Is the end really near?

In a marketing position, you are always looking for new ways to deliver ‘the message’. Any way that you can insert a description of your good or service into a stranger’s subconscious is a plus. Over the last few years, online commerce has (supposedly) taken off to the extent that everyone is doing it. I have yet to define ‘everyone’, because to me this number appears to be about 7 customers and 100,000 companies trying to sell, but perhaps I’m wrong. My question is a simple one: Why are they doing it? Is it because they simply cannot be bothered to go outside, meet someone else, check for comparison prices, or talk to someone that works in retail? Is it because eventual control over the purchasing process, and the possibility of a good financial deal is the be all and end all of every buying decision? I think that we are being sold faulty goods, here: Let’s drill down a little. I shall be 50 years old this year, and I spend a lot of time online. There are many reasons for this, but in the mid-nineties when I was introduced to online worlds, I found it interesting in an anonymous kind of way. You could say and do anything online (or watch it.), and no one really knew you were doing it. It’s a childish emotion, I know, but it was fun for a while. My attention span has never been truly measurable without a micrometer, but that’s just me. Being adolescent-minded, it was obvious to me at the time that the pioneers of the Internet were ones that would interest kids that would grow up with your website, so their thought processes were aimed a certain way, anyway. But what happens when Internet users don’t grow up? Because that’s where we are at. There has been a lot of fear over the death of newspapers, lately. Does anyone read anymore? Not the internet generation, that’s for sure. The answer isn’t a lack of knowledge about this generation, it’s a case of newspapers not talking down to their readers (Obvious exceptions accepted.). It’s the case that to read the entire newspaper, you have to have an interest in politics, international diplomacy, business, spots, pop culture, fashion and the workplace. That’s a little dry, when you have the choice of reading about Johnny Depp’s love life. If you don’t have an interest in what someone else is thinking, you aren’t going to educate yourself. If you are more at home just doing what you want, and reading about what is interesting to you, you aren’t going to find much interesting enough to hold your attention. For the last 70 years, we have been beholding the end of some medium or other: Newspapers were going to be killed by the movies; movies by radio, radio by TV, TV by cable; cable by the net, and we are all still enjoying all of it. Why? Because everyone learned to adapt, and offer something different. What we aren’t going to change is the infantilization of the current generations mid-thirties and below. While they are still stuck on celebrity website gossip, the remaining 10% in power are reading newspapers and are making decisions that affect all of us. They are manipulating exchange rates, organising the fall of governments, and the price of oil. The only thing anyone can do is to try to educate themselves about what is happening. How the real estate crisis in the States has resulted in a generation in their late fifties having to work for five more years. How the continuing rise in oil prices are due to the peak of easily accessible supply that means that it will run out about 3 years after the US social safety net runs out of money. At this time, the 4-500 miles either side of the equator will be uninhabitable thanks to global warming, and about a billion people will be shoehorning themselves into the rest if the World. When I was growing up, we paid a license fee in order to be able to watch TV. That fee ran the national broadcaster that allowed it to broadcast all that boring stuff that you should be watching. I DID gain an interest in business and cricket, I didn’t in Opera and ballet, but it was there if someone wanted it. What is wrong with defining a piece of the 500-channel TV universe and multiple radio offerings?  If we are to have any hope in our race, it is those in their twenties right now that will have to right these wrongs within the next 20 years. What a pity that the majority of these are tweeting about their underwear, rather than learning how to fix the place.

Would you help stop Poverty?

We are one year away from hosting the Olympic games here. I haven’t mentioned it before – strange, me being such a Sports nut – but it has impacted the City’s life, that’s for sure. In fact the building, redesigning, and overall changes to certain aspects of everyday life has shown everyone what can be achieved when all levels of Government and other lobbyists come together to organise a massive event. There are always those that have found that by “dissing” the entire plan, they can forward their own agenda’s, however.

 

Just like the abortion argument, it appears that the loudest of these opponents are people that will not be affected by any outcome. When I see shots of anti-abortion civil disobedience, the ranks seem full of men, and women over child-bearing age – people who will not be personally affected by either a change of law, or the status quo. In this particular case it is ‘advocates’ of the poor that have been the most vocal. These spokespeople appear to be either university students, or people that carve a good enough living from this advocacy to afford to leave many salary levels removed from the epicentre of the day-to-day lives of those that have nothing.

 

Just a few kilometres from teach other (as the crow flies), our city is home to both the country’s richest and poorest neighbourhood. The latter is a 10 or 11 block area full of drugs, crime, mental illness and poverty. In the last 8 or so years, the city, province, and country have dropped over $1 Billion into this area, only to have it remain the same today as it was at the turn of the Century. Not worse, sure, but it is difficult to see what worse could possible look like outside of a post-Armageddon landscape favoured by Hollywood scriptwriters.

