Results from my latest Poll

August 2nd, 2011 Thomasso

Here is the results from my latest poll.

I asked the question, “Will we reach economic prosperity by the end of 2011 going into 2012?”

Here is are the data graphed out.

The people who responded to my poll are in agreement that the economy is far from recovering, and that they have little faith in it. With the exception of one respondent, 90 percent of the respondents have some negative opinion about how long it will take before we see a recovery, even with the Federal government’s election promise of a strong recovery by late 2012.

The poll date was started on May 6th, 2011 , and ended on August 1st 2011.

Posted in General, Photographs, Social economics | Comments Off

Shopping By Intranet Should Be Easier!

July 17th, 2011 Thomasso

This is a little annoyance that sometimes bothers me a lot when I want to buy something. I do the research on a purchase, and when I am ready to buy, the deal goes South; this is happening a lot lately. I am talking about buying as a walk in customer, but shopping on-line. I usually do my research, then check to see if in fact the item is available, then arrange for a pick-up. Today that did not happen. Why?

I spent the whole week looking for a new camera. I scoured the net looking for that allusive deal that would meet all of my requirements, including price, location, and possibly extra goodies that go along with the purchase. All major retail outlets have websites that advertise their deals with price-lists and stock availability. This is how I like to shop. This is convenient for me. When I am going to spend some money on a large priced item, I want to make the deal without wasting time and energy once I have made my final decision.

I am not going to mention the name of the store, or give out the website with a URL showing the item that I want to buy. I feel it is unnecessary to scorn that corporation’s name all over the net for something that it may, or may not have done knowingly.

So, when this company listed the item that I wanted on its website, I was ready to make my purchase. This morning I drove down to the store’s location all excited and happy. I walking into the department where the camera’s were located, and thought that I would first find the camera and see if I could get it, then pay for it and get out as fast as possible. I started searching. It was nowhere to be seen.

I finally asked the store clerk if he knew where it was. He searched on his computer and told me that they do not carry the item any more. I was shocked!

I asked the clerk if he could check again becuase I had conformation from the store’s website that the item was in stock. The clerk returned again and repeated his previous answer, “no sir, it is not.”

So I left. Simple as that. Today I will not have a camera. The store will not have made a sale. I will search out another deal, and the odds are that that store will have lost a sale. This is 2011, 2 years after a rescission, and many places are still reeling from the meltdown of 2008. I would have expected better, more honest service, from stores who make claims that they value their customers, and their needs. I guess service is still waning in today’s marketplace as some retailers are forgetting the value on the Intranet as a shopping tool. Oh well, someone else will have my loyalty now.

Posted in Art, Diatribe, General, Photographs, Socail Media, Social economics | 2 Comments »

Fitting into Change

July 16th, 2011 Thomasso

It has being six weeks now since I started with the new job, new position and new pay. I have made it my mandate to keep everything on track, and to redefine my new roles as they present themselves, plus manage my time efficiently and accordingly so that my life fits comfortably with the changes. Keeping on top, and on track, has made a difference regarding my quick fit into this new world.

My friends have noticed the changes, probably more then me, so that will be something that we will all have to work through in the coming weeks. With these changes comes changes on how we will connect, so we will have to figure out how to deal with spending time and communicating from here on in.

Getting paid was a real experience. First, getting paid, that was kind of nice, but this was my first full pay period, so seeing that much money on one cheque was a very nice feeling. Now the dash to buy the necessary items that I need to work in my new environment. Buying a landline phone was done last week, but that will take some getting used to as I have not had one for nearly 15 years now. I will have to wear a tie from time to time, as looking the part and wearing the uniform of authority and business will now become the norm. I will resist the Bank for as long as possible. Cashing such large cheques is going to be a problem as my employer’s Bank does not like letting go of that much cash in one cheque at one time. (I often wonder if they can really give back all the money that people have in their institutions). This leaves me with my next really big investment, a vehicle, which I will need as there will be lot of commuting form one area to another. Should I buy news, or used – that is the question?

