Economy | Bay Area Community Exchange

One-Third Of All U.S. Adults Struggle To Afford Their Car

15-03-2012

More than 36 percent of adult respondents said that if gas prices continue to rise, they’ll have to give something up in order to afford their car. Of those who regularly drive a vehicle, nearly one-in-four (23 percent) said it is at least somewhat likely that they will build up credit card debt to pay for gas in the upcoming months. Households with children (29 percent) are significantly more likely than those without children (19 percent) to indicate this.

When asked what they likely will do to better afford to drive a vehicle due to rising gas prices, survey takers said the following:

Dine out less often – 70 percent
Spend less money on entertainment (going out to the movies, attractions, concerts, etc…) – 64 percent
Postpone seasonal clothes shopping – 37 percent
Cancel paid online or other subscriptions (Netflix, Hulu Plus, etc…) – 22 percent

OK, let’s pretend for just a minute that I don’t have strong feelings about what or who is sticking it to the American people through gas prices while laughing all the way to the bank. Instead let’s focus on the amazing fact that people are willing to give up things that make them happy and allow them to spend quality time with their loved ones, just so they can keep driving that gas guzzler all over town.

WHY?! There are plenty of perfectly good ways to get around without owning a personal car. Alternatives like car sharing, bike commuting, ride sharing, walking, and public transportation are much cheaper and better for the planet too. The good news is, more people are becoming embracing these alternatives every day.

When asked how their driving habits would be affected by rising gas prices, U.S. adults who regularly drive a vehicle said the following:

Plan to drive less overall to save money – 61 percent
Plan to carpool – 9 percent
Plan to use public transportation – 8 percent
Plan to buy a hybrid/energy efficient vehicle – 6 percent

This is a good start, but the numbers need to be bigger. If you’re struggling to feed your car and your family, check out the resource below to learn more about alternatives to personal transportation. They’ll help you ride out the storm of rising gas prices (assuming they ever come back down) and who knows? You might just like them so much, you’ll never wanted to chain yourself to the pump again!

The Future Of Car Sharing Is Brighter Than You Think

Top 4 Peer-To-Peer Car Sharing Services

New Technology Turns Bike Rides Into Cash

Ride Sharing Makes It Cheaper To Get Home For The Holidays

Most Americans Would Rather Have A Walkable Neighborhood Than A Big House

Tips And Resources For Biking To Work (Even When It’s Hot)

This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of CouponCabin from March 6th – March 8th, 2012 among 2,254 U.S. adults ages 18 and older. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore, no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please contact: Allison Nawoj,anawoj@couponcabin.com.

Image Credit: Flickr – Images_Of_Money

“Doing More With Less” Shows Businesses A New Path To Success

By: Beth Buczynski

05-03-2012

Uncategorized

The economy is in chaos, and many of the world’s richest countries are coming to terms with immense debt and a disenfranchised workforce. Dr. Bruce Piasecki, author of the forthcoming Doing More With Less: The New Way To Wealth says that while this pressure cooker presents major challenges to business–and to society in genera–it also offers unique opportunities to the firms that recognize the wisdom of acting thriftily, and capitalize on them.

Insteading had the chance to ask Dr. Piasecki a few questions about this new approach to thinking about and doing business in a shifting economic paradigm. Here’s what he had to say:

INS: What’s the biggest difference between the path to wealth/success that you advocate in the book, and the way most people pursue it in today’s society and business world?

Dr. Piasecki: What I write about in Doing More With Less is both a forgotten and proven path of wealth thru industriousness and competitive frugality. Many greats have followed this path from Ben Franklin to the great World War II writer E. F. Schumacher in his work “Small is Beautiful.” But today its themes mean more to a world of 7 billion souls, with limited water, energy, and opportunity.

In my years as a management consultant working for large global firms, I find three competing things true:

1. Most people fall into patterns of professional discourse and entrenched spirals of peer argumentation. Lawyers, engineers, corporate planners get narrow, risk adverse.

2. I advocate that we can, and must, remember our first sense of being competitive in a different way and go back at it again and again, each day.

3. This primal self of invention and frugality allows new growth, even in mature adults. We must look at the full glory of creating and keeping wealth, not just the material gains that come from it, which includes the value of social capital. This is possible by learning from Ben Franklin - frugality, inventiveness, and diplomacy.

INS: Why is it so important for emerging companies to adopt a “doing more with less” mentality, rather than trying to emulate the status quo?

Dr. Piasecki: The “Doing More with Less” mentality is a healthy lens through which we can look at this newly globalized world of scarcity and alarm. You can see this in the 30 years of practice at my firm, where firms as different as Warren Buffett’s Shaw Industries and Toyota found value in our approach to competitive frugality. Once you learn to participate in this new, larger form of social wealth creation, the world becomes a more intelligible and acceptable place. I also believe that operating in this mindset can help a new company flourish in a world that is likely to be capital- and carbon-restrained. This is why Doing More with Less is the mantra for success for a life, your family, your firm, whether large or small today. Franklin shows that we all must become frugal, innovative and peace loving again, as we all share this same boat and the same seas.

INS: What’s your perspective on the (very tech-based) collaborative consumption/P2P industry and their potential to impact the business world?

Dr. Piasecki: I find great promise here. We live in a swift and severe world, as I described in my previous book. However, you can ride [the] with wave with more certainty and success if you consider the principles outlined in the personal narratives of Doing More With Less. The two books are sisters in a family that answers this question about new potential.