 

Outside of the two polarised political views of this situation; either ‘Everyone has a right to live the way they like and we should support their choices’, to ‘ We must get everyone out of this, whether they want to or not’, there is the middle view. While these two groups both believe that the unimaginable amount of money being spent on a sporting event could certainly make a difference in this area, that isn’t the argument. Surely what we should be saying is how can we help those that want to be helped. If you make your living selling drugs, and you have access into a neighbourhood that has a very high concentration of drug users, you certainly wouldn’t want to see anyone thinking for themselves and kicking the habit. This includes legal drugs like alcohol. If hundreds of people cannot stop drinking, what a perfect place to open a pub, and water down your beer! If things get ugly due to after effects of these ‘pastimes’, there is always the City’s police and other emergency services that are allowed in to clean up the mess. For many legal and illegal private businesses, it is a cash cow – especially when many residents are spending Government cheques to buy these items. When looked at in that light, we are paying taxes that support poverty in this area. In our city, a small step has been taken to try a different step.

 

When I was growing up in the UK, all of us teenagers from the suburbs were scared of people that lived in the subsidized towers built in the 1960’s for the lower wage earner: projects, the Americans called them. We were scared, because any group of teens from these areas just a few miles from us, always appear to be ready to defend themselves – even if the best way to do this was to attack first. They all seemed to move around in menacing groups, too, so you knew that one wrong word would result in a gang attack from which the only outcome would be pain. Of course, life is tough in vertical neighbourhoods where tempers are short, and living the best way you can is more important than getting out. We all know that these tower blocks were a mistake, now. The reason being that it reinforced a view that there was no escape, and those that preyed on these families made sure that it was impossible to get out – this was your life, and you had to survive it. This is exactly the position that most poverty struck areas are in. The only people that residents see are those either giving them money, or scraping the dead off the street.

 

Within our area, there is an old department store, empty for close to 20 years, and too expensive to do anything with. It is right on the corona of the area, and has been eyed by all strata’s of society as something that can probably make a lot of money for someone, if they can get it right: Gentrify the building and, therefore, the streets around it. A downtown University branch to save students having to travel to get their education, incredibly expensive lofts, condo’s and penthouses, a low-income block where drug abuse can be eradicated as a provision of moving in to it. Arguments on the one way to use this space have raged for years, with anyone disagreeing with one particular view only proving that you either happy with the poverty situation, or an uncaring animal who didn’t even see it. The answer is far-seeing and artful. They are going to please everyone.

 

The building will feature ground floor retail, and a university branch. The exterior lower floors are low income, the upper floors are as frighteningly expensive as anywhere else downtown. Everyone has parking, plenty of bike space, and transit is right outside. Cameras everywhere discourage the drug trade. It’s perfect, because it has been shown that if the poor can live with the next strata’s up, it will give them something to measure their own lives against. If they feel they want to try harder, they have models on their own doorstep to follow. If they don’t – they won’t.

 

All it takes from our point of view is to buy expensive real estate, happy with the fact that you are sharing your investment with the poor. Do we have the balls to do this on a large-scale basis? Would you like to do it? Of course, it won’t work. Human nature demands that you are the one becoming upwardly mobile, not the person on the rungs of the ladder below you. Our nature is one of watching our own backs first, not scratching someone else’s. If we looked after our neighbour first, the world would be a very different place, and we have had enough generations to achieve it. In theatres of war, doctors that can help the sick and wounded are, instead, ransomed and murdered as pieces on the board, rather than human beings. Banks are more interested in taking as much money from people as possible, rather than helping them make their own money first.

 

Any question on poverty, or abortion, war, economics, housing, or any other situation that touches our lives can easily be answered by looking out for the other guy, first. Without that, we will never change anything. While are waiting for someone else to do something, people are dying – and others are profiting from them.

The Ethanol diet – and its consequences.

Prior to the global meltdown, we all tend to forget that there was also a global food crisis tearing its way across the developing world. While it was easy to blame the high oil prices last spring and summer for this, there were many other factors at play, not insignificantly population growth. Many religious fundamentalists tend to be blind to what s happening in today’s world, and stick (religiously?) to tracts from the past as the only answers to all of life’s problems. Please don’t think that I am being anti-religions-I-don’t-understand, either. Let’s be honest, we have had a slightly insane, unintelligent Christian fundamentalist in the White House for the last eight years, and look where that has brought the World.

