My proposal seems pretty simple, and some may say it would make no difference, but I'd like the government to start using real numbers. In their budgets, in the congressional bills, in reports of actual spending. I'd like the newspapers to do the same. It would be quite the task for Washington, as the accountants would have to use 6,9, or 12 zeros instead of one letter, or instead of making the numbers look smaller by placing the phrase "all amounts are in millions" in the fine print. It would also require them to count those zeros, and double check for accuracy. That is fine with me. I'll foot the bill for the extra accounting hours, and I doubt too many taxpayers would fight that one. It's small in comparison to the other things they kindly sign us up to pay for.
Seriously though, we all know that if we have cash, as opposed to a credit card, it is a lot harder to justify buying things we'd have no problem purchasing on plastic. We see our money leave our hands, without having to wait for a statement, only requiring a small minimum payment. This is the oldest trick in the book for debt counselors. After requiring a person or couple to draft up a reasonable budget, they then give the person a set amount of cash, that's it, no more. People start spending less when this happens, because they realize there isn't a magic money fairy that will come replace their supply. Reality hits.
The proposed health bill is supposed to add between $1T and $1.6T in debt, there is no mention of the cost, only what will be added in debt. That's fine and dandy, aside from the fact that more than 25,000,000 people will still be without insurance AND those people will have to pay a fine to the government for not having insurance. To top it all off, it will be the very people the "universal healthcare bill" is supposed to help! Those who don't make at least 150% of the federal poverty level WON'T have health care, and they'll be fined for not having it. This fine of course will go to help fund the health care for the other people who do qualify. It's absolutely absurd! And the amount of debt that we will further drown ourselves and our children in? Well that's a mere $1,000,000,000,000 to $1,600,000,000,000. That's all, no worries. Yeah, look at those zeros, a bit different than the seemingly innocent "T", yes?
One more thing, house bills, how about a page limit? Say 25 pages, maybe 75? I think 75 would be more than generous. It irritates me beyond belief that the bills finding their way to congress these days are sometimes longer than the Bible. It takes me a day or two to read the Bible, but I wouldn't retain a whole lot of it. There is way too much room to sneak in unrelated "projects", or laws, which should be done away with. Simplicity is usually best, so is saving trees. It really gets me when people who claim to want to save the environment, because of course the earth will implode in 5 minutes if we don't do something NOW, waste thousands of pages of paper just to write up a bill and distribute copies throughout congress. Honestly, after the initial bill, revisions, and the final bill going through congress, how many trees are brutally murdered to get a bill through? I would like to know. It needs to stop, and it needs to stop NOW. I'm not an environmentalist, but I don't believe in wasting resources, including paper needlessly. That's the thing though, I don't proclaim to want to "save the earth" by radically changing the way we live, a lot of these politicians claim that is their goal, yet they would knock over a whole forest to supply the paper their precious self serving bills are wasting.
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Unemployment - What You'll Never See in the Headlines
We hear the unemployment rates quite frequently. While they are important, they aren't the whole story. What we don't ever hear about is the number of people who indeed have no job or source of income, but don't qualify for unemployment. I'm not talking about the people who don't qualify because they haven't worked, but the people who don't qualify despite the fact that they HAVE worked.
My husband and I own and run a small business. He started the business in his backyard long before we met. He started with a cement mixer that he made himself. He couldn't afford to buy one. He lived with his parents at the time, in an 800 square foot house, with his now ex-wife and 2 children. Two "bedrooms" and 1 bathroom, build in the early 1920's, and literally falling apart. He saw a need that he could fill. He started making precast concrete products to sell to other precasters, as they could hardly fill their increasing demands with the equipment, space, and people they had. The demand for our products continued to grow until summer of 2008.
We are a small corporation, and we are the only officers of the company. Most people don't know that corporate officers, until January 2009 did not have the option of paying into state unemployment in our state, and thus, were not eligible to receive benefits when their job no longer existed. We received a letter in December 2008 letting us know that we could now opt-in and have money taken from our checks, and from the company, and that we would be able to receive unemployment in the future should the need arise, if we met certain criteria. As with everything in life, there was a catch, to qualify for unemployment, you must have been employed for the previous 4 quarters, not only employed, but paying into unemployment. We knew in January when we elected to pay in, that we would not qualify until January 2010.
