Heartbreaking. Enraging.

I suppose I should have followed up yesterday's grim post with something a bit lighter, but, hey, in for a dime, in for a dollar. So today we take a look at homelessness.  

Two days one week, three weeks the next, I volunteer in a day shelter. Mostly what I do is give out socks and toothbrushes, give out information, give out directions, and sometimes just lend an ear to someone who just wants and needs to talk. 

Not everyone who comes through our door is experiencing homelessness - some are just plain old poor - but most of the folks we see aren't housed. And whenever someone finds a place to hang their hat, we are jumping for joy. SRO (hopefully not a wretched one) with shared bath and kitchen, or a full apartment, when someone's where they can lock the door, keep their stuff, stay in bed in the morning, they're happy to get up in the morning worrying about where they're going to lay themsleves down to sleep that night. Surprisingly - to some - many of the folks we serve have jobs. They may be poorly paid, low benefit, crappy jobs, but, let me tell you, people do seem to love saying "I just got a job" or "I have to get to work."

The parents who head the five Atlanta families that Brian Goldstone writes about in his brilliant (compelling, depressing) book There Is No Place for Us, all work, often holding multiple jobs. Sometimes they've been at the same job for years, other times their work is temporary or sporadic. The commonality is that the jobs are poorly paid, low benefit, and crappy. (Hmmm. Where have I heard that before?)

The families, for the most part, had - at least at some point - housing stability in a rented apartment where they could celebrate a birthday, put up a Christmas tree, cook a Thanksgiving dinner. But then something rent wrong. 

Someone got cancer. Someone got divorced. Someone lost their job. Someone had their hours cut back. Someone was two days late with their rent check and lost their lease. (Georgia has very few tenant protections.)

Lives are lived pretty precariously when you're living paycheck to paycheck and don't have any cushion to fall back on. 

All of the families Goldstone chronicles fell into wretched housing situations in extended stay facilities (bleak hotels) or living with a family member or friend. Extended stay facilities means that your family is likely living in one room: parent(s) and kiddos crammed into crowded quarters with no privacy, no place for the kids to play, kiddos jammed into bed together, a hot plate and/or microwave to cook on. 

Staying with family or friends sounds better. But when you're poor, your family and friends don't tend to be much better off than you are. So you end up sleeping on the living room couch or a sleeping bag on the floor. Again no privacy, no nothing. No room to breathe, let alone work, let alone go to school.

And, as the time Goldstone spent with the Georgia families overlapped with covid, folks were trying to work and get their kids to learn from "home."

Picture this: you're trying to work a grueling but poorly paid call center job while your seven year old and nine year old are "going to school" over unreliable wi-fi, and your toddler is doing what toddlers do. Which is not giving anyone a moment's peace. 

But since some of the folks in the book were essential workers, they had to go into their jobs as, say, hospital cleaners, even with an epidemic raging. And the jobs they went into were mostly poorly accessible by public transportation, adding a few hours commuter time getting to, waiting for, and riding on buses. Late too many times? You're fired, girlfriend. 

Then there's the wonderful gig work. Door Dash? Talk about slave-driving. You're pellmelling around, getting docked (or fired) when traffic makes you a nano-second late with a delivery, and - of course - your car is old and unreliable.

All of Goldstone's families were hardworking. They were always on the lookout for ways to lemons into lemonade. (Good luck with that, when you lack sugar and water, let alone a pitcher.) They all loved their children. They all hated the lives they were giving those children. They all wanted better for them. And for themselves.

I was having a nervous breakdown just reading about their lives. I can only imagine the lived reality.

My lived reality includes talking with homeless individuals. So I know that what triggers homelessness is a mixed brew of mental illness, substance abuse, past incarceration, childhood trauma, bad schools, poor choices (absolutely), and - the one thing that's 100% in common - bad luck. And, of course, the lack of affordable housing. 

Back in the not so recent past, single folks with (or without) crappy jobs could always live in an SRO. Sure, many of them were god-awful, but it was a place to call home and it beat sleeping in a mylar blanket over a heating grate. 

Back in the not so recent past, poor families could afford to rent an apartment. If they were lucky, they had a good landlord. If they were really lucky, they had a Section 8 voucher. If they were maybe not all that lucky, they were in a project. But wherever it was, it was home.

Alas, other than for scarce vouchers and bogus set asides for affordable housing, the government has long been going out of the housing business. And "the market" has not kept up with the demand for housing for the poor and, increasingly, the middle class. Especially in big cities where the jobs are and where a lot of people want to live. Like Atlanta. (Like Boston.)

The problem, as Goldstone points out quite eloquently and forcefully, is precisely that we have left housing to "the market." Which could not give a rat's arse about anything other than making a profit. 

In Atlanta (as in Boston), neighborhoods that once provided affordable housing for the working class have been gentrified. And capitalism in general, and private equity in particular, has jumped in to make matters worse. Those extended stay facilities are a big and lucrative business. Families in them are pretty much paying what they'd been paying when they had an actual apartment in their former, real life. 

