Legally speaking, vodka was, until VERY recently, required to be nothing more than ethanol and water, and be as neutral as possible.
The fundamental problem with vodka is that some of it is totally absurd and somewhat misleading, unless it’s supposed to be flavorless. I mean, WTF Is a “grape” vodka, or a “cane” vodka, or a “corn” vodka? Unless they’re distilled to the point of having no distinct flavor, they’re just unaged brandy, rum and corn whiskey. And if they are flavorless, who cares what they’re made from?
Seems to be totally marketing nonsense to me, or stupid consumers. I mean, if you want your vodka to be clearly identifiable as made from sugarcane, you really probably want rum. But apparently there’s a market for this kind of thing as “vodka”.+
This is incorrect. I’m a financial advisor - variable annuities have been one of the highest paying commissions products out there, and the companies that create them load them up with fees, so they’re making plenty on them as well. Fixed annuities pay out less as a commission - but still make the company plenty of money.
Maybe I said that wrong. They gave a very small free sample and offered to sell you a much bigger quantity for $80 or so which included “a bonus sample” (and if you act now…) I was trying to be succinct but instead was unclear.
My brother had one but he was not allowed to use it in the house. One morning as we were getting ready to leave for school, I picked it up, held it in his face, and pulled the trigger assuming it was empty. It wasn’t, and our parents ran into the room and told us that people do that with real guns too, and this was not something to be taken lightly. I was probably about 13, and he would have been about 10 at the time.
Investment companies sell plenty of fixed annuities. I have never been instructed or suggested to steer clients away from fixed annuities when they would be the most appropriate option. That would be in my capacity as the employee of the investment company selling a fixed annuity - in fact, I have been instructed to shop around to find which company (investment or insurance) is offering the best rates at the time.
Dr_Paprika: “Didn’t hear so much about homeopathy during Covid.”
There was a minor setback for the faith recently, when the Journal of Public Health was embarrassed into retracting a paper on homeopathic treatment of Covid-19.
The American Institute of Homeopathy has a Secret Database of homeopathic treatments/cures of coronavirus infection on its website; you need ‘‘security clearance’’ to access it. Don’t want any nasty evidence-based snickering from doubters.
Fisher Investments pushes tons of ads saying how bad annuities are:
Yes, Ken’s back at it as the hater of annuities. His ads have picked up as has his drip messaging. It seems Fisher Investments has never met a marketing opportunity they are willing to pass up and the Department of Labor rule is just that opportunity.
… On the one hand, Ken hates annuities because they are bad for Fisher Investments. According to the 2014 Gallup Study, most annuity consumers who buy annuities keep their money in annuities.
That could mean close to $1 trillion dollars of annuity savings lost to Fisher Investments. As they say, you do the math – that’s $10 billion of asset fees not earned by AUM planners at the typical 1 percent per year… 3. Ken’s licensing requirements Advising against annuities does not require an insurance license. Insurance agents and advisors who are not registered investment advisors are prohibited by law from advising about the specific securities people own and recommending they use them to fund an annuity. However, the securities industry does not prohibit the unlicensed and untrained investment advisor from discussing and advising against annuities and recommending their surrender… 5. Easy money Annuities are fairly easy to liquidate and transfer funds. Yet, anyone who has funded an annuity with other financial products knows that moving money from risk-based investments to an annuity is fraught with numerous barriers and delays. Even moving money from one annuity to another is very difficult and time consuming. But when Ken helps his clients terminate an annuity, he is not bound by the same rules of suitability, churning and replacement – all insurance laws that protect the consumer from fraud and unsuitable sales.
Should you hate annuities? Yes, some types. Others? No, not if you believe the federal government, trusted academics or Ken Fisher himself.
Behind every successful marketing campaign, there’s a dirty secret. The case of Fisher Investments’ “Why I Hate Annuities And You Should Too” is no different. Here are six reasons why following the advice of his catchy ad campaign might be the wrong choice for you.
So, there is a major investment company that spends millions in ad $ trying to convince people annuities are evil. It is not alone.
This article isn’t what I would call objective in any sense, but I understand it’s perspective. But when the insurance industry complains about lack of oversight of the investment industry, you know they’re completely full of it. My insurance license was a cake walk compared to my investment licenses, and I face far more scrutiny and compliance on the investment side than I do on the insurance side. Fisher doesn’t “hate annuities” because he lacks the sophisticated licenses to sell an insurance product, that’s for sure.
Be that as it may, you’re jumping back and forth between fixed and variable annuities, and they are vastly different creatures.
ISO9001 certification. A bigger pile of trendy-ass buzzword bullsh*t I’ve never seen. One of Mrs R’s college friends made a pretty good career out of jumping on every feel-good corporate buzzword fad that came along. An entire life being obscenely well-paid while adding absolutely no value whatsoever.
Recycling : except aluminum, everything else goes to landfills. But people put a lot of effort into sorting plastics and recycling companies make money by picking up recycling.
Depends on why you’re calling it a scam. If it’s claims that organic is healthier for you, yes, that’s probably not true. Or it’s only slightly true and hard to measure. If it’s because there’s a lot of falsely labeled organic produce out there and the Ag Dept doesn’t do squat about it, yes, that’s true. But if you just want farmers to decrease the amount of insecticides and herbicides they spread around the countryside, then that’s a good reason, despite the aforementioned bogusly-labeled stuff.
Yea, ISO9001 is bullshit. “Auditors” are paid lots of money to verify you are documenting everything. It has nothing to do with ensuring quality of product or quality of services. You can produce complete garbage and have crappy service and pass an ISO audit with flying colors, as long as all your documentation is in order. It’s worthless.
There seems to be a softness in mouthfeel to potato based vodka that is not in grain based vodkas, not sure why, it is counterintuitive to something that is distilled.
A lot of stuff is bullfeathers in the food industry - organic pops to mind [if it is not metal or a salt, and is carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen with other elements for flavor and color is organic, which pretty much defines anything from the ‘finest’ Trader Joe snack to twinkies. Also, pretty much anything sold by Goop … vaginal steaming, anybody? [urrgh!]