Once upon a time, in a land we hope does not actually exist, there lived a King. It is always a King, it has to be… Occasionally a Prince, but we know he HAS to grow up to be a King. Otherwise it would not be a fairy tale.

This King, like all Kings, needed clothing. And the clothing MUST be fine! If it were not fine, he would cease to be King, and look like all the other sad relics in his oppressed Kingdom. (Of course they were oppressed! He’s a King after all!)

 

And so begins the fairy tale… I’ve taken down the entire story, and left only the very beginning.

You really CAN spin straw into gold.

Watch for the eBook on Amazon, for Kindle, or in our bookstore, at http://firelightheritagefarm.com

I don’t know if I can ever publish this (note: apparently I can). But I’ll try to write it.

I don’t talk anymore. My kids have their lives, and call to see if we are ok. And I have nothing to say. I want to. But it is not there. A combination of lack of interesting things in my life, and deeply private processing of thoughts and circumstances that one only shares fully with God.

The last eight years have been the most brutal of my entire life. Family, work, health. All exquisitely painful so much of the time that there were days I could barely breathe with the hurt of it.

I knew absolutely before this that I wanted a long life. I wanted another 50 years. I wanted more of the work, the laughter, and I’d endure the discomforts and disruptions to get it.

When I got it, it was not anything like a continuation of life. It was a slow descent into the borders of Hell that left me feeling like Remi standing in front of the hardware store, crying, “You’re telling me life can only be more of THIS???”. Crying to Heavenly Father that if it were 50 more years of the last several, it really wasn’t what I’d asked for more of.

Other than the obvious that our close friends know about, the worst has been the uselessness. Purposelessness. I live. I do things. I write about them. I have a husband who loves me, and he is often my motivation to keep going. But there is so little meaningful activity in my life at times that I look ahead toward the stretching years, thinking that if they contain nothing but this, that they are bleak beyond enduring. Trapped in every way, and unable to make the changes we knew we SHOULD have been able to, but lacking the resources to even plan a way out. All I could do, and all I can do now, is strive to determine what God wants of me, and to try to do it, even when I cannot. It keeps me breathing, and once in a while, it hands me something to do that puts a little spark of interest back into my life again.

But it still isn’t the kind of thing you can talk about.

I learned to forage for wild mushrooms, and gathered a collection of around 100 edible types, and dried enough that I can have pretty much any kind I want whenever I want them. Not being a great mushroom eater, I still cannot explain to anyone why I am so fascinated by mycology, but it is certain that the bin of mushrooms that I collected will probably last us a decade or two (they are dehydrated).

I learned to can some things I had not known how to can, and I discovered that if you had the right pressure canner that it did not have to be a terrible sentence to have to babysit it, because it did not require constant vigilance, simply being able to HEAR it.

You see? How many people in the world really get excited because you discovered that you could actually can your own pork and beans that tasted pretty close to actual pork and beans? The average person, their eyes glaze over… And my family and friends are no exception!

I bought some plants, and explored some possibilities with container gardening, grew some herbs, learned to use them effectively. And I wrote about it. This took two whole years. The rest of the world remained largely oblivious to my efforts, and likely will stay that way, even if I do get the pictures to finish the book about it. No conversation starters there.

This winter, in a series of events that were so discouraging and personally grieving, our living circumstances changed. The events involved several other individuals, and little good would come from detailing who did what to whom, but they were the catalyst for another set of challenges, with obstacles we simply cannot overcome in spite of doing all the right things to do so.

When the commotion subsided, I found myself with a bag of Mohair. I’ve told the story elsewhere, and intend this to be quite a bit shorter, because I’m not taking this account in the same direction.

A kind friend gave me a drop spindle. I wanted to skippy-do right there, but my feet don’t move that nimbly right now. So I inadequately expressed my thanks, and went home to fret. It was Sunday, and I had not yet realized spinning is actually a good Sunday activity. I took it up on Monday, and my life changed in a way so small that the onlooker would not comprehend the significance.

There are events in your life that you know saved it. I don’t mean saved me from suicide, I’m not the type. I don’t mean saved me from physical decline, I was actually getting better. I mean, saved me by giving me something interesting to do.

I never thought SPINNING would be interesting. It has been far more than that. It has been educational, thought provoking, metaphorical, peaceful, comforting, and physically easier than I thought it would be. It has also evolved, from “how you are supposed to do this”, to “how you can do this better”.

I made all my equipment except that first gifted drop spindle, and a wire dog brush that I got to use as a flick carder.

I also learned old ways of doing the whole wool to yarn process, that do not require so many tools, and which are far simpler than what I’d been taught. I was taught that many things were NECESSARY that were not, and that some things were NOT necessary that ARE the majority of the time. I LEARNED rules for when they are and are not necessary, and the process of spinning is so simple compared to what I was told it had to be.

I learned that it need not be painful, though sometimes my hands or arm does get sore from working at it a lot during a single day.

When I say I made most of the equipment, I don’t mean that I looked on Pinterest, or Googled Spinning Wheel designs and went to the shop to craft an heirloom.

I mean that I went into the back yard where the elms and wild cherry were turning into thickets, and pruned branches, and made spindles, yarn blockers, a nostepinne, and a loom, from small branches.  Doing that lead to learning a way to spin with a drop spindle that did not hurt my back.

I now have a REALLY neat collection of sticks. They work for this or that in the process of getting fiber to a ball of 2-ply yarn. But they are really just a bunch of sticks. People just don’t get what I’m even talking about!

Spinning has surprised me. It is that easy thing to do, that does not require much thought, that keeps the hands busy, while your mind is engaged elsewhere. It is the thing you can do when you HAVE to sit down, but feel guilty if you are not working.

I didn’t expect to love it. I didn’t expect to learn so much about fibers and history. I have not yet persuaded Kevin to take up the Kingly art, but it feels like one of those skills you learn, and that you keep, because there is a PLACE for it

I like that it is part of a chain of activities, from raising an animal, to creating a knitted, crocheted, or woven item. It seems to complete other skills that I have already. It also involves a series of skills with itself that have been interesting to learn.

But this is still not something I can talk about. “I learned to spin.”. “Oh… that’s… Nice?” You see?