From living as a student for so long, and now finally getting paid a real sum of money, and keeping it, is nice – really nice. Giving the bulk of my money to the University for over six years, and only being able to earn so much, has left scars. It now seems all worth while. The only component of my student lifestyle that is still sticking around into my work lifestyle is the stress. Perhaps I could throw in “lack of sleep” too as the transistion from student to career moves forward?

Anyway, it is all connecting together. Finally, change that I can whole heartily embrace and welcome.

Posted in General, Graduation, Social economics, University classes | Comments Off

To Sue a Bank: Florida USA.

June 5th, 2011 Thomasso

I was laughing out loud when I read this news story. This is not one of those stories you hear of the little guy sticking it to the big guy; but rather, two people fighting it out on a level playing field. What is unusual is that this case involves a Bank being successfully sued by its own customer for not paying the customer’s legal fees from a failed action against that customer.

Please read the story here: “Florida Homeowner Forecloses On Bank of America”

Regrettably this story is far away from where I live, and the rules are very different in my country, but the satisfaction that knowing that there are places on Earth where consumers can seek reparations from the wrongdoer, even if that wrongdoer it a Bank is priceless.

Here in Canada this would be insurmountably more difficult as the seemingly endless resources that our Banks have compared to the average customer is hugely disproportionate. It is possible in Canada to sue a Bank, and be successful too, but these stories are far and few between. People should know the Banks are much larger institutions in Canada than they are in the USA per capita. In Canada we have the Big Five, where as in the USA there are over 3000 Banks throughout the country, so they are much smaller there, and have fewer resources to fight with. They are still dangerous creatures to fight with however!

Realistically there is probably more to the story than what we see. Why did the bank go after the customer for a mortgage that did not exist, as it was stated that the customer paid for the house in cash?

Why did the Bank not acknowledge the judge’s ruling that ordered the bank to pay for the customer’s legal fee as part of the legal defeat is suffered from the lawsuit?

I have to give credit to my form professor from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Bob Basil aka @thebasil for passing this news story via Twitter to me. Thanks Bob!

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The End of the Month: 31 Days of May

May 31st, 2011 Thomasso

Well, I should not knock down this month so harshly, after all I did recover from my financial disparity and kept myself debt free. I also won my dispute with Revenue Canada, not that I was ever truly guilty, but it is nice to have the letters and phone calls stop. Plus, I did manage to keep my living expenses and costs down past my tightly planned budget. The “positives” were few, but monumental–you know who you are.

But the month of May 2011 was also unusually cold and wet, and what should have been a month of seasonal spring, only ushered in more winter weather. Until last week, there were long periods of time where I thought it was still March, and only with the leaves sprouting on the trees, I would have been fooled into thinking that. Even with the days almost at their maximum length, It still feels like spring.

With the good and the bad, the month of May has ended just as it has started. I have lots of hope and expectation, but I also have to be lucid and realistic at the same time as the economic conditions of our times seem to be making it tough for people all around me. Sure, I may think positive, but there are many around me who are on the edge of disparity. I see fraid nerves and broken hearts from the people who live around me, and they are starting to show their dissatisfaction about that. Times are tough, and all you have to do is turn off the television and look around to see it. Pride may keep people from telling the truth about their money woes, but their actions speak louder than words when they go with out, or change drastically to compensate from their old lifestyle.

The lie. Everyone lies about money in Western cultures. Governments, organized religions, corporations, Banks, families and people, we all tell fibs about our wealth because that is how we are brought up in this world today. It took me a long time to admit it, that the line between being rich and poor is more psychological than material, like a social plague we are taught to “go big, or go home.” Living with enlightenment vis-à-vis education has also put me in a very extreme perspective of myself as my world is now different from these new lenses I now wear. In terms of existentialism, I have gone from living in a fear-based world, such as dad telling me that “if I’m not good I’ll end up in Hell,” to now instinctively analysing and applying both analytical and critical thinking to each problem and issue that arises. So now I embrace my richness of my life, and have come to my senses of what really counts in it. So far, the only people that I have pissed off are  a handful of theologians and every Bank in the land, a small price for prosperity and my happiness. But I do not plan to stop there. There are more roads to travel and more hills to conquer; thus, no more lies. Why even bother to lie—I do not care about economic prosperity—I say save that for the Conservatives thinkers?