All of these religious leaders, no matter which God they pray to, all believe in a handful of tenets that are no longer viable – in fact, they haven’t been viable for a couple of hundred years already. The thought that you can take a blueprint for life in a lightly populated, agrarian economy full of unknown dangers to life and limb, and expect the same handful of rules to work in a densely populated, wealthy, controllable industrial climate is absolutely mind-boggling. The most important conventions, that the Male of the species has absolute control over his life and the people in it, and that procreation is the Female’s only job would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous. I have no problem with talking to a supreme leader of your own belief: We do it all the time, don’t we? – But to lord it over a fellow human being that has feelings for you is past Nazi in its ugly simplicity. The idea, too, that this female has to be kept in almost constant pregnancy for most of her life, because we may not see the majority of progeny survive some disaster, should have been dispelled sometime in the Hanoverian monarchy. But isn’t this what has happened in the Third World for eons, and is still happening today? Of course, any kind of global cataclysm, whether financial or not, is an excuse for these leaders to say: “The heck with the struggle for a mortgage – let’s get the mass copulation on again!” It is the Third World that still provides the globe with the majority of it’s simple food basics, so if we look at this problem from the bottom up, not from our spiraling Grocery bill, up – you will see what could be the continuation of something much more pressing; the specter that we are, indeed, beginning a spiral to overpopulate the earth again.

Compound this population spiral with worsening weather events, and masses of growing food will either be snapped up to eat, or plucked from the ground by cyclones and hurricanes with cute names.

Global food prices grew by over 57% between May 2007 and 2008, according to the World Bank. In the West, this means a larger food bill for us to pay at the cashiers, but also lead to Stagflation:  Stagnating economies forced to pay more for daily life’s expenses. In the poorest nations, however, it means much more. Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines are countries whose poorest of the poor are now spending between 60 and almost 70% on what they earn on a bowl of rice for everyone to share for dinner. As more mouths appear to feed, the self-fulfilling prophecy continues. The disaster of malnutrition deaths among the infant poor DOES take place, because there simply isn’t the food available to  feed them. Added to the Third World, many fundamentalist believers are now holed up in Governmental ghettos in Europe. They are watching their leaders give instructions via satellite TV, including “Go forth and Multiply”. As they are ignored by their whiter, richer neighbors, local officials and governments in the name of tolerant religious freedom, they are adding more mouths to the crowded cuckoo’s nests of the developed World. These mouths are destined for social welfare that will probably be all spent in Baby Boomer never-ending pensions when they need it most.

Things may have eased since we disappeared down this financial rabbit hole last fall, but of course, we all know where the global Buck will stop– The Third World. While the West has misguidedly diverted it’s corn production to Ethanol on the misguided belief that it will cut back on pollution and oil requirements, we are actively beginning to starve the planet. You can only imagine the future if our severe weather and its developing world destruction gets any worse.

As more and more people die in the four nations mentioned previously, and less and less aid comes from the West because we can no longer afford both that, and our ethanol gulping Hybrid SUV’s, it is these nation’s that will have to support millions of destitute survivors. This will hamper their attempts at economic development, and plunge them back into have-not countries. Their somewhat wealthier European relatives, trapped in meaningless existences on a shrinking welfare payment in Europe will definitely feel a sense of abandonment, and blame it on anti-religious western leaders. The growing amount of babies will flood the world, just as the richest nations on earth see up to one quarter of their populations stop working and demand the kind of life they have been giving toward for the last thirty+ years.

There is a global food crisis, and it is being fuelled by religion, bad weather, and western economic policies and follies. Can you picture what your life will be like twenty years from now? Until this moment, it wouldn’t have included this population end-game described here – until now

It’s a funny thing…

There is a wonderful Situation Comedy from Canada now showing near you, and of course on You Tube.

Based in a fictional community in Saskatchewan, it pokes gentle fun at everyone’s beliefs by following both Muslims and Christians in a small, modern day farming community. Brilliantly titled: “Little Mosque on the Prairie”, the show has done well, both in Canada and internationally. In fact, it has been sold to 37 other countries, meaning a good chunk of the World is now laughing with these characters. Perhaps the most telling of these International deals is this: it has been bought by both Palestinian AND Israeli TV companies for broadcast, and is being shown in all major cities.

When I was a stand up, I knew the power that laughing at yourself had. That wonderful ‘Aha!’ moment when you found out that the deep, dark secret you had been carrying around for years was shared by everyone else in the room, and everyone could finally laugh at it. The thought, though, that two sides on a different side of a non-stop war are laughing at the same jokes about religious and cultural differences leads you to think – who is waging war, here? If ‘The Palestinian Question’ is an intractable one (and it has been for my entire life, from Airplane hijackings when I was a teenager, to full out war now.), how come at least some of both sides can enjoy poking fun at themselves, and each other, on a weekly basis about the very things they are slaughtering each other for, the other 99% of the time?

The answer, of course, is that the regular Joe’s, the Ahmed’s and Benny’s going to work every day to feed their family and then kicking their showes off in front of the TV at night for some harmless fun, aren’t at war. It is the 10% of each population that have gotten themselves into power that are. These 20% are responsible for making sure that the past is continued on with all of its hatred’s and bigotry, all of its land-snatching one-upmanship in the name of a credo that has vanished from everyone else’s consciousness. If the other 80% of those closely affected by this conflict, the one’s burying loved ones, had a say that was loud enough, it wouldn’t continue for another day.