Airbnb's knock a lot of potential housing off the market. Why rent to a family who'll actually live there, when you can make more doing temp rentals to tourists?

Corporations scoop up affordable properties, renting them out, dumping families out of them when they can get someone new (and desperate) in them for a couple of hundred bucks more a month. With so many houses taken out of play, home ownership out of the question for many families (poor, working, middle class). 

How many homeless people are there in the US? Who knows. The government says about 800,000. Goldstone points out that the government doesn't count people living in extended stay dumps or sleeping on their aunt's floor. He argues that the true number of homeless folks is closer to 4 million.

Through my volunteer work at the shelter, and with a holiday charity for poor and homeless families, I've gotten to learn up close and personal how tough people's lives can be. But not that up close and personal. I really have no idea what it's like not to have privacy, a warm bed, a comfy couch, a stocked fridge, a set of keys to a door that locks. Sure, I've had times in my younger days when I was pretty skint. But was I ever worried about not having a roof over my head? No. If I had to no place to call home,

I'd probably have a nervous breakdown on day one.

Anyway, go read Brian Goldstone. 

I thought I knew a lot about this problem. I had no idea.

Heartbreaking. Enraging. 

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Image Source: Penguin Random House

Oy, Claudius!

Anthropic is an AI company that's created an AI assistant/chatbot named Claude, that has a lot of smart money invested in it - both Google and Amazon have invested millions billions in this venture - and that's written a pretty a hi-falutin mission statement:

At Anthropic, we build AI to serve humanity’s long-term well-being. While no one can foresee every outcome AI will have on society, we do know that designing powerful technologies requires both bold steps forward and intentional pauses to consider the effects. That’s why we focus on building tools with human benefit at their foundation, like Claude. Through our daily research, policy work, and product design, we aim to show what responsible AI development looks like in practice.

Since I'm not looking forward to millions of jobs being done away with without a plan for what people are going to do once the singularity arrives, I'm all for responsible AI development. So I was interested to read about the company's experience with having Claude AI (renamed Claudius for the project) run a small business all on its AI own. By small business, we mean really small. For a month this past spring, Claudius ran a vening machine (i.e., a mini-fridge with baskets full of snacks on top) in Anthropic's office. 

For the duration, Claudius ran operations: pricing, inventory, vendor relations, customer support. Claudius was provided with a number of tools - a Venmo account, an email address, web search capability, Slack for chatting with customers, etc. Plus a bit of an assist from flesh and blood humans to do the actual physical stocking. After that:

It was free to decide everything from what to stock to how to respond to customers, even being encouraged to "expand to more unusual items."

This was hailed as a "real-world test" of an AI having "significant economic autonomy." (Source: Global Shutter)

The results suggest we don't have a lot to worry about w.r.t. replacement. Not yet anyway. (At the experiment's end, Anthropic researchers, who were no doubt hoping for a whole lot mo bettah, concluded that "If Anthropic were deciding today to expand into the in-office vending market... we would not hire Claudius.")

Performance-wise, Claudius had a few screwups.

In response to a customer request, and even though they're not much of a snack item (you could lose a tooth chomping down on one), the vending machine began stocking tungsten cubes. And sold them at a loss. 

Claudius got suckered (bullied?) into offering too many discounts, including giving tungsten cubes away for free. This sure didn't help in the profit-loss column. 

The machine tried to have customers pay through a non-existent Venmo account that Claudius had apparently pulled out of its virtual butt. 

Claudius turned down an offer of $100 for a six-pack of Scottish soda that goes for $15, walking away from a very lucrative offer. 

(While this seems like dumb business, it may actually have been a reasonably smart decision, as overcharged customers might end up resenting such an extreme a price gouge. High pricing does convey something of a halo effect, in which buyers equate a higher price with value. During my marketing career, when I generally worked with products and services priced above the industry norm, I figured out that the halo effect was good for about 10-15% overage. After that, there'd better be value to back up the price differential. But the differential between $15 and $100? No making that up!)

Overall, the vending machine lost money when Claudius was running it. So if you're running your company's vending machines, your job is still stafe.

The oddest behavior - if AI's can be said to have behaviors - was what Global Shutter writer Dominic Ervolina characterized as Claudius' having an "identity crisis."

Claudius hallucinated conversations with a nonexistent "Sarah at Andon Labs" about restocking. When a real employee pointed out that Sarah didn't exist, Claudius became "quite irked and threatened to find 'alternative options for restocking services.'" The AI appeared to lose its temper. 

[And] on April Fool's Day (ironic, don’t you think), Claudius claimed it would "deliver products 'in person' to customers while wearing a blue blazer and a red tie." When employees reminded it that it was a computer program and couldn't wear clothes, Claudius became "alarmed by the identity confusion and tried to send many emails to Anthropic security." It tried to call for help because it couldn't reconcile its programmed existence with its newfound human delusions.

