AWOL

This AWOL stands for "American Way Of Life" just to rhyme with my earlier post :-) One thing today's economic recession and job losses stand to validate is an observation I made about USA and its life style long time ago. This is a consumerist economy - less and less of production at home, more and more of ravenous consumption of services and goods from all parts of the world. They live of the credit line extended to them by fools who save money from them from the developing world. So in such an economy its the "marketing" that becomes a key player in the profitability. Unfortunately this marketing spree of the capitalist world seems to have caught up with the non-profit outfits here as well. Recently I made a $5 donation to the american cancer foundation (impulsive act). Since then I have gotten about a dozen postal mails from various other organizations asking for donation. Each time they send me this long scroll of address stickers with my name/address as thank-you-gift. If I guestimate the cost of making these stickers in first place, even if they are made in china, it would have come close to $5, my original contribution. There should be a better way. And a smarter way to squeeze money out of the filthy rich capitalists rather than bean-counting pennies from average joes like me.