Financial Columnist Stands By Her Claim That Kids Giving Away Lemonade Are Destroying America
from the it-must-be-stopped dept
We recently wrote about the bizarre, and economically clueless, column by a so-called "financial expert," Terry Savage, who apparently accosted some young girls for giving away free lemonade, saying that they showed what was wrong with America, since they should be selling the lemonade. The irony over the fact that she was giving them "free" advice apparently did not occur to her. Not surprisingly, a lot of people contacted Savage to express their bewilderment at her column, and rather than admit that perhaps she got the story wrong, she's standing by it. Phillip alerts us to her most recent column, where she tries to explain, yet again, why these girls were destroying America. It's not that she's against charity. Or even that she thinks charity goes against capitalism. It's that she has decided what's best for these girls is to learn how to make an honest buck.Basically, Savage seems to insist that, despite not knowing anything at all about these children, their situation, their upbringing or their parents, that it was an absolute mistake not to have them selling the lemonade.
It's important to start teaching those financial lessons at an early age. These little girls, around age 7 or 8, are already targets of consumer marketing -- for everything from toys to videos, from fashion to food. Certainly, it's also the right time to teach them the value of the money they spend, and how difficult it is to earn it.It certainly is important to teach kids financial lessons. But that doesn't mean they can't give away lemonade as well.
The children weren't rescuing people from the heat, since it was a temperate day. They were just looking for something to do -- and there was no one around to teach them how a lemonade stand should really work.And that's the crux of the issue. Savage has decided that she knows how a lemonade stand "should work." She's also decided that she knows how to best act as a parent for some young girls she knows nothing about. How does she know that they didn't earn the money used to set up the lemonade stand? How does she know that the lemonade stand wasn't a reward for something else they did? She's just decided to take it upon herself to tell children what they should do without knowing anything about the details of what's going on? That's not very convincing.
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Filed Under: economics, free, lemonade, terry savage
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SOme people like htis lady dont know when to shut up
It is further proof that the USA's system is beginning to collapse when some ass walking down a street can harass kids for doing what they want to do.
SHE should be sued by the parents of these kids for harassment. Don't like them giving it away free ....
DONT TAKE ANY AND LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE
BOTH DO NOT WORK.
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Hold up there Bill and Ted. Maybe slightly bogus but you went all the way to heinous?
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Telling though
Someone should send her an onion belt.
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Re: Telling though
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People are so focused in their own greed that they are blind to everything else. Money is everything. Everything people do must be motivated by money. Giving money away is sin. Helping people in need is blasphemy. Stealing, murdering and polluting the environment is all fair as long as there is profit.
So maybe she has a point. What I don't understand is why didn't she charge those children for the economy lesson.
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However, even assuming she really did accost children she didn't know, what Terry Savage is not recognizing, is that kids do this sort of stuff for fun! Does Terry Savage seriously believe that every single activity we do should be done solely for profit?
Should girls get paid for kissing their boyfriends?
Should 8 year old t-ball players hire managers and demand high salaries?
Should kids stay home from school because they're not being paid to go?
Besides writing asinine columns, Terry Savage has do other things in her life. Does she get paid to eat? Why the frick is she doing that? She should sign up for some medical testing and get paid to eat.
Does she sleep for free? What the frick?! Again she should be getting some green for that.
Does she drive in her car to see her mother? How much is her mother paying her for her time? Can she pick up so rides and earn some extra money on the way?
Does she hit up her kids to pay for their clothes and birthday presents/ What the frick?! You mean she's not profiting from her kids?! Why did she have them if not to profit from them? That's un-American!
Even if there were kids who gave away free lemonade. They did it for the fun of it. That's why we do the vast majority of the things we do. Now maybe Terry Savage profits from everything she does. Which makes her a virgin or a prostitute. But that's her choice, not mine.
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But the women who do this professionally get arrested!
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Are they getting paid to be arrested? If not they should refuse to be arrested.
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....
Uh oh. I think I just successfully divided by zero.
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Now look what you did:
http://odie70.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/divide_by_zero1.jpg
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It does not necessarily follow that merely because every word is true, the resulting story is true.
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The plethora of frivolous lawsuits actually seem to often originate from people that think like you - people that don't like that others are wealthy and feel entitled to a portion of their wealth without earning it or gaining their willful consent. Copyright violations are the antithesis of free market capitalism, which is really all about synergistic and voluntary engagement between two actors for mutual benefit - certainly not a government-enforced monopoly. Privacy concerns are rampant in every country (and violations are undoubtedly more rampant when we cannot choose whether to provide our information), and nobody ever said we have to pay millions in bonuses to bad executives. If shareholders want to do so, it's their money (unlike, say, government revenue that was forcibly extracted from us and rained on policticians' friends), and the ironic thing is that bonuses are so high because government interference has created that incentive.
