Bill Gross is right on the money.
Last night on PBS’s Nightly Business Report, the chief investment officer of the world’s largest bond fund said the government’s low interest is punishing the savers. It makes the seniors poorer.
And I think the current policy on interest rates also makes the government poorer. With less income, poorer seniors will definitely spend less and pay lesser income taxes. In addition, it is likely they will be entitled to more income-based government benefits.
It sure does not look like a win-win situation here. - Ayee
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
“The Joy of Strife ”
I am trying to see if I can find some common threads between what our parents told us in our impressionable years and the profound thoughts this four-word phrase tried to convey.
In a moment of awakening, the orphan girl, Anne Shirley of Green Gables*, thought of facing new challenges is more fun than just for the winnings. After she decided to give up a scholarship she won, she was in awe with the idea of “the joy of strife.” She told herself that “next to trying and winning, the best thing is to trying and failing.”*
And the epiphany of this sixteen-year-old girl does have some things in common with what our late parents had instilled in us when my siblings and I were still in the school system studying. It seems at that time our young lives were always tethered to exams. There were tests for every kind of schools from neighborhood kindergartens to top-notched universities. And I remember the hardest were the ones for colleges of our choice. Of course, there were many times we failed miserably in some of them. Thankfully, we must have the most lenient parents as far as exam scores were concerned. They never admonished us for failed grades. Instead, they would arrange for extra tutoring for us so we could take the flunked tests again.
However, before they sent us off to new tutors, they and other elderly members of the family would always remind us of what a Chinese war-strategist of Three Kingdoms era, Zhu Ge-liang*, told his soldiers after they were defeated by their enemies. The wise thinker said to them “more defeats mean more battles ahead.”
In spite of the facts these moving thoughts were originated many years apart, they both bear the same timeless truth that one can always learn something while trying. - Ayee
*Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908
*Three Kingdoms from years 220 to 265
In a moment of awakening, the orphan girl, Anne Shirley of Green Gables*, thought of facing new challenges is more fun than just for the winnings. After she decided to give up a scholarship she won, she was in awe with the idea of “the joy of strife.” She told herself that “next to trying and winning, the best thing is to trying and failing.”*
And the epiphany of this sixteen-year-old girl does have some things in common with what our late parents had instilled in us when my siblings and I were still in the school system studying. It seems at that time our young lives were always tethered to exams. There were tests for every kind of schools from neighborhood kindergartens to top-notched universities. And I remember the hardest were the ones for colleges of our choice. Of course, there were many times we failed miserably in some of them. Thankfully, we must have the most lenient parents as far as exam scores were concerned. They never admonished us for failed grades. Instead, they would arrange for extra tutoring for us so we could take the flunked tests again.
However, before they sent us off to new tutors, they and other elderly members of the family would always remind us of what a Chinese war-strategist of Three Kingdoms era, Zhu Ge-liang*, told his soldiers after they were defeated by their enemies. The wise thinker said to them “more defeats mean more battles ahead.”
In spite of the facts these moving thoughts were originated many years apart, they both bear the same timeless truth that one can always learn something while trying. - Ayee
*Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908
*Three Kingdoms from years 220 to 265
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Food for Thought - Simple Foods
It seems to me the idea of eating simple and unrefined foods are not new to us. The prolific Amereican writer, John Steinbeck, had already told us in his 1935 book Tortilla Flat that simple foods are good for us:
Among the many residents in a seaside community, Tortilla Flat, there was a single mom with eight children. In good years when bean crops were aplenty, Senoria Teresina fed her growing family with tortillas and the leftover beans that she and her mother salvaged from the field. But when the time was bad, leftover pulses were in short supply. To feed her hungry kids, the hard-pressed mom accepted charities from her equally destitute neighbors. But the fine and delicate foods such as cured meat, fish, cheeses, sugars, white flour, and even the fresh greens, the kind hearted residents of the neighborhood flop house pilfered from the local grocers never did any good to her children. These refined foods made them sick. However, once the children were put back on their old diet of beans and tortilla breads, all of their ailments disappeared. - Ayee
Among the many residents in a seaside community, Tortilla Flat, there was a single mom with eight children. In good years when bean crops were aplenty, Senoria Teresina fed her growing family with tortillas and the leftover beans that she and her mother salvaged from the field. But when the time was bad, leftover pulses were in short supply. To feed her hungry kids, the hard-pressed mom accepted charities from her equally destitute neighbors. But the fine and delicate foods such as cured meat, fish, cheeses, sugars, white flour, and even the fresh greens, the kind hearted residents of the neighborhood flop house pilfered from the local grocers never did any good to her children. These refined foods made them sick. However, once the children were put back on their old diet of beans and tortilla breads, all of their ailments disappeared. - Ayee
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
A True Angel
I do not know if others had experienced the same uncomfortable moment as I did today. Luckily, a total stranger stepped up for me and made my day.