The single most important thing I have learned in the past five months is how valuable friendship is. Friends are part of our social wellness. We need friends, and they are truly a valued commodity because without friends, we are not human. I cannot thank my friends enough as I have learned to appreciate them on so many levels. The power to talking and listening is living at the grandest level. It is friends that I think is the missing link of our social thought that can carry us through anything that nature has to throw at us. The month of May has granted me with so many friends, and because of that, I am so much richer then I was in March!

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So, Friday the 13th Eh?

May 13th, 2011 Thomasso

If you are superstitious, then today should have been a red-letter day. But, it was far from being a day when bad things should have occurred, or when everything should have went wrong, the opposite practically happened. The day went incredibly smooth, and was extremely productive. Yes, I was very tired when I got home, but I felt good about it.

There is something to be said about working, even if it is far from what one needs for a comfortable lifestyle. The mind is at ease when you are working. It is pure physiological. You have a goal, a purpose, and there is interaction with people which no doubt helps the human brain function better. Perhaps there is something to be said for the human need of working in a group, even as most seem to hate it.

So I jumped back into the fray, and from a standing position into a full out run, I went to work. Both Thursday and Friday were very laborious for me. Having to focus hard, remember, then regurgitate that information was stressful and punishing, but it quickly came back to me, like ridding a bike, the old neurons started to fire again. Once I got comfortable with the setup, I was able to start running again. All my previous training and experience quickly moved into action and became a natural reflex.

Maybe here I will say this to all those employers who invited me in for an interview, but never called my back. Sorry people (employers), you lose, and you lost big time. As marketers and businesses gurus might have pinpointed you into believing that the pale, stale, males are obsolete, and the young, strong, hard-bodies are what your company needs, then let me say this to you: Take a look at the cost of loyalty, merit and skills versus the youth curve. If you cannot figure that out, then my only statement to you is, “how did you start running a business in today’s economy”? Survival of the fittest—and you are going to lose my friend.

Diversifying is a very old concept. In Canada we do it all the time. Throughout my life, shifts in income have always been the main stay of economic stability. My latest stint has taken me into new uncharted waters, and because of the niche market that I am playing, I will never mention it on my blog in order to keep the competition low. Although you need licensing and a huge amount of training, I still want to keep it low keyed because there are fraudsters and the fakes—people who are deviants and cause great harm to the public and I do not want to them multiply. But yes I have started changing both in terms of work and lifestyle.

My new lifestyle will effect many around me. Perhaps the greatest effect will be on the four levels of governments that are around me who need its citizens to feed it so that it can operate and function. They need capital, revenue, and the turn over in treasury bills diverted back onto cash via taxation. In this brave new world, very little cash will be generated and given back to the wheels of government. It is not that I will be hiding cash, no, it is simply that there is less cash to be had in the market economy.

For example, if Microsoft can buy Skype for something like seven billion dollars in cash, then this is proof that the trickle down effect in retarded, and is not a reliable means of theorizing what is suppose to happen in the real world (CBC News May 10, 2011).

So for cash strapped consumers, cash will still be used, as it is the standard for currency, but it will be kept liquid for as long as possible. Things like credit and loans will be the things of the past as the Banks tighten up too. Sure, Banks will always be there, but only for people who do not really need them for money, and as repositories to keep your money safe until litigation. As for the poor, Banks do not want their business–it is not profitable for them. I blame no one particular person or group, but I will say that this is a cascading effect, and I have changed with each on coming wave.

So I will be focusing on doing more with less. And I have a feeling that I am far from being alone. If every other person is doing this, then I can see the market place changing quite rapidly. In to what, I can only guess, but I think this new change is exciting and may change the “super structure” of “power” as we see it today.
What a Friday the Thirteen eh?  I am happy, glad that I have reach some sort of normality, but sad that my younger friends are going to have an even hard time of reaching the riches of economic success then I did. I am tired, and will not post this entry until Saturday. I am just too tired.

