Blog Archives

The Value of Time (Four Minutes to Read)

7/23/2012

There’s probably not a person on earth who hasn’t said at one time or another: “I need more time.” Time is a commodity that’s more valuable than food, money, and water because if you run out of time you don’t need them! Plus time is different than other valuables because we might lose a nice pair of sunglasses but we might find them or worst case scenario replace them. Not time…if we lose it, it’s gone.

A lot of people think they have a handle on where they spend their time but in most cases it’s general knowledge at best. It’s the same with money. A small percentage of society has a solid budget where they know where their money is going. In both cases this is pretty sad and why a lot of people are struggling with financial issues and stress.

Let’s think through how our time is usually spent during a work week. In prioritizing things we need to provide for our families first and foremost or a lot of other important things won’t have a chance. Prep time, drive time, and work time, often add up to around twelve hours a day. In most cases people get around seven hours of sleep so if you add the two together we only have four hours of discretionary time to work with.

This is where a serious problem begins to unfold compared to what most of our parents experienced. Times have changed and a lot of households revolve around the children and their extracurricular activities. This particular investment also leads to a lot of stress as parents have to keep up with their children’s schedules, make sure their uniforms are clean, make sure they have everything they need for the game or for practice; the list goes on and on. Just my opinion but I’m not sure there’s a good return on investment considering the added stress it puts on the household.

Time is too important a commodity to not manage. Everyone should sit down and think through everything that needs to get done and then prioritize it. Is your daughter’s dance class or piano lessons as important as other areas that might lead to her success? Is your son’s Karate class important for his future? Only you can answer these things but let me give you something to think about. Children from places like China, India, Japan, and Taiwan don’t have baseball or soccer trophies in their rooms they have Math, Science, and Spelling Bee trophies and they’re killing us in the global market. Children from China and India meet with their teachers on Saturday mornings to make sure they understand the week’s lesson. Compare this to our children who sleep in until noon or later! I watched an interview that 60 Minutes did with Chinese high school students and one of them said: “We won’t be a national power through our military we’ll be a national power through our intelligence.”

I got goose bumps when I heard this because these are the kids our children will be competing against. It's no longer good enough for our children to be better than the rest of their class because the bar has been raised. Will ballet classes, baseball, clarinet lessons, piano lessons, or Tai Chuan Do help them get to the level they need to be to compete in the real world. You might think it will because of traits they learn in being involved in extracurricular activities but you really need to think it through. My philosophy is if everybody is doing it it's probably not a good idea because most people aren't going about life the right way.

The effective use of time is a life changer. People who appreciate and respect its value will naturally take care of it more wisely. When you invest something you want a good return; how are you doing? Just take a look at your life and see if you feel like you’re in a better place today than you were a year ago. Is there any difference or is it the same? There’s only one fix and that is to change your time portfolio. Where would you and your family get the best return on your investment? It’s time you answer this life changing question.

The Truth About Unemployment (Two Minutes to Read)

7/22/2012

It seems like every day we have the latest unemployment figures given to us; as of this blog it is sitting at 8.1%. I want to give you a few things to think about that might change your opinion on the
validity of these numbers.

Before I get in to where the numbers come from I’d like for you to consider this: President Obama says he has created over four million jobs since the beginning of his presidency. There are currently 12.5 million people collecting unemployment which is 8.1% of employable workers.
If President Obama has created over four million jobs then this would equate to one million jobs a year. If you divide the new jobs he says he created by the total number of those unemployed then he should be improving the unemployment rate by 8% a year. If you reduce the 8.1% unemployment rate by 8% a year then unemployment should be dropping at least half a point a year; instead unemployment has risen every year that he’s been in office. Does this sound
strange to you?

The government comes up with their unemployment rate by dividing the number of claims by the number of people employed which is captured by the IRS. This is a little too simple because it
doesn’t take into consideration a variety of other factors. For example there are a lot of people who are employed (especially in California because of migrant workers) who are paid cash. More people are working the IRS just doesn’t know about it.