Influenza is making me sniff and cough. And facial tissues become one of the must-have items to help me dry my chaffed nose. In the past before I stepped out for errands, I always had some soft tissues with me just in case of an emergency.
Today in my outing I forgot including a few paper tissues in my care package. And as soon as I sat down at a public office to conduct my business, I felt right away I could use a Kleenex right there. And believe or not, before I even had a second to ask for a paper tissue from anyone, a senior lady sitting a few feet away from me stepped up and offered me one of the many tissues she has had in her pocket. I was totally overwhelmed by this stranger's response to my uncomfortable plight. I wonder how she would know that I was in urgent need of a soft tissue.
Of course, the caring action of this kind person had startled me. But I am also most grateful to her for her timely assistance to get me out of some uncomfortable and embarrassing moments.
And may God bless that dear lady! - Ayee
Influenza is making me sniff and cough. And facial tissues become one of the must-have items to help me dry my chaffed nose. In the past before I stepped out for errands, I always had some soft tissues with me just in case of an emergency.
Today in my outing I forgot including a few paper tissues in my care package. And as soon as I sat down at a public office to conduct my business, I felt right away I could use a Kleenex right there. And believe or not, before I even had a second to ask for a paper tissue from anyone, a senior lady sitting a few feet away from me stepped up and offered me one of the many tissues she has had in her pocket. I was totally overwhelmed by this stranger's response to my uncomfortable plight. I wonder how she would know that I was in urgent need of a soft tissue.
Of course, the caring action of this kind person had startled me. But I am also most grateful to her for her timely assistance to get me out of some uncomfortable and embarrassing moments.
And may God bless that dear lady! - Ayee
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Most Important Persons in A Business
Since I started watching Undercover Boss*, a reality television show, I often wondered who would be the most important person in a work place, rank-and-file staff or the top guns?
We all know a for-profit enterprise without clients will not survive in a competitive world. Loyal customers are what a successful business needs. To have many clients and also to keep them, the business must have empathic and apt employees who know how to be responsive to their valuable patrons. So in my book, the front-line employees, most of them making a fraction of what their CEO’s earned, would be the most valuable people in a business. Through them, the company’s services and products are made and sold.
Maybe this is why many CEO’s are changing their mode of operation now. Instead of finding sweet spots on golf courses with other big wheels, they reached out to the most important people in the company, and made sincere attempts to improve working conditions for all. A few of them even made themselves available on television to show themselves performing clumsily the basic skills like flipping hamburgers on a hot grill. And this new way of managing would definitely bring the best out of both the bosses and their employees. And we have all seen on the televsion how their staff reacted and felt when they realized he or she had just worked next to the most powerful person in their work place! - Ayee
*A CBS production
We all know a for-profit enterprise without clients will not survive in a competitive world. Loyal customers are what a successful business needs. To have many clients and also to keep them, the business must have empathic and apt employees who know how to be responsive to their valuable patrons. So in my book, the front-line employees, most of them making a fraction of what their CEO’s earned, would be the most valuable people in a business. Through them, the company’s services and products are made and sold.
