Greed, Part Two

You can start to see the cracks. They are running in the streets, the sidewalks, and maybe across your lawn. The cracks are deep, and getting wider, a bit more so each day. “OK Mr. President....you can bail out the banks...You can bail out the automakers. But damn it, if you bail out the guy across the street....well that is just too close to home”. By all means, give my tax money to weapon systems to bomb third world nations, or to the fat cats on Wall Street. Help out a neighbor, a friend...and I say “no”.

This is the great problem with America. We admire, even adore the successful, the powerful. We worship at their feet, and hope that by rubbing up against them, we can feel important. We want to keep their limousines washed and their nice suits well pressed. But we despise the guy that is down on his luck. We loathe his lack of success, and blame him for not achieving greatness.

Some talking head on TV last week...a guy I have never heard of, but obviously someone who is important enough to be allowed to rant on CNBC, left a mark on our nation’s generosity, as he called out the president for daring to offer assistance to those who might lose their homes, or those folks whose homes had lost so much value they were now worth less than they owed. How dare a nation so great stoop to help those poor fools who only wanted a piece of the pie. No, let’s ignore healthcare, let’s ignore the environment, let’s ignore the energy crisis. Instead, let’s make sure the banks are insulated from their mistakes. Let’s prop up our unprofitable companies. Let’s fund another weapon system or foreign war, but let’s draw the line where it gets personal. If the bank has put up the foreclosure sign in the neighborhood, the government ought to stay out of it. Better to let a family be displaced, and join the ranks of homelessness. Let some child have to leave their school and friends, or quit college...or miss a meal.

This country likes to portray itself as generous....as a nation that believes in God just as much as we do the might dollar. Really? Is there not something in the bible about helping those less fortunate? Is there nothing written in there about charity? About the welfare of our fellow man? About social justice and compassion? I admit I am no scholar in this area, and I am constantly surprised by our ability to thump the bible when it suits our needs, and to ignore it when it does not.

The nation is splitting....and it is not just along party lines. In fact, perhaps the whole Republican vs Democrat thing was a smokescreen for the real divisions. There are those that feel the government, the country, should exist to exert power around the globe, to exploit resources and leave the individual to suck at the teat of capitalism. Ayn Rand would be so proud. The market will take care of everything. And that it should....in a place where there is more to a bottom line than profits. Since profit has become the only criteria for success, though, the teat is running dry, or perhaps the milk tastes sour. But...there is the other camp....and they are growing restless. They are tired of America stomping its way around the planet, consuming more resources than any other nation, like a bloated pig. They admire socially conscious companies, who value their employees, and treat their fellow man with compassion, and lend a hand when it is needed. Instead of buying another bomber, perhaps we should set that money aside in case one of “us” needs a buck or two to make ends meet. Or perhaps we can use a few bucks to buy a sack of concrete so we can fill in some of these cracks.

Greed, Part One

I have not written for a bit. I have been digesting and coming to terms with the various things that have happened to our country over the last few years, few months, and now, few weeks. I am left with one overarching impression. We are greedy. We let that greed go on unquestioned, and now, we wear that greed like great chains around our corpulent bodies as we thrash about trying to swim, or, at least keep or noses above the waterline.

There was that movie, I think it was “Wall Street” where Gordon Gecko uttered the phrase “...greed is good...”. I can only hope it was said ironically, but unfortunately, it describes a national mindset. I am not sure what “greed” is, but “good”, it is not. I think greed is in fact more akin to a virus. It has infected our way of thinking, our way of life, and like so many virulent viruses, it threatens to kill its host.

I feel sorry for President Obama. I hope his efforts are successful, but unless we marry his stimulus packages with a bit of self reflection, I don’t think the problems will be fixed. They may fade from the headlines when factories roar back to life, but they will simmer, just below the surface, and I would venture to guess they will re-emerge more threatening than ever.