It gives time to think, and I’ve been able to process many of the events that have been so hard to understand. The personal revelations are so mind expanding, and sacredly private, that words are not adequate, even if I did have the need to share it.

I still have nothing to say that is not so difficult that other people turn away. And I cannot bear that either.

But if I have something to do… ANYTHING honorable that I CAN do, it makes things bearable, even when things are so difficult in other ways.

And I CAN spin. I can spin sheep wool, Alpaca, Mohair, and silk. Silk is my favorite, it just FEELS more fun to spin. Eventually I’ll try flax and Cotton. I just want to KNOW.

I’m also learning to weave.

And it’s no great conversation starter.

So we did a dumb thing. We joined the Disney Movie Club. We purchased additional movies at the time of joining which reduced the membership commitment from 5 to 3. One later. So we had 2 to go when our income tanked.

Fast forward to the end. Letter lets us know we have two to go. Ok, so we file that in the back of our minds, no ability to do it today.

Second letter comes. Not only are they telling us that we need to finish, they tell us they’ll bill us $98 plus change if we don’t comply by such and such a date. But they let us know (kindly, I’m sure) at the bottom that we can fulfill the commitment before *this* date, to head off disaster, by purchasing any two movies with a NON-discounted price of $9.95 or more. I repeat, NINE DOLLARS AND NINETY FIVE CENTS. I checked it three times before I placed the final order.

Letter also says that our commitment status will update when the payment is made for the last two items.

So I went into the site to try to place an order that qualified. Everything is discounted! I can’t tell it to charge full price in the cart! Finally dig around and find the “Offers” link, which has the option to Turn Off Discounts site-wide. It defaults to a discount, so you have to actually turn it off to meet your membership requirements.

We purchase two movies. Both are $9.95.

Commitment status does not update. Payment is made.

We wait a few days, just to be sure.

Then I call.

They assure me that it WILL update just as soon as we have purchased two movies with a non-discounted price of $19.95 or more.

I tell them the letter we received said $9.95.

They assure me this could not be so – it is $19.95, always has been, always will be, never has been written otherwise.

They ask me for a copy of the letter. Of course, Kevin has tossed it by now. After all, we placed the order!

Now, on this point I am dead certain of the price listed in the letter. Because I checked it several times. And because I don’t lie.

I also know that if WE received it, it is a standard boilerplate letter. It goes out to EVERYONE who has not bought enough. Customer service KNOWS THIS.

They assure me this is the first they have ever heard of such a thing (several customer service people said EXACTLY the same words – “this is the first I’ve heard of this!!!”, and they repeat those exact words each time they try to explain their surprise at my complaint – if the words were different, I might believe that three people were offering repeated sincere assurances, but since they are repeated verbatim, I am not buying it).

I am not playing ball. This is not right!

They make an offer – They will do me a favor and OVERPRICE the two movies we bought, with an extra $10 each, so that we will meet the commitment.

I’m not happy. I cannot afford that.

Now if the letter had said $19.95 to begin with, I’d have purchased two movies at that price – in fact I tried to, before I checked the letter (again), and realized it said $9.95. Money being tight, I went for the lower cost option!

They pass me to a supervisor, who goes through the same thing, same offer, same assurance that this is the first SHE has ever heard of this problem (she tells me this several times). I ask if I am going to have to sue in court to get them to do the right thing, and she quickly offers to do us a favor and settle it with the two we purchased as fulfilling the commitment.

She tells me repeatedly that I may be assured that this WILL happen, and that her word is good. I can’t even nod and smile, I’m way past that!

Then she says she cannot send an email to confirm the agreement. But… she can take down my number so someone can call me back, and I can then request an email to confirm!

I am not going to have a Sears experience again… And frankly, the fact that the supervisor had a Middle Eastern accent WAS unsettling, especially after our experiences with Sears. But today I’m not trusting anyone to call back, or to do as they said, without SOMETHING in writing, and email is the best I can do.

I ask her to transfer me rather than a call-back. She expresses doubt as to whether someone is there to answer, but finally does this.

Customer service also assures me that they’ve NEVER heard of this problem, but she leaves to confirm the agreement with the supervisor. Finally comes back and sends the requested email – we have that on file now. She also offers to remove our CC data from their database, and assures me she has done so, and that this may prevent the company billing us before the status change can go through.

I’m still not happy.

I mean this is DISNEY! If you can’t trust Disney, the world is pretty well fracked.

Our customer service experience wasn’t a mistake on their part. This is part of their SYSTEM. I work with websites, and businesses, and I know full well if a boilerplate letter went out (and that is what ours was), that the template has the details all there, just as I read them on ours. And if that happened, the lower price is STANDARD, OR, it is an ERROR that was perpetuated across thousands of accounts, which they are fully aware of, and have a policy to deal with.

In either case, THEY WERE WRONG, and THEY WERE LYING. And they are still giving us grief about it, acting like WE are the ones that did not follow the rules!

I am pretty sure that someone in accounting has done the math, and that they’ve realized that it is better to let someone fulfill an overdue commitment with $9.95 movies, and keep them a customer (they’ll purchase more later, even if they are almost broke, since they can purchase discounted), than it is to bill them a penalty and lose them.  But somewhere along the line, the website is not in the loop, and customer service is yanking people around over it. Maybe another case of “the left hand knoweth not what the right hand doeth”, but I’m suspicious because of the behaviors of their customer service people. You don’t just all end up giving the same line over and over again without variation when the situation IS an unexpected one – they were REHEARSED on that one!

It is bad enough that the quality of their movies is such that I won’t even WATCH some of what they’ve produced lately. But to have them messing around with customer accounts in a way that really casts a negative light on their honesty is an unexpected twist for us.

Disney, you really disappoint me.

I was referred a few days ago to the Utah Rural Online Initiative, and this editorial is a combination of a generalized overview of the current status of telecommuting and working from home, and a discouraged commentary on the uselessness of the U-ROI.

If you are here for the info in the title of this article, please bear with me. It IS here. I’ve written this though, to help people save time and understand that government intiatives fail in this area because they never isolate the REAL problems with working from home. They NEVER have people with experience working from home full time in the idea pool, and they NEVER try to teach what IS a real work from home JOB, and what is a SCAM, and they simply BELIEVE every single job title that suggests telecommuting, but they do not READ the job posting to see that it is NOT what they think it is.