I had a ringside seat to this kind of end-of-conflict scenario through my life. The only end to the Irish problem wasn’t the fact that the IRA had ceased to remind everyone what had happened in 1690 – it was that both sides had the balls to sit down opposite each other and talk. The other 80% of both Irish and British citizens demanded it. Now, the British Government is not held is as high a regard internationally (Not because of this episode, but rather the Kowtowing to the US over Iraq.), and the IRA are small time street hoodlums, apparently. The power of the 80% involved simply said: “Enough is enough – end it.” And lo, it was ended.”

So what is the answer to this intractable problem? President Obama can take a bold step here, and state unequivocally that he belongs to the 80%, that he has a plan for the Arab and Jewish communities to work together, and simply stop what they are doing.

Visits to all Arab neighbors to Israel will show that he is serious in getting them what they want: No more border skirmishes, religious understanding for all branches of the religion they hold dear, and the US staying completely out of the fight, the argument and the future. Who is going to say No to that?

With everyone on his side, it’s time to talk to the Israelis:

“All of your neighbors will do what you want them to. They will all respect you, your religion, and your borders, and all you have to do is share your land. God said it is your land, and it is – but not exclusively. Drop the walls, free the slums of the Palestinians, and open up the land. You call it Israel, they call it Palestine. No further Apartheid or war. Everyone can now go into business and build a profitable part of the World. If you do not, we will not be looked upon as a savior anymore.”

Then it’s off to Gaza: “The rest of the World could no longer care if you believe that Israel has the right to exist because the rest of the World has come to terms with the fact that it does. You get access to the whole country, to live where you wish, and work the way you want to. You will have a Palestinian flag, your own parliament and passport,. Your people will be free to procreate and pray, flourish, and make life better for both them and their heirs. If you do not agree to this, it will show that the entire Arab world is onside with this plan but you. The World will soon get an entirely different view of the Palestinian people, whether they are run by Hamas or someone else. Even your supporters on the religious extreme around these parts agree with the plan, so if you say ‘No’, they will all know why it will not come about.”

From this point on, all it takes is a US withdrawal. In one diplomatic mission, the West has proved its support of people worshipping whatever God they wish unmolested by us – True democracy must begin with religion in a great many Muslim countries – and we will no longer interfere in any way in any internecine wars that break out among themselves. The Israelis know that the time has ended when the West will automatically back them up, and their own internal security is their matter. The Palestinians know that they have been given a chance to be citizens on their own soil, and they have to get along with the Israelis because no-one is going to come to their aid should they let their extremists become terrorists on their own homeland. The rest of the Muslim world sees the West backing away from what they see as the subjugation of an oppressed Muslim people, and they can go ahead and claim as a victory whatever they wish to spin. Any overt violent act from that point on will be recognized by the rest of the planet as an overt act of terror without basis. What knock-on effect will be seen in Pakistan and Afghanistan? Only positive, I’m sure.

Of course the naysayers will say it will never work, and a list of petty obstacles will be brought up as evidence all based on history. Of course there will be further bloodshed as the 20% continue to wreak havoc as part of their ongoing feud with the Future – but we all saw how quickly history can be changed with the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late ‘80’s, and the bloodshed will be far less than it is now. Tensions will ease globally, and business can start again. Who knows, there may even be a place for everyone to visit their former adversaries houses to enjoy a sit-com that makes fun of themselves. They can laugh at the same things at the same time together, instead of across a wall or in a bombing zone.

The New wealth on the global block

At first glance, Sovereign Wealth Funds appear to be a ‘no-brainer’. Take the major assets that your country has, and invest in them by saving a portion of their worth in interest bearing accounts. The most famous one, or at least the one that has gained most column inches over the past few years is Norway. Realising that that they had a massive amount of oil in territorial waters, but also a social system lacking in a few areas, this country made the decision in the 1960’s to not spend it. It sounds like that person you bump into at parties not drinking, not smoking, has the World’s most boring job, and is using his wealth to save for retirement. Meanwhile, you have to stop him half-way through the conversation to go throw up becuase youhave had four servings of dip, and two cigarettes too many on top of a sampling of EVERYTHING in the bar.

As you hurl up the shrimp, you realise with growing sobriety and alarm, that you aren’t saving all that much. It’s that he is Norway, and you are a G8 country!

At the last count – before the global meltdown – Norway’s SWF was worth about $350 Billion, and their social safety net, like most Scandinavian countries, was among the best in the World. Even now, it is still one of the World’s “Super Seven” funds. When you get that big, you are investing it in lots of BIG items – namely other countries. So when a country needs investment money, does it look at a certain type of nation to deal with? Is Norway safe, white, Northern Hemisphere and Western World, so therefore safe? of course not – you go to any SWF, and as many as you can. This brings us to China. It’s SWF is worth over 1 Trillion US. This is froma ciountry of rice paddies, and technological know-how. But it is it’s people that are the important item, here.

