Going Rogue at Uncle Sam's Club or amazon?

Walmart and amazon.com are saving consumers money on a few choice bestsellers by offering them for less than cost; I would imagine this will make it very difficult for anyone not named Sam or Jeff to sell Sarah Palin's Going Rogue for a profit this fall. According to the article below, you can buy a copy of Palin's book for $9 at either megastore:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091016/ap_on_bi_ge/us_wal_mart_book_price_war

Although I won't be Going Rogue this November, or going anywhere else most likely, it is with disappointment that I recognize that these two large companies--indeed, the 500-pound guerillas of the retail world--more or less have me trained to look for their discounts first before I shop for anything these days. I imagine my experience is like that of millions of other Americans in that we don't feel we can afford NOT to check out the low prices at Walmart or amazon.com. It is important to recognize that neither company has a monopoly on low price, and in fact, both companies are doing what every succesful company in the history of retail has done--bring people in with specific low-priced items and then sell them other products before they leave.

It's intriguing to think about how "un-Rogue" the "Going" is if one is purchasing the product from the local (read "global") monopoly--be it a virtual storefront or big-box environment. Am I going out on a limb here if I guess that shopping at Walmart is part of Politician Palin's rogue agenda for her nation? I can't say for certain, but she just doesn't strike me as an amazon.com kind of girl.

under 40 in america

According to this article, less than a third of adult Americans under age 35 earn enough money to be fully self-supporting and a third live with their parents.

When Ben Bernanke says the recession is "very likely over," it is just another perfect example of how a technical term like "recession" fails to explain anything real about the "real economy" or about life in America. By many criteria--including increased student loan obligations and fierce global competition--the average 20 or 30 something in our country has it worse than previous generations, and yet for some inexplicable reason, it seems as if this same generation has been exposed to higher expectations in regard to careers and life choices.

Where do these expectations come from? Can we blame it all on Hollywood film and TV advertising? Could it be that even the parents, teachers, coaches, and other "leaders" of our young adults are getting their information from the same flimsy sources or televised news? Are political leaders participating in this national ignorance by recognizing that pessimistic expression is rarely a vote getter? To what extent does our cultural rite and obligation of "optimism" obfuscate reality? If we tell our children to become nurses and engineers are we solving the problem of generational underemployment? What should we say to anyone under 40? Do the parents of these grown children owe them an apology or at least a place to sleep? The above article also reports that 60 percent of grandparents provide some financial support to their children with children. What will happen if and when these wells run dry?

When I graduated from college in 1991, the unemployment rate was around nine percent, about a point lower than it is today, and I met a lot of college grads with good degrees (Swathmore, UPenn, solid state schools, and other competitive universities) feeling fortunate to be employed with full health benefits at $6.25 per hour for a national bookstore chain. Return to the same bookstore today, and I can't tell you if the workers are commonly in possession of a four-year college degree, but I can tell you that very few of the new hires receive full-time hours or health benefits. The wage itself is higher but has not kept up with the rate of inflation.

The push for health coverage is an important one, but the push for jobs is more immediate and more critical. Although the goal is to insure more Americans, a real success of any legislation that passes will be that it creates jobs for Americans. If it creates jobs... and, of course, if it passes.

the empire strikes back

For pessimists and students of corporate capitalism, it must come as no surprise that the unlikely marriage between Big Insurance and Barack Obama's healthcare reform is on the rocks. This article describes a final push from large insurance companies to defeat healthcare reform or at least the parts of it that could hurt their own profits. 

There certainly is an "I" in FIRE, and it appears the Insurance leg of Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate will be going this battle alone. Could it be that the Finance and Real Estate industries are already so beholden to recent government bailouts and stimulus packages that they would risk sacrificing their cousins and neighbors turning a buck in the healthcare game?

The large insurance companies will of course "brand" themselves as protecting consumers by maitaining lower premiums as they fight off all the parts of Obama's plan that threaten their profits (public option, healthcare cooperative, etc.).

Will this work?

It seems like one potential obstacle for the insurance companies is that our total healthcare costs are already so high (for those of us who subsist in the middle and are lucky enough to have coverage), that the average insured person could have trouble comprehending how Big Insurance works to save said regular Joe or Josephine any money at all. Because this kind of average insured American is also likely to be a holder of stocks and bonds (through mutual funds most likely), it seems possible he or she is aware that private companies must first pass on profits to shareholders and workers before there is any talk of reduced premiums for average insured Joey and Josie who have a bad habit of getting older and older and closer to actual need for more expensive healthcare services.

Also, when the number of uninsured exceeds the number of votes either Gore or Bush received in the 2000 Presidential election, it would seem like there are millions of "consumers" who cannot afford to "consume" any current options; Big Insurance will not get very far targeting the unisured in ads. (Note that millions of these people--children, for example--do not have a right to vote.) Also, the trend in state budgets is to survive by adjusting to reduced tax revenue by reducing state welfare, so states are seeing a rise in waiting lists for state subsidies for health coverage. (The number of uninsured is rising and will continue to rise.)

