Purchasing Car Quotes

There's nothing wild about me. I'm a solid middle-aged man." "Except that once a month you turn into a wolf and go tearing around slaughtering things," Clary said. "It could be worse," Luke said. "Men my age have been known to purchase expensive sports cars and sleep with supermodels.

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?

Now, before I spend money I ask myself one question: Is this worth my freedom? Like: Is this coffee worth two dollars of my freedom? Is this shirt worth thirty dollars of my freedom? Is this car worth thirty thousand dollars of my freedom? In other words, am I going to get more value from the thing I’m about to purchase, or am I going to get more value from my freedom?

When I was a small boy, I used to play with toy cars and dream about the day I could own a real one. Many people still play with their cars today. They are in their 20s, 40s, maybe even 70s, but they still behave like little children when it comes to purchasing an automobile. There is a simple law at work in the universe: if it has a motor, it’s going down in value.

There are moments in every relationship that define when two people start to fall in love. A first glance A first smile A first kiss A first fall… (I remove the Darth Vader house shoes from my satchel and look down at them.) You were wearing these during one of those moments. One of the moments I first started to fall in love with you. The way you gave me butterflies that morning Had absolutely nothing to do with anyone else, and everything to do with you. I was falling in love with you that morning because of you. (I take the next item out of the satchel. When I pull it out and look up, she brings her hands to her mouth in shock.) This ugly little gnome With his smug little grin… He's the reason I had an excuse to invite you into my house. Into my life. You took a lot of aggression out on him over those next few months. I would watch from my window as you would kick him over every time you walked by him. Poor little guy. You were so tenacious. That feisty, aggressive, strong-willed side of you…. The side of you that refused to take crap from this concrete gnome? The side of you that refused to take crap from me? I fell in love with that side of you because of you. (I set the gnome down on the stage and grab the CD) This is your favorite CD ‘Layken’s shit.’ Although now I know you intended for shit to be possessive, rather than descriptive. The banjo started playing through the speakers of your car and I immediately recognized my favorite band. Then when I realized it was your favorite band, too? The fact that these same lyrics inspired both of us? I fell in love with that about you. That had absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. I fell in love with that about you because of you. (I take a slip of paper out of the satchel and hold it up. When I look at her, I see Eddie slide her a napkin. I can’t tell from up here, but that can only mean she’s crying.) This is a receipt I kept. Only because the item I purchased that night was on the verge of ridiculous. Chocolate milk on the rocks? Who orders that? You were different, and you didn’t care. You were being you. A piece of me fell in love with you at that moment, because of you. This? (I hold up another sheet of paper.) This I didn’t really like so much. It’s the poem you wrote about me. The one you titled 'mean?' I don’t think I ever told you… but you made a zero. And then I kept it to remind myself of all the things I never want to be to you. (I pull her shirt from my bag. When I hold it into the light, I sigh into the microphone.) This is that ugly shirt you wear. It doesn’t really have anything to do with why I fell in love with you. I just saw it at your house and thought I’d steal it.

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?

There is an inverse relationship between the time spent purchasing luxury items such as cars and clothes and the time spent planning one’s financial future.

THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ITINERANTS, drifters, hobos, restless souls. But now, in the second millennium, a new kind of wandering tribe is emerging. People who never imagined being nomads are hitting the road. They’re giving up traditional houses and apartments to live in what some call “wheel estate”—vans, secondhand RVs, school buses, pickup campers, travel trailers, and plain old sedans. They are driving away from the impossible choices that face what used to be the middle class. Decisions like: Would you rather have food or dental work? Pay your mortgage or your electric bill? Make a car payment or buy medicine? Cover rent or student loans? Purchase warm clothes or gas for your commute? For many the answer seemed radical at first. You can’t give yourself a raise, but what about cutting your biggest expense? Trading a stick-and-brick domicile for life on wheels?

At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way - and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.

Would you rather have food or dental work? Pay your mortgage or your electric bill? Make a car payment or buy medicine? Cover rent or student loans? Purchase warm clothes or gas for your commute?

Though it was mid-July, the morning was brisk, the sky a gray cotton of clouds, and Puget Sound a steely, cold blue. Most of Seattle grumbled, worn with winterish weather, impatient for the elusive summer sun. With umbrellas tucked away in the trunks of cars, sunglasses lost and separated from their original purchasers, the Pacific Northwest was a bastion of misty air and pale, complaining residents.

Money is finite. There is not an infinite supply. That’s something a lot of people have trouble remembering these days. In a time when crazy mortgages, car loans, student loans, and credit cards make you believe anyone can purchase anything at any time with no consequences, it’s easy to forget that money has limits.

Being swayed by people playing a different game can also throw off how you think you’re supposed to spend your money. So much consumer spending, particularly in developed countries, is socially driven: subtly influenced by people you admire, and done because you subtly want people to admire you. But while we can see how much money other people spend on cars, homes, clothes, and vacations, we don’t get to see their goals, worries, and aspirations. A young lawyer aiming to be a partner at a prestigious law firm might need to maintain an appearance that I, a writer who can work in sweatpants, have no need for. But when his purchases set my own expectations, I’m wandering down a path of potential disappointment because I’m spending the money without the career boost he’s getting. We might not even have different styles. We’re just playing a different game. It took me years to figure this out. A takeaway here is that few things matter more with money than understanding your own time horizon and not being persuaded by the actions and behaviors of people playing different games than you are.

For folks who have that casual-dude energy coursing through their bloodstream, that's great. But gays should not grow up alienated just for us to alienate each other. It's too predictable, like any other cycle of abuse. Plus, the conformist, competitive notion that by "toning down" we are "growing up" ultimately blunts the radical edge of what it is to be queer; it truncates our colorful journey of identity. Said another way, it's like living in West Hollywood and working a gay job by day and working it in the gay nightlife, wearing delicate shiny shirts picked from up the gay dry cleaners, yet coquettishly left unbuttoned to reveal the pec implants purchased from a gay surgeon and shown off by prancing around the gay-owned-and-operated theater hopped up on gay health clinic steroids and wheat grass purchased from the friendly gay boy who's new to the city, and impressed by the monstrous SUV purchased from a gay car dealership with its rainbow-striped bumper sticker that says "Celebrate Diversity." Then logging on to the local Gay.com listings and describing yourself as "straight-acting." Let me make myself clear. This is not a campaign for everyone to be like me. That'd be a total yawn. Instead, this narrative is about praise for the prancy boys. Granted, there's undecided gender-fucks, dagger dykes, faux-mos, po-mos, FTMs, fisting-top daddies, and lezzie looners who also need props for broadening the sexual spectrum, but they're telling their own stories. The Cliff's Notes of me and mine are this: the only moments I feel alive are when I'm just being myself - not some stiff-necked temp masquerading as normal in the workplace, not some insecure gay boy aspiring to be an overpumped circuit queen, not some comic book version of swank WeHo living. If that's considered a political act in the homogenized world of twenty-first century homosexuals, then so be it. — excerpt of "Praise For The Prancy Boys," by Clint Catalyst appears in first edition (ISBN # 1-932360-56-5)

We have discussed the new-car purchase in its various forms for the last several pages. No, you can’t afford a new car unless you are a millionaire and can, therefore, afford to lose thousands of dollars, all in the name of the neat new-car smell. A good used car that is less than three years old is as reliable or more reliable than a new car. A new $28,000 car will lose about $17,000 of value in the first four years you own it. That is almost $100 per week in lost value. To understand what I’m talking about, open your window on your way to work once a week and throw out a $100 bill.

America, how’s your marriage? Your two-hundred-fifty-year-old promise to stay together in sickness and in health? First thirteen states, then more and more, until fifty of you had taken the vow. Like so many marriages, I know, it was not for love; I know it was for tax reasons, but soon you all found yourselves financially entwined, with shared debts and land purchases and grandiose visions of the future, yet somehow, from the beginning, essentially at odds. Ancient grudges. That split you had—that still stings, doesn’t it? Who betrayed whom, in the end? I hear you tried getting sober. That didn’t last, did it? So how’s it going, America? Do you ever dream of each being on your own again? Never having to be part of someone else’s family squabble? Never having to share a penny? Never having to bear with someone else’s gun hobby, or car obsession, or nutrition craze? Tell me honestly, because I have contemplated marriage and wonder: If it can’t work for you, can it work for any of us?

Money in hand, I glanced up to find Glenn eyeing a rack of stuffed rats. As the salesman rang up my purchase, Glenn leaned close and, still staring at the rats, whispered, “What are those used for?” “I have no idea.” I got my receipt and jammed everything in my bag… Glenn surprised me by opening the car door for me, and as I settled in the seat, he leaned against the frame of the open window. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and strode inside. He was out in a moment with a small white bag. I watched him cross in front of the car—wondering. Timing himself between the traffic, he opened the door and slid in behind the wheel. “Well?” I asked as he set the package between us. “What did you get?” Glenn started the car and pulled out into traffic. “A stuffed rat.” “Oh,” I said, surprised. What the devil was he going to do with it? Even I didn’t know what it was for. I was dying to ask all the way to the FIB building but managed to keep my mouth shut even as we slipped into the cold shade of their underground parking.

