It goes without saying that the Internet is a busy marketplace buzzing with dubious claims and get-rich-quick schemes. One of the most powerful ways to draw traffic that web-savvy readers will inherently gravitate towards is the "how-to" site: how-to get thinner, how-to become organized, how-to become pregnant -- the list goes on and on. There is no shortage of cheerfully opportunistic sites willing to over-promise and under-deliver on their claims of self-improvement.Add to this list: I Will Teach You To Be Rich. What began as Stamford grad Ramit Sethi's blog dedicated to advice on photo processing has transformed itself into a site with ostensibly helpful advice on personal finance geared towards a younger, college bound audience. However, there are a couple things we find alarming about the site:
Walmart takes a lot of grief in the American press and modern pop culture, and why? Because it's popular, and because it's big – and Americans have traditionally had a hard time rooting for the big guy. Certainly there's never been a summer blockbuster where at the end, a Walmart was constructed over the "beloved old schoolhouse" much to the cheers and delight of the townspeople. - Stay open later than the competition. Too many mom-and-pop stores close up shop at 5 PM. This is like telling your customers with 9 to 5 jobs "Thanks, but we'd rather not have your business." Walmart stays open later, and as such, is better positioned to capture the hard-earned dollar of the American worker. However, there's always room for improvement: did someone say 24/7?
- Offer the low-priced merchandise that people want. The dirty secret of the modern manufacturer is that their products are not designed to last. But who would want that, anyway? The purchase of utterly disposable, low-quality consumer goods frees the consumer from having to lug around old items from house to house in order to will the goods to grandchildren who honestly, wouldn't be wanting such shoddy items in the first place. The myth of so-called "heirloom quality" goods is just that, a myth; and with products becoming cheaper thanks to our miraculous global market, who honestly doesn't delight in simply throwing old items away and buying them brand new again?
- Keep your workers hungry – obviously, not literally hungry, as many Walmarts offer in-house a wide variety of snack food and value-priced meals suitable for lunch (or dinner, or if on a budget, both!). Instead, keep workers metaphorically hungry; avoid costly health plans and retirement benefits that only create a "hand out" scenario that drive up prices for the very person paying the bills: Mr. and Mrs. Consumer. Your customers don't leave their house, drive several miles and come through the front shop doors in order to pay for employees doctor visits, so don't make them carry that burden.
- Lock 'em up. A secure store is a profitable store. Many Walmarts have been known to lock their employees inside the store, unable to leave, during the third shift when the serious shrink occurs. While some self-proclaimed "worker's rights advocates" may claim that this is a violation of these worker's human rights, it doesn't take long to understand that third-shift night workers are the very same alcoholics and secret drug-abusers that are the primary causes of shrink in the first place. Good solid fences make good neighbors, and good solid locks on the outside make even better employees.
- Continue supporting impoverished countries. Walmart purchases a majority amount of their products from overseas vendors, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. Too many needlessly expensive products come from inside our borders when that money could be going to purchase less expensive, foreign-made products at a greatly reduced price. This serves to keep American companies "price competitive" in the global market – a skill many companies have avoided – while still providing the customer with the rock-bottom prices they have come to expect.
Let's not pussyfoot around this thing any longer.Recession.
There's a lot of bullshit debate in the media right now about whether we're in a recession or not, or when this "slowdown" officially becomes a recession. It's all bullshit. It's like looking up at a cloudy sky and having "serious debate" on whether it's going to rain or not. Recession has a precise technical definition and it either "is" or "isn't". And for the time being, we can't know.
The only real question is what to do about the situation we're in now. How can we make this situation as painless as possible, for all involved? As patriotic consumers, it is our responsibility to soften this economy's fall however we can.
Here are some basic steps we can all take to improve our financial futures:
- Buy a TV. With consumer confidence falling, consumer electronics stores are falling on some hard times. Buy now to take advantage of discounts and rebates. You get a TV, they sell a TV: everybody's happy.
- Buy a car. The car companies are feeling the squeeze too. And again, with special deals out there, buying a new car is win-win.
