Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Pretty much everyone, I’d think. At some point, almost everyone dreams of hitting it big (usually with no effort, but that’s something else). How many times as a kid did you talk about having scads of bucks and what you’d do with it? How long did those conversations keep going, or did they ever stop?
Me? I grew up as a kid in a family that had enough, and also ensured the kids were given a chance to be successful. I see that in the fact that my parents didn’t go into a lot of debt, they were responsible with their money and time, and they ensured we’d get out of college with little to no debt on the plate. I’d consider myself fortunate. After that, I was responsible with my money and time, married the love of my life who was raised in a similar manner, and since then we’ve worked hard to ensure that we’ll get out of every day with little to no debt on the plate. While what I make never seems to be enough for that Ferrari (I had a V6 Passat for a while, I think that was about as vain as I’ll ever get), we do well with the money that God has given us to steward.
So when I hear all the blather about who pays what taxes, or who got paid by lobbyists, or how much money is “enough,” I get this itch somewhere beetween my shoulder blades. Have we really devolved as a society that we have to throw our vitriol at people who found a way to get money and keep it? Does Warren Buffett really have to apologize for being an incredibly smart investor who multiplied what he owned? Does Mitt Romney need to apologize for making enough in business that he can now be “retired” and live off speaking and investments?
If you offered me a million right now, I don’t know what I’d do… I’d probably make sure a lot of it got donated to some worthwhile charities, or maybe I’d use it to set up a foundation that I’d run to help people, or something. But I wouldn’t complain because you offered the guy next to me $4 million. Maybe that’s just me.
Forehead smack. They were serious..?!????
From a Yahoo news editoral
(warning – do NOT drink liquids while reading this)
“America would be better off if only atheists were allowed to hold public office.”
So, let me guess. Communism (which has the same rules for party members and officials), isn’t a failing model….it just wasn’t practiced correctly?
Because the whole “only atheists can hold public office” is so Stalin era, and he was a humanitarian, right?
Atheist leadership would be focused entirely on the actual civic problems facing the country. It may be the only world view that places real world problems first and America needs that.
Yeah, roger that. Because humans and their worldview about actions today & consequences tomorrow have NOTHING to do with “real world problems” (SARCASM ALERT!)
I much prefer GK Chesterton’s brutal honesty to this writers self-delusion
“Dear Sir: Regarding your article ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ I am. Yours truly,”
― G.K. Chesterton
Stop… Being Self-aggrandizing
The Internet is a wonderful thing. You can go there to find anything, especially if you’re mostly looking for your own opinion. That’s especially true today where you’ll find a variety of big sites blacking out, blocking their own access, or otherwise whining about the Stop Online Piracy Act.
The act itself is a dumb piece of legislation, designed to enable random people in power at any point to deny service or access to specific IP addresses (and this is a very simple explanation), the act is reasonably unenforcable at its highest level, and I would think easily circumvented by any sophisticated pirate. I’m a bit limited in being able to talk about it because I’m currently involved in technology that would be directly affected (both in requirement and revenue) by the act (sorry, L, I’m still looking to see what I can say eventually).
Anyway, the bill appears nearly dead in Congress, and the administration appears to be blowing with the political winds and threatening to shut it down if it hits the president’s desk anyway. So now we’re down to a bunch of geeks who can’t figure out how to put the dander back down in time, so they’re continuing to make a deal out of it.
Let’s face it… it’s highly unlikely that Google would ever get blocked due to SOPA in anything other than a totalitarian society. For an example, go check China. However, Google appears to be continuing to make money there, and they’ll happily pander in order to keep that business growing. Wikipedia is also unlikely to ever suffer from an act like this. However, they feel obliged to speak “for the little people” in a way that makes them feel better. So on one hand this is “Occupy” for the Internet crowd. They couldn’t hang in the tents since the generators wouldn’t run the temporary datacenter.