On the crowded subway car back to Brooklyn afterwards, the youngest of my three female companions had her bottom groped by a man about Strauss-Kahn’s age. At first, she thought he had simply bumped into her. That was before she felt her buttock being cupped and said something to me, as young women often do, tentatively, quietly, as though it were perhaps not happening or perhaps not quite a problem. Finally, she glared at him and told him to stop. I was reminded of a moment when I was an impoverished seventeen-year-old living in Paris and some geezer grabbed my ass. It was perhaps my most American moment in France, then the land of a thousand disdainful gropers; American because I was carrying three grapefruits, a precious purchase from my small collection of funds, and I threw those grapefruits, one after another, like baseballs at the creep and had the satisfaction of watching him scuttle into the night. His action, like so much sexual violence against women, was undoubtedly meant to be a reminder that this world was not mine, that my rights -- my liberté, egalité, sororité, if you will -- didn’t matter. Except that I had sent him running in a barrage of fruit.

Hodges could remember buying his first new car and letting the guy’s post-sales tutorial wash over him—uh-huh, yep, right, gotcha—just anxious to get his new purchase out on the road, to dig the rattle-free ride and inhale that incomparable new-car smell, which to the buyer is the aroma of money well spent.

It was speculated that a car manufacturing company like Ford, or a space or aircraft project like NASA’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory Project, or millionaires like the Rockefellers or Howard Hughes were secretly purchasing the land. One account even suggested the Mafia was buying land to launder ill-gotten gains or dump bodies in the swamps. However,

Your life is not meant to be used in exchange for mundane things like houses and cars but to purchase greatness.

What are the true reasons why the purchaser is planning to spend his money on a new car instead of a piano? Because he has decided that he wants the commodity called locomotion more than he wants the commodity called music? Not altogether. He buys a car, because it is at the moment the group custom to buy cars. The modern propagandist therefore sets to work to create circumstances which will modify that custom . . . He will endeavor to develop public acceptance of the idea of a music room in the home. This he may do, for example, by organizing an exhibition of period music rooms designed by well-known decorators who themselves exert an influence on the buying groups . . . Then, in order to create dramatic interest in the exhibit, he stages an event or ceremony. To this ceremony key people, persons known to influence the buying habits of the public, such as a famous violinist, a popular artist, and a society leader, are invited. These key persons affect other groups, lifting the idea of the music room to a place in the public consciousness which it did not have before. The juxtaposition of these leaders, and the idea which they are dramatizing, are then projected to the wider public through various publicity channels . . . The music room will be accepted because it has been made the thing. And the man or woman who has a music room, or has arranged a corner of the parlor as a musical corner, will naturally think of buying a piano. It will come to him as his own idea.

It's easy to imagine that, in the future, telepathy and telekinesis will be the norm; we will interact with machines by sheer thought. Our mind will be able to turn on the lights, activate the internet, dictate letters, play video games, communicate with friends, call for a car, purchase merchandise, conjure any movie-all just by thinking. Astronauts of the future may use the power of their minds to pilot their spaceships or explore distant planets. Cities may rise from the desert of Mars, all due to master builders who mentally control the work of robots.

There’s an implication for influence: persuaders would be wise to match the System 1 versus 2 orientation of any appeal to the corresponding orientation of the recipient. Thus, if you are considering a car purchase primarily from the standpoint of its emotionally relevant features (attractive looks and exhilarating acceleration), a salesperson would be well advised to convince you by using feelings-related arguments.

Or consider the fact that after people buy a new car, they often love to read advertisements that speak enthusiastically about the same car that they have just obtained. Those advertisements tend to be comforting because they confirm the wisdom of the decision to purchase that particular car. If you are a member of a particular political party or have strong convictions, you might want support, reinforcement, and ammunition, not criticism.

when you are about to make a big purchase or an important decision—which car or computer to buy, whether to undergo plastic surgery, or whether to sign up for a costly self-help program—don’t ask someone who has just done it.

The war against materialism in our hearts is exactly that: a war. It is a constant battle to resist the temptation to have more luxuries, to acquire more stuff, and to live more comfortably. It requires strong and steady resolve to live out the gospel in the middle of an American dream that indentifies success as moving up the ladder, getting the bigger house, purchasing the nicer car, buying the better clothes, eating the finer food, and acquiring more things.

Consider the level of car-purchasing knowledge Dr. South has recently acquired that will never pay capital gains or real dividends or enhance the productivity of his business. He now has knowledge about every Porsche dealer within a four hundred-mile radius of his home. Dr. South also can tell you immediately the dealer’s cost on nearly every Porsche model, the cost of options and accessories, and the performance characteristics of most models. It takes much time and effort to acquire such information. Dr.

But the truth is that wealth is what you don’t see. Wealth is the nice cars not purchased. The diamonds not bought. The watches not worn, the clothes forgone and the first-class upgrade declined. Wealth is financial assets that haven’t yet been converted into the stuff you see.

After the opposition had failed to negotiate us into a compromise, it turned to subtler means for blocking the protest; namely, to conquer by dividing. False rumors were spread concerning the leaders of the movement. Negro workers were told by their white employers that their leaders were only concerned with making money out of the movement. Others were told that the Negro leaders rode big cars while they walked. During this period the rumor was spread that I had purchased a brand new Cadillac for myself and a Buick station wagon for my wife. Of course none of this was true.

When bicycling, you’re simply less likely to make unplanned purchases, especially large ones. Shopping, especially for bulky items, must be more carefully planned and premeditated—you’ll want to do it all at once, and either bringing your trailer or renting or borrowing a car for an afternoon.

He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s flashlight. He stands at the counter of a shop where owners of Japanese cars come to purchase white cables. Ove eyes the sales assistant for a long time before shaking a medium-sized white box at him.

Some people save money for a downpayment on a house, or a new car, or for retirement. That’s great, of course. But saving does not require a goal of purchasing something specific. You can save just for saving’s sake. And indeed you should. Only saving for a specific goal makes sense in a predictable world. But ours isn’t. Saving is a hedge against life’s inevitable ability to surprise the hell out of you at the worst possible moment. Savings without a spending goal gives you options and flexibility, the ability to wait and the opportunity to pounce. It gives you time to think. It lets you change course on your own terms. Every bit of savings is like taking a point in the future that would have been owned by someone else and giving it back to yourself.

a person who is free to make a $20,000 purchase of a car as a customer, might not be free to buy an office chair for $500 as an employee. Little wonder that big companies grow more slowly than small ones (firms whose chief executives attend the annual World Economic Forum schmooze-fest in Davos tend to underperform the stock market), and big public bodies have worse reputations than small ones.

The best car is not the one that turns the most heads, but the one you have to worry about the least. The best clothes are the ones that are the most comfortable, that require you to spend the least amount of time shopping—regardless of what the magazines say. The best house for you is the one that feels the most like home. Don’t use your money to purchase loneliness, or headaches, or status anxiety.

Agape doesn’t necessarily involve high heroics, and it certainly doesn’t involve syrupy sentiment. It’s practical. It makes a difference. And it matters. It’s evident when someone cooks a nutritious meal for his children after an exhausting day at work. It’s seen when a mother takes on three or more jobs to do what it takes to keep her family clothed, housed, and fed. It’s donating blood on a regular basis to the local blood bank. It’s risking looking un-cool, and perhaps far more than that, by interrupting people as they’re telling a racist or anti-gay joke. It’s when someone decides to use the year end bonus that he received from his employer to repair the car of the struggling single mother down the street, or purchase a burial plot for someone without means, instead of buying that boat or motorcycle he’s been wanting.

I say, it sounds like some dangerous psychotic killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic. My boss just looks at me. The guy, I say, is probably at home every night with a little rattail file, filing a cross into the tip of every one of his rounds. This way, when he shows up to work one morning and pumps a round into his nagging, ineffectual, petty, whining, butt-sucking, candy-ass boss, that one round will split along the filed grooves and spread open the way a dumdum bullet flowers inside you to blow a bushel load of your stinking guts out through your spine. Picture your gut chakra opening in a slow-motion explosion of sausage-casing small intestine. My boss takes the paper out from under my nose. Go ahead, I say, read some more. No really, I say, it sounds fascinating. The work of a totally diseased mind. And I smile. The little butthole-looking edges of the hole in my cheek are the same blue-black as a dog’s gums. The skin stretched tight across the swelling around my eyes feels varnished. My boss just looks at me. Let me help you, I say. I say, the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time. My boss looks at the rules and then looks at me. I say, the fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts in the fight. My boss looks at the rules and looks at me. Maybe, I say, this totally diseased fuck would use an Eagle Apache carbine because an Apache takes a thirty-shot mag and only weighs nine pounds. The Armalite only takes a five-round magazine. With thirty shots, our totally fucked hero could go the length of mahogany row and take out every vice-president with a cartridge left over for each director. Tyler’s words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person. I just look at my boss. My boss has blue, blue, pale cornflower blue eyes. The J and R 68 semiautomatic carbine also takes a thirty-shot mag, and it only weighs seven pounds. My boss just looks at me. It’s scary, I say. This is probably somebody he’s known for years. Probably this guy knows all about him, where he lives, and where his wife works and his kids go to school. This is exhausting, and all of a sudden very, very boring. And why does Tyler need ten copies of the fight club rules? What I don’t have to say is I know about the leather interiors that cause birth defects. I know about the counterfeit brake linings that looked good enough to pass the purchasing agent, but fail after two thousand miles. I know about the air-conditioning rheostat that gets so hot it sets fire to the maps in your glove compartment. I know how many people burn alive because of fuel-injector flashback. I’ve seen people’s legs cut off at the knee when turbochargers start exploding and send their vanes through the firewall and into the passenger compartment. I’ve been out in the field and seen the burned-up cars and seen the reports where CAUSE OF FAILURE is recorded as "unknown.” No, I say, the paper’s not mine. I take the paper between two fingers and jerk it out of his hand. The edge must slice his thumb because his hand flies to his mouth, and he’s sucking hard, eyes wide open. I crumble the paper into a ball and toss it into the trash can next to my desk. Maybe, I say, you shouldn’t be bringing me every little piece of trash you pick up.