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Gas – Nobody Rides for Free

May 10th, 2011 Thomasso

I have been hearing a lot of chatter on Twitter and the Web about gas prices lately, especially in the last twenty-four hours.  I, like millions of other motorist, are very familiar with the price of gas as it has been slowly creeping its way up on the price scale. Why now has there been a huge serge in fossil fuel prices that kicked in yesterday, and why now has the media, and everyone else, just started to care about it?

I think part of the answer is in the trend itself. It has been steadily climbing ever since the economic meltdown back on 2008. With this slow, or fast creeping rise, depending on how you look at it, this trend in the cost seems to be now effecting us disproportionately more so. This could be the breaking point?

Last night I heard that the flooding of the Mississippi River had “spooked” everyone who cares about the markets of commodities, and they then speculated that the cost of fuel should rise as a hand full of oil refineries along the river’s bank will be shut down. That, coupled with the unrest in the Middle East, are said to be what has caused this sudden drop, and then rise in prices are our gas pumps. This according to the CBC News.

We have food prices creeping upwards too, although how much of it is directly effected by fuel prices is uncertain to me, but the cost of some food stuffs is mind boggling. Tomatoes are a weird food commodity as I have seen a two hundred and fifty percent rise, while coffee has climbed about fifty percent. Then there are the smaller packaging by food processors too – to trick consumers that cost are normal. These are increases that I have observed at my local grocer here in Langley Township from comparing receipts over the last twelve months.

The really big factor is the recovering market from the 2008 meltdown. Growth is still slow in Canada, and the unemployment rate is still something to be concerned with. Corporations are said to be stock piling their cash reserves, so a good chuck of the “trickle down” effect is very slow in returning back to the mainstream according to CBC News. And of course, debt is the number one cause of consumers, businesses and governments from getting back on track with their austerity measures. This all seems to me to be the recipe of a very slow recovery, and possible the “double-dip” recession that everyone keeps talking about.

Since I love statistics, and like to graph out everything I find so that I can visually see the effects, I have put together a couple of charts, courtesy of GasBuddy.com. You can got to their website and play around with the chart, imputing your data ranges and compare your ranges to your heart’s content. The program is limited, but serves its purpose nicely.

Click on the chart to make it bigger. The above chart is comparing the Canadian average, in litres per CND Currency-60 month range, of gasoline prices, in Orang. The Blue line is Vancouver’s price rate compared to Ottawa’s same performance. Vancouver’s rate is higher due to taxation, so the difference compared the national average and Ottawa’s is almost relative. Also look at the huge drop in the middle of the chart, 2008, and the slow creeping climb from 2008 up to now.

This chart compares the USA average, in Blue, to the Canadian average in Red. Again, taxation and government subsidies are responsible for the relative difference. Note too how close together the lines match up together during the 2008 melt-down, and how much farther apart these two trends seems to be afterwards. Keep in mind that a $1.50 litre is almost equalled to $5.68 a US Gallon.

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The Results of my Tsunami Poll

May 6th, 2011 Thomasso

I just added up my data from the March 2011 poll I posted regarding the feelings that people had towards the readiness of British Columbia, and by people in general, about a possible disaster such as the Japanese tsunami earlier this year. I know for myself, I live in the possible tidal zone that could swallow up my home if a tsunami swept up our coast. Not surprisingly, all of you who took my poll felt that no matter where we stand today, we are screwed if such a disaster occurred here along our coast as it did in Japan.

Here is the question that I asked:

Do you think that the West coast of British Columbia is ready for the next “Big Earthquake,” in light of what happened in Japan? Could Vancouver cope with a disaster of that magnitude?

Clearly, with one hundred percent of you in agreement, we are not ready for a disaster of this type. I guess if we feel this way about the Government, and any NGO that is responsible for taking care of us, then it is of the utmost importance that we also prepare for ourselves.

I really wonder just how many people have emergency kits at the ready if, right now, a huge mega earthquake ripped through your city right now! And how long would your survival kit need to last?