 

Anyway… To the story…

I’m always a bit skeptical when a government entity sets out to solve a problem. Usually they approach it from the rear, try to bridle the back legs and tail, and then get into the saddle with the reigns facing forward and try to ride the beast with no way to direct the head. This attitude of mine proves founded so many times that I will not excuse myself for the sarcasm that it usually smears across my commentary.

The House Bill that appropriated the funds and stipulated the goals sounded reasonable.

Utah youth move away from rural areas. No jobs. We know this.

 

New residents (except retirees) stay away from rural areas. No jobs. We know this.

 

Existing residents move out of rural areas to find upward career growth. No jobs, no advancement. We know this.

 

Populations in rural areas are declining, except for seniors. Jobs are a factor. We know this.

So in an effort to resolve this, the legislature was persuaded that telecommuting, or freelancing was a good solution.

Now, we must first understand (as they did not), that telecommuting and freelancing are two VERY DIFFERENT THINGS!

Telecommuting, or Work from Home JOBS are jobs that are paid by an employer, sometimes with benefits, and which involve regular hours and steady employment.

 

Freelancing is just self-employment. Yep. You own your own business, you hustle your work from a collection of clients, you work as a subcontractor, and you do your own taxes. No benefits.

This difference is VERY CAREFULLY AND DELIBERATELY cloaked on all of the U-ROI descriptions.

Because people want a JOB.

 

They do NOT WANT A BUSINESS, it is TOO MUCH WORK!

There is some noise in the original HB that funding is also being provided for businesses that are willing to expand with remote workers. (Apparently they have been unable to find any, because there is NO EVIDENCE of this goal in any of the resulting program pages.)

The resulting program provides training for workers. That is all. Just a training program, and NOT for employers. You may see now that they do list Employers, but they just want them to take the SAME classes, and they do not related to Employer needs AT ALL.

To make it sound impressive, they made it a CERTIFICATION program.

It is administered by Utah State University. It is clear they have a TOTAL disconnect between the program they are presenting, and the ACTUAL NEED of workers in the state.

The training consists of learning team cooperation, video conferencing, project management software, and time tracking. They do take a swipe at a few other useless modules also.

If you are telecommuting, the training is COMPLETELY USELESS. Those kinds of software are NEVER USED, and you NEVER work as a “team” remotely. You never work from Project Management software remotely.

 

If you are freelancing, the training is BEYOND USELESS, and doesn’t even come CLOSE to approaching the training you REALLY need. Again, you NEVER work as part of a team, or with multiple people on a project that needs Management software.

There is NOTHING for a business that WANTS to allow employees to work from home, and they completely overlook the solution that would open doors for about 1/3 of businsses to allow that in some respect.

 

All of it demonstrates clearly that they have NO IDEA what the jobs are that are ACTUALLY available, or WHY more are not showing up.

The telecommuting world, as a whole, has NOT MOVED FORWARD AT ALL within the last FIFTEEN YEARS. Technology has done its utmost, and we are stagnated.

Yet somehow these people think this mostly failed concept is the new doorway to an old problem.

It COULD be PART of a solution. But not unless we acknowledge the current state of affairs.

This is what “telecommuting” is now, and what it has been since its inception:

1.  The old “envelope stuffing” scam, and all kinds of variations on it. We must acknowledge first and foremost that the phrase “telecommuting” or “work from home” is one of the top scam phrases in the world. And most of what you find under it is outright scam, or something OTHER than what it is presenting to be. (This is never acknowledged in the training, and no caution is ever given.)
2. “Outbound leads acquisition”. This is telephone sales, people. Cold calling. And it is so brutal that nobody stays at it long. You spend all day trying to get just ONE PERSON to not hang up on you. And you get paid $2 for a confirmed sale. You can’t make money at this. NOBODY PAYS HOURLY on this!
3. “Inbound sales”. This MIGHT be calls coming from ads. It might. But if it is, you are in an office, on-site. If you are HOME, it is computerized call transfers. Same thing as cold calling, only you get it partially pre-screened. Often this is just cold calling renamed, and they tell you to place ads yourself to bring calls. You can’t make money at this either. It is still $2 per sale.
4. “Technical Support, Phone or Chat”. Now can be is REAL WORK, and it pays HOURLY. (It can also be just the old envelope stuffing scam in a variation, but we are referring here to the REAL work, not the scam.) But you don’t get to do this unless you are a TOP customer service rep, or TOP TECH. This means you have had 2-4 years ALREADY on-site with the same employer. It is NEVER every day. It is only a few days a week, and usually half days or less. The rest you do IN THE OFFICE. We do NOT HAVE call centers with all the workers in their homes. Supervising them is a nightmare, and completely impractical, and the limited ability they have to do so is inadequate.
5. All other out of office jobs. This is a wide range, and MOST LISTINGS for these are SCAMS, or just Freelancing. You may be doing graphics, coding, writing, client meetings, outside sales, deliveries, setups, troubleshooting, consulting on-site for the client, and many other jobs.  These generally pay hourly, and ALL OF THEM can usually be done as a freelancer (your own business, as a subcontractor). They NEVER hire someone to do these jobs outside the office unless they have a proven record INSIDE the office (except delivery and worksite-call jobs, and those are NOT work at home jobs). ALL of these may be listed as “telecommuting jobs”. You spend 3-5 years IN THE OFFICE before you get to even take work home and still get paid for it. These are also NOT a job you can work from a rural area, when the company is in a city, because you have to REPORT IN PERSON for a couple of days each week at least, or you pick up at the beginning of the day, and report at the end of day. They require that you LIVE  in the city WHERE YOU WORK.

So, we now understand that either the job is a BAD ONE, or that it requires that you live in the same city as the job does.

And this is why the training is useless.

NONE OF THESE benefit from the training.

 

Either you learn what the U-ROI course teaches ON THE JOB, or you do not NEED it.

They teach three pieces of software, and none of them are industry standards for telecommuting, they are just used to facilitate the training, and that, BADLY. Software you need for the job is something different, though project management and video conferencing are RARELY used for office to office work, the ones taught are NOT commonly used, and they are NEVER used for actual work from home jobs.

So what was really needed?