human being. And what if you were one of the millions of human beings who will have no place in the automated life that will soon be reality? Cars, trucks, buses, trains will drive themselves. Stores and supermarkets will use smart tracking for your purchases. Your home will use repair diagnostics. Your fridge will order its own food. Bots will take care of the housework and entertain your children. What will you do all day?

Next an Intimacy Consultant named Anita arrived. When Anita walked in she looked very studious. However, when she started to set up I would have never guessed that she did this for a living. First came all types of lingerie; see through, lacy, racy, edible, and even costumes. "Okay," Phoebe cleared her throat. "The idea here is to purchase things for our dear Lilli to wear or use on her honeymoon." Phoebe giggled and I scowled at her. "Don’t waste your money," I spat quickly, earning a laugh from Maggie and Viola. "Oh, honey, if Aidan is anything like his uncle then you will definitely want to get yourself some." "Mom," Maggie yelled and covered her ears. We all burst into laughter. "I’m just saying," Viola shrugged. "Your father is quite—" "Seriously? Seriously, mom? No…Ew, ew, ew!" Maggie screamed as she left the room. "God, please let my car get here soon!

What are the true reasons why the purchaser is planning to spend his money on a new car instead of a piano? Because he has decided that he wants the commodity called locomotion more than he wants the commodity called music? Not altogether. He buys a car, because it is at the moment the group custom to buy cars. The modern propagandist therefore sets to work to create circumstances which will modify that custom. He appeals perhaps to the home instinct which is fundamental. He will endeavor to develop public acceptance of the idea of a music room in the home. This he may do, for example, by organizing an exhibition . . . key people, persons known to influence the buying habits of the public, such as a famous violinist, a popular artist, and a society leader, are invited. These key persons affect other groups, lifting the idea of the music room to a place in the public consciousness which it did not have before. The juxtaposition of these leaders, and the idea which they are dramatizing, are then projected to the wider public through various publicity channels . . . The music room will be accepted because it has been made the thing. And the man or woman who has a music room, or has arranged a corner of the parlor as a musical corner, will naturally think of buying a piano. It will come to him as his own idea.

The greater the risk or investment, the more concerns and the deeper they will be. This is completely natural. Aren’t you especially concerned and in need of greater assurances when you make a major purchase, like buying a house or car? Don’t you want to be sure, before you commit to making a big investment, that it’s going to work for you, that you haven’t overlooked something, and that you aren’t going to be surprised, embarrassed, or dismayed down the line?

Know the Competition I had a wonderful experience purchasing a luxury car. I was looking at three different brands. I have owned all three at different times in my life so I knew each fairly well. I had studied the market and knew most of the features of the competing models. However, this particular sales guy knew every detail about every car I was considering and so served me wonderfully in my purchase. He never once used his knowledge to speak poorly of the competition. On the contrary, he told me where each model was better than the car I was considering. Wow. I found myself starting to trust this guy because he was being honest and transparent. He stood firm that his car was the car I should buy because of its particular features and quality, but he brought great information about his competitors to the discussion. It was a really classy way to handle a sales role. A really sad part of my wonderful car purchase was that I was on a competitor’s lot the next day and the sales guy there knew less about the car he was selling than my guy knew about the same car. In

It’s easy to imagine that, in the future, telepathy and telekinesis will be the norm; we will interact with machines by sheer thought. Our mind will be able to turn on the lights, activate the internet, dictate letters, play video games, communicate with friends, call for a car, purchase merchandise, conjure any movie—all just by thinking. Astronauts of the future may use the power of their minds to pilot their spaceships or explore distant planets. Cities may rise from the deserts of Mars, all due to master builders who mentally control the

There were, inevitably, children’s clothing stores, furniture shops still offering bedroom sets by layaway, and dollar stores whose awnings teemed with suspended inflatable dolls, beach chairs, laundry carts, and other impulse purchases a mom might make on a Saturday afternoon, exhausted by errand running with her kids. There was the sneaker store where Olga used to buy her cute kicks, the fruit store Prieto had worked at in high school, the little storefront that sold the kind of old-lady bras Abuelita used to wear. On the sidewalks, the Mexican women began to set up their snack stands. Mango with lime and chili on this corner, tamales on that. Until the Mexicans had come to Sunset Park, Olga had never tried any of this food, and now she always tried to leave a little room to grab a snack on her way home. Despite the relatively early hour, most of the shops were open, music blasting into the streets, granting the avenue the aura of a party. In a few more hours, cars with their stereos pumping, teens with boom boxes en route to the neighborhood’s public pool, and laughing children darting in front of their mothers would add to the cacophony that Olga had grown to think of as the sound of a Saturday.

The Endowed Progress Effect Punch cards are often used by retailers to encourage repeat business. With each purchase, customers get closer to receiving a free product or service. These cards are typically awarded empty and in effect, customers start at zero percent complete. What would happen if retailers handed customers punch cards with punches already given? Would people be more likely to take action if they had already made some progress? An experiment sought to answer this very question.[lxvi] Two groups of customers were given punch cards awarding a free car wash once the cards were fully punched. One group was given a blank punch card with 8 squares and the other given a punch card with 10 squares but with two free punches. Both groups still had to purchase 8 car washes to receive a free wash; however, the second group of customers — those that were given two free punches — had a staggering 82 percent higher completion rate. The study demonstrates the endowed progress effect, a phenomenon that increases motivation as people believe they are nearing a goal. Sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook utilize this heuristic to encourage people to divulge more information about themselves when completing their online profiles. On LinkedIn, every user starts with some semblance of progress (figure 19). The next step is to “Improve Your Profile Strength” by supplying additional information.

And then one day everything changed; the world shifted on its axis, our consciousness evolved. Instead of making their purchase deci- sions based solely on price, people became willing to pay more for sustainable or organic products. They no longer wanted their meat mass-produced; they wanted grass-fed beef from a local farmer. Rather than just a good sweat from their exercise, they also wanted mindfulness, so they took up SoulCycle, yoga, or meditation. And rather than settling down to buy their dream home and build their 401k, they spent their resources searching out experiences they could share and cherish more than they would another purse or car. Above all else, they wouldn’t accept the status quo. Instead of working in secure yet unfulfilling jobs, they wanted to create an existence that reflected their innermost desires and beliefs. And they did, in record numbers.

crimes at Ravensbrück and her early release, complete with German postage. Three maps, a list of approved gas stations at which to purchase fuel, and detailed travel instructions. A note apologizing for only being able to obtain one set of travel papers, and a whole package of Fig Newton cookies. I tossed the box in my suitcase and clicked the locks. Pietrik stirred in the next room. I froze for a second. Should I leave a note? I scribbled a quick goodbye on the paper from Caroline’s package and made my way down the stairs to the old turquoise car Papa loaned me now and then, the one Pietrik had kept alive for years. As Papa said, that car had more rust on it than paint, but it got us wherever we needed to go. At first, I fretted as I drove. What if it really was Herta? Would she hurt me? Would I hurt her? My head cleared a bit once I was under way, one of the few drivers on the road that early. I spread a map and the

During the year we interviewed him, Dr. South spent more than $70,000 for his most recent motor vehicle purchase, related sales tax, and insurance. Yet for the same period, how much did he place in his pension plan? About $5,700! In other words, only about $1 in every $125 of his income was set aside for retirement. The amount of time Dr. South took to find the best deal on his car was also counterproductive. We estimated that it took him more than sixty hours to study, negotiate, and purchase his Porsche. How much time and effort does it take someone to place money in a pension plan? A small fraction of this time and energy. It is easy for Dr. South to say he wants to accumulate wealth, but his actions speak much louder than his words. Perhaps that explains why he has lost a considerable amount of wealth through imprudent investing. Investing when one has little or no intellectual basis for one’s decisions often translates into major losses. T

Even as a kid, I’d lie when people asked if I attended church regularly. According to Gallup, I wasn’t alone in feeling that pressure. The juxtaposition is jarring: Religious institutions remain a positive force in people’s lives, but in a part of the country slammed by the decline of manufacturing, joblessness, addiction, and broken homes, church attendance has fallen off. Dad’s church offered something desperately needed by people like me. For alcoholics, it gave them a community of support and a sense that they weren’t fighting addiction alone. For expectant mothers, it offered a free home with job training and parenting classes. When someone needed a job, church friends could either provide one or make introductions. When Dad faced financial troubles, his church banded together and purchased a used car for the family. In the broken world I saw around me—and for the people struggling in that world—religion offered tangible assistance to keep the faithful on track.

