#92 Voting Ourselves Rich (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

Our democracy is on a cusp.  The last statistics I read, several years ago, predicted that by 2000 more than 30% of the working public would be employed by government offices.  I believe we've whipped past that percentage, like it was a parked car, and are heading off toward 50% in the next few years.  Our "conservative" spend-and-spend (as opposed to liberal tax-and-spend) politicians mis-leaders are building a government that will be more total than anything communist Russia ever conceived.  From local to federal government offices to all areas of education to military service to the myriad of government contractors who serve the whims of bureaucrats, we have created a monster of government in this country.  After government underwent a few years of shrinkage during Clinton's administration, that odd Bush brand of Republican socialism has brought back big, arrogant government with a vengeance.  We're going to see a lot more of Big Brother before we ever again see less of that evil monster.

Excessive government employment is a sign of a failing economy and a fallen culture.  There has been a lot of babble about a "service economy" in the last couple of decades.  Much of that hype is disguising the fact that the overwhelming majority of "service employees" are civil servants.  Civil servants, like most employees of local or national government, primarily serve themselves.  Very few of the concepts of customer service or accountability filter into government offices.  But that's not the worst aspect of mindlessly growing government.  The fatal flaw in our current system is that government employees can vote themselves into becoming the idle moderately-wealthy majority.  In many ways, they already have.

Since a very small minority of working citizens vote, as few as 20% during a non-Presidential election and no more than 40% during Presidential elections, it's possible for the highly organized civil servants to elect their candidates for every office, at every level of government. 

There is no profit or productivity statistic for government employees, but there should be.  A way to put productivity into the national equation is to remove government employees, all of them, from the employment statistics.  Consider every single government employee, elected or otherwise, as unemployed and make it a national cause to put them on the employment roles.  If we can decide on the actual purpose of the government and, then, stick to making government perform those tasks, we could instantly start reducing the size of that monster.  The best way to improve any system is to measure it and the way to measure national productivity is to only consider "working" folks as working folks.  People on the dole, either goofing off on the welfare roles or wasting resources in city, state, or federal buildings, should be on the unemployment roles with no 6 month period where they are removed as "permanently unemployed." 

September 2004

#91 Revolting Developments (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

Do yourself a favor and read a book.  Not just any book, but this book; There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos, by Jim Hightower.  Jim is one of those characters that corporate/political America would label "a bleeding heart liberal."  Jim calls himself a "progressive."  Anyone who meets this ex-politician, sometimes talk radio host, unashamed Texan would have a hard time labeling him as anything other than an immensely practical American.  Which is pretty much all it takes to be defined as liberal in this corporate right-wing environment. 

If you think corporations should pay for the environmental damage they do to the health and property of others, you're a pinko-commie liberal.  If you think that cutting government costs should include cutting corporate welfare, eliminating tax breaks for the ultra rich, and returning government agencies to their intended tasks of protecting citizens and the country's best interests instead of acting as corporate PR and legal defense hacks, you're a left-wing, socialist liberal.  At the core, the American majority is liberal, but they are so indoctrinated to believe that philosophical stance is a bad thing that they mislabel themselves as conservatives and shoot themselves in the foot on Election Day, year after year.  And the rich get richer, the government becomes less concerned with "by the people, for the people," and we become more like the countries most of our ancestors fled to come here. 

It's easy, natural, and understandable to give up and say, "What can I do?  The voters are idiots, the politicians own the political system, the big corporations own the economy, and my tap water is so polluted that my whites are no longer whiter."  In human history it appears that regular intervals, somebody, somewhere, comes to the realization that the Powers that Be only exist at the will of the working classes.  The ability to manipulate the effort and ingenuity of people who actually accomplish work is all that provides them wealth and power.  More often than not, the someone who comes to this realization is simply driven to become one of those manipulators and that sort of "revolution" is about as revolutionary as repainting an old car.  We have that sort of revolution, every 2 years, in the US.  We call 'em "elections," but they have become something more like paint jobs. 

