What is Retail Therapy?

Posted by Phoenix on Jul 29, 2008 in Economy | 0 comments

Retail therapy is shopping with the primary purpose of improving the buyer’s mood or disposition.

Often seen in people during periods of depression or transition, it is normally a short-lived habit. Items purchased during periods of retail therapy are sometimes referred to as "comfort buys."

Retail therapy was first used as a term in the 1980s with the first reference being this sentence in the Chicago Tribune of Christmas Eve 1986. "We’ve become a nation measuring out our lives in shopping bags and nursing our psychic ills through retail therapy."  In 2001, the European Union conducted a study finding that 33 per cent of shoppers surveyed had "high level of addiction to rash or unnecessary consumption’." 

This was causing debt problems for many with the problem being particularly bad in Scottish young people.

Researchers at Melbourne University have advocated its classification as a psychological disorder called oniomania or compulsive shopping disorder.

Retail therapy need not be a negative term. It can be a neutral term that describes the pleasures of the total shopping experience, used by many people to boost their mood. Shopping as a way of boosting one’s mood does not necessarily involve rash or inadvisable purchases. Retailers may view the entertainment aspect of their stores as a means of boosting store traffic, so that some of those customers make purchases, but not necessarily inappropriate or inadvisable ones.

Retail addiction or shopping addiction should be considered a separate and serious problem. The term "therapy" by definition implies a treatment for a problem (here, depression or stress), not a problem itself. Retail therapy may be the wrong treatment in many cases, but it is not, by definition, dangerous or problematic.

Source: WikiPedia.

Well, The above definition was from Wiki.

In my Opinion, its is very useful Technique to apply when you are depressed or feeling low.

This gives you a real freshness and makes you able to stand up and go live life.

Most people Save their Money and they are never able to used it in the END.

its better to save some about (or a Big part of your Income) but you should enjoy life.

Serial Bomb Blastas in Ahemdabad (Gujarat)

Posted by Phoenix on Jul 27, 2008 in Society | 0 comments

AHMEDABAD: Close on the heels of Bangalore serial blasts, serial blasts rocked Ahmedabad on Saturday evening. (Watch)
All the explosion were low intensity blasts. At least twenty people have been injured in the blasts, they have been taken to Maninagar hospital. Six blasts have been confirmed. According to reports two people are feared dead.
The Gujarat Home Minister said 12 blasts had occurred. All metros have been put on high alert. The entire mobile network has come to a standstill. Chief Minister Narendra Modi is due to hold an emergency meeting.
The Prime Minister has condemned the Ahmedabad blasts and appealed for calm.
Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Shakeel Ahmed said that serial blasts speak of serious security lapses on the part of the state government. Maharashtra, Rajasthan and several other states have been put on high alert.
There are reports that there many live bombs still across the city. According to reports, a terror outfit claiming itself to be Indian Mujahidden sent an email at 6.41 pm(local time) claiming that the blasts at Ahmadabad were being carried out to avenge the Gujarat riots.
The first explosion took place in Maninagar, which happens to be Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency. The second blast happened in the Sardar Patel Diamond market. The third and fourth blasts took place in Saranpur Bridge and Isanpur. While the first bomb was reportedly planted in a cycle, the other bombs were hidden in tiffin boxes, according to police sources. There were other blasts in Bapu Nagar and Raipur.

Source: Times of India

The reason I have highlighted those lines in the news, just to write what I am going to write now.

I’ll not write actually, I’ll ask from you!

should Muslims of Gujarat be Prepared for the next Riots? the same thing happened back in 2002, things were done without any investigation. Few people said, its just a Reaction,

So What do we expect now?

The Same Reaction?

 

 

Terror attack in Jaipur and it’s ramifications

How changes in the minimum wage affect the economy

Posted by Phoenix on Jul 25, 2008 in Politics | 0 comments

Whether you are Republican, Democrat, Independent, believe minimum wages should be higher or that they should be lower are all political distinctions. Fortunately, the fact is that minimum wages have an empirical impact on the economy regardless of the party politics surrounding them.

Oddly enough, minimum wages, which are generally designed to help people move above and away from the poverty line, tends not to pull many out of poverty. How is this possible though? People are getting more money, right? So this is always a good thing, right?

Economics has a few answers. Minimum wage is an example of the economic term "price floor" – that is, an artificial rate that sets the lowest price a commodity can be traded for. In this case, the government is setting a price floor on labor and is establishing that $5.15 (which will be quickly rising to $7.25 as a result of new legislation) is the lowest that consumers of labor, businesses in the country, can offer the supply of labor, everyone in the labor for.

The problem with this type of price floor and all price floors is that, already, the demand curve for labor slopes downward (as wage rates increase, employers will demand less workers), and the supply curve for labor slopes upward (as wage rate increase, yes, there will be more people searching for jobs). The two oppositely sloping curves make an "x" and the center of that x is the happy equilibrium: just the right number of people demanded and supplied at the right wage. However, with the price floor, instead of having an equilibrium between the numbers of workers and the amount of people employers want to hire, a price floor makes more people want to work and makes employers want to hire less people.

Quite simply, you have a surplus of labor, which means greater unemployment.

This doesn’t explain, however, why a higher minimum wage doesn’t not directly affect poverty as well as it should. Remember that a minimum wage raises employers’ costs; it is not free money to workers. Because employers have to pay more, they must express this increased cost by raising the prices of the goods and services they provid, so because a company (such as Wal-mart) must pay their workers more, they have to also raise prices to cover the extra costs. In summary, minimum wage actually just inflates the prices of goods in such a way that instead of pulling people above the poverty bar, the poverty bar simply moves up with the people.

long-term economic issue: it decreases people’s willingnesses to specialize, which is important because specialization is the way that people most directly pull themselves from poverty. If a plumber is paid $8.00/hour (just hypothetically), and a grocery store bagger is paid a minimum wage of $5.15/hour, then the bagger now has an incentive of going to school to become a plumber and making more money. There then becomes a kind of hierarchy of jobs by their pay-grade, however unfortunate that is. However, if minimum wage is 7.25/hour (hypothetically), remember that the wages a plumber makes would not increase as well, so a person no longer has any incentive to gain more education or skills and advance.

Minimum wage is not all negative however. Going back to the downward sloping curve of the demand for laborers, realize that if employers can get labor for as cheap as possible, they would prefer to and will. This has explained slave labor in the past and now it explains current trends at providing illegal immigrants with work visas or outsourcing to countries with lower wage rates. The minimum wage serves as a regulation that keeps these employers from selling at high prices, paying their workers little, and making exorbitant profits.

How far are these reality shows REAL?

Posted by Phoenix on Jul 4, 2008 in Society | 2 comments

The trend started around two to three years back to facilitate the exposure of hidden talents but now it has taken a drastic commercial turn ensuring big financial bonanza for television channels.

I still remember Abhijeet Sawant and Amit Sana competing each other for the first Indian Idol crown in an healthy atmosphere. The people use to enjoy the talent feast and moreover it generated great deal of interest in the minds of Indian youths.

But the next part of the story is very saddening. After the high profile success of first Indian Idol there came an era of reality shows with almost every television channel toeing the same line. In between commercials at crucial junction to maintain the suspense, hot dialogues between the judges to make the show spicy, asking the candidates to request for votes in order to earn money almost every thing was done that is hardly related to talent search. The modus operandi is same of every channel and the purpose is very clear, to earn maximum by banking on the fates of the candidates.

The worst part of it came when a sixteen year old Shinjini from West Bengal suffered partial paralysis and refused to speak after being publicly rebuked by a judge in a reality show .The parents have alleged that the television channel is solely responsible for the critical condition of their child. It came at a time when nation commission for the protection of child rights has already set up a committee to frame guidelines for children’s participating in the show .The commission has requested for the opinion of labour ministry to tackle with this menace which it calls as new age child labour.There are few sections in the society who are in favour of penalizing parents for pushing their child in these shows to earn publicity.

There are frequent tense moments and the channels have exerted enough pressure on the participants which ends up hampering their mental development up to a certain limit. Every year few candidates win the crown and remain in the lime light for few days until they are forgotten, as it is very rightly said public memory is very short. But at the end of the day the channels earn huge amount and look forward to another show.

At last there some reprieve as the child rights commission has taken up the matter seriously and hope the results are witnessed soon. Let’s pray we don’t meet any more shinjini in the same manner.