350. Store z has it available for yet another price at $325 for brand z. Why the discrepancy for the exact same product with just a different name on it? No, you aren’t buying brand name here, you are paying profit margin here. These stores know that the consumers aren’t informed and will purchase the product because it’s the cheapest blu-ray player available (cheapest other is $399). Consumers are starting to hear about blu-ray and high definition movies and now that there are a lot of high definition televisions in the households of Americans, there is a new push for blu-ray to enter the audio/video equation. Customer x walks into electronic store y, sees the new “cheaper” blu-ray player and knows its entry level and the brand is ok. Sales person pushes the product or tries to upsell the customer. Sounds normal and is. However, the customer doesn’t know they can immediately save $50 by going elsewhere.

What the stores and retailers are banking on is that the customer will not know the products are the same because they have different brand names on them. They of course rely on the fact that their store name carries with it a certain quality and thus they will pay a little more than another store because of this. The customer has not been informed adequately and the information is readily available on the Internet (it took me maybe 5 minutes to find out the information). You may say that’s fine, the customer is at fault for not doing the research. I agree to an extent but there is a point where it’s blatantly ripping people off because they basically have insider information. Your average customer is going to depend on outside information to help determine purchase decisions outside of price.

Of course this is not the only product in our stores that are like this. There are many products we buy that we can find a better deal elsewhere. But, we don’t do the research and find out. Why don’t we? Because most of us either don’t know how or don’t want to waste the time it takes to research something. The retailers know this so they continue to set pricing the way they do and continue to make higher profit margins on the same items packaged differently. We are being taken advantage of because we are allowing it. If we decided to become more educated on our product choices, we would not buy the higher priced products of course and the retailers would be forced to lower their prices or stop stocking that particular brand. The power is in our hands and the information is free and readily available.

Next time you are on the Internet, rather than just surfing around, research a product and just see what it is exactly you are spending your money on. At the very least, for any new product you buy, research about it on the Internet first. You will be greatly surprised what you find and you will be nicely surprised by how much money you can keep in your wallet. Don’t allow the retailers to take advantage of you because they lump you together with the other uneducated consumers. Take back the power and educate yourself.

Citation: http://myblurayplanet.com/

Why would we want to do this? Don’t we all want to have our own slice of the pie? Our own existence where we are quite happy to have everything under our own control where we don’t have to deal with others in our private time? When you go home, don’t you like closing the door and everything inside is yours? Everything said is true yes, but also very expensive. When did the idea surface that we all must have everything our own? In the past, families lived together or very near each other on their family’s land and basically had an extended “compound.” Remember the television show “The Waltons?” Large families in the past had no problems living close together or even within the same household. Now, it seems like the first thing that has to happen for existence is to move out on our own and show the world that we are independent. Independent at whatever costs are associated with it. We are individuals to the bone.

That is all well and good. We are all in need of our own space, our own domain. However, that can be accomplished without everyone having to buy a house, buy multiple cars, and the list goes on. If we had a housing design that gave us enough privacy and also solved a lot of the budgetary concerns, we would be better off in a multitude of areas. Number one, our family or group would be much more financially stable because sharing a single place is always cheaper than everyone paying for their own, economies of scale at work here. Number two, being so closely involved with other people will create a bond between individuals that we do not experience today. If you live together and depend on one another, you are better able to socialize amongst others. It’s about putting the needs of the family above the individualistic needs of your own. Number three, all ancillary costs will decrease because of the shared environment. In the end, the family or group will be better off in every facet imaginable. Some additional cost savings would be to utilize the land available for farming and creating food for the household. Grow your own vegetables, have a few animals for harvesting, you get the idea. I’m not talking about a 100 acre farm here; you can get by with much less.

I am assuming we are speaking about rational individuals here. Of course there will be issues that arise over time. People always have conflict. However, conflict is manageable and can be dealt with by rational people in a way which will not create division. Hard to believe, but it can be accomplished. If everyone goes into the situation with knowledge of what it takes to survive and succeed, it can be done very easily. I’m not talking about forming a miniature communist state either. I’m talking about creating a venue where people actually enjoy being around each other with the added benefits of costing less money. I am not saying everyone puts their money in the pot to be shared. I am saying share the costs amongst the families, equally.

Think about it, people living together in harmony, what a great concept. Concept does not imply wish. It’s something that can be accomplished if people are willing to rejoin a society of people who truly care about one another and want to spend time with people. Our world promotes individualism and exclusive ownership. Why? Think in terms of money. If EVERYONE has to have it, you sell multiple millions of everything. The more you sell the more money you make. It’s all about volume in the long run. If we live together and depend on one another, our bonds will be stronger and we will benefit from a stronger community. Rather than focusing on our individual wants and needs, we will have our family’s needs at heart. Love your family. Don’t be so fast to want your children to be independent and “on their own.” On their own isn’t necessarily the right place to be.