Change is what???

First, I hope your Mom had a great Mother’s Day yesterday.

I know everyone has heard the phrase change is good. The catch is determining who benefits from the change. Many times, you hear it at work and for the average worker it causes alarm bells to go off inside the brain. And in most cases the change benefits the employer, not the employee.

And change isn’t always good for the consumer either. I recently posted about my new-found fears of apps. And they sometimes don’t even work. The better half tried downloading one to get a bonus and she could never get it to link up even though we were working with a person to make sure her info was correct. It was, and she never got the bonus. So, now she has an app and nothing to show for it, but excessive advertising.

That isn’t what prompted this post though. I was reminiscing the other night. On a side note to lead into this convoluted thought, I do not like it when you read a story about Las Vegas on the internet and it is inevitable that someone will say: Vegas was better when the mob ran it. Seriously how old are you? The mob hasn’t technically been in Las Vegas for decades. My Grandparents went to Las Vegas in the late fifties and early sixties. The grandkids always received the souvenir silver dollar. And since it was back then, they were real silver dollars. Not because the mob handed them out, they were real money. It just seemed the Grandparents thought it was special to bring a few back and give them to us.

Anyway it drives me crazy to read people say it was better when the mob ran Las Vegas. You must be close to 90 to be able to vouch for that.

So, what gives? Actually, some changes are good. It used to be fun to run around with a bucket full of quarters or nickels in the casinos back in the 80’s and 90’s, but now we receive paper. It was more fun yet running around with that coinage was just plain dirty. Your hands would be covered with filth at the end of the evening. You had to regularly wash your hands, which I guess is good, but carrying that paper in your pocket is much cleaner. No fun, but cleaner. Yet, that is about it. “back in the day” you could get inexpensive buffets even at the good casinos or “classier casinos”. Wynn made a huge change with The Mirage and for a good while Las Vegas was really fun. Then the corporate mindset settled in completely and everything has changed and none of it for the consumer. You get resort fees, valet fees, parking fees, less payouts, expensive buffets with the same quality food, shows with pricing through the roof, (I know some of the shows are good, but ticket prices are ridiculous), penny slots with max bets of $7, $8, and $9, sheesh, that is not a penny slot. How can you advertise something and treat it as inexpensive when in practice you are making it the most expensive item on the floor? And people play these games and have no idea if they won, what it takes to win, until the machine credits you a win that is equal to half of what you bet. I watched a bunch of those and just don’t go there.

Just an innocuous example of why you should be wary of change. They advertise the heck out of Las Vegas now, especially MGM, but why. You are either going to go or not, but the national advertising drives up the cost of doing business. All the casinos use to be separate so there was much more competition, now MGM has a list as long as your arm of the casinos they own. No competition, means not good for the consumer.

This leads me to Wall Street destroying real capitalism. They want mergers, so they can make a mint of manipulating share prices with large buys and sells till they get what they want. Consumers and workers lose with mergers, but Wall Street and a few executives gain. Occasionally a regular individual might pick up a few hundred or a few thousand dollars on a stock trade from a merger, yet the majority of the money is made by the big boys on Wall Street.  They companies consolidate, and the larger company moves on to eat up the next company in its way. The executives love it, they get credit for bringing share holder value to some people, but the real business often doesn’t improve.

And so, it goes, corporations love telling you change is good. Why, because it is good for them not you. So, quit buying it. And why is this hard to overcome? Because all those good upper middle-class executives and professionals make that few hundred or few thousand and think the system is wonderful, all they while not realizing the cost to them as a consumer and the community when jobs are lost. Yeah that is a good trade.

I could go on, but I won’t. I am hissed and I am rambling because of it. One of these days hopefully the majority will wake up and want businesses to start acting like businesses again or you can kiss our economy good bye.