Has Dawn changed its formula?

My wife and I tend not to be brand loyal people, although there are a few things we do tend to stick with. Rain-X windshield washer fluid, for example. It works great and I like the way it beads rain on the windshield. We also prefer Cottonelle brand toilet paper.

Years ago, we also stuck with Dawn dishwashing detergent. We had used several brands before it, and nothing would last as long in the sink or bust down grease better than Dawn, hands down.

But I think over the years they must have changed the formula, because I have not been impressed. The soap doesn't last as long through a round of dishes and barely cuts grease like it used to. In fact, it is quite noticeable how much less effective Dawn is at cutting grease than it used to be.

It can't just be my imagination. It is quite a noticeable difference. I should note that I started seeing this difference before inflation, so I don't necessarily think "shrinkflation" in the sense that they have watered down the product to increase margins is the cause.

This was an intentional effort to change the product but still sell it and market it as the same product. But I don't think it is.

As a result, Dawn dishwashing detergent has pretty much lost our business, and we will switch to a cheaper value brand from now on. We were willing to pay the premium for the brand name because it worked. But if the product no longer works, it's not worth the added cost. Plain and simple.

Businesses do these things and have this idea that customers will not notice the changes. But we do. And when we are sure changes were made, we make changes as well to our buying habits, and it seems to me that businesses should be aware of this.

It takes years to build a loyal customer but only seconds to lose one.

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© Jim Bauer 

Do you ever do the math on eggs, or just buy them?

Well, by math what I mean is, comparing the price of different sized cartons. Generally, when you think of eggs you think of them in terms of one dozen. But of course, you can buy them in cartons of 18, and 36 when you buy the twin packs at Walmart, for example.

I always do the math because I want to know if there is a better deal or not if I buy them one way or the other, or if they are sold somewhere else at a different price that I am aware of.

So, if I want to know how much per dozen an 18-pack of eggs costs, I divide the price of the carton by 18, and then multiply by 12.

Let's say the 18-packs costs $3.49. $3.49 divided by 18 equals 0.1938 cents per egg times 12 equals $2.33 per dozen.

In this example, I know the price per dozen at Ruler Foods happens to be $1.99 per dozen, so they are cheaper than the bulk 18-pack at Walmart. 

Unit cost is what I am almost always concerned with when it comes to comparing food prices, and it helps to guide me in the right direction when making purchasing decisions. Is it a good deal or isn't it? I can't know unless I do the comparisons.

Comparing ounces, pounds and so on and so forth is very helpful in knowing whether one price is presenting more value than the other.

I may use these comparisons in other ways as well. For example, buying a box of instant mashed potatoes. Say the box costs $2.99 and is 8 ounces. That's roughly $1.50 per pound. But I can buy a 10 pound of potatoes for $3.99 or 39 cents per pound. Even if I add in the butter and milk and any other ingredients, aside from the additional time it may take to make mashed potatoes from scratch, clearly the better value is the raw potato sack.

One final piece of trivia if you were curious, going back to eggs for a moment. One dozen eggs weighed on a scale is roughly 1.11 pounds. If you account for the shells, which you don't eat, the yield of a dozen eggs is about one pound. You can use that as a guage to compare whether you want hamburgers or scrambled eggs for dinner one night.

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© 2024 Jim Bauer

What Are The Pitfalls of Being A Conservative Blogger?

I hope what I am going to say doesn't disappoint. It's not about the lack of money. It's there. It's not about the lack of an audience. It's definitely there. It's not even about getting hate mail or being lambasted and ridiculed in other places by people who disagree with me all over the Internet.

It is that politics is a constantly moving thing, and the news cycle is fast and furious. 

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Just as soon as you digest the news of the day, analyze it, and then spit out your commentary and observations about it, it's pretty much old news already and very quickly people have moved on to the next thing.

At best, your posts will have a life cycle of about a week. But most begin to die off rather swiftly after a day or two.

It just means you really have to love what you do and be okay with having to do it constantly. It's a lot of material. It's a lot of time spent. And it's of course a lot of writing that has to happen. How much of the stuff that gets written is evergreen?

Hardly any of it.

It does surprise me how often older posts do still get reads though on subject matter that when you look at it, should no longer be of interest to anyone. Yet, someone searched for it and ultimately someone found their way to it.

Maybe it's to research something? Or perhaps some people just enjoy the history of it?

Take Herman Cain as an example. Not only is he long out of politics, but he is also dead. Yet time and time again I see reads on posts about Herman Cain and his presidential campaign efforts from years ago.

Remember his 9-9-9 plan?

The point is that it's just an ongoing effort that sometimes you do find exhausting, and some days you do scratch your head a bit and wonder, "Is it all worth it? Wouldn't it just be better to write something that has no time stamp on it and let that just earn for you forever?"

Even going back and rereading certain older material to see if you can rehash some of it and make it new again can be a fruitless effort, because it's all directly tied to the news of that day when it was written. There's not a lot that can be recycled. Even funny lines or phrases often don't have any lasting value.