The 2000 and 2002 national elections were among the shoddiest paint jobs in American history.  If the next few years don't spawn some sort of reaction from the middle, working class I think it's safe to say we've seen the beginning of the end for American dominance in world economic and political affairs.  If we can't run honest, democratic elections, we can't demand the respect of countries that can.  If our corporations become money laundering institutions for international corporate criminals, working people will find other places to invest their money.  If government loses the faith of working people, the value of our currency, our trade, our position in the world will devolve to nothing more substantial than fear of our weapons of mass destruction. 

Without respect, fear is a double-edged sword.  Fear motivates opponents to resolve the emotion.  You can't remain afraid of a school yard bully without either trying to run, hide, or find allies and strike back.  That's true for our country, too.  American citizens are once again considering immigrating to more neutral countries, Canada being the most popular.  Hiding isn't an option, so fear and terrorism are the likely to increase if we continue on the international bully path.  France has been more successful than anyone would have imagined at turning the European Union's attention from the north, Russia, to America.  Islamic fundamentalists are rallying followers to protect themselves from undirected the US's 9/11 retaliation.  If Islamic countries join with the EU against the US, we will have isolated ourselves from a large portion of the world community.

August 2004

#90 Parking in the Red Zone (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day
One of the many signs of a management vacuum is the institution of assigned parking.  Execs, ignorantly and arrogantly, convince themselves that they need their names on a parking spot as a symbol of corporate dominance, sort of like pissing on a tree to mark territory.  It ought to be obvious to anyone with a frontal lobe that any exec who arrives for work so late that he can't find parking is really demonstrating how unimportant he is to the business. 
In fact, I think a smart stock buyer would consider checking out corporate parking lots to see how many assigned parking spaces are unfilled each morning.  The more empty spaces, the more deadwood in high places.  For that matter, the existence of assigned parking out to be one of the statistics a corporation should be forced to publish in its financial statement. 
The managers just about anyone can agree are worth their weight in parking lot paint cans don't need assigned parking.  They beat everyone to work and can park anywhere they want to park in an empty lot.  Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, David Packard, and the ever shrinking collection of execs who know their business and get things done, practically lived in their offices during the period when their presence actually made a positive difference in the function of their company.  Nobody contested their parking rights because nobody else was looking for a parking space when they arrived at work. 
The concept of assigned parking, in reality, punishes the rare inspired employee who is motivated enough to be at work early.  First, it's likely that someone that driven will have an armload of work to carry into the office.  Two, it's de-motivating to trudge in from the hinterlands past all those empty, named spaces knowing that wasted real estate will remain unused until the morning golf game is finished.  Three, assigned parking is rarely assigned based on anything valuable to the business.
Sometimes handing out a named parking space is an act of management cowardice or neglect.  I have worked for three companies that provided spaces to execs' secretaries.  Not because the secretaries were valued employees, not because they had work to carry into the office, but because they were nasty, ill-tempered people whose bosses were too gutless to fire, reprimand, contradict, or refuse when the secretaries asked for perks they had no reason to receive.  [I'm sure you're surprised than an exec might be cowardly.]
By far the most gutless parking assignment I've seen was self-generated by a janitor.  He was able to mark his spot because he had control of the can of paint used to label parking spaces.  Now, I'm waiting for you to top that for non-existent management.
August 2004

Confusing Signs

A recent ATTN.COM article shrieked, “The State of Millennials' Finances Says a Lot about Our Economic Recovery.” The article ticked off the scary signs of a failed economic recovery:

• Low trust, lower savings.
• Higher education means higher costs
• More education, fewer jobs...?
• Underemployed and undereducated?
• Decreased buying power

It’s pretty clear that several of these complaints are contradictory. Lower savings means decreased buying power. Which is it? Higher education or undereducated? After a thousand words of whining about how badly the poor Milennials are being treated by reality, the article admits, “Despite hardships, Millennials remain uniquely optimistic about the future. But at the same time, data shows they are relatively unattached to political organizations. Last month, almost 80% of young voters sat out on the midterm elections.” Finally, this last bit isn’t confusing at all. Two clear characteristics about Millennials are clear: they are lazy and they are entitled.