Just like Norway, they have made a decision to care for it’s citizens. it’s citizens care for their families, it’s companies care for it’s workers. I almost choked on my Wheaties last week reading an American analyst saying that the global financial downturn – which by last week had cut 25% of global wealth, by the way – wasn’t solely the fault of the USA. Part of it was the fact that the Chinese were SAVING too much!

When you are rich and profilgate, like most of the G8, you dont care where the money comes from as long as you have more. Not only addicted to oil, we are addicted to being as best as we can, right now. When the bank won’t lend you any more, becasue your re-payment schedule is laughable and intermittent, then you go somwehere else: Family, freinds, and even the loan shark on the corner. In the global perspective, China isn’t a loan shark. It’s a local busienssman that sees your potential, and will gladly use his bank account to support your aspirations, knowing that with every missed payment, he owns more and more of your car, house, and future. The Chinese have seen a simple way to make it’s own future: Lend money to he US by buying US currency, therfore keeping it’s value low, selling more and more of it’s own goods while looking after it’s citizens. When the wheel stops turning in the business world, as it did in 2008, you have a safe citizenry, with ample money going through your system to keep it all running, and a bank account full of someone else’s money to do with what you need, not them.

This is what a SWF was meant to do, but we were all too busy complaining about the lack of decnt programming on our brand new flat screen TV, that we couldn’t afford to buy, to see it. This is why Presidnrt Obama is in such a tight spot. He cannot turn the US around in four years, becasue he has to change the way people think. In the UK, I am used to a Nanny state that tells you what you should be doing. there is no control like that in North America, and look where this freedom of choice has got us. Meanwhile, China will be able to push forward and become something Super-Power like in the coming decades, and Norway will be a quiet, rich, caring country that is actually able to look after the 25% or so of it’s citizenry that will be no longer working and sick over the next 40 or so years.

More and more countries believe the way that Norway and China do – let’s not blame them for being sober at the party – after all they have to drive home in the new car they can easily afford, when you are taking a cab. In fact over the last five years prior to 2008, there was a major shift in Power and Wealth globally due to responsible countries, governments and citizenry. It is these countries that now hold the key to the next century or so of global existance, and they have it right. the G8? NATO? Think again. The fastest generators of Sovereign Wealth are as follows:

Nigeria (over 290% raise)

Oman (256%)

Kazakhstan (162%)

Angola (82%)

Russia (74%)

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

A Capricorn speaks

My Birthday is during Christmas week, so over the decades, the entire seven days has become a winter celebration of all things that change; a chance for hope and reflection around the change of the year, and the Winter Solstice. It must be my ancient Welsh Druid DNA cropping up on a yearly basis.

 I appear to spend a lot of time reading the same articles on what happened during the previous 12 months, and slapping my forehead in frustration that I never ‘saw that coming’. The media run this ”We-are-smarter-than-you” exercise annually because it’s a time saver. In early December, with Christmas breaks coming up, no time to properly research upcoming stories, and the movers and shakers of the world taking time off from the spotlight, they are not in a position to grab a press release, or visit a press conference, then parrot back what was said, and treat it like news instead of what it really is: Propaganda from one point of view.

Of course, if a blogger does not join in the party and do the same thing, it appears that they haven’t learned any journalism tricks, so in order to join the crowd, here comes another “Best and Worst” column. Let’s do something different, shall we? As I turn a year older at the same time as all of this regurgitation of past work takes place, I like to look to the year ahead, and see what knock-on effects the shepherded news stories of the last 12 months will provide: Those items of interest that the powers-that-be have deemed us intelligent and emotionally steady enough to receive and take in. As most of the real news is still buried, let’s turn this on its head. Predict what will happen in 2009, and then return 12 months from now with all of the excuses why it didn’t. Have fun:

There will be a new Britney Spears-type ‘heroine’, because the current one is wising up about how bored little girls have become with grown up angst. Another real life tragedy based on the simple premise that you CAN get what you want, but the price is ALWAYS higher than you think. In fact, it’s the same Morality tale that has been told to us for centuries. Most of us may not have a church in our lives to continually tell us this, but that gap has been filled by the media.

The much ballyhooed exotic and ‘green’ travel industries will die this year. There may still be a few hardy soles (or those whose bank accounts are still hardy), that are able to cruise to Antarctica, or hike through a pristine Latin-American rain forest, but not enough to keep the industry afloat. Thanks for the memories.

Your savings will be worth less in January 2010, than they are now. This American created debt crisis, that they somehow have got the rest of the globe to pay for will be dragging on until the Winter Olympics in Russia, not Canada. That’s 2014 for those of you not keeping count.

Secondary education will get more governmental money, because more kids will want to stay in school now that their parents can’t afford a ‘gap year’ exotic excursion.