Then there are the millions of people who were on unemployment but dropped out of the system; not because they have a job but because their benefits ran out. Here’s the sneaky part; when these people drop out of the system they’re no longer considered unemployed. When I took the
number of applicants who dropped out of the system due to their benefits running out and added it back to the number of people unemployed, it ends up being a 10.8% unemployment rate. Forbes ran an article that had it at 11% so my calculation should be fairly accurate.

Extending unemployment benefits negatively affects the job figures so you’d think that some political parties would stay away from it; but at the beginning of a term it’s not a bad move. First of all it sounds great on the campaign trail. Then when in office they always have the advantage of blaming the current unemployment on the past administration. They do have to deal with it on the back-end like President Obama is now, but they’re generally optimistic about improving the situation before their re-election run. It didn’t work out this way for Obama so they’re probably wishing they didn’t play the unemployment extension card when they did.

Now you’d think Republicans would bring this matter up but they’re very careful with it because if their candidate gets into office they want to be able to play the same game as President Obama. There are only so many economic measures shared with taxpayers so they spend a lot of focus on spinning these numbers. None more so than the unemployment rate because they know most taxpayers don’t understand a lot of the other economic news.

I wrote this blog so everyone would know the figures we’re constantly getting from news organizations aren’t accurate. For them to report that Obama has created four million jobs and at the same time talk about an 8.1% unemployment rate isn’t at all logical. I’m not sure if they think for themselves anymore; they just take information off of the AP wire and run with it without due diligence.

I also wrote a piece about President Obama’s claim of the millions of Green Jobs he’s created and I very easily debunked what he said; it’s actually quite blatantly shocking. Fortunately his claim is being reviewed by a Congressional Committee because the report seemed so unrealistic. I saw their hearing with the head of the Department of Labor and believe me it doesn’t look good for
Obama.

But how many Americans are going to know the findings of the committee? President Obama can say what he wants on the campaign trail knowing that voters will never end up hearing the truth. I can’t blame him it’s just politics as usual. Just more Americans being misled (in the private sector we refer to this as lying). Games like this would be considered fraud in the business world but politicians play by different rules than the rest of us.

Benefits of a An Economic Depression (Two Minutes)

7/21/2012

Sounds like a crazy question but let’s take a look at what a depression would mean to our country. A depression can be viewed best as a sustained recession. The demand for goods and services declines because our economy halts or starts reversing. This leads to market fears so the stock market takes a big hit. People start spending less money which negatively impacts a variety of retailers.

Essential products are still purchased like groceries; as a matter of fact grocery stores sales would go up because people would start eating out less. The value of goods drops (i.e. appliances, cars, homes, etc.) because retailers have to do something to turn inventory. But the bottom line is that money gets tight so non-essential products take a significant hit which means that companies that provide these types of items lay people off to stay afloat. This of course leads to a variety of problems as more people are out of work and not adding to our country's GDP and instead draining it due to the need for government assistance.

This certainly doesn’t sound good but let’s look at the flip side. Because we are now dealing with a global economy the prices of our goods and services directly competes with the rest of the world. As we know countries like China, South Korea, and Taiwan, are by far outperforming us due directly to their much lower prices. The fact is, when the value of our dollar is depressed the cost of producing our products goes down allowing us to provide lower retails making our products and services more attractive across the globe. It's kind of funny if you think about it that a lot of countries root for us to not experience a depression because it directly impacts them. They want us to be financially well off so we'll continue to buy their goods and services. International trade is something The Great Depression didn’t have going for it and it's something that will expedite us getting out of one.

Americans would have less money because the value of our dollar drops in a depression but keep in mind prices go down as well so the impact wouldn’t be as dramatic. Now if an individual was doing business with another country (or even travelling to another country) he or she would take a financial hit because the U.S. dollar would be worth less than their dollar. For example someone travelling to England might plan on spending $500 on clothes while there but the currency exchange might make their $500 turn in to $400 to spend. Basically the clothes she purchases would take 20% more U.S. dollars to buy.