Training for EMPLOYERS, to open the door for REAL working at home. This means both an increase in remote work at home opportunities, and an increase in the use of subcontractors. And the training that is needed is NOT anything like the University is offering, it only needs ONE training module (yeah, I’ve got it, hold your horses… that means the HEAD, not the REAR).

 

Training for WORKERS, to learn to run their own business as a subcontractor. Unfortunately this is fairly extensive training, and the University is TOTALLY unqualified to teach it since they have NO IDEA what is actually involved in making money from a small business (they can only scale down corporate business training, and this is ALL WRONG for a small business) Any other training is useless, since if you are qualified to work in the office, you are qualified to work at home. (Yes, I am qualified to speak definitively on this subject, given my background in small business startup consulting and small business website development.)

The real problem with telecommuting, and the reason that it has not expanded is obvious to every employer who tries it.

You cannot monitor the productivity of your workers.

This is a MASSIVE Problem!  It stops you cold with pretty much every worker that you DO NOT TRUST, and that you cannot see, from work turned in, to judge productivity in your absence.

This is a VALID concern!

So we need to acknowledge three significant truths:

1. Employees hate to work, and we are in the middle of the biggest employee laziness crisis that the world has ever seen. If you don’t SEE the work, it ISN’T happening, and your business DIES. This is REAL.
2. If you pay someone by the hour and they are not in your presence, you need to understand average productivity per hour, and know whether EVERY EMPLOYEE is producing at least an average amount of work. (Me, I go for higher standards than that.)
3. There are only certain kinds of work that can be monitored remotely.

Those that can be remotely monitored through technology (and we’ve tapped that).

Those that can be monitored remotely through work turned in (documentation of work done but not visible is a time waster, so don’t even go there…. oh…. you already did… I’m sorry you are losing your shirt). So the expansion potential for home based work is in WORK TURNED IN.

So what is the real solution?

Flat rate pricing. Also known as Piecework.

This works for Subcontractors, and for standard Employment. With benefits if you wish (determined by work output rather than total hours).

For an Entrepreneur, hourly rates are a trap. If they convert to flat rate pricing, they break the income ceiling, and open up a window for unlimited income growth. This article explains.

For a business owner, paying flat rates to subcontractors or remote employees (or even employees on-site) allows them to pay every employee according to ACTUAL productivity.

Yes, there are problems. But they are solvable.

1. Tracking production. This works best if you have only one person per task or sets of tasks (or per station). YOU have to be able to verify counts, and you have to set up so they can’t cheat. This makes some types of work suitable, some types less so.
2. Employee theft. If you have a chaotic shop or office, employees WILL steal each other’s work, and they WILL try to recycle their own or someone else’s work that has already been credited. Off-site employment can slow that, but separating stations and tasks does this also (when only ONE employee does THAT thing, no one else can count the work as their own). MANAGEMENT theft though, is rampant either way if it is allowed in the business.
3. Motivation. If you work your numbers right, a new worker will make LESS than they want to make. As they speed up (watch for quality issues as they do), they’ll realize that they make as much as they work to make, and they’ll get more efficient, and quickly learn to make MORE than they could have by the hour. This is GOOD for the employer, because he only pays for what is produced anyway, and the faster the workers produce, the less the employer pays for in shared overhead per output.
4. Pricing… This takes experience. Some things run on an average, so sometimes it takes less time, sometimes more, but averages out to a reasonable pay scale.
5. Lazy workers. Ok, so I said this. But if you pay flat rate, every new worker will complain about low wages, because they haven’t learned that they EARN based on EXPERIENCE, and SPEED. It takes them WEEKS to really grasp that every time they are disappointed in their paycheck they can look at their work and find a way to speed it up.

Implementation of flat rate pricing is simpler than it seems, but does take some judgment calls in the beginning, and then adjustments to the reality. We often see the ideal, or the worst case as being the “norm”, and base our pricing on that, and over a repetition of 20-100 times, we can get a good average production time for a specific task, and come up with a fair price for it.

You start with a generous hourly rate basis. You do NOT start with minimum wage!

Start with a well paid, productive worker. Let’s say somewhere between average and top producer, with the same hourly pay scale.

 

In-office that might mean anywhere between $12 and $35 per hour, depending on industry (though many go higher).

For a subcontractor (they own their own business), you must increase it by 50-100%, depending on industry, overhead, etc. Remember, you SAVE that money in your office, so a subcontractor is WORTH that much more. THEY set their rate, but YOU negotiate, and you have to be able to calculate what it is worth compared to hiring it in-office in many instances.

Next, observe the output for that productive worker. For our offices, that is me. I want to be generous here also, so I don’t calculate my top production rate, I calculate it when I am skilled and have learned one or two rounds of speed increase.

So if I am working comfortably (not pushing it) I can make 20 valves per pour. It takes me 15 minutes to do 1 pour. That’s 80 valves per hour.

 

I can unmold, trim, and cut,  about the same rate per hour comfortably. This is still not pushing it.

 

So I can produce 80 valves in two hours. And this is NOT at my top speed.

 

I pay 50 cents per valve, finished to quality standard.

 

I have calculated my other expenses for the product, and can AFFORD to pay 50 cents per.

 

A competent worker can earn at $20 per hour, once they learn to do the tasks. They will START OUT earning much less. Probably half to begin with, until they are familiar with it.

 

A FAST worker can earn twice as much. A worker who pays attention to detail in the pour, will trim less, and can increase their speed again.

 

Ideally, you want top workers who are innovative enough to be earning $50 per hour or more as subcontractors, or $20 per hour or more as employees, in a similar situation. Many industries would need to have a MUCH HIGHER earning potential.

If your hourly rate basis is fair (this consists of the pay that an average GOOD SKILLED worker would make per hour at the flat rate you pay), and if your employees or subcontractors get the idea of increasing speed without compromising quality, and if you pay attention and start teaching productivity skills, you, as an employer, can reduce your payroll waste, and improve your production.

Yes, I’ve done this with services. It works. I never CHARGE hourly, and I never PAY hourly, it is all flat rate.

Flat rate piecework pay models are probably the number one overlooked business tactic today, and they are the single most liberating tactic for small businesses to increase pay potential, as well as being a means where many businesses can hire more remote workers.