We also knew in January 2009, that we may well be out of business long before 2010. We don't hear about people like us in the news. There are no real statistics. We have worked more than 100 hours some weeks, on average we each work 70+ hours a week. We haven't been able to pay ourselves regularly since the beginning of this year. We opted to try to retain key employees instead, as well as their benefits. These are people we have had with us for many years, some more than 10 years. We didn't want to lay them off. We eventually had to, but a few still come in, knowing they won't see a paycheck, because they don't want to see our business go. It's an awful position to be in, on both sides. While my husband and I have been receiving some pay, it isn't nearly enough to get by. We don't have the luxury of receiving unemployment to help make ends meet.
We weren't irresponsible home buyers. When we purchased our home and took out a loan, the monthly payment was 1/8th of our monthly take home pay. We were hardly irresponsible, yet I worry every day about foreclosure. We are still working at our business, so we can't go get jobs elsewhere. If we decide to file bankruptcy for the business, we don't just wake up the next day able to go work for someone else, nor do we get to keep any of our personal assets. Many small businesses in this country are closing their doors, so I imagine we are not alone. But you don't hear about people like us in the news, we don't see any statistics or numbers that represent people like us. I wouldn't care about losing my home if it weren't for my children. I can't stand the thought of my children losing their home. So there you have it, just a brief introduction to who I am, what my situation is, and where I'm coming from. I would love to hear from other small business owners facing similar problems.
My husband and I own and run a small business. He started the business in his backyard long before we met. He started with a cement mixer that he made himself. He couldn't afford to buy one. He lived with his parents at the time, in an 800 square foot house, with his now ex-wife and 2 children. Two "bedrooms" and 1 bathroom, build in the early 1920's, and literally falling apart. He saw a need that he could fill. He started making precast concrete products to sell to other precasters, as they could hardly fill their increasing demands with the equipment, space, and people they had. The demand for our products continued to grow until summer of 2008.
We are a small corporation, and we are the only officers of the company. Most people don't know that corporate officers, until January 2009 did not have the option of paying into state unemployment in our state, and thus, were not eligible to receive benefits when their job no longer existed. We received a letter in December 2008 letting us know that we could now opt-in and have money taken from our checks, and from the company, and that we would be able to receive unemployment in the future should the need arise, if we met certain criteria. As with everything in life, there was a catch, to qualify for unemployment, you must have been employed for the previous 4 quarters, not only employed, but paying into unemployment. We knew in January when we elected to pay in, that we would not qualify until January 2010.
We also knew in January 2009, that we may well be out of business long before 2010. We don't hear about people like us in the news. There are no real statistics. We have worked more than 100 hours some weeks, on average we each work 70+ hours a week. We haven't been able to pay ourselves regularly since the beginning of this year. We opted to try to retain key employees instead, as well as their benefits. These are people we have had with us for many years, some more than 10 years. We didn't want to lay them off. We eventually had to, but a few still come in, knowing they won't see a paycheck, because they don't want to see our business go. It's an awful position to be in, on both sides. While my husband and I have been receiving some pay, it isn't nearly enough to get by. We don't have the luxury of receiving unemployment to help make ends meet.
We weren't irresponsible home buyers. When we purchased our home and took out a loan, the monthly payment was 1/8th of our monthly take home pay. We were hardly irresponsible, yet I worry every day about foreclosure. We are still working at our business, so we can't go get jobs elsewhere. If we decide to file bankruptcy for the business, we don't just wake up the next day able to go work for someone else, nor do we get to keep any of our personal assets. Many small businesses in this country are closing their doors, so I imagine we are not alone. But you don't hear about people like us in the news, we don't see any statistics or numbers that represent people like us. I wouldn't care about losing my home if it weren't for my children. I can't stand the thought of my children losing their home. So there you have it, just a brief introduction to who I am, what my situation is, and where I'm coming from. I would love to hear from other small business owners facing similar problems.
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