- Buy a house. Housing prices always go up. There is absolutely no exception to this rule.
Because of my pro-business stance, I occasionally receive emails from readers who accuse me of being anti-consumer. I'd like to say once and for all, that I am not anti-consumer. I believe in excellent customer service, which means giving a consumer the best possible product at the best possible price.
Now I'm no fan of the iPhone. I'm quite attached to my Blackberry Pearl with awesome Microsoft Outlook Integration and push email services (for the life of me, I cannot figure out why Apple doesn't support Microsoft Outlook)! But I really do have to weigh in on the current debate over unlocked Apple iPhones.
You see, some customers think that just because they buy a product, they can go ahead and use it in any old way they want, even in a way that hurts the company they bought it from. Apple very generously produced this product with the expectation that users would sign up with AT&T. Perfectly reasonable deal–you want an iPhone, you sign up with AT&T.
But a small group of malcontent users has decided to hack the iPhone to avoid signing up with AT&T, which hits both AT&T and Apple where it hurts: the bottom line. These customers are nothing more than consumer terrorists, breaking the rules to put their own best interests in front of others.
Apple would not be a good corporate citizen if it allowed these terrorists to go unchallenged. And as we all know, you can't negotiate with terrorists. If Apple doesn't render their phones useless ("brick" them, in the internet vernacular), the consumer terrorists have already won.
Well, it's happened again. The UAW has dealt another blow to a once powerful symbol of America. This time, 73,000 workers walked out of GM plants across America and forced the company to the bargaining table over healthcare costs. In the end, GM was powerless to fight the coup and had to commit $35 billion to fund healthcare for the UAW.
So have you heard about the massive recalls of toys made in China? I take product Quality Assurance seriously, so when I heard about this, I wondered what had gone wrong. Were the toys broken? Did the toys suffer from some kind of manufacturing defect which renders them unusable? Did the packaging not match the color of the toys inside?
As it turns out, it was none of these things. It turns out that crybaby consumers are getting worked up over something that they cannot even see. Something that does not affect the "playability" of the toys in any way. It turns out that consumers are up in arms over something the toys are made with: lead.
Surely by now, you're shaking your head–How can that be? But sadly, it's true. The toys look fine. They function fine. They smell just fine. But now some know-nothing consumers are up in arms because they don't like the way the toys are made. They say that the lead is poison. Well don't eat it, genius! The glass and steel found in modern households are also dangerous if you eat them, but come on! Show some common sense and some Personal Responsibility.
Look, I'm all for customer safety. At my former position as Northeast Manager of Food Distribution for one of this nations top snack food producers, I vigorously supported the "no-glass" guarantee policy. But this is lead we're talking about. You cannot cut yourself on lead. You cannot shoot yourself with lead. You cannot trip and fall over lead. It is an all-natural chemical that is all around us.
If you've got a portfolio anywhere close to the size of mine, you know that the past couple of weeks have been a real roller coaster. A stalled housing market and rise in foreclosures have economists talking about a global credit crunch. All the gloomy news sent stock prices spiraling. Fortunately, the Federal Reserve's cut in interest rates has stopped the bleeding, at least for now.
Who is to blame for all the turmoil? Once again, we need look no further than ignorant consumers who have gotten in too far over their heads. This time, these morons have taken enormous loans that they cannot possibly afford. What these customers don't understand is that their decisions affect the economy at large. When some moron customer takes a loan he cannot afford and ends up in foreclosure, he can just walk away from the house scot-free with no ill effects, right? Wrong. When thousands upon thousands of these irresponsible borrowers all make the same bad decision, the economy suffers.
Which means that business suffers. Which means that we all suffer.
The biggest victims of these simple-minded consumers are the banks which offered them the loans. These lenders are American Heros, selflessly providing every citizen the chance to live out the American dream of home-ownership. That is, until their generosity is taken advantage of, and they're put out of business by irresponsible consumers. These people are martyrs.
What our society is missing is Personal Responsibility. As consumers we have the responsibility to make intelligent decisions which will support the growth of our economy. To not consider the impact of your financial decisions on others would be selfish.
