Dec 08
Every year about this time (the Christmas Season) I see messages about refusing to buy from stores that do not explicitly acknowledge Christmas. They say to look at the windows and doors for a sign that says “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Christmas” or something similar rather than “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays”. If there is [...] [...more]
Posted: under Faith.
Tags: Christmas, proposal
Every year about this time (the Christmas Season) I see messages about refusing to buy from stores that do not explicitly acknowledge Christmas. They say to look at the windows and doors for a sign that says “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Christmas” or something similar rather than “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays”. If there is no “Christmas” greeting, then we are to go elsewhere to do our shopping.
The problem is that if we do this the store’s executives will not know that they lost sales because of their stance on avoiding religious references to the holiday, nor will they know how much they lost because of it. If you really want to make an impact, you have to go a step further.
This will inconvenience you. You have to shop and actually make the purchases. Be sure to follow up the transaction with a cheerful “Merry Christmas” and wait for a reciprocal response. If the checker does not give an appropriate response, go right to Customer Service and return your purchase with the statement that you can’t make Christmas purchases where Christmas is not recognized.
There will probably be objection to your reason. Ask to speak to a manager. The idea is not to make a scene, but to let it be known the price of offending Christians to keep from offending atheists and other non-Christians.
And don’t forget to express your wishes for a very Merry Christmas.
Tracy Henness
Jun 23
Government imposes regulations on the way companies do business, keep records, affect environment, and compensate employees. These regulations add expense to business activities which must be offset by raising the price of products and services. The additional cost causes a decrease in sales, resulting in decreased profit. So companies compensate by finding ways to reduce [...] [...more]
Posted: under Economy.
Tags: Economy, government, proposal
Government imposes regulations on the way companies do business, keep records, affect environment, and compensate employees. These regulations add expense to business activities which must be offset by raising the price of products and services. The additional cost causes a decrease in sales, resulting in decreased profit. So companies compensate by finding ways to reduce costs, usually resulting in decreased quality, which lowers customer satisfaction and consumer confidence, which again reduces sales, decreasing income and profits; and as a side effect gives government more incentive to impose additional regulations. So the workforce is reduced due to the decreased demand for goods and services because the cost of those goods and services cause consumers to more stringently evaluate the cost versus its necessity. Decreasing the workforce causes a drastic reduction in consumer spending across the board. Companies become unable to profit from sales of goods and services, prompting the decision to shut down rather than continue to operate at a loss, leaving more of the labor force unemployed and unable to afford to buy goods and services that were once considered necessities. Loss of jobs and loss of income reduce the number of citizens from which the government can collect income tax, causing government to either operate at a deficit or find ways to increase taxes. Taxes on businesses get passed along to consumers in the form of price increases. Consumers think twice before making a purchase, leading to lost sales, reduced demand, decreased production, diminished profits, reduced workforce, higher unemployment, failing economy, government intervention, higher production cost, price increase, fewer sales, reduced demand, decreased production, diminished profits, reduced workforce, higher unemployment, failing economy.
So what can be done about this downward spiral? This is an unpopular proposal, but one that should be considered before the US economy becomes too unstable to prevent disaster. Reduce minimum wage for new hires and limit automatic wage increases. There are many who will refuse to work for such low wages, but those who really want to work will be more likely to show their worth to the company. And with the lower initial wages, companies will be less likely to ship US jobs off to foreign soil. Having more US workers on the payrolls will increase spending, strengthening the economy.
Wage increases should be rewards for valuable service to the employer, for innovation, and for improvements to the processes and procedures. There should not be rewards for laziness. If all workers are given the incentive to find innovative way to improve production, introduce new product, find better ways to provide service, to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, business will have an extended resource base from which to draw. Better products and services will improve consumer confidence, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and have a positive effect on the nation’s economy.
But contrary to my proposal, the state of Illinois is raising the minimum wage in July of this year. I know several people who have waited through years of wage freeze wishing they could at least get caught up with the rising cost of living, while people who have more recently been hired may be getting a mandatory wage increase. Some of those who’ve worked faithfully for years may soon feel they’ve just been slapped in the face by the company. Companies that are struggling and trying desperately not to cut staff are once again faced with the dilemma. Do they increase prices, reduce quality, just ride out the storm and hope things turn around soon?
I don’t have all the answers. Pray that God will bless this country with technologies or resources that have global market value, restore our economy, and bring prosperity back to this land.
Tracy Henness
Feb 11
I had a thought this morning while getting ready for work. At this time it is not a well thought out thought. I’m sure it has its flaws, and it would be controversial, and might even be eventually ruled as unconstitutional. It involves the rampant problem of Internet pornography. The problem that this idea addresses [...] [...more]
Posted: under Morality.
Tags: legislation, pornography, proposal
I had a thought this morning while getting ready for work. At this time it is not a well thought out thought. I’m sure it has its flaws, and it would be controversial, and might even be eventually ruled as unconstitutional. It involves the rampant problem of Internet pornography.
The problem that this idea addresses is that of restricting access to minors. The current system obviously does not work. First of all, the existing rules are regarded more as guidelines rather than enforcible laws. About the only ones that are to any extent enforcible are those involving child pornography within the United States.
Some sites are “responsible enough” that they require credit card access. This would deter some minors in that if charges were to show up on their parent’s monthly statement there’d be some explaining to do. This also acts to deter some adults because they want to hide their wandering eyes from their spouses. But obviously this strategy does not deter enough people since there is such a proliferation of these sites available.
Many sites simply grant access only to those who will click a button affirming that they are at least 18 years of age. The problem with this is that if someone is willing to sin in viewing porn, are they going to be deterred by having to lie about their age? After all, how many times have they heard their own parents publicly imply that they are younger than they really are? Yet these sites carry this simple verification to protect themselves from charges of exposing minors to porn. Basically there is no real verification process.
That is where this idea comes in. It adds a level of enforceability to the laws. It provides an additional layer of moral accountability. It could be used to help monitor activities of sexual predators. But on the negative side it grants the government more power to intrude in the lives of ordinary citizens, and sites hosted outside of US jurisdiction would benefit by not complying with such legislation (unless that country also had similar restrictions).
The idea simply is this: Have a national database updated by the Department of Motor Vehicles of each state that links the driver’s license number to the age and a choice of whether the applicant wants to be allowed to view Internet pornography. In the case of those under legal age there is no option to allow access to porn sites. If a parent responsibly chooses ‘no’ then the minor child cannot be granted access even if he or she has access to the parent’s driver’s license. Since licenses generally are only renewed every 2 – 4 years, people would be given the opportunity to contact the DMV to set their status preference. Non-drivers would have this preference applied to another form of state identification. Both porn sites and search engines would be legally responsible for verifying the license number and restriction status with the national database before granting access to “adult” content. The database could have an auto-increment counter for access requests, and flags can be set to alert authorities to excessive activity by registered sex offenders.
I welcome comments on this idea, since it is in its infancy at least in my mind. It is possible and even probable that this concept has already been presented in some form, even possibly at a legislative level.
Tracy Henness