This is your opportunity! The Zed, shine your eyes! They call it a big-big name, evaluation consulting, but it is not difficult. You undervalue the properties and make sure it looks as if you are following due process. You acquire the property, sell off half to pay your purchase price, and you are in business! You’ll register your own company. Next thing, you’ll build a house in Lekki and buy some cars and ask our hometown to give you some titles and your friends to put congratulatory messages in the newspapers for you and before you know, any bank you walk into, they will want to package a loan immediately and give it to you, because they think you no longer need the money! And after you register your own company, you must find a white man. Find one of your white friends in England. Tell everybody he is your General Manager. You will see how doors will open for you because you have an oyinbo General Manager. Even Chief has some white men that he brings in for show when he needs them. That is how Nigeria works. I’m telling you.

Provincetown is by nature a destination. It is the land’s end; it is not en route to anywhere else. One of its charms is the fact that those who go there have made some effort to do so. Provincetown is three miles long and just slightly more than two blocks wide. Two streets run its entire length from east to west: Commercial, a narrow one-way street where almost all the businesses are, and Bradford, a more utilitarian two-way street a block north of Commercial. Residential roads, some of them barely one car wide, run at right angles on a semiregular grid between Commercial and Bradford streets and then, north of Bradford, meander out into dunes or modest hollows of surviving forest, as the terrain dictates. Although the town has been there since before 1720 (the year it was incorporated) and has survived any number of disastrous storms, it is still possible that a major hurricane, if it hit head-on, would simply sweep everything away, since Provincetown has no bedrock, no firm purchase of any kind. It is a city of sand, more or less the way Arctic settlements are cities of ice.

women keep trying. They put off the rent or the utilities to scrape together the $500 for a first-trimester abortion. They drive across whole states to get to a clinic and sleep in their cars because they can’t afford a motel. They do not do this because they are careless sluts or because they hate babies or because they fail to see clearly what their alternatives are. They see the alternatives all too clearly. We live, as Ellen Willis wrote, in a society that is “actively hostile to women’s ambitions for a better life. Under these conditions the unwillingly pregnant woman faces a terrifying loss of control over her fate.” Abortion, wrote Willis, is an act of self-defense.5 Perhaps we don’t see abortion that way because we don’t think women have the right to a self. They are supposed to live for others. Qualities that are seen as normal and desirable in men—ambition, confidence, outspokenness—are perceived as selfish and aggressive in women, especially when they have children. Perhaps that is why women’s privacy has so little purchase on the abortion debate: Only a self can have privacy. And only a self can have equality.

The automobile, like the all-important domestic façade, is another mechanism for outdoor class display. Or class lack of display we'd have to say, if we focus on the usages of the upper class, who, on the principle of archaism, affect to regard the automobile as very nouveau and underplay it consistently. Class understatement describes the technique: if your money and freedom and carelessness of censure allow you to buy any kind of car, you provide yourself with the meanest and most common to indicate that you're not taking seriously so easily purchasable and thus vulgar a class totem. You have a Chevy, Ford, Plymouth, or Dodge, and in the least interesting style and color. It may be clean, although slightly dirty is best. But it should be boring. The next best thing is to have a "good" car, like a Jaguar or BMW, but to be sure it's old and beat-up. You may not have a Rolls, a Cadillac, or a Mercedes. Especially a Mercedes, a car, Joseph Epstein reports in The American Scholar (Winter 1981-82), which the intelligent young in West Germany regard, quite correctly, as "a sign of vulgarity, a car of the kind owned by Beverly Hills dentists or African cabinet ministers.

To purchase a Volkswagen, customers were required to make a weekly deposit of at least 5 Reichsmarks into a DAF account on which they received no interest. Once the account balance had reached 750 Reichsmarks, the customer was entitled to delivery of a VW. The DAF meanwhile achieved an interest saving of 130 Reichsmarks per car. In addition, purchasers of the VW were required to take out a two-year insurance contract priced at 200 Reichsmarks. The VW savings contract was non-transferable, except in case of death, and withdrawal from the contract normally meant the forfeit of the entire sum deposited. Remarkably, 270,000 people signed up to these contracts by the end of 1939 and by the end of the war the number of VW-savers had risen to 340,000. In total, the DAF netted 275 million Reichsmarks in deposits. But not a single Volkswagen was ever delivered to a civilian customer in the Third Reich. After 1939, the entire output was reserved for official uses of various kinds. Most of Porsche’s half-finished factory was turned over to military production. The 275 million Reichsmarks deposited by the VW savers were lost in the post-war inflation. After a long legal battle, VW’s first customers received partial compensation only in the 1960s.

A reply dated 13 May finally arrived from the town clerk. Mr Mottershead could open the zoo subject to: 1) the type of animals being limited to those already described in previous correspondence; 2) the estate should not be used as an amusement park, racing track or public dance hall; and 3) no animals were to be kept within a distance of a hundred feet from the existing road. This necessitated the purchase of an additional strip of land between the road and the estate, which would have to be securely enclosed, but which couldn't be used for animals. (First it was used as a children's playground and later became a self-service cafe.) Somehow my dad managed to get a further mortgage of £350 to pay for the land and fencing. Of all the conditions, the most damaging in the long term was the last: the zoo was allowed 'no advertisement, sign or noticeboard which can be seen from the road above-mentioned'. Only a small sign at the entrance to the estate would be permitted, which meant the lodge, which was a good twenty-five yards from the road was completely invisible to any passing car. This would remain a problem for a very long time. For many years, the night before bank holidays, Dad and his friends would have to go out and hang temporary posters under the official road signs on the Chester bypass. The police turned a blind eye as long as they were taken down shortly afterwards.

If the hunger for paradise is wired into your heart (and it is), either you will realize that this present life has been designed as a preparation for the paradise to come, or you will do your best and work your hardest to turn the present moment into the paradise it will never be. You and I live in a broken world that right now will not be the paradise we seek. You and I are flawed people, living with flawed people, and collectively we have no ability whatsoever to deliver paradise to one another. Every place you go and every created thing you handle has been damaged by the fall. This simply is not and won’t be the paradise you seek. For all who have placed their trust in the Savior, paradise is a secure reality. The paradise for which your heart longs is coming, but you will not experience it right here, right now. No, God has chosen to keep you in this broken world in order to use its brokenness to prepare you for what is to come. The brokenness you live in the middle of, and the difficulties you face there, are not in the way of God’s good plan for you; they are an important ingredient in it. Right now, God is not so much working to change your surroundings but to change you so that you are ready for the new surroundings he has planned and purchased for you in his grace. Simply said, either you are waiting by faith for the paradise to come, or you are working with your hands to build paradise in the here and now. Looking for paradise in the here and now is another ingredient of the money madness inside many of us and has overtaken the culture around us. We frenetically spend on material things, physical experiences, and new locations in the search of a piece of paradise. Our hearts long for the freedom from external difficulty and internal emptiness that we so often feel. We instinctively know that there must be more, that this can’t be it. Deep within us we feel like we’re missing something. So in our eternity amnesia we don’t lift up our eyes to look afar and consider the glories that are coming. No, we open our wallets and look around at what may have the potential to give us the paradise we are seeking. And because nothing can deliver it, we spend from thing to thing to thing, hoping that the next thing will deliver. But we don’t end up with paradise. We end up with houses that are bigger and more luxurious than we need, cars that are more identity markers than means of transportation, a pile of possessions, many of which lie unused, amassed debt, and wallets that are empty. But the paradise that we’ve spent to get has eluded us. Sure, budgets are helpful, but only if they are a piece of handling our money with eternity in view. When it comes to money, the PMP that lives inside us and that has captured our culture just cannot work. It will cause you to spend too much, it will tempt you to spend unwisely, and for all of your investment, it will leave you empty in the end.