Another example is a U.S. investor who invests $5MM dollars in another country might have their investment devalued to $4.5MM because of our depressed dollar. Meaning what would be a good investment if our economy was strong turns into a bad one just because of the negative exchange rate.

Another positive when people go through a depression is they are reminded what needs and wants are. Never before have Americans spent so much money on non-essential items; we work harder and harder to buy things we don’t have time to use. Believe me a depression would help us get our priorities straight.

We’d survive much better in a depression than our ancestors did. There are a variety of reasons for this including our much better access to food and water. People were scattered more back in those days so communication and supply routes were terrible. We certainly don’t have those issues today. Most homes across America have not only phone service but internet service as well (unless they discontinue it for their budget's sake), which improves things from a mental perspective because being connected to what's going on around us makes a huge difference on our mental toughness which softens the blow during challenging times no matter what they are. One of the worst parts about the Great Depression according to those who were there is they knew nothing about what was going on. We won't have to deal with this fear.

Another reason we’d be better off is most people have transportation something that wasn’t common in the 20’s and 30’s. Their ability to get to where the resources were was practically non-existent. Lastly, access to fuel is substantially better now. Gas shortages wouldn’t be a problem like there was back then; of course people would change their driving habits to save money on fuel which is a good thing. No more driving a few blocks to go to the convenience store, instead the oldest form of transportation is used...walking. This is a positive too.

I don’t want to experience a depression but it’s good to know there are some positives. Plus it’s good to keep in mind that opportunities always exist during good times and bad. It’s been the same for thousands of years; some people keep their optimism and take advantage of opportunities even in bad times while others just complain about the situation and get lost in the daily grind. So if an economic depression does hit you just have to decide which person you’ll be.

Are You Different?

7/21/2012

Let’s face it most Christians have been pretty messed up for thousands of years. We all know why of course and that is because our human nature is bad/evil.

Some non-Christians believe we’re two-faced because they don’t see how we’re any different from them and some of this is our fault which I’ll get to in a moment. Unfortunately a lot of the negative
feelings towards us from non-Christians are due to misunderstandings. They don’t know that we go to church because we know we’re messed up and need help. Instead they think we believe we’re “Holier than Thou” and look down upon them. I believe this particular issue is difficult to overcome because these perceptions have been around forever but there are certainly things we can do to show we’re different in a good way.

As you know, we’re called to be in the world but not of the world so this requires us to be different in various ways. The question is how can we be different? How can we shine our light in some way to stand out and make a positive difference? How can we show non-Christians that becoming a Christian is a good thing? In sales we termed this: “What’s in it for me?” Meaning we had to figure out how we could meet a buyer’s need before we could sell anything. It does feel a bit strange looking at it this way since we’re talking about Christianity, but isn’t this exactly what Jesus did? He was effective because he ministered/met peoples’ needs.

These of course are only my opinions but first of all I think we need to have a positive attitude regardless of the circumstances. The world isn’t positive, so this is a great way to be different.
People will see this in us and want some of it. Some people will even ask you how you can keep a cheerful countenance during such difficult times which will completely open up the door for you to tell them where your joy comes from. You might lose your positive attitude at home and be all frustrated about your situation but do your best to put on a brave face when you walk out that door or you’ll miss a great chance to minister.

The bottom line is that we must bear spiritual fruit that people can see. We all know the fruits of the spirit include: love, peace, joy, gentleness, kindness, patience, faithfulness, self-control, etc. We may know this but do with live this? Do you consider most of the world living the above attributes or do consider them as being exceptions to the norm?

With the above in mind we know exactly how we can be different from the rest of the world; we can be effective in the world but not of it. Next we need to figure out how we can bear the above mentioned fruit. I don’t believe we can do a very good job of forcing ourselves to be loving, kind, etc. I consider these things kind of hard to fake it until you make it like some things can be.