At the same time, I do feel like it is still an important thing to do. That is, to write about these things anyway and be able to share my thoughts and perspectives. People do read them, and hopefully they also walk away from some of it with a different take on things that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise considered.

Being a conservative blogger certainly presents its challenges. All of it is worth it in the end though. Besides, when one is a writer, I guess it doesn't matter what you write about or the work that goes into it, or even who it reaches or for how long. You're going to do it anyway.

There may be some days when conservative blogging can seem aimless. But it does still have a purpose. And even if I am only fulfilling that purpose for a day or two after I run my mouse over that publish button, I know that each post may be but a small ripple in a vast ocean of discourse, sparking thought, debate, and perhaps even change.

However short lived that happens to be. I'll take it.

THE WRITER'S LIFE

"Like that elderly man in that tiny studio apartment, one never stops doing it. Because writing is more of a thing a writer must do to exist than to eat. The words within them are as much a part of their being and as vital to their survival as the next beat of their heart. When the words come, they must find their way onto an empty page."

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© 2024 Jim Bauer

What Are Your Thoughts on Trump Media?

I am a Trump supporter, but as an investor, I simply find the Trump Media stock to be weird. Not in a strange way like, "This is a really weird thing." But more in the way that it moves.

I have been investing for several decades and the stock makes little sense to me, at least as an investment.

To me it's acting more like a gauge of voter sentiment than a stock—or moreover a gauge of voter sentiment when it comes to Trump supporters. How many democrats do you think own the stock? I'd guess very few, if any.

Take the most recent dip following the debate. It's not like anything has changed with regard to the company itself. Profitability hasn't changed, there's nothing moving the stock up or down except what shareholders, who are no doubt tied to Trump politically, feel are Trump's chances of winning.

I think it is also a way for shareholders to indicate in a very direct way whether they like what Trump is doing or not.

"We sold our shares," they say. "Because we thought you did not perform well enough during the debate and we want you to step up your game, sir."

I won't begrudge the company or its shareholders. They can do what they want with their shares and their investment. But it is not supposed to have anything to do with the valuation of the underlying business, and by all measures, the company is grossly overvalued, with the stock moving for reasons that are not tied at all to the business.

Whether or not Truth Social or Trump Media has a future, even, is debatable. I guess it would depend on what happens in November and how much interest anyone would have in Trump's social media page after the fact, especially if he loses to Kamala Harris. So, for that reason, to even call it an investment seems like a bit of a stretch.

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© 2024 Jim Bauer

Should There Be Another Presidential Debate?

Well, I think so even if Trump is on the fence about it for the moment. An offer has been put out there by Fox News, and certainly Fox News could be fairer to the former president and harder on the vice president than ABC's moderators were.

Trump is adamant that he won the debate. I think on a technical level he's right. But I think in the eyes of most, only accounting for the debate performances themselves, Harris won.

A technical win, you say?

Here's the thing. We already know who Trump is. And that's true no matter which side of the aisle you are on. Even the independents and the undecided voters know who Trump is. Who they were at the debate to see was Kamala Harris.

Well, because she's the supposed "new and improved" Kamala Harris, complete with a whole new package of goods she's selling.

I think what the independents and undecideds wanted to know more than anything is how she would explain her sudden changes of policy. Of course, that never happened because David Muir and Linsey Davis, who moderated the debate, pretty much spent the whole night grilling Trump and giving Harris a pass.

Unfortunately, the technicalities aren't what matters in debates like this. It's about how you look. It's about how you perform. It's about how you answer the questions, or don't.

Trump had some good responses. But he did lose focus more than once, and I think one of the greatest opportunities he missed was to lash back at Harris after she brought up that confounded border bill Trump was against, that the media adamantly refuses to not tell the truth about.

The fact is that the Biden administration never needed the bill to secure the border. Just as easily as, on day one, Biden sat behind his desk in the Oval Office and reversed all of Trump's border policies, he could have sat behind that same desk and restored them.

Trump could have said that. Trump should have made that abundantly clear. But he didn't, and that was a serious missed opportunity, I think, that (at least in the eyes of some voters) mooted his other points about the seriousness of the border issue even though I still think most people get it.

Trump's take is essentially that he won. For him, that's all he needs to know. As he told Sean Hannity after the debate, the only time you ask for a rematch is if you think you've lost. But again, he only won on technical basis.

Granted, it may still be way too early to say whether or not the debate had any impact on either candidate. Polls will have to be done, and we probably won't know any real answers on that until days later.

Harris had a good day. At least for all intents and purposes—again, regardless of whether or not anything she said was true or could be taken at face value. That's not the point. So close to the election and with this crazy roller coaster ride getting wilder and wilder, I don't think Trump should pass up any opportunity to do a debate and get his message out, and potentially expose Harris for what she really is.

A complete fraud.

