How they do it
The image shown here is an ESP32 TFT microprocessor with an OLED display. It comes with a case and a watchband. It’s fully programmable; you can either use the software that it comes with, or modify the code to do whatever you want. And it retails for $59.95, which means if you buy a thousand of them and add your own logo, the unit cost is probably about $20. This is functionally the same smart watch that Apple sells for $699.
That’s where billionaires come from. This’s why I ran for school board a few years back. I wanted to know why our students weren’t being taught software development — REAL software development, not how to tell a turtle to turn left. I didn’t win. But a friend of mine who had served on the school board told me I didn’t miss much. “If they don’t like your politics,” she told me, “they won’t even return your phone calls.” I had a relationship with Granite Hills for a while, and that was my exact experience.
We’re supposed to be impressed at the current low rate of unemployment — now at its lowest level in 50 years, according to NPR. The average annual income of American workers is more than $53,000. But that average includes Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett. The median income, which is what you get if you line up everyone in order of their income and pick the guy in the middle, is $34,600. The poverty level for a family of 4 is $31,700. What’s wrong with this picture?
“There are millions of jobs available,” a girl who was being interviewed on the evening news was told. “I know,” she said. “I have three of them — and I still can’t afford my rent and food.”
People are being told inflation is the culprit, and of course, the current inflation was caused by Joe Biden. No, it wasn’t. Supply chain issues that were surfacing even before the COVID-19 epidemic caused them, and the resulting shortages have been mercilessly exploited by our business community. I wrote a book about this, and my own favorite line in my book (HTTPV: How A Grocery Shopping Website Can Save America, Amazon) can be paraphrased as “Lying is the biggest profit center in American business.”
My book was based on a website that FORCED shoppers to comparison shop based on price. Compulsory factchecking, just in grocery shopping, would have produced a savings of $165 billion the year I wrote the book; today it would be twice that. And I built the website in FOUR DAYS. This isn’t hard. It just takes political will.
The Republican Party lies because if they told the truth, they’d never win another election. Businesses overcharge because you don’t compare prices, or simply don’t look at the difference between MSRP and readily available cost accounting data. Employers pay what you’re worth, which depends on your level of skill and training, which depends to a large degree on the quality of education. ALL of these can be fixed by intelligence and a little effort.
Nothing is stopping you from minimizing the effects of inflation. Joe Biden can’t fix it for you; controlling inflation is the job of the Federal Reserve, and you might not like how they do it. But blaming Biden won’t help, and it’s playing into the hands of liars among his political opposition. So if you fact check both politics and prices, you can kill two birds with one Google search.
We need to up our game. Education is your key to a higher income. If you do something anyone can learn in a day, you can be replaced in a day, and you can’t hold out for higher pay. But if you learn a new and more valuable skill, you can compete in a marketplace that values you more highly. That’s how some people do it.
Les Pinter is a contributing columnist and a Springville resident. His column appears weekly in The Recorder. Pinter’s book, HTTPV: How a Grocery Shopping Website Can Save America, is available in both Kindle and hardcopy formats on Amazon.com. Contact him at lespinter@earthlink.net