The Importance of a Well-Thought Company Name

After discussing with some people what possible reason could motivate the Canadian banking arm of ING to rename itself to Tangerine after being sold to Scotia Bank, I noticed first hand how much the impact of a company name can have on how people view it.

 

As I currently bank with ING and most of the changes are subtle, I didn't really think anything of the name change. I got some notices in the mail informing me of it and I thought it was a bit weird of a bank renaming itself to the same name as a fruit, but since I see a lot of weird things on the internet I didn't really think too much about it. I left the notice on my desk for a while and when someone pointed it out to me why ING would do that, I couldn't really think of a decent reason.



Usually when you think of banks, they are named after regions or in the case of ING, they developed a brand name over time. This encourages you to trust them to handle the money you deposit as we work hard for our money. They tend to be conservative as no one would deposit their money with someone they think might squander it, so the business is very professional.

The thing I noticed with Tangerine, is even after the name change (I believe) they still have the same employees, and most of the same management. They are basically the exact same company they were a month ago but with a different name.

The difference is just by changing their name, I don't think I would have trusted my money to a bank called Tangerine at the same time I first used ING. It sounds more like a startup company than a long standing bank. I would be more under the impression that they would focus more on growth and there is a chance I could lose all my money with them. Just by that simple name change.

The company likely wanted to stand out by choosing a name such as Tangerine in the conservative world of banking. How things will work out over time, it  will be interesting to see and I don't even know what to predict. More and more companies are re-branding in an effort to stand out more for the younger crowd and maybe in 5 years, there will be more banks like this and I will look back on this post wondering why I didn't have an open mind. Or maybe the banking sector is just not open enough to this type of branding quite yet, but I guess time will tell.

When a young person myself second guesses why they are banking with a company called Tangerine even though they are nearly the same company they were a month ago, I am a bit skeptical this will turn out well. I guess I will check back in 5 years and see how this goes and I may follow up on this later.

Self Driving Cars

Having cars that drive themselves can help people in many ways. If the cars are well designed, there is minimal chance of accidents as the cars never get tired and are always fully aware of their surroundings. They can drive more efficiently, reducing gas mileage and they can reduce parking costs and the need for more cars as it has the potential to drop on person off and then go pick someone else up. If they interact with other driverless cars, they can become more efficient as it reduces stop and go traffic from forming. Although there is much good that can come from them, there is always some drawbacks.

First, there may be some bugs in the system and there is a risk of the software being hacked and manipulated, especially if the car is communicating with other cars or is network connected. There is also legal reasons, since the car maker of autonomous vehicles are the ones at fault in an accident, it is really hard for them to release more since they can't afford the potential for a flurry of lawsuits. Google proved they worked and for logged 10's if not 100's of thousands of miles, but sadly until more of the legal stuff is sorted out, not much can be done.

These cars could greatly increase the mobility of certain groups, such as the elderly and children who may not be able to go somewhere as they aren't able to drive. Calling a taxi is one option as well, but as many people prefer car ownership, owning your own car or sharing it with a car sharing program can make more use of the car while cutting down costs. As well, owning one autonomous car can cut back the need for multi-car households, as the one car can replace multiple other ones.

Besides commercial vehicles, most vehicles spend the majority of their time turned off. Just think how much better it would be to not only cut down on the amount of cars on the road and reducing congestion, but cutting down on the costs of owning a car as well.

Learning a New Language while Deciphering the Internet

While talking to some people, someone mentioned a site called duolingo.com which allows you to learn new language for free. I was a bit skeptical but I decided to try it out anyway. I looked into it, and the reason it is free is because it slowly translates the web from the language you are learning to the language you currently speak (in my case English). This works better than Google Translate since this is crowd sourced, so whenever you put what you think the translation would be, it gives you the option to up-vote translations from others since direct translations don't always work.

After signing up for the Beta and taking many months to get a response, I eventually got signed up. When starting, I was given the option of learning German or Spanish and I decided to try German. They later added French which is what I have been working on the last couple of months. Although it will take a long time to actually learn it, I am starting to pick up on more and more sentences without thinking too hard and getting the general of idea of what it is trying to say. If my mic was higher quality, you can even speak back to your computer and it would tell you if you are saying it correctly as well.

I found it great to learn at your own pace since days that you are bored, you can spend a lot longer on it and other times I may not look at it for a month. If choosing French, it gets you to translate English to French and vice versa. When it gives you French to translate, there is a French voice pronouncing the sentence properly to get a better idea how it is actually said. Starting off you get very short and simple sentences but later on the sentences get more challenging and I found you are eased into it nicely.

Either way, I found it to be a great distraction as opposed to checking Facebook or other sites while procrastinating. Since each lesson is only about 10 mins, it is also a great time killer when having to wait a short time. Although it is not the most effective teacher, being free and putting as much or as little time into it as you want makes it very helpful at starting to learn another language.

How Deficit Spending is Getting a Bit Out of Hand

With all the stimulus that happened in the last few years thanks to the recession, it always bugs me to see just how much of each person's taxes we pay on the Interest of the debt, let alone actually paying it down. For example, in 2012 the Canadian government's debt was around $586 Billion with Interest payments of $41 Billion. That means that each year if everyone, including retirees, the unemployed and children payed taxes, over $1200 from each person would go just to the interest of the debt, let alone paying it down to reduce the interest in the future.

For the United States, it is even worse. They have over $15.5 Trillion in debt, with interest of over $430 Billion per year means that each American pays over $1300 per person.

Yet the governments takes forever to cut spending or raise taxes, and if taxes are raised they just end up spending more.

On top of that, deficits are run in good economic times and bad. This causes the budget to cycle between being short a little during good times and being short a Lot in the bad times, only adding to the problem. This was true from the 1960's until the mid 1990's. The small surpluses from the years after 1996 have not nearly made up for the massive yearly deficits for the 30 years beforehand, as shown on the graph below

Source:  http://fin.gc.ca (Government of Canada)

If more focus was paying off what we owe now, just think of what we could do with an extra 16% of the government's revenue freed up. We could pay less taxes or receive better services. Or maybe we can even lend that money out to others and invest, so we have to pay even less in the future.

It always bugs me to find out just how much of the money I earned is wasted this way. Paying taxes are not always great, but wasting more in the future just so we pay less now does not make much sense. Although it is hard for a party to get elected while cutting spending and raising taxes, in the end, it works out much better. It also allows future governments to get better value of our tax money, allowing our economy to forge ahead stronger in the future