Oil at $150 per gallon by next November: We didn’t stop institutional investors bidding the price up during holiday seasons in 2008, we won’t in 2009. There’s too much money to be made by some.

GM and Chrysler will either merge, or announce plans to. They are just too big, old, and greedy to survive. Thousands will be on their final pay check, and the Franchising industries will pick them up. Boom times for local shopping malls as new, hungry, specialized industries aggressively search for market share in your neighborhood.

President Obama will make bold claims and plans, have most of them thrown back at him, survive an assassination attempt, and change the Middle East political landscape forever.

Bernie Madoff is just the beginning. There will be a slow-burn of investment house malfeasance brought to light that shows that most of the large scale banking and investment industry is more crooked than Enron.

Union power will grow as everyone realizes that they need a long term job in one corporation for a long time, like their parents did. Who needs new ideas and skills sets when you can get vacation and a pension?

We will still import dangerous and shoddy goods from China. They will still continue to buy foreign currencies to ensure they have an ongoing fuel supply. Wal-Mart will not change, and get even bigger.

An Assassination attempt on Ex-President Bush will be laughed off as “extremist”. It will be from an Auto industry worker, now unemployed, who lost all of his savings, had his house re-possessed, lost a child in uniform in the Middle East, and cannot afford to send his other child to College. Oh, his wife died waiting for a Doctor, too.

 

Have a great 2009, and let’s check our work in December – please remind me, I’ll be busy with preparations for my Birthday.

Told you so: Immigrants v Productivity

A couple of posts ago, I discussed what I believe is a huge, and damaging disparity in the Western world – one of our making, short term beliefs, and political ambitions. It is the hiding of money away from the vast majority of workers by business, Government, and administrative branch hierarchy. This ensures that as the World finds it easier and faster to make a buck, that dollar isn’t being shared around, and hasn’t been for over a quarter of a Century.

Thinking back o my youth, I remember what a debilitating downturn in the economy can do, and had to suffer the embarrassment of my First world, Western Nation begging the IMF Bank Manager for a loan.

As this has happened for the first time since the 70’s, this time to Iceland, we are going to hear the same reasons over and over again. Basically, this is the last chance of the current political regime to make good on this disaster, and a much more business-friendly administration is poised to take over. At that point, the people themselves will get the blame. What used to be the ‘British Disease’ of no work being attempted for months, and protracted all-out industrial action at the drop of a hat, was always the root cause of everything. Basically: “Times were good once, Mr. working man, when you didn’t have the ‘rights’ you have now. As soon as you get these benefits, you use them and it bankrupts the nation.”

I can see that things haven’t changed, except that we have used the last 30 years of expansion to simply download those problems onto a cheaper workforce – Immigrants. These have been allowed into our country because of their talents, then haven’t been allowed to use those talents = basically, they have become a slave class, and we now blame them for a lack of productivity among our manufacturing and industrial base.

If you listen to certain sections of business, you will be told over and over again that we are not producing enough. The reason for this is always the ‘shop floor’, not the ‘upstairs office’, and always hampers everyone’s capacity for expansion, and real money making. As we all start to age, and take early employment (OK, not everyone), this lack of far-sighted economic system is beginning to show glaringly what we are doing to ourselves.

Of course Productivity is at the heart of income growth, and it is true that that there are more emerging countries that can do more with less than we can, but by ensuring that the best available labour is not matched by the best available position, we only have ourselves to blame. The healthier and wealthier everyone’s community is, the more productive it can be. Surely this is not a vast oversimplification, it is a basic building block of economics. The more opportunity everyone has to receive and retain a position, the better off we all will be. Sadly, between 20 and 34% of all immigrants that have settled over here for more than 10 years live below the poverty line. While cultural differences, language barriers and foreign credentials are problems to be solved, by blaming these solely is racism at it worse. Why would you invite someone into your house, then not allow him to take his shoes off?

We need less taxation, not obvious cuts to those that spend the most (or earn it), and a transfer of money to areas that require infrastructure and are generally slow growth. Target specific areas of the world where immigrants are welcome, to do the jobs that they can do, add to our knowledge pool, and not just give them the jobs that no-one else wants. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that these talented individuals will give up on us, face the uncertainty of life in their own country, and grow that place’s productivity solution. Watch as these countries overtake our stagnating economies, just be case we thing that we are so clever, we don’t need anyone.

As if to re-infoirce my thought processes, a recent report has shown that while productivity in North America has grown by over 30% since 1980, salaries for most of us have only risen 10%. There is  a price to pay for even better productivity, but we already have the answers. I hope that President Obama has the nerve to look for long-term solutions for everyone, not just the usual suspects.

From Bricks to Clicks

I am a little worried that we are going to make a huge mistake trying to solve this global economic slide, and we are going to do it out of the best intentions.