Make no mistake that the legislation is a lousy idea, and that it could be used for censorship faster than it could for actually, you know, stopping online piracy. But street theater on the Internet doesn’t amuse me enough to participate.
That’s called “too proud to take handouts, have a job”
The Hill talks about the Tea party losing steam. Frankly, you want an example of that – take a look at Jim and my blogging habits compared to “the greats”
The “great ones” are fascinated by political process, the primaries, nuances of the various GOP debates (how many have there been?). Jim and I don’t do political commentary for a living. For a # of reasons, partly related to the fact that we do strategy and the blog is about looking forward using patterns we see today vs. reporting on today – we are often spotting trends ahead of the links that could help drive traffic to our site. It’s a bit annoying to read what another better writer, or someone with more linkage says that exactly mirrors your idea – 2 weeks, or 2 months later. But hey, it’s NOT a living here…
speaking of “not making a living off others”
Here’s the Hill
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Leave it to the media to write about how their own waning interest in a subject implies it’s falling to pieces. What.Ever
But here’s the rub – unlike OWS, the Tea partiers had JOBS. Which also explains the Democrats not really liking them much (well, except for the unions who help fund democratic campaigns. they like you)
From a blog, but with sources that link to real studies – we’re staying out of poverty because we’re too proud to game the system
Several years ago I memorized three rules for avoiding poverty … three simple rules. I believe I got them from a book by Og Mandino, but wherever they came from, they impressed me enough that I had cards printed with these three points on them to hand out when appropriate. The three steps were:
- Stay in school.
- Don’t get pregnant
- When you get out of school get a job. Any job. And keep that job until you can find one that pays more.
Oh, for those who are NOT too proud to game the system – a link for you:
Emmerich analyzes disposable income and economic benefits among several key income classes and comes to the stunning (and verifiable) conclusion that “a one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year.” And that excludes benefits from Supplemental Security Income disability checks.
Oops – I’m late to prepare to do a presentation – at 7pm tonight, so I’ll end here. Hopefully the economic conservatives don’t have to hold their nose too much – the alternatives appear to be worse. The culture that encourages a family of 3 to live off $14,500 in welfare benefits becomes….London summer 2011
It’s Not SOPA…
…we’re just not inspired.
I’m not even sure I have random thoughts to post. So we’ll keep looking and update soon for our faithful readers.
Lest We Forget…
Happy Friday, everyone! Happy, happy, Friday… From Veronique de Rugy:
Tyler Cowen had just e-mailed me about the probability of an imminent downgrade of France when this Wall Street Journal alert arrived in my mailbox:
Standard & Poor’s could announce downgrades in the credit ratings of a number of European governments as early as Friday, said two people familiar with the matter.
Well, what fun for the morning. This is mostly just inevitable, but it’s going to roil the markets a bit. At least doing it on a Friday will give the markets time to think about long-term panic over the weekend so they can cool. This is likely beneficial, because a good weeknd of hard drinking in NY usually keeps the markets from really hurting (though medical and therapy bills correspondingly go up).
At least the early reports have other mixed news that might blunt the impact. I had to carpool early, so I missed my normal early AM business programs. If I get a chance I’ll check back later on it.
And if you’re wondering if this was mostly a filler post to maake up for the fact that I’m on temporary boycott from dumb primary analysis… you got it.
Updated: Yep, it happened. The banks should be pulling out the gasoline and matches in a few minutes.
Let the Good Times Stop
The Twinkie is bankrupt. (Thanks to Reason for the pointer, by the way.)
The company, which has assets of roughly $1 billion, has been struggling under the weight of a debt load of about $860 million and soaring expenses tied to its labor force. Hostess has up to 100,000 creditors, and its chief unsecured creditors are labor unions and pension funds that represent the company’s employees, according to the Chapter 11 petition filed in United States Bankruptcy Court in lower Manhattan.
