Was looking for a tool and thought I might check out what Sears had to offer. Upon visiting the Sears website, the ad above was quite prominent. This seemed more like an ad a retailer would do around Thanksgiving. A bit surprising to see it in late January. Perhaps this is the end of the quarter for Sears.
Ford, in reporting its biggest profit in more than a decade Friday, disappointed Wall Street but pleased UAW workers with bonuses averaging $5,000.
The profit-sharing bonus was two-thirds larger than the amount Ford was required to pay under its contract, said UAW President Bob King.
“What’s really important for our members to know is they didn’t have to do this,” King told the Free Press.
With about 20,000 Ford hourly workers living in Michigan, the checks, due in March, will help lift the state’s economy.
Time for some quick math. If each of the 20,000 hourly Ford workers in Michigan gets a check for $5,000 how much might that boost the Michigan economy?
Let’s assume that the check is for the full amount and that each worker on average will spend 60% of it in the 30 days after they get it.
20,000 (checks) * $5,000 = $100,000,000
At a 60% spend, one hundred million dollars will generate $60,000,000 in economy boosting cash flow. It will be interesting to see how the Michigan economy does in the months of March, April and May. It would seem likely that dining out will increase and that fuller restaurants will equal more tips for servers. Will the general sense of optimism create a measurable up tick in consumer confidence? I for one believe it will and time will tell if that is an accurate prediction of what will occur.
Global Detroit cites Duke University research indicating a third of Michigan’s high-tech startup companies founded between 1995 and 2005 had at least one immigrant founder. A U.S. Small Business Administration report found that 16 percent of all Michigan businesses started between 1996 and 2007 were started by an immigrant.
Creating an environment that is welcoming to people interested in starting their own business is critical. Having policies that attract and bring talented people to Michigan from other nations and that are more likely to start-up a business enterprise could be a jobs engine.
There was a time when Detroit and Michigan were leaders in innovation and manufacturing. Manufacturing will probably not be a job engine for Michigan as it was in the past. technology and services are the areas that are poised to be fast growing and provide the most opportunity.
Below are two sequential tweets about the film The King’s Speech in my Twitter timeline.
Will be looking to see this at some point.
via Foursquare – Four Green Fields
Came to the tip above after seeing a friend check-in, at the venue above, on Foursquare and post to Twitter. Was interested in the place since I had never heard of it before.
The tip section contained a comment that was not that helpful. Sounds like a problem the manager should be informed of ASAP and not posted online. The tip section is usually to recommend a signature item on the menu that is really great.
Other tips posted by “Robbie” for other venues have what one would call a negative tilt.
Recently there has been some conversation about stand up desks, to the point that I have begun to consider one myself. Looking to get the computer, cords and accessories in its own space. So, earlier tonight I was searching on Google and went to several places including Amazon and Staples looking for examples of stand up desks. A little while later while I was on the MLive page and the ad you see below appeared in the right sidebar. Wonder how many more times it will appear.
Bottle-grade PET is up more than 21% from a year ago and more than 24% since late September, according to ICIS, which tracks petrochemicals data.
via Plastic Prices to Pressure Soda Prices – WSJ.com.
*Full link is behind the great wall of subscriber
Wonder how much this will crimp margins for Coke and Pepsi.
Questions:
Will prices go up?
How much will prices increase?
Will unit sales decrease faster than prices rise?
Will revenue increase fast enough to increase profits or will customer decline to buy at higher prices?
“When adults and kids see the power of self-direction and realize the benefits of mutual support, they tend to seek it out over and over again.”
via Seths Blog: Three ways to help people get things done.
People can inspire others. In doing so, it can create a sort of self empowerment that enables people to see and create at a higher level.
One of the things that has caught my fancy are tweetups (meetups with people one has met online, typically via Twitter). Some of the best conversations are had with people in these real life meetings. Some are just one-on-one, others are large groups, sometimes with as many as 25 or more people. Some of the best ones have just a few participants. Smaller groups usually create openings for each person to contribute. Smaller groups also foster a closeness and openness that large groups may crowd out. Some people are shy in larger groups and their thoughts and ideas are hidden from the conversation in such settings.
Would have never guessed that I consumed that many. Now that I think about it, there was a time when I would read or view a few thousand posts a day. That went on for a few months. That was a time between jobs that lasted longer than I would like, lots of time was spent reading posts.
Note: Many of these posts were jobs. There was a time when using the RSS feature from indeed.com was very useful.
Several weeks ago I made the choice to read more blog posts. Before I could do that I had to clear out quite a few RSS feeds that were no longer relevant. Below is a chart of the recent activity in Google Reader. The blue bars represent posts that came in and the orange bars represent my use of Google Reader to consume content.
Also, note the large increase in the number of posts that come in daily. More feeds have been added since many of the high volume low value feeds were removed.
How many blogs do you subscribe to?
How often do you read blogs?
D.L. Damore 