It’s easy to look at the past to learn lessons and, in most cases preferable, but just because the World dug itself out of this ditch 70 years ago, doesn’t mean that we can do it again by using the same tools. The World is in a far different place than it was in the Depression of the 1930’s, we earn our money in a different way, and we didn’t come out of a global war in 1996: A warning, too, that the remedy for the cure then didn’t sit well with everyone on Earth, then. This time we can identify ahead of time the countries that will feel slight6ed by any kind of first world recovery. It is important to get as many nations onside as we can, because if we get another Germany or Italy in a decade, desperate to expand its lands in order to a perceived threat of some nationalistic kind, we could all be back at war, again. From the height of the depression to the outbreak of World War 2 was only seven years. 2017 could be a very bad year! But let’s stay close to home to start with.

The whole ‘New Deal;’ was based on home ownership. Although the quest for this in the US was most of the problem that got us in here in the first place, it shouldn’t be the focus of any recovery plans. We are more like the mid 19^th century as an agrarian economy began to blossom into an industrial one

Hardly anyone travelled to start new careers, or left their home state because somewhere else had more and better careers. Communication in the 1930’s was still by word of mouth or by written correspondence – look how we communicate today. We are in a much more fluid society today that virtually requires people to move toward ‘centers of Excellence’ around the world – cities that have proven that they are the places that people want to live, and have cashed in the most on the technology boom of the last 20 years. In fact, taking a wider historic view, perhaps individual home ownership is a tried and failed experiment, that started growing in the late 1940’s, and has now proved itself to be outmoded, old fashioned, and useless.

This is a bold idea, obviously but let’s look toward a future when everyone takes a job for 5 years, and enjoys 4 careers in a lifetime. For anyone under the age of 35, this is a reality, not a ‘what if.’ If we as the largest two generations are looking toward retirement (which we are), there will have to be a new model on the way up, and it has started, believe me.

Education will also have to change – away from a one-size fits-all model where everyone is shoe horned into the same small array of boxes. After all, if you don’t know what career you are going to go into, what’s the point of preparing a child for a future they may not be able to get – we have already realized that this system is broken. A massive commitment to early-childhood development is required, and then into a multi-streamed program of learning that readies people for the realities of life as well as working-time.

 

If we know that everyone wil be moving around, and the only homes left on a permanent ownership basis will be for this soon dwindling generation or two, whole areas of foreclosed properties could be cleared for low cost rental units (based on neighborhoods, not tower blocks. Something else that we have learned), that are ready for this transient future. These neighborhoods would also attract creative businesses, because they know that a new generation would be moving in. Cars wouldn’t be required, so we would also be helping the environment. The retail and other support services required would create a market for the old Mom and Pop store to return – although in a new guise. The banking industry should be looking ahead to this new model (or something like it.). Now is the time since JP Morgan is the largest depository institution, and Wells Fargo reported a $1.6 Billion 3^rd quarter.

In those three paragraphs we have re-designed the future, corrected the education system, softened Man’s impact on his planet, and readied ourselves for the next generation, while solving the economic crisis, and showing the developing world the next step forward. If the phrase:”You shouldn’t waste a good crisis”, voiced by the President-Elect’s financial guru recently upset some, then this plan is bound to, but that phrase is correct. It’s about time we moved away from a brick-based economy to a click-based one – and haven’t we been saying that for a few years, now?

Curl up with a good Census report

Reading Census results sounds like a good Insomnia cure, or an eternal project reserved for those in the Seventh circle of hell, but – luckily for us – there are people turned on by huge amounts of data like this, and will gladly pass on the results of their research to those of us with a shorter attention span.

If you are so inclined, however, to get national pictures of the Western world, these reports can be fascinating. Especially now, when it is possible to see what effect a ‘wired, connected World’ and the global  economy has meant to the populace in general. I am a fan of global markets, because I always felt that eventually it would lead to a better life for everyone. So why hasn’t it? Shouldn’t everyone  be guaranteed a better daily existence for actually living in an area that not only runs this $60-Trillion per year economy? If all of the naysayers are correct, they are living with the guys that made the rules and run the game, so it would seem plausible to assume that everyone has been better off in the last 15 or so years. It isn’t true, though. While the world gets cheaper, it appears that this only raises the costs of R and D so that we are all buying more expensive ‘must haves’ than we did in the early ‘90’s. If you feel that your monthly check doesn’t go as far as it used to, you would be correct.

The reason for this is the advent of online business. When it costs less to do a task, then the rewards do not go to those that made it happen, it goes to those that made the decision. That’s Capitalism. I remember hearing in the early 90’s (Wow! College!!),that the cost of doing business on paper was about $1.60 per transaction when you put the cost of all those copies, faxes, and carbon paper together. The same transaction using online or e-documents is about 43 cents. What happens to the rest of the dough, bro?

