Me2Everyone

Owning stock in a startup company is something that is a huge risk for most investors.  However if that stock is 100% free, then there is only an upside, right? 

Me2everyone.com is a startup company that claims they will be a virtual world version of Myspace.  From what I have read, you will be able to hang out with friends in a virtual online world, while also starting your own business, your own newspaper, or even selling your own products.  The idea sounds brilliant, and it's even better when you consider that all members who sign up to Me2Everyone will receive free shares of stock in the company.  So far in a little over 1 month 203,000+ members have signed up.  Upon signing up, all members receive 1000 free shares of stock.  Then for every person you refer that signs up you will receive an additional 500 shares.  If and when this virtual community launches and makes money, all the shareholders/members will share in the profits.  The goal is to go public on the NASDAQ in 2012 with a share value of $0.77 per share.  Possible?  Yes.  Likely?  No.  There are 18 Billion active shares, so this is the number of shares that will either be given out to new members or held by the original owners.  Let's do some calculations.

18,000,000,000 X $0.77 = $13,860,000,000

It's extremely hard for me to believe that an online virtual world will have a market capital of $13billion+.  

There are a ton of people discussing the positives and negatives of this new site at the Me2Everyone Forum on Talkgold.com.  Many people believe that they really don't have any goals of forming a virtual world but the whole site is created simply to harvest email addresses.  I don't believe this is what they are doing.  There will be a virtual world that launches sometime soon, but whether or not your free shares of stock will ever be worth anything is yet to be determined.

A lot of good information can be found as well at MoneyMakerGroup.com's Me2Everyone.com Forum.  If you are a member of Me2everyone, please leave a comment below with your thoughts.

If you would like to sign up to Me2Everyone absolutely free and obtain your free shares click Here

Higher Taxes for Wealthy is Not Democracy

America.

Home of the free? Yes.

Home of the brave? Yes.  

Home of Democracy? Not really

Here's why.  Democracy was created to allow people to try and achieve the American Dream.  Democracy should mean that no matter how successful you become, you should not have to pay a larger percentage of taxes then anyone else.  Democracy is supposed to encourage entrepreneurship, not discourage it.  Obama's new ideas of taxing the richer people in the United States at a higher percentage then the middle and lower classes is surely not democracy.  

If John makes $50,000 a year, he should pay the same percentage of his income to Uncle Sam as Todd who makes $300,000 a year.  Why should he pay a higher percentage?  At a 15% income tax, John would be paying $7500, while Todd would have to hand over $45,000 to the IRS.  Why should Todd have to pay a higher percentage when he already is paying a huge amount more every year?  This is against everything that democracy stands for.  Whether you are rich or poor you should still have to hand over the same percentage of income as one another, unless you are below the poverty line.  Why should we punish those Americans who have worked their butts off educating themselves, just to help those who were lazy and had no desire to make anything of themselves?  Sure, there are those of you who will say that the rich are rich simply because they have had greater means of educating themselves.  This is true in many cases.  However it is totally false in the majority of cases.  

There are solutions to raising tax revenue without taxing the rich's income.  It is called "Sales Tax".  Currently the national average sales tax is around 6%.  If we raised this amount to 23%, we could effectively eliminate income taxes all together.  This would in turn put a greater tax burden on the rich who spend more money, and reduce the burden on the poor who have less to spend.  This would be a solution, but is it a practical one?

Sales taxes to replace income taxes is of great debate among polititians today.  On the Political side of things, it seems all fine and dandy.  However on the economic side, it has the potential to be a huge disaster.  Once you stop taxing income and only taxing the purchase of goods and services, the amount of spending nationwide should see a large decrease.  With the large decrease in spending, there comes a large increase in savings.  This would harm the economy especially in a time of recession.  

There are economies in this world that have achieved eliminating income taxes in favor of a larger sales tax.  It can work, but are the politicians and economist in Washington smart enough to make it work?  Probably not.

Multiple Ponzi Schemes Getting Away with Stealing

Over the past few months, it seems as though there have been a handful of multi million dollar (or even several billion dollar) ponzi schemes busted.  We have seen Madoff's scheme get busted for apparently taking $50 billion in investors funds.  The latest scam, Stanford Financial Group, isn't accused of being a Ponzi Scheme but was an investment scam that allegedly had millions invested in Madoff's Ponzi Scheme.  

There will always be Ponzi Scheme running, and there will always be people willing to put a large chunk of their life savings into these programs.  For example, Philadelphia Phillies' Relief Pitcher Scott Eyre had literally all of his liquid cash in the Stanford Financial Group when it was shut down.  Most people get involved in these schemes through referrals from friends, family members and even business partners.  

For those of you who are considering investing in a lucrative investment that was suggested to you by a friend or family member, ask yourself this;  "Does this investment seem too good to be true?"  If you answer yes then it most likely is.  All investors should always use one rule in deciding where and how much to invest.  The greater the return promised on your investment, the greater the risk is to you in losing your money.  This is true 99.9% of the time whether investing in Stocks, Bonds, Forex, Real Estate, or an investment scheme.