Consumer Influence

Relying on the Government to make the world better is seldom a good strategy.  First the Government can't decide what is better.

We have power as individuals and certainly the most effective one is our pocketbook.

Making contributions to candidates who support your views is one way.  We have turned the political process into a quest for money to run campaigns and publish or air ads.

A even more effective way to influence is by the products we buy.   Many of us do this to some extent already, if we are aware of a company that supports policies we oppose.  Of course what would be more helpful is a way to easily know if products and services we but are made by responsible companies.

We see that many of us are willing to buy products that are organic, and some of them are even certified to be so.  They do generally cost a little more and may or may not be better, but the concept that they eschew harmful pesticides is certainly a good goal.

What is not as clear is what products are made by environmentally sound companies.  There are some products that are certified for various attributes, often related to a specific issues, we don't generally know if the company is in fact trying to minimize environmental damage.

There are a number of organizations that will certify environmentally safe products, such as Good Housekeeping Green, but generally the labels are poorly understood and often ignored.

Take Energy Star products.  These are helpful if you want to know the carbon footprint of that particular product but not if you want to know whether it was produced in an environmentally safe manner.

We need to demand that products we buy do what they can to protect the earth in their manufacture.  The more we choose safe products the more they will be produced.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Modern Stress

One of the things that causes a lot of today's stress is how we live.

One of the great advantages of living today is all the things we now have and "enjoy" over what the world was like say 100 years ago.

Most of our ancestors lived a much simpler life which involved working close enough to home to walk to work, coking meals at home, seldom traveling any great distances and finding entertainment in simpler ways since there was no Television, movies were new and radios were a recent innovation.

Reading, talking, eating as a family and participating in community events or church events was the primary activities.

Of course 100 years ago we were already entering the modern age and had movies, radios, automobiles, etc, although not at all to the degree we would later.

Of course there were disadvantages.  We didn't have the medical advances that have greatly extended our life spans.

Generally though we were fitter with much less obesity since walking and working hard were pretty universal.

There was stress and its hard to characterize that, all stress is individualized, but for the millions of recent immigrants and those here a little longer, the stress was likely related to making ends meet and survival.

I'm sure there were things people wanted that they stressed over, but it just seems like we stress over much more superficial things in our consumer based material existence.

We can't go back as a nation, but each of us can in many ways eliminate unnecessary stress from our day to day existence simply by wanting less.

It might not be good for the economy, but you might find it relaxing.

More Economics

There are a lot of people in the world and to a company everyone represents some sort of customer, either a current one, or a potential one.

Customers come in many different categories and some have money to spend and others do not.

Customers in the United States generally have had more money to spend than customers in most other countries, although not as much more as they once did.

Businesses ultimately make money by selling their product and if you make it hard to reach the people who live outside this country they will be at a disadvantage.

If you consider our relationship with China you will note that they sell much more here than we sell there despite the fact that they have a population that exceeds ours by a factor of three.

Its not that hard to explain since despite their population advantage we have a much higher per capita income level, so we can buy imported items and to a large extent they can buy less.

At least at this time.

China has a growing economy as do we, but they clearly have more growth potential than we do as they create more higher paying jobs (higher paying for them),  This means that the potential customers in China are turning into real customers at a faster and faster pace.

The United States is a much more mature economy so any increase in consumption has to be tied to increases in income.

To engage in a trade war with China at this time provides other countries, say European ones a great opportunity to exploit that growing market and disadvantages us.

Will a certain percentage of goods we import from China start being produced here?  Well unless we can find a different lower cost producer some will, but they will cost more, reducing our buying power.

Will the huge potential Chinese consumer market be filled with American goods?  Well it not as likely as it was before we started this trade war.

We all will get to pay more and will help our competitors exploit the Chinese market.

Of course we already conceded much of Asia by withdrawing from the Trans Pacific Trade Pact.

Good economics?  Not really.