Due to the COVID 19 Hoax, many companies stated that they were hiring work from home support or computer workers. This did not last, they could not find workers who actually knew HOW TO WORK, without cheating the boss. The Utah-ROI does not even MENTION this to employers, and there is no acknowledgement that it is even a problem.

I’m really disappointed to have to be so negative about a program which has at the root a real possibility for growth. But the way they are doing it is not going to change anything, because they didn’t isolate the problem before throwing a canned solution at it.

The U-ROI doesn’t accomplish anything meaningful in bringing more rural employment. Conversely, all it did is assure a few more jobs on the USU campus. But that may have been their real goal all along anyway.

Yes, our company DOES offer consulting for both small and large businesses for flat rate pricing, subcontracting success, and small business startup and profitability.

And unfortunately, we are NOT hiring in rural areas.

I used AdSense on a few websites many years ago. I made enough money from it to be worth my time. I sold the sites I had it on after the third or fourth noticeable drop in click revenue in the face of increased traffic. Google was obviously getting more greedy.

When I checked back a few years later, a penny a click was the norm. Gone were the days of being able to actually EARN from AdSense.

Recently I tested it again on some of my websites. It is even worse. I concluded one thing:

Google does not know how to do math.

If you earn 5 cents one day, and that gets added to 2 cents from the day before, and your monthly total was already 35 cents, you’d think that you’d have a new balance of 42 cents, right?

Wrong.

You now have 38 cents.

Now, you may think I am being petty using such low numbers. Or that I’m being silly. Or that my own numbers must be higher. Or that if my numbers are not higher, I’m doing something wrong.

You’d be wrong again. Many people with AdSense don’t even do this well.

I was using GENEROUS numbers.

GENEROUS, PEOPLE!!!

A few days ago I had $2.61.

I earned $1.14 the next day. It was a bumper crop!!!

That gave me a balance of $2.64. Apparently most of the apples were rotten and we just could not see it.

Then I earned 16 cents the next day. All in all, a fair harvest.

I now have a balance of $2.68. By now I’m SURE the pickers are stealing from me.

I’ve seen the monthly balance drop.

I’ve seen EVERY SINGLE DAY that I earn over $1 wiped out at least in part in the monthly balance.

I have NEVER seen more than two or three days in a row without downward adjustments.

I have more than one website with this on it. They are not high traffic, just normal. The kind I used to be able to make $100 per month from with AdSense.

So let’s do the math. Google obviously cannot!

I have en0ugh traffic to get AT LEAST (we are being conservative here) SIXTY CLICKS PER DAY (ok, go ahead and laugh, but I know the clickthrough averages, and I know what my site traffic is for some fairly obscure websites!). Remember I used to make money even with this little traffic!

Even at ONE PENNY PER CLICK, we should be averaging SIXTY CENTS per day!

You can laugh again… But let’s finish this!

They are SUPPOSED to pay you on a percentage. And the lowest a click can cost is (or was) 5 cents… and they DIDN’T lower that number! Most keywords cost WAY more than that! But Google does not seem to pay more than a penny for anything anymore.

Even so, at a penny a click, I should be earning MORE than 1 penny a day, EVERY day. Right?

Because there are SIXTY legit clicks per day average!

That’s $18 per month. Legit clicks. REAL CLICKS!!!

No big deal. But stick with me.

I average $5-9 per month.

This month had particularly good traffic.

The income is $2.68 on the 28th day of the month. I doubt it is going to top $3.

This is the first month since putting the ads back that it has made less than $5 in a single month.

I suspect Google has gone to fractionals anyway, but it is now clear that they are engaging in outright click-fraud.

It is no wonder people are taking down the Googles.

I’m going to run this a little longer, and optimize a little bit. But I expect this is going to be more work than it is worth (I’m a tester of things, and a writer about tested things, so I’ll get my money another way).

Just one more thing that is sounding the death knell for Google. Cost of clicks is UP UP UP, and payment for clicks is DOWN DOWN DOWN, and organic search results are a thing of a bygone era. There are major problems with most of their “free” services, and we don’t even want to talk about Google Labs.

Shame on you, Google.

 

LATER: Yes, Google, we noticed. The day after I posted this article, you changed your displays in Adsense so that the total earnings do not update until the month rolls over.

We also noticed that the totals elsewhere never quite add up any better now than they did before. Your efforts to obfuscate just aren’t effective because… wait for it… they never suspected this one…

WE CAN ADD!

Math matters after all, and Google’s version isn’t nearly as popular as they planned for it to be.

We can also SEE that our daily earnings don’t just INCREASE, they also DECREASE. $1.62 to $0.85? What happened? Did you accidentally PAY TOO MUCH??

That sorry habit of showing a monthly total that decreases the moment it is added to the grand total is also very obvious, and you continue to shame yourselves before the entire world.

Bad… Bad Google!

The heady days of loving Google aren’t just over, Google is whipping them to death by their own hand.

Being a woman myself, I’ve noticed some interesting things in certain professions regarding the capacity of women to contribute to the industry.

I’ve had a few experiences that have suggested to me that under no circumstances will a woman be allowed to propose any kind of challenge to existing knowledge, no matter HOW logical it is. In fact, if a man (one who has a reputation in the industry, or one who is the rankest of careless anateurs, it matters not!) is mulling over two hypotheses, one of which is more logical than the other, and a woman suggests that this is the case, he will immediately take the weaker case, insult the woman for not having the brains to know which is actually true, and when he cannot support his contention with fact, will resort to name calling and personal insults, in a barage of verbal abuse designed only to drive her off. It usually works – at least on one hand. She leaves. But he is still an unthinking idiot.

Don’t get me wrong here – I know many men, who are actually shining examples of rational thought. So not every man does this. But enough do that the pattern is verifiable.

It seems that some men have not moved far from the Middle Ages in their thinking regarding women.

It is apparent that they still believe that since women’s brains are smaller in size, obviously they lack the ability to process certain types of information: Psychology, Mycology, Surgery, Mathematics, Engineering, the knowledge to obtain any PHD, and many other types of “higher” learning.

They assume that because a woman’s brain is smaller than a man’s, that the portion that is “missing” is the part that is responsible for actual thinking, especially the part that is responsible for NEW ideas!

Lest someone think this is actually a sustainable argument, women are smaller in size than men, overall, therefore do not require as large a brain to power the body. A man and a woman of equal size, will have an equal size brain, if all other considerations (genetics, nutrition, use of recreational drugs or medications, etc) are also equal. So the whole “men have bigger brains than women” is a false argument in the first place.

A cleric in Saudi Arabia was recently mocked and publicly humiliated for claiming that women should not drive cars because they possessed only half the intellect of men, which made them unsuited to controlling a vehicle. I’m sure some of the men whom I’ve encountered would agree – but most of the thinking world has moved beyond such unsupportable fabrications.

This attitude was widely held in earlier ages of this world. One would think that we could move beyond it, since standardized testing shows unequivocally that women are in fact better students than men, and that they score higher across the board in intellectual achievements.

Having been verbally abused numerous times by men who knew less than I did about the topic at hand, and who exclaimed in outrage that I must be wrong because other “experts” said I must (in the face of evidence to the contrary), I have run out of patience. I have left the scene, boys (and a few girls who cling to the boys but cannot stand on their own to support reality). I am NOT going to stand down just because you have insulted me. I’ll go somewhere else, where YOU are not, and continue my work. I’ll publish where you cannot ban me because I would not be intimidated by your abusive paranoia. And I’ll just continue to prove by evidence what you deny by reason of “he said so”.

What is really happening is nothing more than pure envy. There are still people in many industries that will “review” the work of another scientist or scholar, degrade it violently, and then turn around and publish it as their own work. This reprehensible practice has gone on since the dawn of time, by unprincipled “experts”. You will invariably find that there are more people succeeding at this practice who HAVE a reputation than there are who have not! This is kinda sad, since those are the people that the world thinks drive the industry – when in fact, they are hiring a chauffeur with a gun to his (or her) head, and claiming to have got there under their own steam. Theft is rife in the academic and research world. And this happens with the works of men, as well as the works of women – but a woman is more likely to be slammed and belittled in the process. They’ll deny her the PHD for her writing, and then publish it almost verbatim as their own brilliant idea.

For those men who have adopted the attitude that women have no place in the world of the sciences, I have only this to give you:

“And if a person [interpteted to mean “a man”, since women did not merit the distinction of personhood] lived a good life throughout the due course of his time, he would at the end return to his dwelling place in his companion star, to live a life of happiness that agreed with his character. But if he failed in this, he would be born a second time, now as a woman.” Attributed to Plato – [Needless Commentary: I womder if he thought a woman could ever live so as to aspire to becoming a man? If so, what a horrid after-life it would be – or if he thought there was no afterlife and only reincarnation, what a horrid place a “perfect” world would be, with only men to populate it!]

We actually had to have a RULE in our home (and for our yard), that you could not play with sticks. Cruel, I know! But it was NECESSARY!

Something about a stick, and a boy. Ok, so not just boys, if you have boys, and girls, the girls have this problem also.

Oh look! A stick!

(Picks up stick.)

No fair! He has a stick!

(Grabs other end of stick – notice the yard is full of sticks.)

(Brief wrestling in which both boys cry foul.)

CRACK!

Oh look! We have TWO sticks!

No fair! You have the bigger stick!

(Drops stick, grabs end of other kid’s stick.)

WHACK!

Where’d SHE get THAT stick?!

(Starts over, with all three kids.)

You see, if there is a stick, they HAVE to pick it up! And it is all down hill from there.

If you clear out ALL THE STICKS, they will find something that is LIKE a stick. And you can NEVER clear all of the things out, they will always find one.

They fight over them. They fight with them. They hit things with them. They break them off things, they break things with them. The only thing they do NOT do with them is clean them up after a storm and THROW THEM AWAY.

I have it on good authority that girls love sticks because they are ALWAYS the magic wand. You have to hit things with them. Hard. Or the spell will not stick.

There is NO safe game you can play with sticks. Trust me. My kids played ALL OF THE GAMES with sticks!

So we HAD to have the rule.

And they still played with sticks. Badly

THIS STORY and many more can be found on Amazon, for Kindle, in Laura’s storybook: A Little Romp Through Laura’s Storyland

Math. Pesky math. Somehow it always wins, in spite of the dogged persistence of some activists and politicians to get it to go away. History too. History is a constant annoyance to those who wish to promote their version of fantasy where things do exactly the opposite of what they actually do in reality.

Minimum wages are counterproductive in solving the problems they purport to solve. Increases in the minimum wages do not work either – in fact, a market driven economy will usually raise starting wages for many businesses long before the minimum wage is increased.

Since Wal-Mart and McDonalds seem to be the stereotypical businesses to bash where minimum wage is concerned, we will use them to represent all businesses. Because they all have to work on the same principles.

Wal-Mart does NOT in fact pay minimum wage, they typically pay at least a little more, and quite a bit more in some areas where there are employee shortages. But we will use Wal-Mart anyway, just because they will be affected along with everyone else.

WalMart occupies a specific niche in the retail world. To be able to keep their prices low, and still maintain a profit margin, they operate on low margins. Their profit margin is ALSO LOW, so don’t go around saying they have plenty to spare and they can absorb the cost of doubling their employee salaries, because they can’t. Their profit margin won’t cover that, the MATH does not add up, and in order for ANY business to stay OPERATING, the math HAS to work.

Cost increases of 25% across ALL areas of their operating expenses CANNOT be absorbed by a 1-2% profit margin. Yeah. Math. CAN’T HAPPEN!

One of the ways they keep prices low is to use loopholes in regulations to keep the cost of regulation lower. Part-time employment is one of the ways they do that, because the law requires benefits for full time employees, but not part time. (This concept applies to mandated benefits like Obamacare also.)

Fast Food and other minimum wage employers do the same thing. WalMart typically pays just a little higher than minimum wage for entry level employees – and everyone who has been there for a while GETS MORE (and they have to, or they won’t stay). In order to stay in business that is what they have to do. Seven years ago, they had more full time employees. The regulatory burden for employers increased at that time, along with a dramatic jump in health care benefit costs. Many of their stores dropped to part-time only at that time (previously most had a set amount of full time and part time positions per store).

There’s a trade-off in going to all part time – the cost of training employees increases dramatically, because there are both more employees to train, and because part time workers have a higher turnover rate – so the ONLY reason an employer will absorb that cost is when the cost of full time employees becomes so high that it is more cost effective to pay the cost of repeated training.