In addition, Social networks and the ability to share workloads among people in different parts of the world ties directly to my message. We do this every day in my management firm, where seasoned seniors work with new economist and recent college grads.

In a world that is ever increasingly connected and transparent, we need to harness technology to the maximum societal benefit, in a way that spreads democracy and global well-being. We must change the machines not just the laws, and most important, we must avoid the dangerous dance of excessive debt and become again self determining.

Image Credit: Flickr – get directly down

Most Americans Would Rather Have A Walkable Neighborhood Than A Big House

By: Beth Buczynski

22-02-2012

Uncategorized

Before the 2008 recession hit, Americans were obsessed with big houses, big cars, paying no mind to the big debt that went along with them. But since the economic crisis, it appears that most of us have been taken down a peg or two. Potentially losing everything has brought into focus what’s really important–and according to a recent survey (PDF), it’s no longer having a massive house.

According to the 2011 Community Preference Survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors, the shifting economy has had a substantial impact on attitudes toward housing and communities.

After hearing detailed descriptions of two different types of communities, 56 percent of Americans would prefer to live in a the smart growth community rather than a sprawl community. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said sidewalks and places to take walks are among the top community characteristics they consider important when deciding where to live. Perhaps even more surprising was the fact that 57 percent said that improving existing communities was a much higher priority than building new ones.

Other encouraging survey findings:

Preserving farms and open areas from development are a higher priority (53% extremely high or high priority) than creating new developments (24%).
Improving public transportation is viewed as the best answer to traffic congestion by half of the country (50%).
After hearing detailed descriptions of two different types of communities, 56% of Americans select the smart growth community and 43% select the sprawl community. Smart growth choosers do so largely because of the convenience of being within walking distance to shops and restaurants (60%).

These findings stand in stark contradiction to the actions of U.S. politicians who recently voted against an amendment that would have extended federal funding for community biking and walking programs. Instead the bill would expand current highway development, allowing bigger trucks on the road and putting many DOT contracts into the hands of private corporations.

Learn more about the controversial bill in this NY Times article, and then take the time to tell your Senators exactly what kind of community you really want your tax dollars to support.

Image Credit: Flickr – Lance Shields

Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein [Interview]

By: Mira Luna

10-02-2012

Uncategorized

From Shareable.net
Interview by Mira Luna
01.29.12

Charles Eisenstein is the author of two of my all time favorite books, the Ascent of Humanity and Sacred Economics. He graduated from Yale with a degree in Philosophy and Mathematics and now teaches at Goddard College. He is a well known speaker on the topics of culture, spirituality, economics, gifting, the money system and community currencies.

Mira Luna: What got you interested in Economics?

Charles Eisenstein: While researching for Ascent of Humanity and looking into the origin of the all the crises on Earth, when you go down a few levels, you always find money. The money system is deeply implicated obviously in everything that’s happening. For a while I believed money is the problem, but money is built on deeper causes – the defining myths of civilization. Still money is deep down and at the core.

I read economic philosophy by a myriad of well known economists, including Keynes, Henry George, and other more mainstream economists. I found that they were all contradictory. I didn’t have a degree in Economics, but all these PhD Economists disagreed with each other so I thought a fresh perspective was needed to shift and expand the dialogue. I bring philosophy, history, spirituality, psychology, and nuts and bolts economics into it.

On a personal level I went through a phase where I was deeply in debt and went bankrupt and then broke. I was sleeping at other people’s houses with my kids for a while and hit bottom. It became obvious that what I was doing wasn’t working. That got me interested in the psychology of money. Money embodies unconscious beliefs in the nature of reality, self and the world like: more for you is less for me, we live in a finite universe with scarce resources, we are separate from each other, we are fundamentally in competition.

Mira: What are the myths underlying the money system?

Read the rest of the article here.

Participatory Budgeting Returns Power To The Taxpayers

By: Beth Buczynski

07-12-2011

Uncategorized

One of the chief grievances of those involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement is that they no longer have a say in how tax revenue is put to use in their own communities.

This was vividly demonstrated by the billions (and possibly trillions) paid to bail out the Big Banks that caused the credit and mortgage crisis in the first place. It is further demonstrated by the current suggestion to raise taxes on the middle and lower classes while subsequently cutting funding the the public programs they most rely on for survival.

There might not be much we can do to force changes to the federal tax code or spending cuts, but things are much more accessible at the local level. If you’re unhappy with budget cuts for schools and libraries, fire fighters and social services in your community, and think you could do a better job managing your town’s money, participatory budgeting might be the answer.

On the following pages are excerpts from an article about participatory budgeting by our friends at Shareable Magazine. Residents of over 1,000 cities are already using aspects of this process to re-involve citizens in creating and balancing municipal budgets. This article offers some initial tips for how you could start participatory budgeting in your city.

>>Up Next: What is Participatory Budgeting?

TheDoGooder.com Offers 3 Ways To Help Communities Thrive

By: Beth Buczynski

11-11-2011

Uncategorized

The ongoing economic recession has caused funding for schools and small businesses (the backbones of our communities) to virtually evaporate. While the politicians stall almost every practical solution for creating jobs and supporting innovation in Congress, children, families, and local economies continue to suffer.

The recent passage of the McHenry Crowdfunding Bill in the House shows that our political leaders have more faith in the public’s ability to spot and fund worthy industries than their own. A new social network for sustainably-minded people called “TheDoGooder.com” takes this idea a step further by providing a fundraising platform that connects schools, small businesses, and the people who want to support them.

Learn more about how your school or business could get in on the action below!