You never forget the cars you grew up with. Whether it’s the car you learned to drive on, the first car you bought, or the well-kept classic that still gleams in your garage, that memory is likely one that you will hold fondly for the rest of your life.
AxleGeeks, a vehicle data site and part of the Graphiq network, was curious to see how much the average new car cost in the year you were born. We also wanted to see how much car those same dollars might buy you in 2016 given the new features and technology available to today's car buyer. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, we calculated the average expenditure per car (considering sales of both domestic and foreign models) for each year since 1967. Then, using the national consumer price index, we adjusted for inflation and calculated the price of each car to determine its value in 2016 dollars. We also compared the difference in price each year to see how much it went up or down. Turns out, though we enjoy a lot more bells and whistles today, the price of your average new car has remained fairly consistent. Car prices in the U.S. reached a peak in 1999, the same year the average family income peaked at $57,000,according to the Federal Reserve. National GDP growth also hit a 25-year apex in 1999, reaching a whopping 4.79 percent. As GDP growth declined in following years, average car prices followed suit. The BEA data we used provided the average month-to-month price of purchased cars, so we took the average of all 12 months to determine the yearly cost average. To read more click on link: http://goo.gl/TVmYjl
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The Woman of My Dreams
By Keith Kelly All I could tell you was that I kept having this dream of a woman carrying flowers. She had a lavender dress on, a robust bosom, and she had blue flowers in a wicker basket walking towards me. It was an older dress possibly from the sixties. In the dream, I couldn’t see her face. I woke every morning wondering who this person was. Had I seen her before on the street or in a magazine? Who was she? Her right hand was on the handle of the basket, and her left holding the bottom. Her arms positioned in a way as if she were about to hand the flowers to me. Although blurry, behind her I could see the bush she picked the flowers from. I noticed her skin was slightly brown, but was unable to tell if it was her natural color or it was from the sun. I began to create a face for her, and still, the face I created for her was like no other face I had ever seen. In the face I created for her, in her eyes I could see the excitement in them, as she was about to hand the flowers to me, but why me? Was I a female in the dream, or perhaps her daughter, or maybe I just a guy who liked flowers. Perhaps this dream was a vision from my past life. Maybe she was my wife. Strange as it would seem, I fell in love with this woman in my dream. Her skin was beautiful; she seemed sophisticated, warm, and friendly. Until now, I never realized how much one could tell from a faceless person. Everything I needed to know was in my image of her. I loved her, and what her face looked like was not of a concern to me anymore. I didn’t care what she looked like, I had fallen on love with her, and the looks of her face irrelevant. Once I fell I in love with her, the appearance of her face was no longer a mystery me, it revealed itself, and she was beautiful. The End 1. First, do no harm.
Think about it. If everyone could pull off this simple goal, the world would be transformed overnight into a far, far better place. It sounds so easy in theory and yet it’s so hard in practice. Still, it’s a pretty impressive priority, if you ask me. 2. Enjoy your time here. How much of our time do we spend hating, whining, arguing, fighting, and generally making ourselves and everyone around us miserable. Sadly, social media, blogs and comments have extended that to include just about everyone. Try making it a priority to enjoy yourself. See how that works out for you … and everyone around you. 3. Provide kids with more opportunities than you had. This may sound like falling off a log but, in it’s not. In this day and age, just being a good parent and ensuring that your children have a chance for a better life than you had is an incredibly honorable and difficult goal to achieve. And the payoff is a better next generation. 4. Experience the real world, explore your inner world. The greatest learning comes from two places: experiencing the real world and exploring your inner world. Today, we’ve become voyeurs of a two-dimensional world bound by tiny little displays. If you get out and do things and quietly explore your mind, your learning will become boundless. And that leads to the next two goals.: 5. Leave a legacy of knowledge. Where would we be without the breakthroughs and insights of great scientists and philosophers. The lessons of our forefathers? The art, music, and creations of those who lived to share their unique perception and gift with the rest of us? 6. Do great work. If you can somehow manage to figure out what you love to do, you can strive to be the best and achieve great things. Whether that’s building wonderful products that customers can’t get enough of or making sick people well, that will serve you, your family, and the greater good. Doing your best work is a powerful goal. 7. Be a good man among your fellow man. The longer I’m on this planet, the more I’ve come to realize that what seems to be the simplest of goals is actually the most difficult to achieve … and the most noble. In my experience, none is more challenging than simply being a good man among your fellow man. Try it for a week, or even just a day. See how long you last. Anger.
Anger is one of the worst emotions you can express because it leaves you open to attack from others. When you're mad, you tend to be unstable, act crazily, and are easy to manipulate by others in your life. But there are things you can do to stop them. If you're mad, work through that anger on your own. Don't lash out in anger. Don't fight with people and argue needlessly. Don't let the psychopaths out there find those points of weakness and use them against you. Defend yourself, even in states of anger. Happiness. On the flip side, happiness can also be used against you by a manipulator. Many times, especially when you're engaged romantically with a manipulator, they'll help you to feel happy then use that happiness, and what they did to make you happy, against you. They'll start doing things like insisting you do exactly what they say, otherwise they might leave you and take that happiness with them. It's always sad when this kind of manipulation occurs, but you have to be strong, face it down, and leave it behind. Jealousy. Jealousy might actually be a more reckless emotion than anger, as it tends to manifest deep within and is almost always looked down on. Jealousy opens you up to a manipulator creating fake fights between you and other parties, thus serving their agenda. When you feel jealous feelings bubbling up, don't let them turn you into a paranoid victim. Instead, think through the jealousy. Talk to the people involved. Be open. Be transparent. It's easy to use a jealous person because they often hide their jealousy. Take away their power by getting it out in the open. So you were driving down the road a little faster than you should have been, and you spot a police cruiser lurking behind some shrubbery. One former police officer says that the smartest thing that you can do right then is to wave at the officer. Why? He will either think that you know each other and wave back, or will think that you're acknowledging that you were driving too fast, and are letting him know that you're slowing down. Either way, you drastically reduce your chance of getting a ticket. Read more... http://goo.gl/2P93rl
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AuthorKeith Kelly currently lives in Rio Rancho New Mexico. Archives
October 2020
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