When times get tough - it is time to design.

Hello everyone, hang in there. Woe to the retailers.
We are making gifts this year. Maybe splurge on food. If nothing else, it will be an old fashioned Holiday season. The way it should be, togetherness, gifts of the Magi, feasting. It frankly sounds good to me.
I am in the retail business, my online store is www.vitalwonders.com selling designer magnetic therapy jewelry and artful fused glass jewelry and gifts, but I cut out most advertising this year - still paying off last December's pay-per-click bills. What answers the question anyway of 'who is clicking on my ads? How much can it cost to not sell anyway?' [a lot] Who pays $2.50 a click? You don't sell if you don't show and who is showing? The same big guys on most every page - how do they do it? Many times they are subsidies of the click company which I doubt get any bill but seem to set the bids high high high. Seems to me greed will bite these big companies in the butt because after a while as they grow bigger and bigger no one will be left to keep the wheels oiled.
I lowered my prices consistently as the months went on, seeing how everyone is taking economic blows, and reality is slipping into new depths. Am I the only one biting the bullet? Are we not writing history as we are winging it? This is new territory for us, I just hope I can continue in a civilized manner. Anything can come at us, when you are vulnerable fate strikes. As I tried to prepare starting eight years ago, I thought I could outlast it. Well, for four years anyway. But the obvious corporate thieves struck heartlessly and I watched as a spectator and witnessed rug after rug being pulled out from beneath me. Forced company buybacks of blocks of stocks, why always mine? How did they pick and choose who's stocks are taken back and who gets to keep theirs at the new inflated price, huh Sears? After 25 years we get unceremoniously fired and dumped. And what a low price you offered and after taking off the charges for the right to sell the shares back, we got shinola. The other fourth of my portfolio went bankrupt. [not their CEOs tho] Exxon made big bucks but it didn't seem to trickle down to the investors. What's the point, who is getting the profits? Oh that special few! Where are they going to hide anyway? People hear 'let them all eat cake' too often and there is no cake, it will bounce back. How utterly foolish. Hey thanks health insurance companies, thanks for letting me pay in and pay in for some catastrophic event that MIGHT happen and then canceling me when it did and leaving me untouchable. Breaking a bone nowadays is like farming using big machinery, it could cost little if treated but why treat a wound when you can xray the hell out of it, give inflatedly high med prices, have nine specialists take a look see at hundreds per, and who even knows who really had their hands in the mess, a sea of strange faces when you are whacked on drugs they pumped into you. Ever get butchered in an emergency vehicle? They are there to help you so you lose all rights but if not done right, they can turn out to be a worse memory than the accident. Then let's inundate you with meds that all constipate you and then NOT let you leave until you eliminate. Mission impossible? I could go on but why bother. There are plenty with worse horror stories than my observations. But why do doctors get huge salaries for a quick look see and the nurses who watch over you and nurture you along hourly get a small salary, long hours, and a brutal schedule? I'd rather pay the nurse. Doctors rushing at a diagnosis is like injury lawyers scuttling towards the victim... Can I get in on the bill, huh? Oh boy, a vulnerable victim to re-victimize!
We need new people in charge, new ideas, new technologies, new standards, new pride, new motivation and big fixes! And some decency.