How is it that we came to live in a place where baseball players make 25 million dollars a year to play a child’s game? Many of us who played in our younger days would pay for the privilege of standing in Yankee Stadium awaiting a routine fly ball to settle into our glove. Why should a movie star command a similar figure for 3 months of work reading lines written by others? Why should the executives that run our top companies pull down tens of millions of dollars in compensation while they make the bottom line more attractive by sending more and more of the work over seas where there are not such greedy folks setting the bar of compensation so high?

A simple question: How much money does it take to live a good life? Is a good life defined by having 18 cars and 6 houses and a yacht? At what point does it become “too much”. At what point do the hard working folks struggling to make their mortgage payments say “give ME some of that”? I fear we are dangerously close to that moment, and it would be good for those in power to recognize that the difference between the top of the pyramid and the base has gotten too dramatic. Sure, if you invent a computer or build a better mousetrap, you should make more than the guy who is content to build the computer or assemble the mousetrap, but in the end, aren’t both jobs important? Isn’t one job useless---valueless---without the other?

The CEO of a major company gets paid well because he “makes money for the shareholders” (of which he is typically one). Making the shareholders happy means he (or she) should be paid handsomely. But what if all that attention to the bottom line led to behavior that was not ethical, or harms the environment in some way, or eliminates jobs? Wouldn’t a better methodology of evaluating a CEO’s performance be to measure how many well paying jobs they are providing to the economy? Isn’t there some way to integrate a company’s commitment to the environment into their bottom line? Why is the only yardstick “profits”? Can’t profits be dressed up to appear beautiful when they are in fact ugly, or even, non existent? But we are greedy. We don’t want to look under the skirt. We happily cash our dividend check....the CEO cashes his bonus check....and somehow the bills will get sorted out later...sort of like....a Ponzi scheme?

The insatiable thirst for more money has had several subtle impacts. It has driven the cost of everything upward, since things worth owning are expensive, or so it would seem in the California real estate market. Often, there is little connection between the value of something and its cost to purchase. $100,000 dresses. Huh? 2 bedroom houses for $1,000,000. Huh? $10 beers at a baseball game. Huh? I guess the US military started all this when they bought $300 hammers.

We stopped asking why things were so expensive and instead simply aimed to make more money so we could buy the overpriced things we thought we needed. Easier to be greedy, I suppose, than to be smart. And if somehow our ability to earn more money was thwarted by the fact that we are not a CEO, or a left handed pitcher, or a movie star...well there was another way: the Credit Card. The ease of getting credit further separated the price of things from their actual value. Houses, cars, diamond rings, Coach and bags....all can be had now. Price is secondary as long as there is room on the credit card.

But you know what?...we bought a lot of stuff that was not worth what we paid for it. Starting with our houses, but surely $60,000 Hummers and $15 hamburgers qualify as well. Meanwhile, since we hated paying taxes, we let our schools fall apart, so we refinanced the house so we could send our kids to private school. It was like paying college tuition for a 5 year old, and then doing it for 13 years until they actually went off to college...where finally we could qualify for student loans and get the poor kid in debt to start their adult lives. But we do want our kids to go to college so they can get ahead (or at least in debt) and lead meaningful lives pursuing the almighty dollar.

As our government attempts to solve our nation’s problems by tossing money out of the empty coffers of Washington DC, like tossing raw meat to a den of starved lions, we should at least consider how we got here, and how to avoid returning. Are we simply starving carnivores awaiting fresh meat....in which case, if there is not enough meat, when do we start eyeing each other? After all, we are not made of money....

Tell me about your childhood....

No doubt about it....we are depressed...bombarded with a 24 hour news cycle that reminds us, continually, that our houses aren’t worth anything, our retirement plans have shriveled up, and we are making plans to spend our grandchildren’s money just so we can avoid another Great Depression. If it’s so great, how come I feel so lousy?

If you are like me (and since I am so egocentric, I’ll just assume that you are), you are in your late 40’s and have gotten by pretty much unscathed by the cold realities of life on this planet. I am far too young to have served in World War II, and I even missed Vietnam by a few years. I never even had to register for the draft, and though we grew up with the threat of a nuclear holocaust, it always seemed far away, except of course when Reagan got elected. We were too old for the Gulf War, and if we were lucky enough to buy a house, it has appreciated irrationally and provided us with ready cash so we could buy new cars every three years, send our kids to private schools and live lives our grandparents could simply not understand (and likely would not approve of). In summary, we had it pretty good. That, however, appears to have changed, and I wonder how well equipped we will be for survival in the 21st century.