Because of our personality types some of these things are easier to do than others. My problem is that some of these things come natural to me but I sometimes blow it when the going gets rough.
This is where the Holy Spirit comes in; I think we sometimes forget this powerful force we have within us. Having been born into sin the fruits of the spirit are out of our reach but they’re not out of reach of the Holy Spirit.

The key for us is to invoke the Spirit. I don’t know about you but if I don’t pray daily for help I usually end up over my head. The Holy Spirit is just waiting for us to ask for help no matter what our problem is.

I’ll wrap up here since I don’t like these blogs to be too long. There are so many other things I could have brought up in reference to Christians being different from the world. I guess it all boils
down to this, if the people we work with don’t have a clue we’re Christians, I’d say we’re like a useless tree which bears no fruit. Jesus didn’t have kind words about barren trees!

The War On Capitalism (Two Minutes to Read)

7/20/2012

President Obama gave a speech recently that pretty much said entrepreneurs wouldn’t exist without people. Having been one myself I can tell you that jobs wouldn’t have existed if some friends and I hadn’t taken a huge risk (including the possibility of losing our homes) to pursue a dream and start our own business.

Did we need people to accomplish our dream definitely but the fact is the jobs came before the people not the other way around; kind of like which came first the chicken or the egg. In this case it’s very clear we had to create the need for jobs before we could hire people to fill them.

Obama consistently puts out a message that business executives are evil. He says he wants to create jobs but time and time again he trashes corporate America. There are a lot of problems with doing this and one is that a majority of companies that provide jobs aren’t part of corporate America; instead they are classified as small businesses with many of them having less than 50 employees. These small business owners aren’t evil. There are over 27 million of these companies in the U.S. and they account for over half of the jobs.

The problem is that President Obama keeps saying things that undermines small businesses; basically putting them in the same boat with the G.E.’s and Proctor and Gamble’s of the world when they’re an entirely different business model. Small businesses are growing not downsizing;
they are the ones we really need for our economic survival.

When Obama says he’s going to tax people with earned income of $250,000 on up he directly affects most of these small businesses. The reason for this is that small businesses are often S-Corps meaning the profits are treated as income/salary just like their employees deal with. So whatever tax bracket the business owner is under on a personal basis is applied to their business income.

Large companies are C-Corps; meaning the company is the taxed entity not the owners of the company. Corporations are under very different rules from a tax perspective and are under very strict guidelines in reference to stockholder protections. They have a Board of Directors to oversee various aspects of how the company is being run. The bottom line is they operate nothing like a small business. The excutives in a major corporation can make millions in bonuses/stock options even though their salaries are generally around $750,000. Small business owners are more inclined to make around $150,000 with no bonuses or options. With the above in mind, many small business owners would fall into President Obama’s $250,000 increased income tax because that is the profit received not the amount the owner actually receives.

Most small business owners use their own formula for distributing profits as they aren’t federally regulated like large corporations. Let me give you an example of what our company does (I’m now retired from there). First of all we take 10% of our income before taxes and give it to charities. Next the five business owners paid their taxes which averaged around 40% of company profits. Then we’d give 20% of our profits to all of our employees in profit sharing (we gave them a 401k program as well). Lastly, we’d take the remaining 30% and reinvest in the company which always included adding more jobs because of our growth. We contributed to the country's gross domestic product the government takes away from it.

Any dollar taken away from our company and given to the government takes away from every area I mentioned above. Less charity, less profit sharing for our employees, less new jobs, etc. There is no way the government could do a better job with our money then how we were using
it. We grow jobs, they don’t. We spent efficiently, they don’t. We didn’t have corruption, they do. We efficiently spread the wealth within our own communities, they spread it where the votes are. This is why Republicans are fighting so hard to stop President Obama. The president tries to make it seem like Republicans are fighting for the rich when it isn’t true; they’re fighting for our economic survival. I don't think a lot of people get it but it would be ignorant of Republicans to support the rich because they are a very small voting base. Creating class warfare is just an unfair strategy by the Democrats. I find dividing Americans like this to be appalling.