Posted in Art, Criminology, Diatribe, flood, General, Photographs, Social economics | 3 Comments »

Stupid Meaningless Numbers

May 6th, 2011 Thomasso

What set this diatribe off for me? This morning as I got the call that there will be no work for me to do today. Well looking at my browser, I just happened to glance at this news story from CBC News that spewed Canada had a lowered its unemployment rate. It is a routine for me to turn on the computer, connect to the Internet, then scan the news site in my browser just after getting up from a hard night’s sleep. So I was happy for about one-one hundredth of a second with this joyous news of economic upwardness. “Ya-hoo” I thought to myself.

CBC NEWS: Canada produces 58,300 jobs in April 58,300 new jobs push unemployment rate to 7.6%

The news story touted that Canada produced over fifty-eight thousands jobs in the month of April, 2011. And then below that it stated that it pushed the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent. So, I bet you are wondering why I was only happy for a very short period of time, right?

OK, first, Canada has almost forty million people in it. I would venture to say that roughly three-quarters of us need income to either support ourselves, or to support our dependants. Most of the thirty million employed are, or have, worked last year. Some have lost their jobs, and are unemployment, while others just simply vanished from off of Statics Canada’s radar. So there is a sizable dark figure in this number alone that is very significant.

Second, We are dealing with rates, not a total number of employment vrs unemployment tallied up into a percentage. I know from having this discussion with my friends, “rates” are very misleading because not many of them have had advanced statistical training, or they simply have forgotten their high school math lessons. Rates are calculated as follows: The total number of employed, divided by the number of unemployed, multiplied by 1000 to give you the sum for your rate.

Sadly, there is one huge variable in this equation that does not satisfy me. How do you determine the number of unemployed?

My third problem. Statistic Canada has only has one real measure and that is the information it gathers from those who have filed for unemployment benefits. It does not, or cannot track those who are “off the radar.” In other words, there is probably a significant number of those who are simply not collecting it, or, for whatever other reason, do not qualify for it, and do not inform the various government agencies that they are unemployed. On the other side of the same coin, there are people who have more than one job, say two part-time jobs, and when they leave one employer, receive their separation papers, they continue to work for another, voiding out any claim(s) they have to the employment insurance benefits. When there are a huge migration of people from one area to another, or from one industry to another, there is an unknown dark figure when trying to account for the population.

And lastly, a drop of 0.1 percent in the unemployment rate is not something that I would run up and down the street celebrating about. In fact, for me, this does not generate any enthusiasm whatsoever because of the unknown variables and that dark figure that would essentially cancel out the variance.

There! I have probably spent more time typing this blog-post out than the time that it was worth reading  this news story. Sure, it is nice to know that our employment rate has dropped, albeit a very modest drop, but I know for some, this feel-good story might be misleading for those who take this as the gospel of economics—it is not. The real hope is that this becomes a trend, a statistical regression that will keep on climbing until we reach utopia.

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It’s Over! Yay – Election 2011

May 2nd, 2011 Thomasso

I am sure happy all of this is over now. The results were nothing short of surprising. For myself, I am stunned on so many levels. Sure, the Conservatives get their majority government that they so gleefully cried for coming into this election, but to have the New Democrats as the official opposition? We are talking a Cow with holes in it! It think tonight many choices were made by the Canadian public, and results speak very clearly for themselves. I see it as “out with the old, in with the new.”

Now whether you agree with it, or not, as I am sure many are unhappy, or shouting hysteria with glee, tomorrow our country will have changed. Canadians have asked for this, Canadians will finally get what they deserve. With a majority government, change will effortlessly take place unlike the case with two consecutive minority governments of the past. We have forty-eight months to test this new machine out and see if it can deliver all those promises that were made during this election.

I will update this graphic tomorrow once the final numbers are in. For now the Conservatives have a clear lead, and a clear majority government, with the cut-off of 155 seats for that majority in Ottawa. This graphic has been updated on May 3rd, 2011. It appears that these are the final results from the election.

Congratulation to Stephen Harper as Prime Minister, with a majority government, and Jack Layton, who is now the leader of the official opposition, a first in Canadian history!

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