Decouplers often trip up on this step in two ways. First, they are overly generic in articulating the CVC. When mapping the process of buying a car, auto executives tend to describe it as: feel the need to buy car > become aware of a car brand > develop an interest in the brand > visit the dealer > purchase the car. This is a start, but it is not specific enough. Decouplers must ask: When do people actually need a new car? How exactly do people become aware of car brands? How do people become interested in a make or model? And so on. The generic process of awareness, interest, desire, and purchase isn’t specific enough to help. Decouplers also flounder by failing to identify all the relevant stages in the value chain. For the car-buying process, a better description of the CVC might be: become aware that your car lease will expire in one month > feel the need to purchase a new car > develop a heightened interest in car ads > visit car manufacturers’ websites > create a set of two or three brands of interest > visit third-party auto websites > compare options of cars in the same category > choose a model > shop online for the best price > visit the nearest dealer to see if they have the model in stock > see if they can beat the best online price > test-drive the cars > decide about financing, warranty, and other add-ons > negotiate a final price > sign the contract > pick up the car > use it > wait for the lease to expire again. With this far more detailed CVC, we can fully appreciate the complexity of the car-buying

Blues Elizabeth Alexander, 1962 I am lazy, the laziest girl in the world. I sleep during the day when I want to, ‘til my face is creased and swollen, ‘til my lips are dry and hot. I eat as I please: cookies and milk after lunch, butter and sour cream on my baked potato, foods that slothful people eat, that turn yellow and opaque beneath the skin. Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday I am still in my nightgown, the one with the lace trim listing because I have not mended it. Many days I do not exercise, only consider it, then rub my curdy belly and lie down. Even my poems are lazy. I use syllabics instead of iambs, prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme, write briefly while others go for pages. And yesterday, for example, I did not work at all! I got in my car and I drove to factory outlet stores, purchased stockings and panties and socks with my father’s money. To think, in childhood I missed only one day of school per year. I went to ballet class four days a week at four-forty-five and on Saturdays, beginning always with plie, ending with curtsy. To think, I knew only industry, the industry of my race and of immigrants, the radio tuned always to the station that said, Line up your summer job months in advance. Work hard and do not shame your family, who worked hard to give you what you have. There is no sin but sloth. Burn to a wick and keep moving. I avoided sleep for years, up at night replaying evening news stories about nearby jailbreaks, fat people who ate fried chicken and woke up dead. In sleep I am looking for poems in the shape of open V’s of birds flying in formation, or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.

Which of course leads to the other thing I’ve been thinking about: categories of violence. If we don’t mind being a bit ad hoc, we can pretty easily break violence into different types. There is, for example, the distinction between unintentional and intentional violence: the difference between accidentally stepping on a snail and doing so on purpose. Then there would be the category of unintentional but fully expected violence: whenever I drive a car I can fully expect to smash insects on the windshield (to kill this or that particular moth is an accident, but the deaths of some moths are inevitable considering what I’m doing). There would be the distinction between direct violence, that I do myself, and violence that I order done. Presumably, George W. Bush hasn’t personally throttled any Iraqi children, but he has ordered their deaths by ordering an invasion of their country (the death of this or that Iraqi child may be an accident, but the deaths of some children are inevitable considering what he is ordering to be done). Another kind of violence would be systematic, and therefore often hidden: I’ve long known that the manufacture of the hard drive on my computer is an extremely toxic process, and gives cancer to women in Thailand and elsewhere who assemble them, but until today I didn’t know that the manufacture of the average computer takes about two tons of raw materials (520 pounds of fossil fuels, 48 pounds of chemicals, and 3,600 pounds of water; 4 pounds of fossil fuels and chemicals and 70 pounds of water are used to make just a single two gram memory chip).389 My purchase of the computer carries with it those hidden forms of violence.

Chapter Eleven She did not spend long in the supermarket at Riverwalk, confining her purchases to supplies she would need for the next few days. There was beef for stew, a large pumpkin, a packet of beans, a dozen eggs, and two loaves of bread. The pumpkin looked delicious—almost perfectly round and deep yellow in colour, it sat on the passenger seat beside her so comfortably as she drove out of the car park, so pleased to be what it was, that she imagined conducting a conversation with it, telling it about the Orphan Farm and Mma Potokwane and her concerns over Mma Makutsi. And the pumpkin would remain silent, of course, but would somehow indicate that it knew what she was talking about, that there were similar issues in the world of pumpkins. She smiled. There was no harm, she thought, in allowing your imagination to run away with you, as a child’s will do, because the thoughts that came in that way could be a comfort, a relief in a world that could be both sad and serious. Why not imagine a talk with a pumpkin? Why not imagine going off for a drive with a friendly pumpkin, a companion who would not, after all, answer back; who would agree with everything you said, and would at the end of the day appear on your plate as a final gesture of friendship? Why not allow yourself a few minutes of imaginative silliness so that you could remember what it was like when you believed such things, when you were a child at the feet of your grandmother, listening to the old Setswana tales of talking trees and clever baboons and all the things that made up that world that lay just on the other side of the world we knew, the world of the real Botswana. Mma Ramotswe

I was sitting down hanging with the fellas them just for the girls, because really and truly this was bugging me. How could these fellas have the finest girls in the community, and they don’t work, they don’t have any money. Anytime something has to be purchased they would say, ‘Man, Scrooge, throw the blow; buy this and buy that.’ So we were sitting on a car one day. They were out to a disco the night before and this fella got chopped or stabbed. I didn’t know anything about it until the fellas came around looking for KC the next day. These fellas just yuck out their guns and started busting shots, and everybody just break off running for their lives. Afterwards I mumbled to myself that these are some crazy fellas. They just came shooting for no reason. The funny thing about it is this: guns were not even that common on the streets then. We’re talking around 1987, 1988. I believe the fella who fired those shots at us, goes by the nickname Dog and he lives in the US now. I said to Ada, ‘What kind of thing this is? I mean, these fellas came and just started shooting.’ That sent a whole new way of thinking in my mind. Prior to that, I was just a person going to work, coming home, and chilling. I just happened to be sitting there one day. They didn’t know me and they didn’t care who I was. I never used to even be with KC and them. I just happened to be there that day. If I had known that those fellas were crazy like that, to come shooting at whoever they saw, I wouldn’t have been there hanging with KC and them. After that, my whole mindset changed. It was either shoot or be shot. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members.

Variations on a tired, old theme Here’s another example of addict manipulation that plagues parents. The phone rings. It’s the addict. He says he has a job. You’re thrilled. But you’re also apprehensive. Because you know he hasn’t simply called to tell you good news. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Then comes the zinger you knew would be coming. The request. He says everybody at this company wears business suits and ties, none of which he has. He says if you can’t wire him $1800 right away, he won’t be able to take the job. The implications are clear. Suddenly, you’ve become the deciding factor as to whether or not the addict will be able to take the job. Have a future. Have a life. You’ve got that old, familiar sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. This is not the child you gladly would have financed in any way possible to get him started in life. This is the child who has been strung out on drugs for years and has shown absolutely no interest in such things as having a conventional job. He has also, if you remember correctly, come to you quite a few times with variations on this same tired, old story. One variation called for a car so he could get to work. (Why is it that addicts are always being offered jobs in the middle of nowhere that can’t be reached by public transportation?) Another variation called for the money to purchase a round-trip airline ticket to interview for a job three thousand miles away. Being presented with what amounts to a no-choice request, the question is: Are you going to contribute in what you know is probably another scam, or are you going to say sorry and hang up? To step out of the role of banker/victim/rescuer, you have to quit the job of banker/victim/rescuer. You have to change the coda. You have to forget all the stipulations there are to being a parent. You have to harden your heart and tell yourself parenthood no longer applies to you—not while your child is addicted. Not an easy thing to do. P.S. You know in your heart there is no job starting on Monday. But even if there is, it’s hardly your responsibility if the addict goes well dressed, badly dressed, or undressed. Facing the unfaceable: The situation may never change In summary, you had a child and that child became an addict. Your love for the child didn’t vanish. But you’ve had to wean yourself away from the person your child has become through his or her drugs and/ or alcohol abuse. Your journey with the addicted child has led you through various stages of pain, grief, and despair and into new phases of strength, acceptance, and healing. There’s a good chance that you might not be as healthy-minded as you are today had it not been for the tribulations with the addict. But you’ll never know. The one thing you do know is that you wouldn’t volunteer to go through it again, even with all the awareness you’ve gained. You would never have sacrificed your child just so that you could become a better, stronger person. But this is the way it has turned out. You’re doing okay with it, almost twenty-four hours a day. It’s just the odd few minutes that are hard to get through, like the ones in the middle of the night when you awaken to find that the grief hasn’t really gone away—it’s just under smart, new management. Or when you’re walking along a street or in a mall and you see someone who reminds you of your addicted child, but isn’t a substance abuser, and you feel that void in your heart. You ache for what might have been with your child, the happy life, the fulfilled career. And you ache for the events that never took place—the high school graduation, the engagement party, the wedding, the grandkids. These are the celebrations of life that you’ll probably never get to enjoy. Although you never know. DON’T LET    YOUR KIDS  KILL  YOU  A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children PART 2

Starting a little over a decade ago, Target began building a vast data warehouse that assigned every shopper an identification code—known internally as the “Guest ID number”—that kept tabs on how each person shopped. When a customer used a Target-issued credit card, handed over a frequent-buyer tag at the register, redeemed a coupon that was mailed to their house, filled out a survey, mailed in a refund, phoned the customer help line, opened an email from Target, visited Target.com, or purchased anything online, the company’s computers took note. A record of each purchase was linked to that shopper’s Guest ID number along with information on everything else they’d ever bought. Also linked to that Guest ID number was demographic information that Target collected or purchased from other firms, including the shopper’s age, whether they were married and had kids, which part of town they lived in, how long it took them to drive to the store, an estimate of how much money they earned, if they’d moved recently, which websites they visited, the credit cards they carried in their wallet, and their home and mobile phone numbers. Target can purchase data that indicates a shopper’s ethnicity, their job history, what magazines they read, if they have ever declared bankruptcy, the year they bought (or lost) their house, where they went to college or graduate school, and whether they prefer certain brands of coffee, toilet paper, cereal, or applesauce. There are data peddlers such as InfiniGraph that “listen” to shoppers’ online conversations on message boards and Internet forums, and track which products people mention favorably. A firm named Rapleaf sells information on shoppers’ political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, the number of cars they own, and whether they prefer religious news or deals on cigarettes. Other companies analyze photos that consumers post online, cataloging if they are obese or skinny, short or tall, hairy or bald, and what kinds of products they might want to buy as a result.