In short, capitalism is great precisely because everybody is allowed to do as they wish and work together toward individual satisfaction, including charity or free lemonade. Savage is apparently just a dumbass journalist, as so many seemingly are these days.
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@ Ryan: "capitalism is great precisely because everybody is allowed to do as they wish"?
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No, copy"right" is the antithesis of free market capitalism. Copyright requires an institution to implement, more institutions = less free market capitalism.
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When the govt enforces it is a govt enforced monopoly.
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Sure it is.
(being allowed to open a lemonade stand where you want and charge what you please is pretty much the epitome of capitalism)
No, that's freedom. Capitalism is the accumulation of capital. You're confusing the two.
or greed
That's the basis of capitalism.
(obviously the children didn't agree with her cost-benefit analysis that seems to ignore all value except that of money)
Capitalism isn't based on the accumulation of "fun" or "karma" or anything other than "capital".
The plethora of frivolous lawsuits actually seem to often originate from people that think like you - people that don't like that others are wealthy and feel entitled to a portion of their wealth without earning it or gaining their willful consent.
That's funny coming from someone who doesn't even know what capitalism is about.
Copyright violations are the antithesis of free market capitalism, which is really all about synergistic and voluntary engagement between two actors for mutual benefit...
No, capitalism has nothing to do with "mutual benefit", it has to do with the accumulation of capital.
- certainly not a government-enforced monopoly.
Unless it helps you accumulate capital, that is.
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Not to mention the fine they might've incurred had they been busted for selling without a permit.
"...it was a temperate day..." Jaysus wept, what a killjoy.
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The real puzzle...
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Trumped by 7 Year Olds
Does Savage even qualify as a moron in a hurry?
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When everyone kills themselves for a few extra bucks to spend on "new shiny 5.0 ultra edition", you loose sight of living life. Let the kids have their bright day. Sooner or later they will be forced into the cattle lines like everyone else.
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Well, at the end of each summer each staff member at the park I worked at would pitch in a third of the price, out of our own paychecks, and buy like twelve (or more) boxes of pizza to give pizza away to anyone who wanted it, parents, children, family, etc... We would literally feed them for the entire day and sometimes even had leftover boxes for ourselves and others.
So now I'm convinced that what we did was wrong and congress needs to pass a bill forbidding this sort of behavior.
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Yes, you were destroying America. You were supposed to mark up the pizza %250, and sell it by the slice. What the hell is wrong with you?
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Ayn Rand
Sigh. I really hate that way of thinking.
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Customer: Sure!... Hey This tastes like p*ss!
Girl: That's because it is. Mouthwash? $50 a shot.
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Maybe supercilious know-it-all Terry Savage interfered with otherwise very effective parenting.
(And as I recall, our "punishment" turned out to be pretty fun and we ended up doing it a few more times on our own. Of course Savage would probably just use that as proof of how our lesson in generosity fueled my later support for health care reform.)
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Free Lemonade
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Savage is an idiot
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More specifically, you meant to say "density of hot air" as you are just about the only one producing it here, but damn, there's a lot of it!
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TAM said so...
And provided no arguments to support his absolute declaration...
But he never makes those.
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lemonade stand
second. promotional giveaways are and have been a long standing element of business. dummy.
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2 boys from the countryside bought a mule so they could use it in their little father farm, the day they got to get the mule the man who sold it to them said the mule died the night before and he had already spend the money, they whispered to each other and asked the man if they could have the mule corpses since he didn't had the money to give them back, the man agreed. One week later the man meet the boys and curious about the dead mule he asks what the boys did with it. The boys answered by saying they organized a raffle offering the dead mule. The man surprised asked the boys "But it was dead, nobody complained?", the boys replied "Only the winner after we told him the mule has died the night before but we gave him the money back and he was happy", and they continued to explain how much they did get for that little stunt "And we recovered the money we paid you and got more to buy another mule". According to legend they became bankers after and today they command one of the biggest agriculture banks in the world.
The highlight of the story is that to make money you need to make a fool of another.
What is wrong with America? Other got smarter.
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Lemonade stands and raising children
When my children were very young, similar things happened, and my relatives and friends were so determined to "fix" the "wrong upbringing" I was giving my children that they even went behind my back to try to "teach" my children.
I finally told them "You are raising followers, I am raising leaders" - unfortunately it turned out that way (with all three of my kids and all five of theirs), and the relatives have never forgiven me (not that I really care).
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