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Should Blue Laws Return?
Should we return to the days when stores were forced to shut down on Sundays so the employees had a chance to attend church and spend time with their families or go to other meeting of a more social nature? One major investment management firm thinks so. What about holidays? With Thanksgiving coming up and an increasing number of retail outlets opening for the day, we must keep in mind that each of those stores is preventing its employees from attending their family feast. Is this the employees’ wishes? Quite possibly, yes. We’ve been lowering the effective minimum wage over the years after adjusting for inflation. We’ve been eliminating the middle class in the meantime, making it more difficult for a family to support itself on only one income and continuing to push the idea of ‘keeping up with the Jones’. Are we doing the right thing? Do all of the employees working on Thanksgiving Day want to be there? Or, would they rather be home watching Dallas and Detroit play their rivals on the television? Or cooking in the kitchen, talking and having fun with family they haven’t seen in months? The answer to these questions is also ‘yes’. …
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3D Printing Impacts Us in More Ways Than We Imagined
In an age where we have machinery to plant and harvest the crops, tend to the cattle, repair the infrastructure and in general take care of every need we have; In the age we are approaching where we can tell a computer to 3D print a pizza for us and it will be ready in just a few minutes without having to go to the door to greet the delivery person; In this same age where we can have body parts printed for people who have been injured or abused their body to the point that they need new parts; In this age which is quickly approaching there will no longer be a need for the masses to work. Then, in that age, what shall we do? One will need to work only if they want something to do which cannot be satisfied by the entertainment systems of the day. TV, in the new sense, will be able to stream, on demand, whatever programming the viewer desires. Sports on the professional level could be virtual, to prevent injuries to the athlete, or they could continue to be actual physical events where people play for the thrill and the danger of…
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Small Business vs. Big Box vs. Internet Retailers
The grocery store owner of a century ago knew his customer well enough to know whether or not to extend individual credit to him/her. He could recommend items based upon previous purchases. And he treated his customer like a person; asked about family and happenings in the customer’s life. This was typical of a small business. We as a society lost that when we started shopping at bigger and bigger stores. We became A customer, not THE customer. As the customer we were just an anonymous person picking up what we needed or wanted without (much) advice from the shop owner. The independent shopkeeper started to disappear, replaced by the big box store. Even many of the stores that appear to be small shops are actually owned by franchisees of a large retail chain. And multiple store names are owned by the same small group of people. If you live on either coast, look at your local supermarket chain. Chances are there is at least one chain that has a store every four miles. Look at the store where you buy your clothing. Again, it is likely a member of a larger entity. Do the clerks at these stores know…