Why ain't I rich?

I’m sitting here wondering why I am not a wealthy, wealthy man. In fact, I’m wondering why everybody in this country isn’t rich.
Now, it’s not as though I spend a lot of time wondering about being wealthy. In fact, most of my thoughts are confined to being poor.Poverty is not a rhetorical question in my present circumstance.
So here’s what got me to thinking about being rich. The other day, I was half-listening to CNN, when I heard about a woman who was caught stealing a puppy out from a pet store. Apparently, this woman’s dog had been hit by a car and died, so she was looking for a new dog. So, on an impulse, she lifted a pup from the store and stuffed him under her jacket. She got caught, of course. What struck me as unusual about the story is that the pet store owner said the puppy’s retail value was $1,600.
Think about that for a minute. Then consider that that the average annual income in the world is the equivalent of about $800.
So as I’m pondering all this, I realize that about 25 years ago, somebody decided to run some water through a filter, put it in a plastic bottle and sell it to people. Bottled water is now a multi-billion dollar industry. Then, up in Seattle, somebody figured out a well to sell “coffee drinks’’ for $4 a pop. Before Starbucks, it never occurred to anybody that you could get that kind of money for coffee. You never had to have a menu to buy a cup of coffee, either.
You can now spend $200 or more for a pair of women’s blue jeans.
So, the question becomes clear: If you can sell a puppy for $1,600, a pair of glorified Wranglers for $200, a bottle of water for $1.50 or a cup of coffee for $4, what’s preventing anyone from getting stinkin’ rich?
I think the formula is pretty simple. Find a common product, tweak it a little in some inconsequential way, and then price it about 20 times what it’s actually worth.
Wanna get rich? All you need is gall. And advertising

-Slim

P.S. If you would like an enhanced version of this blog, you can sign up now for the bargain introductory rate of $500 per sentence.