down economy, she owned jane on main. it served special fresh food in the same space that she sold the flowers. we helped her to rebrand her business. although jane still does flowers, that part of her business didn t rebound the way she had hoped. is so, she pivoted and started to focus more on the cafe business and the food and sweets she served there. she moved in to a new bigger space in town and rebranded herself and the cafe, jane. she also created jane bakes. a line of all natural cookies, low in sodium, sugar and calories and carbs that she makes in small batches and sells online and in grocery stores. jane s cookies caught the eye of meredith. last year, we traveled to montrae california s famous fisherman wafr.
weekend. gas prices. 70% of people say it will not curb their spending. what are they spending it on? food. it is a $6.2 billion food event in this country. that averages to $68 per household. why? 64% of people will attend, this is far and away the favorite activity, some sort of picnic or barbecue. according to the hot dog and sausage council, on independence day we will consume $150 million hot dogs. and a bunch at that nathan s contest at coney island. and fireworks. despite a down economy, fireworks sales has increased over the years. that happens to be with the loosening of restrictions on purchasing. very con done gentlemen on the weather. in each town or city, it s a big
good. but that s not how you get recovery in a down economy. the new york times yesterday, front page of the business section, pointed out that even if the economic growth is strong over the remainder of the president s term, he s still so way behind recoveries in comparable bad recessions. a poll finds almost 60%, actually 59%, almost 60% disapprove of the president s handling of the economy, which invites the question, maybe it s his policies that aren t working, that are wrong. well, the heritage foundation released last month their new index of economic freedom. the united states when president obama took over was number sixth. we re down to 1th behind astonia. it seems like the smart course would be to reduce regulation, adopt the john stossel rule, your colleague that for every law is passed, take off two other laws, reduce two other regulations, or more, to unleash the private sector.
it? it s hard to keep blaming your predecessor in the sixth year of your presidency. he doesn t have any new ideas. if you listen to the president over the last month, month and a half, he wants to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which is really an anti-jobs program. you re increasing the cost of labor. that most likely, might not be a huge drop, but that will cause probably fewer workers, not more. it s a 39% increase. a lot of small businesses can t handle that. they ll have to start firing workers, laying off people from full-time to part-time, or just close shop. what it essentially is a tax on companies and small businesses that hire low-skilled workers. the very people you re trying to get hired in this down economy. that s an anti-jobs program. it s trying to win the upcoming election with terms like inequality, makes people feel
walmart employees are holding christmas time food drives for themselves when we have an economy that looks like this? it s actually doing a lot better. the point here is that if we are growing jobs, if companies are trying to hire people, if they are competing to hire people, then if we are being innovative and entrepreneurial, this isn t a problem. we have a down economy. hopefully it does turn around. there are other creative ways to help folks aside from just paying, say unemployment benefits. one, there s an argument to be said, if you pay them unemployment, they are less likely to seek it especially if it pays less than their job. there are other ideas out there, for example relocation vouchers. if you live in nevada, the economy is bad. you can move to north dakota, depending on your personal circumstance. we can pay somebody a lump sum