As bad as the real economy gets, there are still millions more of us holding on to jobs and health coverage, so once again, it is up to us to decide which kind of America we'd like to live in. America has never been a static entity; there has always been change. The blend of capitalist and socialist (safety net) principles has been altered and adjusted throughout the 20th century; one could argue that a 21st-century move toward a public option is more consistent with historical precedent than keeping an industry unregulated, so it can survive. "Creative destruction" plays out in many different ways in a capitalist democracy.

If Obama fails on health-coverage reform, do we look for an attack on Big Macs and KFC? There are other ways to fry potatoes and protect the health of one's citizens.

Rumor has it that Michael Moore is leading a campaign to get Chris Dodd to donate all of his profits from politics (his life savings that is) to pay the insurance premiums of uninsured adults in Hartford, CT. If I'm not mistaken, CT's central pulse was once the insurance capital of the world. It remains unclear if Mr. Moore plans to use his own life savings to pay the premiums for the citizens of Flint or Detroit.

Michael, is that you on the phone? Sorry, wrong number.

$11K fines for free!

This link leads to an article from The Washington Post on the Federal Trade Commission's revised guidelines for corporate endorsements. As I understand the new rules, it is possible for an independent blogger to receive a fine of up to $11,000.00 if it can be proven that the product he or she wrote in favor of was received for free.

Does this mean that the person whose church provided a Bible is obliged to mention that the Bible was provided free of charge before he or she proceeds to spread the good word?

This paragraph from The Post article does a good job of summing up the fact that "professional journalists" (an occupation from the past that once paid handsomely and offered union protection and dental) have been treated to free goodies for years:

"For instance, traditional reporters and journalists have long received products and services to review. In the ethical world, brands entrusted the resulting experience with the reviewer and used corporate collateral and not monetary pressure to help sway positive exposure. In some cases those reviewers either kept products or received services, without paying for them, whether or not they ever published an unbiased review. Why are professional bloggers viewed differently?"

My favorite example of this is car reviewers at major papers getting all-expenses-paid weekend trips for the sole purpose of test driving the new product from Ford or GM. Yes, reviewer, you can enjoy two nights in a four-star hotel with lots of food and only other reviewers to fight in a crowd around the dessert bar. You can imagine the kinds of articles that are written in major newspapers and sold as the automobile "news."

In general, improved regulation of the most egeregious "undercover" or "stealth" marketing campaigns could be a good thing. We don't want our "testimonials" to be fiction whether the product is from Big Pharma or Big Book (hi, JB). But let's make sure we remember that larger entities that already control markets are the ones we're supposed to fight if we believe our anti-trust legislation is legislation that improves a democracy. An $11,000 fine will not hurt the bigs in any industry. Hmmm. Does that mean the law has been redesigned to fight the little guy?

At this point, I cannot say for sure.

But one thing I do know is that the little blogger receiving stories for free, writing favorably about them, and perhaps reselling some if possible, is most likely a book lover who would prefer to have a steady job.

Is the FTC taking applications these days?

our official position on book reviewing

USK does not see itself as a source of perfectly objective information when it comes to books. In fact, USK only represents the opinions of its blog staff! Our official position at the United States of Kudera is that we try to keep it positive when we are writing about books. This is partly because one of our opinions is that it is so difficult to sell anything these days, and in particular it is so difficult to sell books not "written" by Sarah Palin or given an Oprah endorsement. We do receive a few books for free here or there, but we have not received anything directly from Oprah or Sarah Palin.

In general, we do like books written by our friends and acquaintances, and we like you, and we will like you even more if you try to write a book (preferably a novel, but we're down with short stories and poetry as well). If Sarah and Winfrey ever write a novel, we might take a look at it, and if we read and like it, then we could let that be known at http://kudera.blogspot.com/.

In an age when the cable "news" can be hard to differentiate from infomercials and corporate advertising, it is good to know that the FTC is keeping its eye on the dangerous world of paid bloggers receiving their books for free!

It reminds me of seeing a known book reviewer (like a "known criminal" yes, but what I meant was, "a book reviewer I know") on his moving day, and he had about 300 books he was hoping someone would take off his hands. Dangerous hands those were no doubt... of course, this was before he became a blogger.

Who says the pen is weaker than the sword? Yah!

the publishing self

If you're thinking of wading into the wild and wacky waters of self-publication, check out this wikipedia.org article for inspiration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-publishing#Self-published_best-sellers.

Although the article is flagged for missing some "verification" of sources, it appears as if many of your favorite canonical writers were once in the same position you were in (except they weren't reading this on a netbook while tweeting their novel in 140 character spurts). Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and e.e. cummings are some of the authors listed; perhaps fearing that the wiki readership could find the news so inspiring that they bumrush the lulu.com website, the article's writer notes that it is "extremely rare" that self-published books find a "large audience."

Yeah, we know this, but remember that most books published by major and minor houses fail to find a readership too. Is anyone not named Sarah Palin going to profit from book sales this winter???

Hey, if that fact stops you from writing, then you're not a writer. And let's not wade into David Letterman territory by asserting that Sarah Palin is not a writer either.

Before his on-air apology, when was the last time Dave wrote his own material?