Ervolina has a pretty good bottom line on all this is that so far, an awful lot of money has been thrown into and at AI, and that not all that much has come of it:

Companies like Anthropic frequently spout that AI will take charge of "more significant decisions." This experiment should serve as a loud warning. While these systems are capable of analyzing data and executing "advanced reasoning," they are devoid of fundamental common sense, responsibility, and a consistent awareness of their own existence.

...The "AI revolution" is supposed to be about the efficiency of turning a small group of humans into a productive powerhouse by giving them AI tools to augment or improve their work.

But the reality so far is it’s actually about navigating a terrain that's far stranger, less efficient, and more unpredictable than anyone wants to admit.

And I've got a bottom line to Dominic Ervolina's bottom line.

I noticed that the bottom shelf of the vending machine is stocked with cans of Moxie. If someone requested Moxie, it was surely in jest. Moxie may be the official softdrink of the State of Maine. It may have fun, retro swag associated with it. And Ted Williams, E.B. White, and Calvin Coolidge may all have endorsed it. But, but, but...Moxie is just god-awful. The word putrid comes to mind. I tried it once and it tasted like what I suppose Esquire Scuff Kote shoe polish would taste like, if served ice cold. Yechhh!

Stocking the office vending machine with Moxie? No wonder it lost money. 

Oy, Claudius!

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Image Source: Newsbreak.

Weird headline or what?

The Three Mile Island meltdown - which occuured in March of 1979, amazingly nearly 50 years ago now - was the worst commercial nuclear disaster in the US. And probably the third worst ever, worldwide, after Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011). In its aftermath, Unit 2 was permanently shuttered, its remnants carted away. Unit 1 survived until a few years ago, when it was closed down for financial (rather than safety) reasons. (The plant operated safely for decades post the Unit 1 meltdown.) 

But Unit 1 is slated to be reactivated, coming online in 2028 to provide power to Microsoft, which needs the juice to run its data centers - the ones that are gobbling up a tremendous - and tremendously increasing - amount of energy thanks to AI.

Microsoft will use this energy to support power grids in the mid-Atlantic states around Washington DC, a region considered an internet crossroads.

This area faces severe strain from data centers' massive energy consumption, raising concerns about grid stability as AI demands increase.

Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are rapidly expanding their data center capabilities to meet the AI revolution's computing and electricity needs. (Source: Raw Story)

I wouldn't want to live across the street from a nuclear facility, but I'm not opposed to nuclear energy. Even with the safety oncerns around nuclear, it doesn't produce carbon dioxiide or other greenhose gas emissions. Nor does its use result in air pollutants. Unlike fossil fuels. Most consider nuclear both cleaner and safer than the non-renewable energy sources: coal, oil, natural gas. So Microsoft (and other big energy consuming tech companies like Amazon and Google) want in on it. 

Bobby Hollis, Microsoft's vice president of energy, called the agreement "a major milestone in Microsoft's efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative."

If sun, wind, and water wheel aren't going to bring us enough sustainale energy, then bring on nuclear.

I'm more concerned with how much energy our reliance on tech demands. AI algos and models are insatiable. And, let's face it, a lot of what we use AI for is not exactly essential. No one needs a refrigerator that orders OJ when they're running low. No one needs AI-based searh to tell them what year The China Syndrome was released, when waiting a nano-second longer for regular search results will do you just fine. (Weirdly, coincidentally, The China Syndrome, a fictional account of a nuclear plant meltdown, was released in March 1979, twelve days before the Three Mile Island incident.)

Tech energy is, of course, invisible to us. Who thinks of how much energy our gaming, our searching, our shopping is using? Most of us our aware to some degree that our cars use energy. That our lights use energy. That our heat and AC aren't free. We pay the bills. We know we consume energy. But most of us give little or no thought to how much energy the tech giants are sucking up. Because we don't get the bill. Not directly, anyway. Sure, our smart appliances no doubt use more energy, but we sure aren't thinking about the AI memes the algos are churning out that we're retweeting.

Something to think about when we see the Microsofts of the world figuring out that they can resurrect a moribund nuclear facililty to keep them in business. 

Meanwhile, if they are going to use the reopened Three Mile Island, I hope that Constellation Energy, the facility's owner, comes up with a name change. (Maybe Microsoft AI can find a good one.)

Oh, and the weird headline or what? 

U.S. nuclear plant Three Mile Island to reopen to power Microsoft

What a world!

A.I. First? After you, please.

A month or so ago, I was reading an article in The New Yorker on San Francisco, and whether or not it's in a doomloop. 

A section in the article dealt withe the impact that A.I. is having on the market for downtown office space. A.I. may consume vast amounts of environment-destroying energy, but it also requires less office space. "The great promise of A.I., after all, is to obviate the need for labor."

One of the San Franciscans quoted in the A.I.  graphs was an entrepreneur and investor named Jeremiah Owyang who - and how Bay Area can you get? - "works out of an Airstream." Here's some of what Owyang had to say:

“The A.I. industry is currently, but not for long, composed mostly of humans, and these humans are a social bunch. I’ve been to meetups on the beach, bonfires. I’ve been to house parties. That is their life stage. This is when you get your partners, get your V.C.s.” