We went to pick up our rental car at Avis in Barcelona today so we could drive north to the Costa Brava. I am a member of the Avis Chairman’s club and normally get great service from Avis. For instance, they drive us in our rental car to the terminal when we return the car. I did not expect that kind of service in Spain but was shocked that after a long wait, I was told by the Avis person that they did not have the car I had reserved and intact they did not have any automatic cars. We are not use to driving a stick shift car and did not want to practice in Barcelona. The only think he could offer was our going to another Avis location where they had a car for us. We took a taxi there and then after another long wait, we were able to get a car. As the young man behind the counter check us in, he had a number of interesting remarks. He said, this is just the begin of the decline of our civilization. He said companies like Avis where paying the minimum to their staff and had fewer and fewer people doing more and more work. He said workers no longer cared and the person that was suppose to make sure our car was at the original location probably just could not be bothered to enter the data. He said, “the best days are over”. I am afraid he is right.
Tag: economic crisis
-
Introducing the Four Day Work Week
As some of you know, I plan to run for President via Americans Elect if nominated. I will be posting some of the planks of my campaign platform
Here is one: Introducing the Four Day Work Week
As some of you know, I plan to run for President via Americans Elect if nominated. I will be posting some of the planks of my campaign platform from time to time. Here is one – Introduce the Four Day Work Week.
I hate to be the one to tell you, but the jobs that were lost in the debacle that resulted in part from the real estate bubble, are not coming back. The combination of globalization, increased productivity resulting from technological advances and resource depletion are permanent. Rather than dealing with that reality, we masked it by the using of easy credit. So rather than having growth we simulated growth. That allowed Americans to buy homes they could not afford with debt that they could not pay back. Building these homes created many jobs but those jobs could not be sustained. In the mean time, increasing real estate values allowed the rest of us to feel more wealthy and more comfortable spending our savings or, even worse, borrowing from the equity of our homes. I think you probably already know all this. But our government leaders are telling us (both parties) that we just have to return to growth and everything thing will be ok. The two parties do not disagree with the end objective – growth. They just disagree on how to get there. And they are both wrong.
So if we are going to have 10% unemployment (it’s really more like 20% but we don’t count the people that had given up looking for work), more or less permanently (although will likely get worse), then what does this mean for our country? If so many people are unemployed permanently, things are going to get ugly. Unemployment insurance can not maintain standards of living. And unemployment insurance will not be extended for ever. So many families will find themselves with greatly reduced incomes or even no income. Family not directly effected will fear that they will be next to lose their jobs. This means that in addition to living with great anxiety, they will also be willing to work longer hours for less pay and less benefits which, while increasing profitability for their employers, will have the effect of actually reducing job growth. Not all parts of society will be effected in the same way. For instance young people and in particular young people of minorities will be even more effected. You only have to look to the recent riots in the UK to see how well this works out.
So is there an alternative? Yes, we can go back to the promise of a four day work week, something I was told to expect when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. If we reduced the work week to 32 hours, after a period of adjustment, everyone could be employed. Yes, we would all be earning 20% less but we would have a full extra day in our lives. This in effect would add increase our days off by 50%. We would stop having to worry about losing our jobs. We would once again have some bargaining power with employers. We would have not to be fearful of gangs of young men who have never found work.So rather than think about a reduction of your salary by 20%, think about all the great things you will be able to do with the extra day.
Here is a pretty good video talking about this concept.
New Dream Mini-Views: Visualizing a Plenitude Economy from Center for a New American Dream on Vimeo.
…..
-
Maybe the economic crises will save the world
As I have often said, “Cancer saved my life”. When I was 51 years old, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Several months later I was treated with radiation therapy. It has now been almost 12 years and I seem to be fine. Many would say I was cured. But back in 1996 when I was learning about prostate cancer, I realized that while you can know you have prostate cancer you can never know that you do not. It can come back even 20 years later. I decided to make major changes in my life. At that time I was a Corp. Vice President at Intel, managed a multi billon dollar perfolilo venture capital investment perfolilo, was a key interface between Intel and the media industry as well as the communications industry. I was a major spokesperson for the company and keynoted lots of great conferences. I sat on the board of a few entertainment companies as well as a few non profit organizations. I was financially secure. But that was not enough. I was about to start an investment partnership with friend (he actually did it and that company become very successful). The cancer gave me a very different prospective on my life. I decided I would make every decision as if I only had ten years to live. So the first thing I did was to end my discussions about starting an investment company. Then I decided I would leave Intel not to retire per se but to explore the things I thought were interesting and to find out what I could do on my own so in 1999 I went out on my own. My balance had changed. I was exercising a lot, eating better, spending time with family and friends and continuing efforts to make the world better for others. So hat does this have to do with the world economic crises?
Over the last forty years the USA had become increasingly materialist. It was all about a bigger house, a better car, the rights schools and lately right technology. We no longer dreamed of sending people into space but instead we dreamed of larger flat panel TV’s. In the meantime the rest of the world was following our materialist lead. Probably because of the success of our media industry, billions of Chinese and Indians dreamed of owning a car for instance. One of the results of all this is our problems with climate change. Another is the transfer of wealth via oil purchases to countries that are not friendly or democratic. And we borrowed billions from the Chinese. Our life style was killing us and killing the world as well. The result of our greed is the financial mess. It was created in part by people that could not get enough material things. People that measure their success by the size of their private plans or their country homes. Even though we had the worse president maybe in all of our history, a man who may be a criminal if not a fool, Obama may have not been elected if the market crash did not happen. Now we have a leader I believe that can help us balance our country and can hopefully inspire other countries as well. And he can operate in a time when the crises has weakened other countries even more than it has weakened ours. Iran is weaker. Russia is weaker. China is weaker. The crises provides us with a historic moment in which to realign our priorities. And yes, it is very painful for all of us an especially painful to those that have lost their homes and their jobs. But out of all this may come great opportunities especially for our children and their children. I would be happy to give up a 60 inch flat panel for that.