I always knew President Obama had a socialist streak which only makes since because of his background. Not only are there a large amount of black Americans with a mindset of entitlement and shared wealth, President Obama was also an academia so he didn’t work in the business world. Many people in the academic community have a different vision of how things should work; what they need is time in the “real world” so they aren't as naive. While giving presentations at various universities I always ended up having college students come up to me afterwards saying they wish their professors had real world experiences to share.

President Obama hasn’t hid very well (maybe he’s not trying), that he believes in Socialism which in Karl Marx’s view was a natural progression from Capitalism. I don’t think he consciously ran for office to tear our country apart, I think he had these ideological views that he and his friends discussed over the years as to how to run the country. Then when he got into office he realized he was way over his head. Not surprising since he was a community organizer before jumping into trying to be a country organizer. This is why he’s still doing so many things President Bush did even though he said he wouldn’t. Once he got into office he finally faced the real world and his ideology wasn’t the solution. It would be the same for most of us, we sit around talking about how messed up things are yet most of our ideas for fixing them probably wouldn't be realistic when confronted with the big picture.

I’m sure that most democrats don’t care about living in a socialist society but they’re naïve to the negative impact it will have on our nation because economic growth always takes a significant hit as well as job loss in this type of society. Socialist societies are filled with citizens with entitlement
mentalities and as we’ve seen many are now going bankrupt. Has socialism ever led to a successful society? The answer is no.

Christendom (Two Minutes to Read)

7/20/2012

Christendom is the political, economic, moral, social, legal life of a nation as inspired by the Gospel. This is the way it was in the U.S. for most of our existence; never perfect but there was a
moral compass guiding us to pursue the best that humanity had to offer.

We should ask ourselves why people years ago could leave their bikes parked outside without a lock on them. Why were they not concerned about locking their doors. Why were they not concerned about leaving their keys in their cars? Why were they not concerned about their
children playing outside? Of course I could go on and on but you get the point.

The answer to these questions is quite clear to me and that is morality was still a driving factor in how people lived their lives. Christendom was guiding the lives of most Americans and
Non-Christians were conforming to how the masses lived not the other way around like it is today.

There have been massive amount of studies regarding why civilizations have fallen over the last thousands of year and there was a common denominator and that is the societies began losing their moral compass. Even if they knew nothing about God they still lived by many of The Ten Commandments because it was a natural way of coexisting. When it was lost, when they began killing others to take their land and their women, their societies began the downward spiral. There were certainly other factors as well but once again the core problem identified by these researches was that morality began declining followed by their society.

The big question is what can we do about it? Unfortunately there are no easy answers. We’ve allowed elected officials as well as the Supreme Court to dictate how we are to live our lives and quite frankly we’ve done it with little resistance.

The more influence they’ve exerted the worse our lives have gotten. Our bikes and doors are locked up. Our children are limited in when and where they can play. When I was a kid I was told to be in by dark and I didn’t have a care in the world about something bad happening to me.
We can’t say prayer in school. The government is no longer funding the best organizations for helping people in need because they are religious organizations. There is clearly a large place to blame for our declining morality and it falls directly on the government taking away religious freedoms. The ACLU has also been instrumental in our moral decline.

Back to what we can do about it. We first have to decide whether we are willing to be in the world and not of the world. If you look around and you can’t differentiate your life from everybody else’s
then you have a problem. Jesus said narrow is the gate to heaven meaning if you are traveling down life’s journey with a crowd of other people, good luck getting through the gate. The bottom line is we are called by God to be different; not perfect, just different. He wants others to see in us that we are patient, loving, kind, compassionate, trustworthy, etc. He said that if others don’t see these things in us then we are pretty much useless. It’s a hard but fair statement. What good are we if we’re like everybody else?