The cost of goods dramatically increases every time mandated increases in the cost of doing business are put in place also. It can’t NOT happen that way.

When the cost of hiring and paying workers increases, YOUR cost at the checkout GOES UP. (This is pretty basic math, by the way, but there are still people who are shocked by this.)

This is how business works – every time the government regulates a change that drives up the cost of doing business, the customers and the employees pay that price. Employers do not even TRY to absorb that cost, because they CANNOT and still stay in business.

The cost of the average full meal at a fast food restaurant will run approximately the same as the current minimum wage, or higher. They may have frugal deals that are lower, but the regular price runs on that rule. Every time the minimum wage increases, the cost of a full meal deal goes UP proportionately. Because the business does not have to absorb ONE cost increase, they have to absorb a cost increase in EVERY ASPECT of business.

They do not plan for the cost of the meal to keep lock step with minimum wage, it just does because that is what it COSTS. Once the affect of wage increases filter down through every layer (and it takes 1-2 years for the full effect of EVERY increase to be felt, which is why governments like to obscure it by incremental increases), the cost of your full fast food meal is predominantly dependent upon the cost of labor at all levels of production.

Stay with me here, because this is where liberals like to let their eyes glaze over and pretend this stuff does not matter. IT MATTERS… This is BASIC MATH, people!

When the cost of labor goes up, it goes up everywhere, for more than just minimum wage. It has to.

The bottom wage increases, and you HAVE to increase ALL THE OTHER wages also, because if you do not, it is NOT FAIR to employees who have worked three, five, and twenty years for your company. It is INHERENTLY UNFAIR to pay an entry level, unskilled worker (which is what minimum wage pays for, and ONLY what minimum wage pays for!) the same wage as someone who has skills, and work experience!

You have to increase ALL SALARIES.

And when the cost of the farmer’s food, seed, equipment, and employees goes up, he charges more for his crops (or he goes under – that happens a lot too, so you have to buy from someone who DID raise their prices), and the cost of transporting that food goes up, and the cost of trimming, washing, packaging it goes up, and the cost of warehousing it, labeling it, and distributing it goes up, and the cost of buying it in your local store does not just go up by the cost of THEIR employee raises, but by the cost of every other employee raise along the way because EVERY COST they have, goes UP.

Within 6 months, the affect of the raise in minimum wage is nullified by increased costs, they STILL cannot afford to live any better than they did two years before, but now they are in a higher income bracket, and may not qualify for some services that they qualified for previously. Within 2 years, the full effect of the increases are completed, and the worker is WORSE off than before!

Did you get that? Did you really understand this? Because if you did not, you are too ignorant to vote! This is critical to understand!

When the cost of minimum wage goes UP, the cost of groceries, utilities, transporation, medical care, housing, and EVERY OTHER COST for BASIC LIVING, goes UP, by AT LEAST the SAME PERCENTAGE, often MORE! So this new salary, that suddenly seems like so much, WON’T BUY ANY MORE THAN THE OLD ONE! It evaporates away under an onslaught of higher prices, and the person that the law was supposed to “help” still struggles just as much!

It is also VITAL that you understand, that the ONLY people making minimum wage, are people who have been on the job less than 6 months, and who have just started a new job that requires NO SKILLS!

Within 6 months, they are no longer making minimum wage. Within 1 year they can get a job somewhere that pays a $1 more per hour than where they are now. If they are smart, and gain SKILLS (either through work experience at a job that provides useful work experience), or through seeking after hours training, there is NO NEED for them to ever work another job that pays minimum wage! THEY control their OWN destiny and their OWN ability to GET OUT OF THE HOLE.

The only people who work minimum wage for more than 6 months of their life are those who REFUSE to better themselves, and are incapable of holding a job for more than 6 months! That is their CHOICE, and the world does not owe them a better rate of pay!

And that is why people who understand math, and people who can THINK rationally, oppose a minimum wage in the first place, and always argue against increases.

All it does is increase costs for everyone. Including YOU who voted for it!

Increases in minimum wage DOES cause a loss of sales for some businesses. Temporary for some, permanent for others.

Where people have a CHOICE, they switch to a lower cost option.

Where they have no choice, they either do without (if it is an optional expense), or find a way to cope if it is not.

So some businesses will lose revenue over it. Some will go out of business over the cost increases, ESPECIALLY when a minimum wage increase is only local, and buyers can go elsewhere to get what they want at a lower price.

Increases in minimum wages ALWAYS cause some job loss. Some of it will recover in time, some will not. So those people who are working minimum wage jobs not only face more of them being cut to part time (so the employer can save on benefit costs), they also face potential closure of their business, or lay-offs due to reduced customer demand for an overpriced product.

Here is the great irony in that….

The FIRST PEOPLE TO BE LAID OFF, are those who are paid MINIMUM WAGE! Because they are the MOST EXPENDABLE employees!

They are the employees who are most recently hired, who have the LEAST SKILLS.

Some businesses will lay off employees and downsize in reaction to minimum wage increases, in order to cut employment costs, but the majority don’t, because it is a dead end to do that unless your sales also decrease. The successful businesses do not lay off employees and downsize (other than making sure all employees are actually vital), because they understand that loss of employees means loss of revenue due to lower production. The only time you cut employees is when you want to reduce production, as a result of loss of sales. The big businesses will simply raise prices and adjust their equations across the board, and go on, as well as implementing other strategies such as higher percentages of part time employees and lower starting wages for businesses that USED to pay more than minimum wage.

Businesses that try to absorb the cost, go out of business. Universally. The costs are TOO BIG to be absorbed. Fewer Jobs. More hungry people. Way to go!

Minimum wage laws HURT EVERYBODY, but they hurt the people they claim to help MORE than they hurt anyone else. Any potential benefit is always so short lived as to be useless in the long term, and MOST businesses that understand MATH, will raise their prices right BEFORE the hikes go into effect, so there is INCREASED financial hardship before the wage increase even occurs.

BTW, history shows that everything stated here is correct. If minimum wages actually worked, the problems they are supposed to solve WOULD BE SOLVED! But instead as soon as the rate is raised, there is a general outcry to raise them again!

