The Job Trap

The Job TrapMost of us need to have jobs in order to survive. A few lucky people are born into the world with inherited wealth, or perhaps they win the lottery. But the rest of us need to eke out a living.For most of us, this means working for someone else. And this is not a bad thing in and of itself. Con artists and fraudsters love to prey upon the working man who has dreams of "being his own boss" or "running his own business"...

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Referral Websites - A Total Rip-Off and Waste of Time

Referral Websites - A Total Rip-Off and a Waste of Time.As I noted in my "Scams" article, the first three hits in Google are basically a waste of time, if not a total rip-off.Many people are skeptical that the Internet can be a good source of information, services, or goods, and they have plenty of reason to think this. For every decent and honest merchant on the Internet, there are probably 5 that are just horrible, if not criminal.However,...

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Emotional Vampires

An Emotional Vampire can suck the life out of you by draining you emotionally. This topic is related to my "They're BAITING You!" article, and also relates to the concept of conservation of emotional energy, touched upon in my previous...

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Conspiracy Theories & Other Time-Wasters

 How does believing in a conspiracy theory improve your life?  It doesn't. It just makes you paranoid, unhappy, and unpopular. You may have noticed a theme in my posts. I don't put up with a lot of nonsense. Take your tax...

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Funny Money

I have mentioned before how the ready availability of Student Loans in the last two decades has caused college tuition to skyrocket.The theory is simple. If a student can sign some papers and get "free" money, then the cost of college is no longer an issue."But," you say, "They have to pay that back!"True enough, but the problem with students, is that they view the person paying it back as some old guy that isn't them. Since student...

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The DEATH of Retail

Circuit City is liquidating, finally. Linens 'n Things is no more. Retailers are complaining that the market is "down" and look forward to an uptick in sales in the future.I hate to break it to them, but this shift in retail sales will likely be a permanent thing. Our population is aging, and spending less. The Internet makes price shopping a snap (or a click, anyway). Big-box discount retailers like Wal-Mart and the shopping...

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Understanding Health Insurance

The Health Insurance system in America is a mess, no doubt about that. But the reasons why Health Insurance is so screwed up is not the reasons you may think. Everyone wants to blame "greedy health insurance companies" or "greedy doctors" or "greedy malpractice attorneys" but no one thinks about the other player in this game - greedy patients.Patients, unfortunately, bitch and gripe about how high their premiums are, or how unobtainable...

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