Steve Hoffacker's Sales Quips

The Administration - in its never ceasing effort to spend us into the poor house - has another scheme that spends money with a hallow promise of benefit and a shady motive.

The President wants to extend wireless internet service (his so-called "national wireless initiative") to 98 percent of the country and claims that this will reduce the deficit by $1 billion a year. How can spending money to run the lines, make the connections, subsidize the people who can't afford to have broadband service now (or many of them would), and maintain the netwoerks save anything? He uses some fuzzy math to illustrate his premise, but any money generated through this program would just be spent and not used for its declared purpose.

It would cost, cost, cost.

But this is a distraction.

There is an ulterior reason for having everyone on wireless service, and it has nothing to do with we the people. It has to do with governmental monitoring of our internet activities - sites visited, searches, connections, and even more aggressive watchdog methods.

First, this can't save money. Forget that right now.

Second, it is about putting a potential monitoring device in every home.

Third, this is just another excuse to spend money and possibly generate a little cash throw-off to be spent again.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other blog homesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

While I am not a fan of government regulation, because I feel that market forces can regulate businesses and weed out unfair practices or businesses, there are some aspects of business - like banking - that don't play by the same rules as normal businesses. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act has a provision in it that should help small businesses and consumers.

The provision is to cut the fees charged for the use of debit cards from as high as $1.30 per transaction to a maximum of 12 cents. Obviously Visa and Mastercard don't like this and their stocks took a big hit yesterday.

The provision is said to bring the charge more in line to what the costs actually are for the banks to accept and process the debit card transactions.

If the measure is implemented, retailers won't need to inflate their retail costs by much or anything at all for debit transactions. Afterall, it is the same as cash and even better because there is no chance of conterfeit funds and no need to make a trip to the bank to deposit the funds.

Retail sales with people using their debit cards could see an increase once consumers learn that retailers essentially pay nothing for a debit card transaction. For us small businesses, the decrease in service charges will be welcomed. Again, it makes debit card usage essentially the same as cash or a check, but safer and quicker to get the funds into our accounts at the bank.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other blog homesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2010. All Rights Reserved.

Did we really need the debt commission to tell us what we already knew - that we needed to spend less money? Forget the commission. Just stop spending money. Authorize no new spending and cut, cut, cut everything that isn't promised by law - including office space, staffing, and raises. The Commission does agree - to a point - and recommends salary freezes for 3 years (I hope that includes Congress, the Administration, and the Judges) and a 10% reduction in staffing. How about all vacant positions are hereby permanently eliminated and say an immediate 20% reduction in the remaining ones with additional cuts each year until we get down to less than half of what it is now?

By the way, does anyone know how much we spent to create a Commssion to tell us to stop spending money? Maybe the ultimate paradox?

Interesting though that they want earmarks stopped. Something Boehner is getting his fellow Republicans to agree with and sign on - except for Inhoff. Something Obama campaigned on and soon broke along with all of his other promises except passing health care. Speaking of which, the Commisssion specifically and noticeably didn't mention anything about it - arguably the most expensive, wasteful item to come along.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other blog homesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2010. All Rights Reserved.

That didn't take long. Announce that you're going to start printing funny money, and prices start to climb. This was nearly instantaneous - thought it might take a little longer than this. Gas prices are way up. Soft drink prices are up. Cereal, produce, cookies, meat, coffee - all up. Some are due to the withdrawl of corn from the food chain for the production of ethanol.

Speaking of ethanol, sugar is a much better source of ethanol if that really is so desirable as a fuel additive. Small engines don't run well with ethanol and gas mileage is worse on most vehicles. Now we're going to be going to E85 which may have disasterous result for vehicles more than 5 years old.

It doesn't make sense to take such a popular crop and divert it to fuel when it is essential to so many processed foods.. No wonder food prices are increasing. Add to this the decision to manipulate the market with a flood of dollars, and we are in for a long ride.

So in addition to everything else that is going on in the economy we now have to deal with rising prices. Incomes aren't increasing, and employment is not increasing - only prices.

Congress needs to reassume their constitutional duty to regulate money and abolish the Fed.

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For more information on my coaching and educational programs and services, visit my website stevehoffacker.com, or go to my other blog homesalesinsights.com for additional sales tips, insights, and commentary. Listen to my free podcast messages at Steve Hoffacker's Happenings.

Steve Hoffacker - Consultant, Coach, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Motivator, Teacher, & Strategist - for Realtors, Real Estate Sales Professionals, Home Builders, New Home Salespeople, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, and Independent Sales Representatives.

© Steve Hoffacker, 2010. All Rights Reserved.