To the degree that advertising reaches us, occupying our time and thought, it keeps us vibrating within strict limits. If forty million people see a commercial for a car, then forty million people have a car commercial in their heads, all at the same time. This is bound to have more beneficial effect on the commodity system than if, at that moment, all those people were thinking separate thoughts which, in some cases, might not be about commodities at all. Of course, advertising people will argue against the notion that the purpose and result of their activities is to unify and homogenize people and culture. They are forever speaking of the dazzling array of choices our market system provides and how advertising provides the information we need to make choices. It is an ominous sign that so many people can accept this argument, which confuses diversity of product choice with diversity of life-style or thoughts. It ought to be self-evident that if I choose a Ford and you choose a Volvo, we are not expressing diversity, we are expressing unity. Moreover, if you and I at any one moment are both occupied with mental images and feelings related to products—any products— rather than some experience which is not connected to purchasing, then in terms of the commodity system, the gross national product, and the world of advertising, we are indistinguishable; we have merged as “market.” While it might matter to Upjohn or Cutter Laboratories which drug a consumer buys, both are in agreement that they benefit whenever people seek any drug rather than a nondrug solution to a problem. Advertising, then, serves to further the movement of humans into artificial environments by narrowing the conception of diversity to fit the framework of commodities while unifying people within this conception. The result is a singularly channeled mentality, nicely open to receiving commercial messages, ready to confuse brand diversity with diversity itself, and to confuse human need with the advertiser’s need to sell commodities.

When Musk took delivery of his F1, CNN was there to cover it. “Just three years ago I was showering at the Y and sleeping on the office floor,” he told the camera sheepishly, “and now obviously, I’ve got a million-dollar car… it’s just a moment in my life.” While other McLaren F1 owners around the world—the sultan of Brunei, Wyclef Jean, and Jay Leno, among others—could comfortably afford it, Musk’s purchase had put a sizable dent in his bank account. And unlike other owners, Musk drove the car to work—and declined to insure it. As Musk drove Thiel up Sand Hill Road in the F1, the car was the subject of their chat. “It was like this Hitchcock movie,” Thiel remembered, “where we’re talking about the car for fifteen minutes. We’re supposed to be preparing for the meeting—and we’re talking about the car.” During their ride, Thiel looked at Musk and reportedly asked, “So, what can this thing do?” “Watch this,” Musk replied, flooring the accelerator and simultaneously initiating a lane change on Sand Hill Road. In retrospect, Musk admitted that he was outmatched by the F1. “I didn’t really know how to drive the car,” he recalled. “There’s no stability systems. No traction control. And the car gets so much power that you can break the wheels free at even fifty miles an hour.” Thiel recalls the car in front of them coming fast into view—then Musk swerving to avoid it. The McLaren hit an embankment, was tossed into the air—“like a discus,” Musk remembered——then slammed violently into the ground. “The people that saw it happen thought we were going to die,” he recalled. Thiel had not worn a seat belt, but astonishingly, neither he nor Musk were hurt. Musk’s “work of art” had not fared as well, having now taken a distinctly cubist turn. Post-near-death experience, Thiel dusted himself off on the side of the road and hitchhiked to the Sequoia offices, where he was joined by Musk a short while later. X.com’s CEO, Bill Harris, was also waiting at the Sequoia office, and he recalled that both Thiel and Musk were late but offered no explanation for their delay. “They never told me,” Harris said. “We just had the meeting.” Reflecting on it, Musk found humor in the experience: “I think it’s safe to say Peter wouldn’t be driving with me again.” Thiel wrung some levity out of the moment, too. “I’d achieved lift-off with Elon,” he joked, “but not in a rocket.

It is not the development of material need which sets the modern vocabulary of aspiration apart from anything which has gone before, but rather the transformation of our spiritual needs. It is our spirits, not our clothes and houses and cars, that set us so radically apart from our own past and form much of the rest of the world. Imagine what we must be like to the primitive peoples who receive our attentions as anthropologists. We come upon them armed with our mastery of nature, and yet they can disarm us with the simplest metaphysical inquiry: what happen when people die? where do they go? what are the duties of the living to the dead? Their cultures are as rich in answers to these questions as our culture is rich in answers to the technical and scientific problems which baffle them. It has always been a truism of the Western bad conscience that we have purchased our mastery of nature at the price of our spirits. The conservative and romantic critique of Western progress has always used the example of the savage - rich in cosmology, poor in goods - to argue for an inverse historical relationship between the development of material and spiritual needs. Certainly this view could draw upon the dark side of the Christian theology of need. While secular optimists have trust in the permanence of spiritual need, Augustinian Christians have fixed their gaze on the nightmare of the happy slave: the being so absorbed by the material that all spiritual needs have perished. Yet human needing is historical, and who can predict what forms the needs of the spirit may take? There is a loss of nerve in the premature announcements of the death of the spirit, the easy condemnations of materialist aspiration in capitalist society. Western societies have continued the search for spiritual consolation in the only manner consistent with the freedom of the seeking subject: by making every person the judge of his own spiritual satisfaction. We have all been left to choose what we need, and we have pushed the search for private meaning to the limits of what a public language can contain if it is to continue to be a means of communication. We have Augustine's first freedom, and because we have it, we cannot have his second. We can no longer offer each other the possibility of metaphysical belonging: a shared place, sustained by faith, in a divine universe. All our belonging now is social.

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The most important modification that must be made to a standard analysis of incentives is salience. Do the choosers actually notice the incentives they face? In free markets, the answer is usually yes, but in important cases the answer is no. Consider the example of members of an urban family deciding whether to buy a car. Suppose their choices are to take taxis and public transportation or to spend ten thousand dollars to buy a used car, which they can park on the street in front of their home. The only salient costs of owning this car will be the weekly stops at the gas station, occasional repair bills, and a yearly insurance bill. The opportunity cost of the ten thousand dollars is likely to be neglected. (In other words, once they purchase the car, they tend to forget about the ten thousand dollars and stop treating it as money that could have been spent on something else.) In contrast, every time the family uses a taxi the cost will be in their face, with the meter clicking every few blocks. So a behavioral analysis of the incentives of car ownership will predict that people will underweight the opportunity costs of car ownership, and possibly other less salient aspects such as depreciation, and may overweight the very salient costs of using a taxi.* An analysis of choice architecture systems must make similar adjustments.

By contrast, one company that clearly understands the stakes is Uber. In the last several years, few companies have captured the media’s attention like Uber. In my opinion, Uber has been successful because it’s perfectly nailed a Job to Be Done. Yes, Uber can often offer a nice car to take you from point A to point B, but that’s not where it’s built its competitive advantage. The experiences that come with hiring Uber to solve customers’ Jobs to Be Done are better than the existing alternatives. That’s the secret to its success. Everything about the experience of being a customer—including the emotional and social dimensions—has been thought through. Who wants to have to outmaneuver other poor schlubs on the same street corner who are trying to hail a cab? You don’t want to either pay for a car service to wait outside your meeting or be at its mercy when you’re finally ready to call it to come back and get you. With Uber, you simply push a few buttons on your mobile phone and you know that in three minutes or seven minutes a specific driver will arrive to pick you up. Now you can relax and just wait. You don’t have to worry if you have enough cash in your wallet or fear that if you swipe your credit card in that taxi machine, you’ll get a call from your bank wondering if you’ve recently made purchases in some state you’ve never even been to. Calling an Uber has even more potential to ease your anxieties about getting into a cab alone. With Uber there’s a record of your request, you know specifically who is picking you up, and you know from the driver’s ratings that he or she is reliable.

How to become the President of Liberia from “Liberia & Beyond” In 1973, Charles Taylor enrolled as a student at Bentley University, in Waltham, Massachusetts. A year later Taylor became chairman of the Union of Liberian Associations in America, which he founded on July 4, 1974. The mission of ULAA was meant to advance the just causes of Liberians and Liberia at home and abroad. In 1977 Taylor graduated from Bentley University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. Returning to Liberia he supported the violent coup, led by Samuel Doe, and became the Director General of the General Services Agency most likely because of his supposed loyalty. His newly acquired elevated position put him in charge of all the purchases made for the Liberian government. Taylor couldn’t resist the urge of stealing from the till, and in May of 1983, he was found out and fired for embezzling nearly a million dollars in State funds. During this time he transferred his ill-gotten money to a private bank account in the United States. On May 21, 1984, seizing the opportunity, Taylor fled to America where he was soon apprehended and charged with embezzlement by United States Federal Marshals in Somerville, Massachusetts. Taylor was held in the Plymouth, County jail until September 15, 1985, when he escaped with two of his cohorts, by sawing through the steel bars covering a window in his cell. He precariously lowered himself down 20 feet of knotted sheets and then deftly escaped into the nearby woodlands. He most likely had accomplices, since his wife Jewel Taylor conveniently met him with a car, which they then drove to Staten Island in New York City.

