If you could realise just everything, what would you want?
Category Archives: Thoughts
Do You Buy Food in Large Packages?
We like to buy products that come with larger packages, because, we think we’re saving money doing so:
Wal-Mart sold $284 billion worth of goods in 2005. Groceries accounted for about one-quarter of that amount, but that meant $64 billion, and rising. Many food companies do a third of their business with this one retailer. Wal-Mart does not have to demand slotting fees. If a food company wants its products to be in Wal-Mart, it has to offer rock-bottom prices. Low prices sound good for people without much money, but nutritionally, there’s a catch. Low prices encourage everyone to buy more food in bigger packages. If you buy more, you are quite likely to eat more. And if you eat more, you are more likely to gain weight and become less healthy.
When we buy larger portions, do we actually consume more?
Unfortunately, yes.
Hard is Fun
I saw the film Inside Job this morning and it gave me a few notes to take. It’s about the 2008 economic crisis.
I’ve always believed that there must be something wrong if more than half of the society consider it perfectly normal to get something out of nothing. No system works in the long run following this line, be it weight loss, gambling, physics or our financial system. People who “earned” millions a year by transferring money, did not create direct, solid wealth, e.g. food or clothes or cars. Their action, put plainly, was to take money from group A who wanted to “earn” something out of nothing, and give it to group B who gladly took that money and spent it. Apart from the rare occasions where group B were actually people who did create wealth, and the bank did create indirect value by making that action possible, the dealers’ work is, most of the time, worthless. But of course, surely that is their job, right? To tell good investments from feeble ones, not to pump as much cash into the system as possible, so as to give their wallet a nice boost.
No it isn’t.