Maybe this is why many CEO’s are changing their mode of operation now. Instead of finding sweet spots on golf courses with other big wheels, they reached out to the most important people in the company, and made sincere attempts to improve working conditions for all. A few of them even made themselves available on television to show themselves performing clumsily the basic skills like flipping hamburgers on a hot grill. And this new way of managing would definitely bring the best out of both the bosses and their employees. And we have all seen on the televsion how their staff reacted and felt when they realized he or she had just worked next to the most powerful person in their work place! - Ayee
*A CBS production
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Numbers can be misleading.
Recently, income tax rates for the riches are back in the spot lights again. The suggestion to reduce the country’s riches income tax rate never goes well with the rest 99% of us. But if we look at the absolute dollar figures on who is paying what, we will see a different picture.
The US government now taxes individuals at the rates between 15% and 35%*. It looks like our progressive tax system does what it is designed for: the richer, the higher tax rate. For the ones making $40,000 taxable income last year, at a rate of 15%, each of them will have to pay $6,000 to IRS. And for the others who made more than $379,150, at an effective rate of 29%, everyone in this well-off group owes Uncle Sam a whopping $110,017 each.
Now let us look at how much income tax the country’s ultra riches paid, say, at a rate of 15%, which incidentally is the lowest tax bracket on IRS’s book. With a taxable income of $5 million, the tax bill at 15% would come to $750,000!
A lower tax rate does not mean lower tax in dollars and cents.
Besides, making the riches pay more taxes is not a solution to reduce public debts. The more taxes the governments can collect, the less likely our governments will become smaller from where they are now. - Ayee
*Internal Revenue Services’ 2012 Tax Tables
The US government now taxes individuals at the rates between 15% and 35%*. It looks like our progressive tax system does what it is designed for: the richer, the higher tax rate. For the ones making $40,000 taxable income last year, at a rate of 15%, each of them will have to pay $6,000 to IRS. And for the others who made more than $379,150, at an effective rate of 29%, everyone in this well-off group owes Uncle Sam a whopping $110,017 each.
Now let us look at how much income tax the country’s ultra riches paid, say, at a rate of 15%, which incidentally is the lowest tax bracket on IRS’s book. With a taxable income of $5 million, the tax bill at 15% would come to $750,000!
A lower tax rate does not mean lower tax in dollars and cents.
Besides, making the riches pay more taxes is not a solution to reduce public debts. The more taxes the governments can collect, the less likely our governments will become smaller from where they are now. - Ayee
*Internal Revenue Services’ 2012 Tax Tables
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Love Them but Don’t Smother Them
Last night I learned the untimely death of a 20-year-old rhinoceros at a wildlife reserve in South Africa. Spencer, a long time resident of a lion and rhinos park near Johannesburg, died while the vets were implanting a tracking device and pesticide into the horn of the sedated animal.
Although the implanting procedures give me willies, under certain circumstances, there may be good reasons to tag a wild animal with monitoring devices. But infusing deadly poison into a living thing is some thing that does not sit well with me. A chemical that is poisonous enough to kill bugs can kill other living things too!
I have always thought wild animals in an animal reserve lead a more carefree life. Sheltered animals are better protected from their predators, including poachers, than their peers in the wild. But Spencer’s good-hearted keepers thought this middle-aged bull rhino needed extra protection to prevent him from being poached for his prized tusk. Ironically, instead of being killed by the heartless poachers, Spencer met his premature death at the hands of the good people who were supposed to be there to protect him. - Ayee
Although the implanting procedures give me willies, under certain circumstances, there may be good reasons to tag a wild animal with monitoring devices. But infusing deadly poison into a living thing is some thing that does not sit well with me. A chemical that is poisonous enough to kill bugs can kill other living things too!
I have always thought wild animals in an animal reserve lead a more carefree life. Sheltered animals are better protected from their predators, including poachers, than their peers in the wild. But Spencer’s good-hearted keepers thought this middle-aged bull rhino needed extra protection to prevent him from being poached for his prized tusk. Ironically, instead of being killed by the heartless poachers, Spencer met his premature death at the hands of the good people who were supposed to be there to protect him. - Ayee
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