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© 2024 Jim Bauer

Do You Think Price Gouging is Real? No. But Neither Do Democrats, Really

It has been one of the key issues touted by the Kamala Harris campaign that she wants to propose a ban on price gouging, especially when it comes to food prices, laying down the claim that grocers have been taking advantage of customers by keeping prices artificially high.

There are two issues here with this. For one, price gouging is not happening and is not the cause of higher grocery bills. For two, it's a theory that, whether true or not, resonates with a good number of people. Especially Democrat voters who tend to view big business as greedy and corrupt.

What it should tell voters is that the administration Harris is a part of does not want to accept blame for inflation, which their policies are clearly responsible for, and thus, without acknowledging the real problem, going forward they cannot adequately address fixing the problem.

Granted, it may not matter. Inflation is coming down. The whole thing, in the end, may simply be no more than a moot point and a campaign talking point.

But the reality is that even most Democrats either don't think the claim is true or have no confidence that even if an attempt was made to institute a ban that it would ever get anywhere in Congress. It is doubtful that even Harris is all that serious about the claim.

She has to know it's not true.

The one thing that remains to be true, and is a key consideration here, about the grocery industry, and this has not changed at all since inflation began to rear its ugly head, is that grocers run on razor-thin margins of anywhere between 1%-3%. If price gouging were happening, those margins would be higher than normal. But they're not.

The bottom line is that prices have gone up because the cost of bringing them to market has gone up. From raw materials to the cost of manufacturing and higher labor costs, to higher transport costs—that's what behind the higher prices.

First of all, in order to make a ban on gouging even worth doing is you have to prove it is occurring. Once you scour a balance sheet it will be clear it isn't happening, and again, the whole idea becomes moot.

You can't impose a ban on something that doesn't exist, and therefore, even if a ban was in place, it would do nothing to lower prices.

And where are these record profits? Maybe grocer's bottom lines have been boosted a bit. But in lock step with inflation? Not hardly. According to the USDA, food prices between 2019-2023 have risen by 25%, yet at the same time grocer's profits have only risen by 6%. That's hardly a rout against the consumer.

What is the whole idea, really? It is a deflection. Harris knows inflation has angered voters across all aisles, and she doesn't want the blame for it. If she can convince voters it's the evil, nasty corporations causing the problem she can maybe get a pass on the whole thing.

Ultimately, not only is the idea dead on arrival, but any plans also to make a ban possible are as well. It's a lie. It's smoke and mirrors. It's a passing of the buck. She knows it, and so do the Democrats as a whole. 

Passing a price gouging ban stands no chance of ever seeing the light of day.

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© 2024 Jim Bauer

Do You Want to Make Money Talking About Nothing?

Back in the day the Internet used to be quite ubiquitous with opportunities to "write" things and get paid. I put the word, "write," in quotations because it's not writing like writing poetry, short stories, or even articles or blogs.

It's social media kind of writing. Similar to what one might do when they post something on X or Facebook. The difference between those sites and the other ones was that you got paid for it.

But the premise was the same. You could talk about your day, an experience you had, share what you had for dinner or pretty much anything you wanted to talk about. And like I said, sites like this were ubiquitous. 

Sites like Bubblews, DailyTwoCents, PersonaPaper, Niume, and even a site like WebAnswers, which was a question-and-answer site, were quite popular, and people did actually make a decent amount of money doing it even if it was not life changing money, nor enough to replace a regular income.

Oh, but it got close. 

Bubblews, for example, allowed people to make sometimes a hundred dollars or more a month, and the same could be true of WebAnswers which was tied directly to Google AdSense and generated a lot of cash for users.

If you were on multiple sites combined, as I was, income could be really good. Close to $1,000 a month, and I am not joking about this.

On top of that, if you could actually write, there were other places like HubPages that were open to writers, and some of the top writers in a place like that could actually make an income akin to a job. Or pretty darn close to it.

But of course, this was back in the day and all of the sites I mentioned, with the exception of HubPages, no longer exists. Part of the issue was always the pay structures. The site owners essentially paid too much, and I think the idea was that eventually one of these sites would be able to go public, find new sources of income, and be able to become platforms open to the public that could offer alternative sustainable incomes for people.

The idea is mostly dead, unfortunately, save for one site that I am aware of that remains. That would be myLot.

Surprisingly, it's become a rather small community despite having been around for nearly 20 years. But it still pays, although it's a tiny amount. Payouts occur each month so long as a member has earned at least $5, and on average, depending on user activity, people generally earn between 10 cents and 25 cents a day.

So, it's hardly a job. But it is a fun place that is fun to write about anything, and have interactions with different viewpoints and cultures from around the world.

Call it an electronic pen pal site if you will. 

Each post is called a discussion, and what they are essentially, are conversations among "friends." And it does happen to be a very tightknit community. People really get to know each other.

If you are looking for a place to share your thoughts and ideas and life with others and get paid for it, myLot might be just the place to give a try. Whether it sticks around for a long time to come is up in the air. But considering it has survived longer than any other of the sites like it says something about its successful model to at least keep the doors open as long as it has.

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© 2024 Jim Bauer