In his bid as a presidential candidate, Mitt Romney has revealed that he believes income inequality is pretty much just envy. He believes that the poor and the middle class are envious of the rich, and supports the income inequality. Why? Because this income inequality show that we are a nation that is merit-based and not entitlement-based. 

I’m conflicted. I believe many of the rich have worked to get where they are, and we’re in fking America. However, we as a society all abide by a standard set of rules, and the rich are getting away with buying out new rules, and disregarding rules (and not getting penalized for them). The income inequality isn’t strictly because of envy, it’s because of the unfair playing field. People in America are here for opportunity, but the rich are severely limiting those opportunities by not playing by the rules. 

I absolutely agree, that we should be a merit-based nation, there needs to be a sense of being a collective nation at the same time. There’ll always be people complaining, but I will complain a lot less when we are all equal and all playing by the same rules. If the rich want to set the rules, they should play by them too. There needs to be a sense of a governing board that acts as a neutral/fair referee, and with all the lobbyists in the government’s pockets, we’re far from a unified nation. The poor complain the inequality is unfair, the rich know the inequality is unfair, and in choosing a person that is part of the system, we can never change.

Romney’s views are extremely skewed - because he himself is rich. Sounds to me, he doesn’t connect with the working class. He doesn’t understand where we sit, he forgot what it’s like to make a living. This is what happens when a rich corporate businessman wants to play politics. In the context of the words he says, it’s clear he’s extremely corrupt and does not represent the views of the American people. Republican’s on the East coast are voting for him, because they’re not hearing him. Oh, what it’s like to be naive. 

<3Kaje

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/12/news/economy/romney_envy/index.htm?source=cnn_bin

I’ve encountered this situation a few times and I’ve never took much time to think too much about it. It just came up again today and I thought I’d dig deeper. I’d like some input to get me going.

Situation:

You are planning to buy something for yourself, we call this Item Q
You have two ONLINE stores to choose from: Store A (amazon.com) and Store B (generic store)
Price of Item Q at Store A = $100.00
Price of Item Q at Store B = $75.00
Store A charges no sales tax + free shipping
Store B charges 9% sales tax + 5 dollar shipping.
Assume you might buy from Store A again but it really depends on what you need at the moment.
Assume that Store B sells this item and not much else, you would probably never buy from this place other than this one time.
Finally assume that you cannot redeem the gift card for actual cash and it cannot be transferred to another individual.

Scenario 1:
You have a gift card to Store A of $20.00. Which store do you buy from and why?

Scenario 2:
You have a gift card to Store A of $40.00. Which store do you buy from and why? If this answer is different than the one above, why did it change?

Ultimately what I’m getting at is, how do gift cards come into play with our shopping decisions? Do you use the gift cards to pay “less” cash, even if the total ends up being more? Or do you pay more cash to a lower total and save the gift cards toward something you might need in the future?

<3Kaje