Do the math! There is no way the REAL math can be interpreted to support minimum wage increases.

The interpretation can be rather subjective. I find that self-sufficiency often conflicts with the popular notion of “minimalism”.

How can I preserve my own food without the proper tools? Those tools take space.

How can I garden without my shovel and rake? I have learned I do not need more than a shovel, rake, and wheelbarrow, but I DO need those! A hoe, and a trowel are handy also. And the containers for the container garden. and the greenhouse. I’ve already exceeded the “minimalist’s” idea of minimalism, though my list for gardening, even a large garden, is QUITE a bit smaller than that of other people I know, who cannot manage to garden without a tiller, hoe, and other specialized equipment. I also store some seeds year to year, and must have a spot to put them, often in the fridge, which is too small for this in a tiny home.

If I have livestock, I must have buckets and a storage area, and coops and hutches and shelters. I need a cupboard in the house for the assorted vet supplies and herbals for the animals. And I MUST have livestock, my health is so much better when I do.

If I make my own clothing, or mend damaged clothing, a sewing machine is required, along with a mending kit, and fabric, thread, and notions. I do needle work, so my crochet hooks, knitting needles, yarn, crochet thread, pattern books, and storage baskets are necessary. They are necessary for wintry evenings when we catch up on hand work, and for fall when we are preparing for Christmas, and for the rest of the year during those times when I MUST rest, but do not wish to sit idly doing nothing.

My husband’s woodworking tools and automotive repair tools are essential to our ability to provide for ourselves, along with tools and supplies for building cages, fences, and repairing greenhouse and shelter structures. We can live far more frugally when we have supplies of lumber, wire, screws, and various other bits and pieces, bought in a time of our choosing, rather than wherever we happen to be able to get to in an emergency.

Our self-defense equipment and supplies are needed, as well as hunting and butchering equipment and supplies, even though we go pretty basic, these things still take quite a bit of space.

Our library is also an essential element. We have a good library of DVDs, for uplifting entertainment which helps us both unwind and relax, and which helps boost us emotionally, especially in the winter when evenings are long, and there is stuff to do with our hands while we watch something we enjoy. We used to have a large library of books, but we no longer have time for recreational reading (I can watch a story and crochet at the same time, I can’t do that with a book), and though I LOVE reading, it seems the only books we can justify now are instructional books. We have a fairly good increasing collection of DIY and animal husbandry books (we once had a large library of this type, but it was lost in a malicious disaster). The library requires shelves, and a place to put it (around the walls of the house if nothing else).

And then there is the food storage… There will NEVER be enough room for that, nor enough jars, no matter how many we acquire! The food storage that allows us to buy food on sale, and preserve it so we don’t have to pay high prices for everything. The food storage that allows me to preserve foods that are healthy, that I can fix in a matter of minutes, so we do not have to buy commercial quick-fix. And the food storage that sees us through the economic vagaries of the current unpredictable national political climate, with a minimum of hardship. The shelves for jars, the freezer, and the extra fridge that allow us to harvest from our garden, or accept extra from the gardens of family and friends, or take advantage of a sale on produce, or raise our own animals and have a way to store them after butchering, so we are not dependent upon the prices and production methods that are commercially popular, but not so good for the bodies in our household. The shelves to hold the empty jars until they are filled again, and the space to put the dehydrator, the canner, the juicer, the slicer, the grinder, the food mill, and the buckets, bowls, and pots that are required for the processing of the food.

The newspapers we store for cage liners, the boxes we save for shipping product, the shelves and bins for growing fodder or microgreens, the place to put the herbs that we grow indoors, and a place to put the plant starts when spring arrives.

Self-sufficiency takes space, and organization of a large body of belongings. There is no way you CAN do it on a minimalist’s philosophy, fretting over every square inch of space that it takes, fussing over every single object that it requires. Every single person who strives to be self sufficient is constantly battling an insufficiency of space, trying to fit in just one more shelf unit, just one more cupboard, just one more storage bin, rearranging furniture and storage rooms one more time, to see whether there is an un-thought-of arrangement that will allow them to fit just one more piece of equipment into the room. They expand their home, or a kid moves out, and they shout with glee over the spare room (while grieving the expense, or the absence of the child), and within moments of getting to work arranging the extra space, they are already wondering how to fit it all in, and discouraged that there STILL is not enough room! They dream of having a dedicated room for crafts, or canning, or a room large enough to hold ALL THE JARS, or a shop that is large enough for the projects they really want to do. And they never get it.

I could never live “tiny”. Not that I am unwilling to live with little space, I’ve done that many times. But I did so in want. And I did so when our situation required dependency. I cannot do it with full self-sufficiency.

Indeed, a tiny home, by its nature, demands dependency upon frequent shopping, frequent laundry, and almost NO DIY. It works for someone in a city who does not mind shopping every other day, and who does not need nor expect to do anything for themselves that requires tools, equipment, or supplies on hand.

Once you pursue real self-sufficiency though, more space is required, even if it is just a lean-to out back. Pioneers had small cabins, but they also had barns to store the equipment required for daily production. I have a small juicer, they had a large cider press. I can make soap in the kitchen, they did it in the yard, with a large cauldron that was stored in the barn. However you do it, you have to put the supplies SOMEWHERE.

It is a great temporary option to get started, to keep costs down – If you DO keep them down – by minimizing square footage. But most tiny homes aren’t a significant savings either, you can generally find a larger home for far less, due to the expense of miniaturized elements in the home.

If that is your dream, good on you. But if your dream is to homestead, and be truly self-sufficient, a tiny home is not going to be sufficient to get very far, unless you have a lot of additional storage. And then you aren’t REALLY living tiny. You are just doing the VISIBLE part of your living in a tiny environment.

If you have a small house, and a second house with a kitchen and laundry, and a third storage shed to hold all the preservation equipment, and a fourth heated building to hold the food storage, and a fifth shed to hold the rest of the stuff that doesn’t fit, you aren’t really living tiny! You are just living in five houses instead of one!

I already know I am doomed to spend the rest of my life constantly questioning what I can throw out, what I truly need and don’t need, and simultaneously lamenting the lack of space to put the things I DO need to live the life I want to live.

Tiny is cute.

But for us, it just is NOT practical for a long term solution.