Illogic food pricing in the US, Part II

I guess I should just stop shopping at super markets over here since it seems to be bad for my blood pressure. Reaching for the yeast (yes, the fresh) in anticipation of baking some buns, I was shocked to see the price: $1.79 for 17 grams - 17 GRAMS! In Denmark they throw it at you, 50 grams for $0.20-0.50. So since I need min 2 US packages of yeast to make a full portion of buns (yes, Danish recipe), I end up paying more for going through the trouble (and the electricity for heating the oven) of making my own bread than buying a so-called quality bread in the same super market! Now where's the logic in that!?!? In Denmark it used to cost me $2 to make my own bread and $4 to buy a good bread, see THAT's logic.

Also sad to see that of the few words that are highlighted in the baking isle sign is NEITHER flour nor sugar (anymore, it used to be sugar), but cake mix!! No wonder America is struggling w overweight and bad health when it's so expensive (and therefore uncommon) to make your own dishes. How sad though.

Mixed bag on politics

In Denmark where I'm from, you earn less when you work in the public sector, but it's true that you have the best pension deals, typically around 8 weeks of vacation and good parental leave and sabbath deals. Nonetheless most Danes still aim for a job in the private sector because the salaries are much higher and there's the possibility to get stocks/bonuses/stock options while all still have minimum 6 weeks of vacation. Women more often than men choose to work in the public sector because of the parental leave deal, the possibility for flexible work hours and there's a smaller risk of over time work so it's easier to pick up the children after school or daycare.

I don't know if Americans in the public sector earns more than people in an equivalent job in the private sector, but I'd be surprised if it was so.

As I understood based on the FRONTLINE tv documentaries and articles on the housing implosion it was not laws or the government that forced banks to make bad loans and rub them off to others that thought they were buying secure loan packages. But the lack of laws to prevent the banks from doing it. As far as I remember these preventive laws were made in the aftermath of the 1929 depression and removed by President Clinton in the happy 1990s. Economists were repeatedly warning that it was a problem that the law that demanded banks to have a certain amount of money saved up as a buffer, was gone. But no one i power seemed to listen.

As for retirement age, I think it's the same problem all over the developed world: The elderly burden is rising because the young/elder balance is tipping = fewer people in the working age to generate money to take care of the retired => retirement age rise, private saving is encouraged/rewarded by the government if not outright enforced. I don't necessarily think Boehner's idea on this issue is a bad idea. But there has to be a possibility for early retirement for people of weak health that are unable to work until they're 70. I expect to work till I'm 70, and that's what I want - if I stay healthy. And I'm gonna do all I can to stay healthy. In Europe people are saying that the 30s are the new 20's and the 80s are the new 70s and so on. People in their 80s being so healthy that they lead quite active lives, traveling, doing sports, having an active sexual life etc. That's what I hope will be the case for the majority of people in the world in a few decades.

As for the oil spill, I, too, like JK, have seen other oil companies presenting themselves as "green" companies, especially Shell

See the full debate here

American bank-customer rules like the Wild West

I just stumbled upon a status from a Facebook friend complaining over the service from Bank of America to a degree that he left the bank and encourage others to follow suit. Some of his friends commented and all comments agreed with him.

That made me add this comment, which has been brewing inside me for as long as I've lived in the US:

I just can't believe how weak the competition is in the US bank sector & how weak the consumers are!?!? How can the banks demand as high interest rates over here?!?? It's a mystery to me. The interests rates over here would be illegal in Denmark, and somehow our banks (in DK) are still doing quite well (and so are their stock holders) with decent profits even though Danish banks usually demand 8-12% interest rate on your credit card and 7-8% on home loans (the expensive 2nd mortgage). The institution that loans you the max 80% value of your home typically takes 5% interest rate for a fixed loan or lower if you're willing to renew your loan and accept a floating interest rate - for good or bad - 1 a year or every 3 years. Student loans cost the student 1% a year while they are studying and until 1 year after they graduate. Then it's time to pay back, and that at a rate of 3-5% I wish the Americans would have the same rules!

Checking Bank of America's website, I can't even find the rates they take for credit cards and student loans, not even under Frequently Asked Questions! But they make it very easy to open an account, of course. Not pretty.

Speaking of usury, just saw an ad for a company called peachtree, which looks like something equivalent to lendingtree/moneytree or whatever they're all called. All these pay day loan companies shocked a Danish friend and journalist of mine so much when she visited me here in the US that she took a picture of one of these companies. These kinds of companies are not legal in Denmark and haven't been for decades because they're considered to be taking advantage of desperate people in need.