At the heart of this appears to be some significant mis-management of funds, especially since Hostess had declared bankruptcy before in 2004. Some of that is known as not learning from your mistakes. Down a few paragraphs, we have this little number, though.
About 80 percent of the company’s 19,000 employees belong to a dozen separate unions, most notably the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, Mr. Driscoll explained in an affidavit attached to the bankruptcy filing.
In particular, the company said pension and medical benefits costs as well as “restrictive work rules” were eating into profit. The company paid about $52 million in workers’ compensation claims in the fiscal year ended May 28, 2011, the affidavit said.
Again, I think this is only part of the problem, though Hostess is making this out to be a union vs. non-union issue, citing that their competiors don’t use union labor. Honestly, if you got this far into the mess, you probably have quite a few management faults that got you there. Agreeing to what the union wanted was just part of it.
But this does beg the question… is it worth it to grow business in today’s environment? We already have the answer from Hungary per Lynn’s post yesterday. But in general, does growing a company to be a national or international leader make you too much of a target for forces against your success? What management team can you assemble these days that can work the intracacies well enough to go from zero to a billion, or even a couple million?
My wife and I own a small business, and we occasionally talk about bringing it to a storefront. But the prospect of hiring someone to be there when we’re not usually is offputting enough that we stop right there. Our business continues to grow, and I believe we could easily live off it alone in a few years. But with that commitment, what else do we have to consider that could break us? I’m not a fearful person from a business perspective… and my doubts make me all the more leary since I’m likely to call that “strategic instinct” and just stay small and think small.
For the future of US business, that’s bad.
Suck it up, buttercups
My husband and I have always had a set of friends who attempt to shield their kids from the cold hard world. “you’re so creative! You can be an artist!” or “you’re such a great soccer player – keep working hard, and you could play pro!” (those of you who know anything about MLS will see the irony there)
The problem is that at some point, the world does get competitive, and while you could be the prettiest girl in your family, you weren’t the prettiest girl in school. Or you could make first chair in your highschool band, but weren’t the most talented player in college.
We always wondered what would happen with kids who weren’t conditioned to look at life practically, to have a plan B & look at life strategically. We assumed it would be one massive temper tantrum against reality, but eventually they’d suck it up and find a way forward.
A couple have – “Go east, young man“. If OWS wants a job, move to China. It’s not so bad there, as long as you can live without Facebook & Google (you can use Baidu and Alicloud if you learn to read Mandarin)
A few articles indicate that to find a way forward, they might need to go back & retrace their steps:
As a humanities graduate who coasted with average grades, Ethan does not have rosy prospects in the private sector. With the public sector budgets under pressure, “safety” jobs are also more difficult to secure. The unemployment rate for aspirants with a liberal arts background is in the high teens. In contrast, recent graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are almost fully employed.
I think a lot of other entrepreneurs who have experienced starting a business, will also not give jobs because of these issues. And this is why more and more people are jobless, who buy fewer and fewer things, which means they pay less VAT. And this is why there are fewer and fewer decent companies, who hire less employees, who pay less taxes, so there’s less state money for social aids, and this is why social aid is about to come in the form of concentration camps.
The Education of the Uninterested
I’ve taken a small share of community college courses since I graduated. For instance, when I was considering a temporary stint in Germany, I hit the local school for an introduction to German (that incidentally taught me more about culture and saved me from many clashes over time simply by teaching me common grammar rules, I’ll tell that story someday). I still pour over the catalog that we get here in Oregon to see if there are any art classes that I could take to give myself another hobby.
So I find it somewhat funny and sad that California is embroiled in a clash of culture over its current community college planning. There’s a lot more to it than this story, but I think the messages in here are instructive enough to say a couple things.
The 22 recommendations approved by the college system’s Board of Governors are intended to address a devilish problem: Essential classes are in critically short supply and thousands of students are turned away from classes they need because of the state’s economic crisis.
