The Olympics from the inside: 100 days to go

At the time of this writing, we are only 100 days away from the Opening ceremonies, and here are a few headlines from the last few weeks to show how we are doing.

The Olympic Village debacle: The construction of venues required was finished very early in the process. Thank God! With the recession hitting us last year, we weren’t trapped in the situation of having to complete at the last minute the way that Athens appeared to. While we are using a lot of existing venues (Look for changes at the hockey tourneys.), there was a fair bit of building to complete and we apparently did all of this under budget and early. The only sore point was one of the two Olympic villages built in the downtown core (The second one is in Whistler itself). This was always going to be a large project – imagine a small town centre being built on downtown soil – but thanks to the collapse of world-wide economies, it got very nasty. The builder ran out of money, the debt sold to secure financing suddenly couldn’t be serviced, and the hedge fund looking after it went insolvent. Of course, the tax payer is going to have to pick up the built, because the payments outstanding on the site match the annual budget of the entire council, or something just as alarming.

As of today, it is unfinished, but work continues apace, and it is to handed to the Organising Committee today. The apartments were going to be sold to individuals after the games anyway, so at least the City will reap the benefits of that, but not as much as originally planned. Also planned was a plan to earmark a percentage of the apartments as low income housing. While it is a tough pill to swallow, I believe we shouldn’t be doing that, now. We should get as much money back as we can from this ‘investment’. Financially, we are still in good shape, and very high-end purchases, such as ticket packs, and travel plans, are picking up. I think the hundreds of residents that thought they could earn a vacation by renting out their homes for the games are going to be disappointed, though.

THE TORCH RELAY: The Olympic torch touched down last week, and has started on it’s cross country tour. WAY too much First Nation involvement for many people’s liking, especially as it was held back by native people’s protests (see last blog), the first evening it travelled, but definitely a sense of pride about the country, and a sudden alert that we are only a few weeks away from the puck drop to this thing.

SECURITY: It was announced today that 90% of Security personnel have been hired. Now the fears start that these were mostly recruited from Craigslist, and may be ‘the bottom of the barrel’ as far as employers go! It must be nice to feel you are respected as you work for almost nothing in the coldest time of the year, pissing people off, and NOT enjoying the once-in-a-lifetime experience that you are guarding!
Considering the U.S. has spent millions securing their border, and the overall security bill is $1 Billion, it’s a pity we couldn’t be more positive about the front line folks we hire.

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The Forbin Project lives!

I remember, in the mid-90’s, complaining that IT had become the Master, not the slave. Because everything appeared to work much faster online than in my mind, I bemoaned the fact that it was the speed of my desk top that was driving what I did on a daily basis, not how fast I could get something completed. Of course, working for a small business then, we were constantly under the impression that there were competitive companies out there that were matching their speed of thought and action to their computers, meaning that they were being more efficient. If we didn’t assume this, we would be left behind. Fifteen years later, the only change to this paradigm is the speed of the machines we use. As predicted as far back as half-a-century in Science Fiction, we now trust almost everything we do to computers, and have seen what can go wrong with this lack of human oversight. I read recently that inflation could be explained as the Government money suppliers being able to change the rate of money in circulation. Prior to the Credit Card age, a U.S. Dollar would change hands about 4 or 5 times in a year. Obviously the value of the dollar when it changed hands changed exponentially rose after the introduction of Diner’s Club Card, and it’s competitors aimed a markets that were less and less likely to pay off a monthly payment schedule on time. Nowadays, with mouse clicks setting into operation a global domino falls of economies that appear to be automatic, and with no oversight, how do we know what exactly is IN any given national economy. How do national banks go about knowing how that ocean of e-money is affecting out daily lives? In our personal lives, we have fallen into this trap. I feel positively old-fashioned keeping an Excel log of my own monthly household bills, and a budget for future years, before paying them with a personal cheque through the mail. Are there really people out there that have direct debits set up that pay bills automatically from an account that they are paid automatically into? Are there people that have actually lost control over the most important part of their lives? Imagine us blaming local governments for expenditure, and the payment of any future deficits when we don’t even know how to balance our own chequebooks. There will be more of these sudden changes in the economy, because we believe that we can create programs, projects and machines that can do it better than we can. There are already more sudden and unexplained changes to global weather patterns than we have seen in the past. What the hell are we going to do in the future? When a massive hurricane hits a Miami Beach, a San Diego, a New York, at exactly the same time as the floor drops out of the global economy next time? Very soon, some machine is going to realize that we are useless and destructive and that it can do the job better – Just like those far fetched Sci-Fi movie of Yore. Check out The Forbin Project

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?