“Go Spend Some Money”
Although Ron Abbott, the owner of the Rincon Market and I apparently voted for different candidates in the last national election, we think a lot alike. And that’s the way it should be.
Most of the time Ron is very busy Saturday mornings prepping for catering parties later in the day or making those eye-popping omelets. Maybe once a month he takes a few minutes out to talk to me about business … his favorite subject next to stories about his grand kids.
Within a minute or so he started discussing the economy. “You know,” he said, “there is only one way to fix the economy, go out and spend some money. Spending money makes our economy work. If you hold back your money, everything slows down.”
I’m always telling folks to do something, not wait for the government to solve all of our problems. So this was music to my ears. Ron mentioned that he is maintaining his staff levels and is paying his loyal crew way above the minimum wage. But like other company’s in Tucson, business at the Rincon Market is a roller coaster ride every week.
“When people complain to me about the economy,” Ron added, “I tell them we’ve got to fix the economy and to fix it we just have to spend money. If those with money spend the money the economy will improve.”
Ron’s dead right, you know. In fact I’m thinking about getting one of those new, 110-watt washer/dryer combo units that is really high tech. It’s expensive, but what the heck, if I’m going to be broke, at least I’m going to be clean.
Related Good News
While eating dinner tonight I watched Brian Williams on the NBC Evening News. About half way through his report, he talked about jobs coming home from China. It seems that wages in China are jumping 30% to 40% a year. In addition, because of the One Child Rule, they are having trouble finding young, less expensive workers. Consequently, their manufactured goods prices are getting to normal, developed-country levels and manufacturing in the good ol’ USA is becoming competitive again. (Click on the link above to view the news story.)
Even if our workers are a little pricey, the quality of their work more than compensates for the added expense. (Low quality is another one of China’s problems.) Then you mix in Ron’s directive to spend money and I’m feeling a little more optimistic today. Hope you are, too.
This week’s cereal donations numbered 22 boxes and bags. Amazingly, it is the same number of boxes and bags we collected last week. How do you folks do that?
We collected a total of 170 lbs. of food. The money we donated amounted to $44.00, a $25.00 check and $19.00 in cash.
See you Sunday,
Peter
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