…
Under the new plan, all students will be expected to set up an education plan to move quickly toward an associate’s degree or vocational certificate. If they linger too long or take too many classes unrelated to their goal, they lose registration priority. Others poor enough to quality for a fee waiver would lose that benefit after 110 credits, well beyond the 60 credits needed to transfer.
If you really look at the issues in the system, it boils down (in a somewhat rough and I’m sure unfair fashion) to the following:
- The school system itself got cut by $2B because CA can’t figure out how to cut dumb programs to make people smarter
- The school system isn’t graduating people with degrees because it doesn’t have a system in place to push for that
- The current school system has a bunch of people who are taking classes for free because there are waivers based on income and situation
- The current school system has a bunch of people who are taking classes for free because the classes are free
There, that about sums it up… Hey, if I sign up for a beginning painting class in my state, I have to pay $100 or something. I think that’s eminently fair. If I’m going to learn something it shouldn’t be on the backs of taxpayers for me to learn it. I’m ambivalent on the “scholarship” programs since I don’t have all the details. In general, a community college is supposed to better you while you work for a living. If you really can’t afford that, then I’d rather see what else you choose to afford instead and we can start the conversation from there.
One other gem at the end of the article:
As the board members voted, students stood, interrupting with “Mike check!” the Occupy movement’s signature statement. They paused only long enough to allow the board to finish voting, then shouted:
“We’ll be back! We shut down the Port of Oakland – twice – and we’re coming for you!”
So the good news is that we at least know where the hippies went. As in any life event, it’s always good to know your constants.
Truth Hurts
When checking over at Reason Mag’s Hit and Run Blog this morning, I found this little post that plants a nice big whack on the environmental movement. The original is an open letter from Canadian Natural Resources Minister (The Honourable) Joe Oliver.
Canada is on the edge of an historic choice: to diversify our energy markets away from our traditional trading partner in the United States or to continue with the status quo.
Virtually all our energy exports go to the US. As a country, we must seek new markets for our products and services and the booming Asia-Pacific economies have shown great interest in our oil, gas, metals and minerals. For our government, the choice is clear: we need to diversify our markets in order to create jobs and economic growth for Canadians across this country. We must expand our trade with the fast growing Asian economies. We know that increasing trade will help ensure the financial security of Canadians and their families.
So first, that’s a nice shot over the bow of American diddling on Keystone-XL. Canada is going to continue to push hard on a pipeline to some port for its oil. If it ends up going West as opposed to South, then that’s just less distance before it hits the paycheck.
Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade. Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydro-electric dams.
And that’s a very relevant point… as far as I can tell, the hard-core environmental opinion is that the only energy that’s really good is stuff we can’t use. Wind power is okay until you try to build the turbines, and then it looks ugly and kills birds. (As an aside, I think it’s really cool to be driving down the road next to the big wind farms and see all the props turning… well, really half of them, because they can’t sell the power they can produce, but that’s another story.) Hydro-electric is really cool, except it keeps salmon from having sex. Natural gas is a wonderful hydrocarbon source until you actually try to pump it out. At least oil and coal have always sucked in the environmental mind.
Now I should admit that I’m a big fan of the outdoors, and I’m okay with national land grabs as long as those are paid in the long term by selling rights to exploration in certain areas. ANWR comes to mind… With all that, though, Mr. Oliver points out some painful realities:
These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. They seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources. Finally, if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further. They do this because they know it can work. It works because it helps them to achieve their ultimate objective: delay a project to the point it becomes economically unviable.
And he’s got a point. If we add a burden of collection to any energy source, then it eventually becomes unviable to utilize new sources. Let’s see how cool solar becomes when it endangers turtles that like to sunbathe. Then it’ll suck.
I have this picture in mind that the far-left environmental groups really want us to go back to the days of no electricity and horse-powered farming on the homesteads. Who else thinks they’d then cut down a bunch of trees to print leaflets on how bad farming is on our forests?
