Here's the Bad News

I’m having a bad day. My alarm didn’t go off and I can’t figure out why. It was set and the time was correct. It’s lucky I only woke up 15 minutes late because my son wasn’t up either and I had to rustle him out of bed to get him on the bus. 

When I came out of my room I discovered my brine shrimp is dead. My brine shrimp lived with two others in a biosphere ~ a self contained world in a globe. My oldest son gave it to me about 5 years ago. It had three tiny shrimp in a little ocean with a stick and some moss and rocks. The world is supposed to perpetuate itself, setting its own climate and sustaining life. The brine shrimp never had any babies. I guess 5 years must be the life expectancy of a brine shrimp’s because all three of them died this year. This was the last one. There’s no way to open the globe and add any more, so my little world is dead except for some moss and algae.

It reminds me of The Half-Blood Prince scene in Harry Potter where Professor Slughorn tells Harry about the day his fish, Francis, disappeared ~ the day Lily Potter was murdered by Voldemort. I feel like my world is ending the same way. Like America is ending, or already ended.

And that brings me to the bad news. Trump has said he will raise tariffs as much as 2000% on foreign made goods. Obviously his rants vary widely as to details but according to the sane-washers that means a 20% to 60% hike on Chinese imports. And guess what’s made almost exclusively in China? Doll supplies ~ particularly doll eyes.

The last time Trump was in office I had to raise my prices 18% and you need to brace yourselves because I’m thinking it will be 25% minimum this time. This is not because I am mean or trying to fleece you. I have to stay in business. Trump did three things in his first term that really spiked prices for businesses. First, he slapped tariffs on Chinese goods. Then he appointed Louis DeJoy Postmaster. DeJoy is a criminal who used straw donors at his company to help Trump and instead of being prosecuted, was awarded with the position. He’s used his authority to make the US Postal Service much more expensive and less reliable. Finally, Trump botched his handling of the pandemic to an outrageous degree, putting his nepo-baby unqualified son-in-law in charge. This resulted not only in hundreds of thousands more deaths in our country than others but also paralyzed the supply chain, making it nearly impossible to get goods distributed around the country. He did give businesses a 15% tax cut but since we charge a 20% self-employment tax it was really only a 5% tax break and it wasn’t permanent.

And don’t think I am reserving all my ire for Trump. I was very expectant Biden would understand the pressures on businesses and remove the Chinese tariffs, remove DeJoy, and make the business tax cuts permanent but he did none of that. He failed miserably in my estimation and I am absolutely furious.

About eight years ago Jimmy Carter said he thinks we already lost our democracy and live in an oligarchy and I believe that is true. Think about this: more than half of the members of Congress are millionaires. Their median net worth is $1 million. Meanwhile, the rest of us, the governed, have a median net worth of $39K at the lowest (people under age 35) to $409K at the highest (people aged 65-74). Only 18% of the American population are millionaires and that includes the 50% of Congress millionaires. This election made Musk billions of dollars overnight due to gains in his Tesla stock, even as he (who let’s not forget is UNELECTED) pledged to cut billions from government spending and crash the economy in the hope it will “start over”.

Essentially, we are ruled over by people with almost unimaginable wealth. They make the laws and policies to benefit themselves. Of course, not all rich people or millionaires are bad. My husband and I are net-worth millionaires. The difference is we can remember poverty. We crawled out of it ourselves, whereas people like Musk, whose father owned an Apartheid-era emerald mine in South Africa, and Trump, whose wealthy father gave him $400 million which he promptly squandered, have never been poor. Neither of them has any idea what it takes to build a business from scratch with no money. Joe Biden was working-class at one point but he made his money in government, not through entrepreneurship. Why else would we be charging entrepreneurs a 20% punitive tax for starting a businesses? Every politician claims to want to spark American innovation and spur the growth of new businesses but none of our policies actually support that.

My point is, this is why we have such spectacularly bad economic policies; they’re put in place by people who live in the ivory tower of wealth and have no experience in the real world. Mortgage rates, which were falling, spiked up to almost 7% immediately after the election. Most businesses have already announced price hikes due to the expected tariffs.

If you’re not going to help people build factories in America then you have no business slapping tariffs on foreign imports. I can raise a couple thousand dollars to import doll eyes. I can’t raise millions to build a doll eye factory in America. I had high hopes for Kamala’s $50K business grants for new startups. I was planning to get a bunch of 3D printers and surprise you all with my own made-in-America doll supplies. Now I’m left delivering the bad news.

I was worried about this exact scenario, since Democrats seem to have no more urgency than Republicans to lower the cost of goods. That’s one reason why I’ve been pivoting to digital products over the past year. At least there’s no shipping, manufacturing, or import costs and I can work from anywhere. This country feels increasingly unsafe for my Chinese American children and although we have no plans to leave, I want the option to work from anywhere in the world if we have to get them away from here.

I know this is a depressing post, and I’m sorry. And I know half the country is grieving and terrified and angry right now. It feels hopeless. I’ve been in this place before. When my husband, Jerry, was disabled in a near-fatal work accident in 1998 the two of us together made less than $40K a year. We immediately lost $600 a month Jerry had been making in overtime pay as a lineman. I was pregnant with our first child and we had just bought our first house, a modest ranch untouched in style since it was built in 1968. It was like stepping into a time capsule.

I didn’t know what to do. It felt hopeless at first but desperation lit a fire under us both and we pulled ourselves up into a lifestyle I honestly never thought we would achieve. I want you to know it’s possible. And I want you to start something now, even if it’s just a side-hustle, to bring in extra income. We all deserve a seat at the table. We all deserve a say in how our country is governed. Let’s help each other up so we get what we deserve.

It took me 18 months of working at night after my day job to replace my salary so I could stay home with our son. That’s all I wanted; not fantastic wealth, just to be with my baby. Nowadays I’m sure it would go much faster. I didn’t have digital products or social media or even any sales site online except eBay. This is a scary and depressing time but it’s also a time of immense opportunity. 

I pulled myself a tarot spread today and the result was so positive I thought I would share it with you. I drew the VIII of Strength, the VIII of Wands, and the XIV of Temperance. These mean: first, you have the strength, second, you need to hurry and hard work is required, three, the end of your problems is in sight. Unbelievable outcomes are possible very quickly as long as you correctly evaluate your circumstances and find your balance and peace of mind.

This is amazing advice for success in any venture! Believe in yourself, grab opportunities when you can, start fast, work hard, and keep your equilibrium. Don’t allow yourself to wallow in despair. Don’t act from fear. Keep steadily pushing yourself toward your goal. Keep your head down and your focus on the finish line and ignore everything else.

With all that in mind, I partnered with Paul and Shreya once again to bring you the Your First Info Product course. This 15-module video course takes you through every step of creating and selling your first digital product. Once you get it done and set up you can have money coming in around the clock, no matter what you’re doing. You can complete the course quickly too; you can watch all the videos in a couple hours. The best part is, it’s only $39! It’s an absolutely insane value. I want to see you succeed and I know this will help. Click here to learn more and get the 15 step checklist to create your first info product for free, just for looking!

And I advise you to go ahead and buy your doll supplies or get your dolls into my hospital before January 21st. Link to all my shops by clicking here.