Gandhi said: “Become the change you seek in the world.” His message to us is to start with us. Trying to change things like the state of our country and individual societies is too daunting a task but we can change ourselves. If we want morality back in our society then we need to be
the role model for it. That’s really all God ask of us. He knows that if we focus on being the best we can be then everything else will fall into place because we’ll have the fortitude to fight the good fight against evil in our society. He knows that we’ll get more involved in politics because it has so
much influence over our ways of life. He knows that we’ll take care of people in need because we will have the moral compass to do so.

We need to focus on ourselves and become the change we seek in the world. For me it means to attend church, participate in Bible studies, and do a lot of praying. These things keep my focused on God instead of the world.

Then we need to get involved with politics and let our legislators and the Supreme Court know they are ruining our lives and the proof is available to back this up. We need our moral compass back and that includes getting rid of the terrible interpretation of the separation of church and state. I have another blog dedicated to this topic and it very clearly shows why the Supreme Court was wrong in their decision and how we could argue to overturn it. Think about it, nine Justices deciding the fate of our nation; I find this very scary because Christendom doesn’t play in their decision making when it is the moral fiber that keeps our country strong.

The right to revolt against our country is written in our Constitution. Citizens are told they can do this if they feel the government is endangering the nation; basically not doing their jobs
effectively. I don’t know about you but there’s no doubt in my mind they’ve earned a revolution!

The Devils in the Details (Two Minutes to Read)

7/9/2012

President Obama has been on the campaign trail claiming to have created over three million green jobs. Republicans in the House didn’t believe these figures so they conducted an open hearing (I watched it on TV) with John Galvin, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The committee learned the Obama Administration made Green Job classifications so vague that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was told to give Green Job status to millions of people with jobs
like bus drivers (even those who gas the buses or work on them), bicycle messengers, anyone working in garbage collection whether collecting garbage or working in the office, environmental agencies, Salvation Army employees, etc. Not only are the job classifications for being a "green job" ludicrous, John Galvin wasn’t able to explain how they came up with the three million jobs.

President Obama is constantly blaming the state of our economy on Europe and on the Congress and Senate (especially Republicans of course). As you can imagine Europe is upset about his claims and responded that the U.S. is negatively impacting their economy as well because
we’re not buying as many goods overseas. The Congress and Senate (including many democrats) are mad at President Obama for pointing the finger at them and not taking responsibility for his share of the blame. President Bush dealt with a lot of problems as well but he was professional enough to not throw the legislative branch under the bus. The President's job is to motivate the Congress and Sentate; blaming and trying to motivate at the same time certainly isn't effective. I think it shows a severe lack of leadership on President Obama’s part.

President Obama is blaming (even in one of his TV ads) Republicans for not supporting his latest job stimulus package that is directed towards the public sector (i.e. firemen, medics, policemen, teachers, etc.). He said Republicans are hurting Americans for political reasons. But the fact is Republicans don't support his stimulus package because they feel it's a terrible way to try and stimulate the economy; they would rather introduce and extend current tax cuts.

The main main reason (out of several) Republicans don't support the stimulus plan is the billions of dollars President Obama wants to spend only covers a year of new jobs. Meaning they take the money being used and factor in how many jobs would be created based on the average salaries of these workers. In other words if I had $500,000 to use as a stimulus and employees averaged making $50,000 a year, I'd get to say that I created ten jobs. But what would I do the next year? I'd have to throw money at the problem again to keep these people employed; of course President Obama doesn't share this little gliche in his plan.

The fact is what Obama is pushing is politically motivated not economically motivated. Throwing out his brilliant stimulus plan and telling people they need to fight with him to get the House and Senate Republicans to stop playing games with the American people is effective campaign rhetoric but it isn't the truth. He's smart enough to know his plan doesn't have substance but he knows he can get away with it because most Americans don't understand that when it comes to politicians there's always a devil somewhere in the details!