I think Alfred Edmond from Black Enterprise said it best. He suggests you ask yourself, “Am I using money to buy things or accomplish things?” Buying things refers to purchases like a new car or a plasma television. Accomplishing things means spending money on opportunities that move you forward—like homeownership or an education.

Steve had tried to reach us after our Father’s Day phone call. There was no way I could have realized that, because I didn’t have any mobile phone reception at the cottage. He was back on Croc One and trying to get hold of us via satellite phone. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t be in range again until the next day. We enjoyed our dinner, built a huge fire, and snuggled down for the night. We didn’t hurry ourselves the next day. We meandered west, stopping at a raspberry farm and at the Honey Factory in Chudleigh. They featured a beehive behind glass, and we loved watching as the bees worked on their honeycomb. They never stopped to say, “I wonder what the meaning of life is.” They just kept building. The Honey Factory also featured a plethora of bee-themed products: bee gum boots, bee back massagers, bee umbrellas, and a bee trolley for the kids to ride on. Bindi sampled every single flavor of honey that they had. She bought a wristwatch with a bee on it. Robert picked out a backpack. “Robert,” I said, “that backpack is great. It has bees on it.” “It has one bee on it,” he said, correcting me. “Oh, okay, one bee,” I said, amused at my son’s seriousness. We spent the last hour of the morning at the Honey Factory. As we walked out the door, Bindi looked at her newly purchased watch and said, “It’s twelve o’clock.” We all stopped for a moment and considered that it was twelve o’clock. Then we got into the car and left.

Also today when you sit down to eat your meal, no matter where you are, try to think about the many people who have made the meal possible.  See if you can engage in this activity while you eat slowly.  Let appreciation well up from within you as your taste buds are activated.  Think of the people who built your car with all of its complex components that work together to provide transportation.  Or think of the bus driver or train engineers.  Think of those who laid the roads or rails.  Think of the cashier who stands on their feet all day long ringing up purchases.  Think of the truck driver who delivered the merchandise to the store.  Think of the packagers.  Think of the farm laborers who make the food possible.  Think of those in oil producing countries who provide their natural resources and labor.  The list is almost endless.  I can imagine that by the end of the meal you still have not thought of all the countless labors, big and small, that made that meal possible.  Don’t forget to include your own labors as well.

Smart entrepreneurs have grabbed this opportunity with a vengeance. Now online lesson-plan marketplaces such as Gooru Learning, Teachers Pay Teachers, and Share My Lesson allow teachers who want to devote more of their time to other tasks the ability to purchase high-quality (and many lesser-quality) lesson plans, ready to go. With sensors, data, and A.I., we can begin, even today, testing for the learning efficacy of different lectures, styles, and more. And, because humans do a poor job of incorporating massive amounts of information to make iterative decisions, in the very near future, computers will start doing more and more of the lesson planning. They will write the basic lessons and learn what works and what doesn’t for specific students. Creative teachers will continue, though, to be incredibly valuable: they will learn how to steer and curate algorithmic and heuristically updated lesson creation in ways that computers could not necessarily imagine. All of this is, of course, a somewhat bittersweet development. Teaching is an idealistic profession. You probably remember a special teacher who shaped your life, encouraged your interests, and made school exciting. The movies and pop culture are filled with paeans to unselfish, underpaid teachers fighting the good fight and helping their charges. But it is becoming clearer that teaching, like many other white-collar jobs that have resisted robots, is something that robots can do—possibly, in structured curricula, better than humans can. The

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A Belgian-made FN-FAL rifle was disassembled in the trunk of the car, along with a hundred rounds of 7.62mm NATO. The other half of the purchase was strapped to the Texan’s ankle: a short-barreled .357 Magnum. Some might have considered a semiautomatic a better choice, but he had always been partial to wheelguns. In any case, it was a back-up gun.

Reason #1: Downtime Aids Insights Consider the following excerpt from a 2006 paper that appeared in the journal Science: The scientific literature has emphasized the benefits of conscious deliberation in decision making for hundreds of years… The question addressed here is whether this view is justified. We hypothesize that it is not. Lurking in this bland statement is a bold claim. The authors of this study, led by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis, set out to prove that some decisions are better left to your unconscious mind to untangle. In other words, to actively try to work through these decisions will lead to a worse outcome than loading up the relevant information and then moving on to something else while letting the subconscious layers of your mind mull things over. Dijksterhuis’s team isolated this effect by giving subjects the information needed for a complex decision regarding a car purchase. Half the subjects were told to think through the information and then make the best decision. The other half were distracted by easy puzzles after they read the information, and were then put on the spot to make a decision without having had time to consciously deliberate. The distracted group ended up performing better. Observations from experiments such as this one led Dijksterhuis and his collaborators to introduce unconscious thought theory (UTT)—an attempt to understand the different roles conscious and unconscious deliberation play in decision making. At a high level, this theory proposes that for decisions that require the application of strict rules, the conscious mind must be involved. For example, if you need to do a math calculation, only your conscious mind is able to follow the precise arithmetic rules needed for correctness. On the other hand, for decisions that involve large amounts of information and multiple vague, and perhaps even conflicting, constraints, your unconscious mind is well suited to tackle the issue. UTT hypothesizes that this is due to the fact that these regions of your brain have more neuronal bandwidth available, allowing them to move around more information and sift through more potential solutions than your conscious centers of thinking. Your conscious mind, according to this theory, is like a home computer on which you can run carefully written programs that return correct answers to limited problems, whereas your unconscious mind is like Google’s vast data centers, in which statistical algorithms sift through terabytes of unstructured information, teasing out surprising useful solutions to difficult questions. The implication of this line of research is that providing your conscious brain time to rest enables your unconscious mind to take a shift sorting through your most complex professional challenges. A shutdown habit, therefore, is not necessarily reducing the amount of time you’re engaged in productive work, but is instead diversifying the type of work you deploy.

mileage of each oil change, going back for years, to an age before it was socially acceptable to wear a beard like an unkempt bird’s nest. Number two: eventually, I posted news of my purchase on the 500E forums, which primarily consist of about nineteen guys who sit around and discuss how their car values are going up. Almost immediately, someone came on and replied that I was a thief: he had made a deal with the Fiat dealer earlier that afternoon over the phone for just eighty five hundred bucks, and he planned to come collect the car a few days later. And I swooped in and GRABBED IT! Quickly, the 500E forum turned on me in the way that only a forum full of sixty-five-year-old men can: with rampant misuse of the “QUOTE” function. I stopped posting almost immediately. In the end, I decided to flip the car—and I sold it within a couple months to a guy in Ohio for $16,000, or about six grand more than I had paid. It was a sad event, and I was disappointed to see the super sedan go—but as it was getting loaded on to the trailer for its trip north, one nagging thought kept me from getting depressed. At least I wasn’t

map out all the activities in that group’s typical customer value chain. Decouplers often trip up on this step in two ways. First, they are overly generic in articulating the CVC. When mapping the process of buying a car, auto executives tend to describe it as: feel the need to buy car > become aware of a car brand > develop an interest in the brand > visit the dealer > purchase the car. This is a start, but it is not specific enough. Decouplers must ask: When do people actually need a new car? How exactly do people become aware of car brands? How do people become interested in a make or model? And so on. The generic process of awareness, interest, desire, and purchase isn’t specific enough to help. Decouplers also flounder by failing to identify all the relevant stages in the value chain. For the car-buying process, a better description of the CVC might be: become aware that your car lease will expire in one month > feel the need to purchase a new car > develop a heightened interest in car ads > visit car manufacturers’ websites > create a set of two or three brands of interest > visit third-party auto websites > compare options of cars in the same category > choose a model > shop online for the best price > visit the nearest dealer to see if they have the model in stock > see if they can beat the best online price > test-drive the cars > decide about financing, warranty, and other add-ons > negotiate a final price > sign the contract > pick up the car > use it > wait for the lease to expire again. With this far more detailed CVC, we can fully appreciate the complexity of the car-buying

Volvo has adopted a similar approach. Its ‘Autonomous Emergency Braking’ system, which automatically slows the car down if it gets too close to a vehicle in front, is widely credited for the impressive safety record of the Volvo XC90. Since the car first went on sale in the UK in 2002, over 50,000 vehicles have been purchased, and not a single driver or passenger within any of them has been killed in a crash.

My father liked to constantly remind me that he put himself through college, purchased his first house and a car for $500 with his weekend job. The way I figured it, by rate of inflation and hours worked, I should have been able to afford a mansion and a yacht by now. Somehow, the math wasn’t working out like that. Maybe I was under my desk the day they taught that in school.