Before you get your panties in a wad and whine “we’re not all lazy,” I know. Nothing of anything is all anything. However, it’s also true that 90% of everything is shit. The shit the Millennials represent is specially sorry. In my opinion, nobody has ever been braver, more on-target, or more politically creative than the Occupy Wall Street kids. I would put their energy and dedication against any generation’s social protest movement from the 1900’s labor movement to the Vietnam protests to the civil rights movement. Occupy is heroic and very Millennial. The other 99% of that generation can’t be bothered to crawl out of their parent’s basement for breakfast.

In conversations with several realtors regarding selling our 1.4 acre, 1900 square foot home, we have been given the same message repeatedly, “Young buyers are lazy. They do not see the potential in anything that will require them to do work. Fix everything, replace everything that needs replacing, paint everything, and sterilize the place.” When I asked how that would play out with the 1.4 acres of yard that needs at least 3-4 hours of work every week to stay reasonably under control, they all said, “That’s in the fantasy zone. They will imagine themselves able to take care of a park because it fits their delusional fantasies. Just make it look neat and don’t talk about the work required to do that.”

In a moment of despair a friend commenting on her kids’ inability to drag themselves out of their parents’ home and begin their own lives, she said, “They want to start off where we ended up.” I’ve seen a lot of that, too. I taught at a technical college for 12 years and the resistance to learning core skills was impressive. How these spoiled, lazy children expected to make a living in an industry (music) that was not only in severe economic decline but that has always been highly competitive completely evaded me. As expected, most of the school’s graduates ended up in completely non-music related businesses doing the sort of tasks they could have been doing without any education at all.

Supposedly “youth unemployment is stuck at 17.7%.” I wish I could say I am surprised or that I believe the economy is at fault for this sad state of affairs. However, the fact is that I wouldn’t hire many of the people I had in my classes for menial labor, let alone the skilled labor they pretended to be training for. The fact that Congress is working hard against the best interests of that group of citizens (and the rest of the 99%) is in large part the fault of this huge non-voting block. The 18-40 managed to drag themselves off of mommy’s couch to elect Obama in 2008 and to a massively lesser extent in 2012, but they failed in their responsibilities in both the 2010 and 2014 elections and have no grounds from which to complain when the Republicans trash their future by overriding Obama’s vetoes in the next two years. This bunch of coddled kiddies want to blame Boomers for their problems, but they’re going to find that when the Boomers are gone their own kids will shift that blame to their own parents who are going to do what they’ve always done; whine and screw off.

#89 Marketing Wizards (2004)

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day

The Internet economy died when marketing gurus decided that website ads were ineffective.  How they made that decision is about as logical as all of the rest of marketing decisions. 

Take, for instance, television advertising.  Nothing costs more than television advertising, except government.  How does a company know its advertising dollar produces income?  The Neilson rating system.  How do the Neilson ratings determine a program is "popular?"  The folks with the Neilson monitors have left their TVs on a program for at least 5 minutes.  Those five minutes don't have to be five minutes of advertising, either.  Just any old five minutes will do.

Pretty scientific, don't you think?

Last year's ABC attempt to buy Letterman to replace their evening news is based on the idea that people will go to bed, leaving their boob tubes on ABC (and Letterman, who certainly bores me to sleep), and wake up to Diane Sawyer or some talking head selling widgets.  If you turn on the tube, head for the bathroom, and leave the box on that channel for five minutes, up go the Neilsons. 

What would you spend for the science behind that kind of advertising clout?  Personally, I'd rather have a website ad. And I'm not convinced that website ads work, either. 

Obviously, ads do something.  Otherwise, George Bush II wouldn't be in office.  He sure wasn't elected based on performance, capability, intelligence, or good looks.  He's proof that most Americans don't know "What me worry?: Alfred E. Newman from "E=MC²" Albert Einstein. 

Marketing gurus seem to think that the 18-35 year old male is especially stupid, vulnerable to advertising, in other words.  I guess it's possible that 18-35 year old males elected Bush. I have to say that's a disturbing thought.  I wouldn't put that whatever group who elected GWB in charge of parking my 35 year old pickup.  That rust-bucket still has some practical value.

August 2004