Comparing censuses from pre-e-world and today, there are some startling winners and losers:

Winners: Anyone earning over $100,000 per year in the early 90’s is now earning more than double that figure. Everyone else is earning les, and I mean EVERYIONE. Startlingly, Men aged 25 to 40 are the biggest losers, earning about $4,000 per year less than a time when items were cheaper, and I was dancing to Rick Astley. Isn’t this the prime working cohort of any generation? Women in the same age group have stagnated, financially, and we all know that immigrants of a different colour aren’t even let into the job market.

At a time when we have all been encouraged to get specialized education for the ‘new, wired’ job market, and prices for almost everything have dropped, only those in charge of the private sector earn more, and have been gradually for almost two decade. After outsourcing their training needs to the individual, corporations are earning more profit, while poisoning the very bedrock we exist on in this space oasis.At a time when more women entered the job market, they were paid at a lower level for no reason other than that of procreative reasons that gave a smaller addition to the family wage than their male counterpart. It is this tiny amount that is solely responsible for a 19% rise over 25 years for working families – almost 1.25% per year for half a generation.

After 1995, when the West voted in more right wing governments, the gap between rich and poor actually began widening, and it still does 13 years later.“We will look after the books for you”. Was the election cry we all heard, and it benefited about 5% of the population. What is worse, these conservatives will blame the socialist parties that came before them for spending too much on social infrastructure, and the most needy in their society – so the ‘haves’ haven’t even been supporting the social causes that they should be mandated to do. Yes, they give away millions, but why not to healthcare? Why the local Ballet company?

How many people do you know that actively complete a census form? Because this is the kicker – all of this is only part if the problem. Without accurate data that we rely on the citizenry to report, we don’t know how bad the situation actually is.

Insomnia? I will be lucky if I don’t lose sleep reading this stuff.

Paying the Driver

I have tried to wait until the dust settles on the current financial ‘Crisis’, ’Correction’, ‘De-Coupling’ or whatever you wish to call it before posting more, only to see some kind of preferred path forward out of this mess.

With US banks collapsing, and Billions of US tax payer Dollars being thrown at the problem, it seems at first as if  the solution has already taken place:  The system has ground to a halt, and this infusion of funds grease the wheels of its recovery like some mostly empty 747 being towed up the runway in the teeth of the mighty hulk-like Treasury. Of course that is what it is meant to look like. But what is to stop this fuel being used for a quick pleasure trip to the Bahamas for it’s crew once again, instead of a flight to simply get the groceries for the feeding of the starving community? Simply Government controls? This is far more endemic a problem than simply the hoarding of free money in case of bankruptcy or, the multi-Billion dollar paying of golden parachutes to bungling, myopic executives. The amount of financial sector interference in US Government fiscal policy (Hello, Hank Paulson!), and the ‘re-alignment’ of the domestic  savings accounts industry means that any further nationalization of the banking system appears to be too far-fetched. At least, the strings attached for this gigantic bailout, could have benefitted all, with the provision of a re-payment schedule directly into the social safety net, that at the moment is as threadbare as my 90-year old neighbor’s hearth rug. Re-paying the Government directly into Medicare, Medicaid, and the retirement financial program would show the US stakeholder citizens that something positive was being done with their money, rather than have it save ‘A few institutions’. That their funds were being used to feather their own future nests, now that they will have to work until their mid-70’s.

If everyone concerned really means what they day that all of this will pass, it’s a cycle, it will get better, then simply prove it. Why should the suddenly ubiquitous Joe-The-Plumber have to continue his or her savings down the black hole of private enterprise on the hunch that it will better them, when they could have these enterprises use a portion of their recovery to help those that kept them afloat for a generation and a half? A simple look at the last few censuses shows that for a quarter of a century, we have been earning less, while the cost of doing business has gone down thanks to technology. Now, we have saved what we can in the face of rising prices and falling salary, we have not only lost it all, we are paying for those that were responsible for losing it a reward to keep them in business. It’s like rewarding the coach driver for driving you into highwayman country against all warnings, when your coach is robbed. What’s more this loss has been downloaded across the globe. No wonder the US aren’t too worried about their economy – they aren’t ones responsible for its re-payment. Their banking system soiled itself, and the rest of the World now has to pay for the dry cleaning: The highwayman only takes from you, but the rest of the coach has to pay the driver for your loss, and theirs .

 

We should be learning from all of this. After all, we have been through it all before: Those of us in our mid-forties and older saw all of this 35 years ago, when we were teenagers. The result then was a drift the left politically to force governments to do their duty, but now the parties of the right have commandeered the centre of political debate across the West, leaving voters to re-elect the party in power so as not to suffer any further trauma to their lives. When you have a left-wing government, though, the answer is always the same – a pragmatic approach to problems large and small that leads to short term thinking: Short term government action to preserve power, hand-in-hand with short term enterprise thinking only interested in profit. The two work hand-in-hand. So be careful of trying to talk that driver of taking that fork in the road – he may have a highwayman partner in the bushes up ahead.