Keep your goals in mind. Focusing on the importance of your goals helps decrease temptations. So if you focus on how good you’ll feel when your car is paid off, you’ll be less tempted to make that purchase that will wreak havoc on the month’s budget.

consumer discretionary stocks include products that consumers might want, but don’t necessarily need (like a new car or house). They can defer those purchases until things start to get better. They can’t defer food purchases.

Each and every day, we all are faced with potential risks and must make risk-to-benefit calculations repeatedly. This is a basic fact of life. Our right to make decisions based on the outcome of these calculations is not outlawed by the government, except when it comes to certain recreational drugs. As a scientist, I find this exception particularly frustrating, even hypocritical. The justification for restricting specific drugs is often related to the purported inherent dangers posed by these chemicals. Heroin use, for example, is said to be inherently more dangerous than other legal activities such as gun or car use are. Really? Guns, let’s not forget, are specifically designed to kill. This is not to say that every owner purchases a gun with this goal in mind. As a budding gun hobbyist, I know that’s not true. Still, each year there are about forty thousand gun-related deaths, and more than half are suicides.2 In 2017, heroin-involved deaths reached an all-time peak at just over fifteen thousand, a number well below that of gun deaths.3 (Again, it’s important to note that most of these heroin deaths occurred because the drug was contaminated with a far more potent fentanyl analog or because it was combined with another sedating drug, such as alcohol or sleeping pills.)

United Airlines Customer Service number-+1-855-653-0624 United Airlines Customer Service number You can always purchase tickets without a service charge on united.com. To book with a United representative in the United States or Canada, the service charges are $25 by phone, $10 at a City Ticket Office and $50 at the airport. Ticketing charges may vary outside of the U.S. and Canada and based on your MileagePlus status level. You can change or update existing reservations in the My trips section of united.com or the United app. There’s no service charge to get help from our Customer Contact Center by phone if you have an existing reservation, but your representative will inform you of any change fees that may apply. Airlines offers flights, hotels, cars, vacations, cruises and activities – but the company is most well-known for flights originating in the United States. The official website offers tons of information for people wishing to book flights, including direct booking from the website or via phone contact with customer service. The customer service contact information varies depending on the type of contact you wish to make with the company.

Therefore, when you are about to make a big purchase or an important decision—which car or computer to buy, whether to undergo plastic surgery, or whether to sign up for a costly self-help program—don’t ask someone who has just done it. That person will be highly motivated to convince you that it is the right thing to do.

Emergency savings can be used to pay for unexpected emergencies only, which include: ➔Unexpected home repairs and replacement of essential items ➔Unexpected essential car repairs ➔Unexpected medical/dental bills ➔Bills and household costs in the event of an unexpected drop in income. Examples of expenses that cannot be funded by emergency savings are: ➔Christmas and birthdays ➔Routine or advance-planned medical/dental treatments ➔Budgeting fails ➔Impulse purchases ➔Non-essential repairs/replacements ➔Holidays.

Cash For Cars Removal - How Can It Save You Money? Cash for cars removed in Cash for Scrap Cars Removal is an excellent way to take the burden of disposal off your mind and have your car properly disposed of. Car removal companies remove cars that are not being resold or who don't meet environmental standards for disposal. They pay you the money for your car's value directly to the company, and then remove it at no cost to you. Cash for cars removal companies typically do not take responsibility for vehicle damage during the process of taking your car away. They also will not pay to get your car back if they discover that your vehicle does not meet their criteria for taking it away. Cash for Car Removal offers two methods of payment. Methods of payment are chosen based on the needs of the individual company and what the business can afford. Methods of payment generally range from a lump sum payment to monthly payments. If you pay in monthly installments, from Cash for Cars Bundall your car will be removed several weeks before your next payment due date. When you pay in lump sum, your car removal company will pay all necessary charges to your bank. This means you won't have any hidden fees. There are many advantages to hiring Cash for Cars Removal. Some of the advantages include the following: Cash for Car Removal companies offer environmentally friendly services for people who need to sell their used cars or vehicles, but do not have the money to purchase new ones. If your car or vehicle has certain cosmetic damage that prevents you from reselling it, you might qualify for a Cash for Cars Removal service. The removal companies also work in partnership with junk yards and dispose of old vehicles there, as well as storing vehicles temporarily while owners who qualify for bankruptcy are given another chance to start over. Cash for Car Removal also has an agreement with the city of New York to pick up and remove automobiles that have been ticketed or convicted of city driving laws. Not only are these individuals given another chance to start over with their lives, but the cars are also sent off to the junk yard or storage facility so they can be recycled and sold again. Before you get started, ensure that you do not have any outstanding tickets, unpaid taxes, liens, or other legal problems that may prevent you from getting Cash for Cars Removal. Cash for Car Removal offers safe and secure pick up and drop off locations for individuals who have valid licenses and insurance to drive vehicles. They work in partnership with various banks to provide the safest and most reliable finance-oriented services around. Cash for Car Removal is committed to helping individuals buy or sell used cars that meet their financial needs and do not pose any financial or environmental problem. Cash for Car Removal services are provided by many different nationwide junk car removal companies, as well as independent contractors. When you contact a Cash for Cars Removal company, make sure you're working with a reputable company that has years of experience dealing with every type of situation. Cash for Car Removal has been at the forefront in providing the most eco-friendly and convenient ways to remove your unwanted vehicles from your home or business. Using a Cash for Cars Removal company allows you to spend your time elsewhere instead of being stuck in a high traffic area. Cash for Car Removal gives customers a choice between paid removal and free pick up. The cost of each service is based on the amount of vehicles to be removed, the distance the vehicle is removed, and how many will be dropped off at each point. When used correctly, a Cash for Cars Removal service can save you hundreds of dollars and hours of unnecessary driving.

When investigating car options for a new car purchase, I will rent the various models of cars for a day and drive each of them before making a decision.

Wealth is the nice cars not purchased. The diamonds not bought. The watches not worn, the clothes forgone and the first-class upgrade declined. Wealth is financial assets that haven’t yet been converted into the stuff you see.

Rich is a current income. Someone driving a $100,000 car is almost certainly rich, because even if they purchased the car with debt you need a certain level of income to afford the monthly payment

As a result, the American Dream became extremely useful in pitches for consumer products that encourage potential purchasers to feel better about their purchases, such as a new home or a second car. In fact, ProQuest News & Newspapers shows that more than half the use of the phrase American Dream has occurred in advertisements rather than articles.

while we can see how much money other people spend on cars, homes, clothes, and vacations, we don’t get to see their goals, worries, and aspirations. A young lawyer aiming to be a partner at a prestigious law firm might need to maintain an appearance that I, a writer who can work in sweatpants, have no need for. But when his purchases set my own expectations, I’m wandering down a path of potential disappointment because I’m spending the money without the career boost he’s getting. We might not even have different styles. We’re just playing a different game.

Thirdly, German bankers drooled over the large difference between the interest rate they could charge to German customers and the going interest rate in places like Greece. The chasm between the two was a direct repercussion of the trade imbalances. A large trade surplus means that cars and washing machines flow from the surplus to the deficit country, with cash flowing the opposite way. The surplus country becomes awash with “liquidity,” with cash accumulating in proportion to the net exports pouring into its trading partners. As the supply of cash increases within the surplus nation’s banks, in Frankfurt to be precise, it becomes more readily available and therefore cheaper to borrow. In other words, its price drops. And what is the price of money? The interest rate! Thus interest rates in Germany were remaining much lower than in Greece, Spain and their equivalents, where the outflow of cash (as the Greeks and the Spanish purchased more and more Volkswagens) maintained the price of euros in Europe’s south above its equivalent in Germany.3

But the truth is that wealth is what you don’t see. Wealth is the nice cars not purchased. The diamonds not bought. The watches not worn, the clothes forgone and the first-class upgrade declined. Wealth is financial assets that haven’t yet been converted into the stuff you see.

Yet a Rolex won’t buy you more time. A Mercedes won’t get you there any faster. And a vacation home won’t earn you more vacation days. In fact, the opposite is true in most cases. We are attempting to purchase that which is priceless: time. You might have to work hundreds of hours to buy an expensive watch, years to pay off a luxury car, and a lifetime to afford a vacation home. Which means we’re willing to give up our time to purchase the illusion of time.

The more costly a decision, in terms of time, money, effort, or inconvenience, and the more irrevocable its consequences, the greater the dissonance and the greater the need to reduce it by overemphasizing the good things about the choice made. Therefore, when you are about to make a big purchase or an important decision—which car or computer to buy, whether to undergo plastic surgery, or whether to sign up for a costly self-help program—don't ask someone who has just done it. That person will be highly motivated to convince you that it is the right thing to do.

Have you ever purchased a new automobile, and all of the sudden it looks like the world is filled with exactly the same car you bought? You buy a new can and it looks like everybody and their brother is driving around in the same vehicle.

Living together instead of marrying is pretending at life; you want to test drive the car without fully purchasing it.