Hilarious! Bank of America Chairman, Charles Holiday, just said on C SPAN that US banks shouldn't be restricted in size because then they would be weaker compared to their European competitors! As if any European bank is allowed to be as big as, say Bank of America. Has he 'forgotten' that it is EU that keep suing Microsoft for quenching free competition?!

Make Strides Walkathon 2010 - help children & adults walk again

Join my team at the very first Prosthetics Outreach Foundation 2 mile Walkathon Saturday July 10, 9-11:30AM @ Seward Park, 5895 Lake Washington Blvd. S Seattle, WA 98118

Or skip the walk and join the other volunteers, eat, drink enjoy the music and other entertainment, all in order to help children and adults in the developed world walk again. Have fun and do good at the same time!

If you happen to be out of town that day, you'd still make my day if you donate to my cause!

POF Make Strides Walkathon 2010 - Prosthetics Outreach Foundation

My Wishing List for Earth Day 40th Anniversary

On this 40th anniversary of Earth Day, I hope the American representatives in the House and Senate will make America greener by:

* Giving the Americans effective public transport,
* Re-teach them to hand dry their their clothes instead of tumble dry it,
* Teach the Americans to eat un-produced food (=> less trash & pollution),
* Give the Americans incentives to walk & take the bike instead of the car whenever at all possible,
* Make building laws that have green requirements (recycle water, 3 layer isolation windows that manage heat/cold, lasting or biodegradable building materials, half & full flush water closets, water saver on shower head and water taps, warm water pipe heating either in the floor or via radiators, solar cells on roofs etc),
* Improve recycling possibilities, e.g. make bins for used batteries next to the garbage cans by apartment buildings and on street corners or outside drug stores and supermarkets,
* Make Round-up and other unnecessary chemicals ILLEGAL- at least for private consumers (as they have been in Europe for years!),
* Make the leaf and snow blowers illegal!! Give people a good old rake/broom and snow plow = free exercise :-)


Links
Earth Day on Wiki
White House Honors Earth Day 40th Anniversary
United States Environmental Protection Agency
Earth Day History by Envirolink

Somebody's Watching You - an eternal fight to protect yourself on the web

Just found this useful piece of advise on a Facebook friend's wall:

"Read the snopes article. It just makes the email available for purchase and the places where they got all that info still have it all. If you're going to go and try to remove yourself from this site (near impossible as far as I can tell) there are MANY other sites that have the same info. This is just the only one you've heard about. Check out whitepages.com sometime. I searched for my name and found old listings all over the country. Even to places I'd never lived because my ex husband kept the phone number we'd gotten when I was still with him.



Information on the net doesn't die. Don't give these people another piece of yourself. Just ignore it. Personally I stopped trying to stop or block spam to my email. Stopped trying to "unsubscribe" (in reality it just proves you're really there and it's a good email). I went from getting 500+ spam emails a week to about 2-5 a week. Food for thought...."

and

"from wikipedia - Email address harvesting
While Spokeo has a privacy link that provides a process for removal of a name from Public Listing, what it also does is harvest a legitimate e-mail address. The legitimate e-mail address is then available for purchase, potentially opening up the email address to spam"

http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/spokeo.asp
http://www.spokeo.com/
http://www.whitepages.com/ cooperaters with
http://www.peoplefinder.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spokeo

Technical equality

Maybe it's just me, but I get irritated every time I'm fighting off the cable of the iron when I'm ironing. I constantly have to throw it back to the far end of the iron board in order to avoid it from making new, unintended folds in the shirts I'm trying to REMOVE folds from.

And that's when it hit me:
How come the cordless electric drill was already invented in 1961 and the cordless electric hedge trimmer was invented in as early as in 1962 (according to Black & Decker), and that the cordless electric screw driver was invented more more than two decades ago when I still have to battle that blasted iron cord?















I can't help thinking that it is a question of gender inequality - or maybe just a lack of female inventors in the realm of electronic devices. Sadly, it might also be a sign that few men iron their own shirts, STILL in 2010! If they did, I'm sure the cordless iron would have been invented ages ago!

What I don't understand is why the producers of irons haven't seen the huge potential for profit in inventing it, male inventor and owners or not. It was after all a man that invented the washing machine, the dryer, the dish washer, and the vacuum cleaner, all tools which existence I'm grateful for every time I press that start button - ok, except for the vacuum cleaner. I'm still waiting for the day someone invents a light AND effective vacuum cleaner that doesn't cost a fortune, although I have high hopes for the further development of the Roomba!

So all you technical inventors, take a break from your current drafts of technical devices primarily targeted for men's entertainment and take a good look at how you can take the remaining cord enslaved technical devices for tedious house work a step into the 21st century!

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