I assume we will learn how to get along without twice daily Double Cappuccinos and weekly pedicures. Most of us will be able to shrug off missing heirloom tomatoes and $150 tennis shoes with the word “Coach” printed all over them. But what about simpler things? What happens if we go to the kitchen sink and there is no water in the faucet. What happens when the price of a gallon of milk is more than we can afford. What if there is no chicken in the pot? Has our past prepared us well for a future that might feature a global financial crisis, a water shortage (at least in the Western US), and a climate crippled by our emissions of carbon dioxide, to say nothing of war, nuclear proliferation, and the rise of terrorism. Any one of these problems is daunting all by itself, but what about the real possibility that we might have to deal with all of them at once?

Perhaps it is simply because it is in the distant past, and we know how the story ended, but it is amazing how well our ancestors dealt with the first Great Depression. They were tough....they stood up against the Nazis, and sacrificed a great deal so that generations like ours could live in a nation of plenty (for the vast majority of us). Maybe if we had a few hard knocks earlier, we’d be better able to weather this storm. Maybe if we spent less and saved more...bought less on credit, opted to do without the latest cell phone, or SUV. Would we be able to live in 2 bedroom houses after living in 4,000 square foot McMansions? On a more basic level, could we grow our own food, cut our own firewood or mend our own fences? Are we well equipped, or simply equipped well?

Happy Endings?

There was a feeling that every high school student can relate to...that moment when the bell rings on the last day of school before summer vacation. All the pages in the notebook can be safely discarded, pens can be left uncapped and pencils can remain unsharpened. All the assignments that were left undone, or under done, were rendered completely unimportant with one last tick of the clock.

As the clock struck noon today, George Bush has tossed his notebook in the air, and left the papers to flutter down with no rhyme nor reason, the pages left for someone else to pick up, perhaps reassemble, or maybe to simply discard. For our 43rd president, he gets an exit with full honors bestowed upon our commanders in chief, popular or not. He can clear brush or sip lemonade from the hammock in the back yard while others try to sift through the scattered remains of his tenure in office and try to salvage what is worth saving, while noting what needs repairing. It will be a tedious process, and it might take half of President Obama’s first term just to make sense of it all.

He can count himself lucky. His “work” is done, and for the most part, he will not be held to account for the damage he has wrought on our nation, and its standing in the world. If one needs reminders of his popularity, how about being booed at the inauguration, or being serenaded to “Na-Na-Na-Na, Hey Hey Goodbye”. Ouch. Or how about the striking pose captured on film as the new inhabitants of the White House waved to the departing helicopter? “....have fun storming the castle!” One can only wonder what George and Laura Bush talked about as they returned to their Texas compound...I am sure the last few weeks have been filled with opportunity for reflection, so this was likely more of an exhale. The weight of the world, quite literally lifted from their backs, as they began the rapturous climb skyward in the military helicopter.

Former Presidents face the new burden of using their status for some good around the world. Jimmy Carter was perhaps one of the most effective ex-Presidents, despite his status as a mediocre chief executive. The elder President Bush, along with Bill Clinton teamed up in a true odd couple sort of way to raise funds on behalf of those impacted by the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Hurricane Katrina. I am hopeful that the younger President Bush finds some cause that will allow him to improve his legacy which at present seems sort of disheveled. However, I will not be surprised if he opts to simply ride off into the sunset. As the inauguration of President Obama grew near, President Bush became a sort of tragic figure...misunderstood, at least in his mind, unloved, and unwanted. They ironically rolled Vice President Cheney out in a wheel chair....they could no longer even limp out of town. As a nation, we take just a moment to wave goodbye. We cannot spare a lot of time, for there is much to do, and not a minute to waste.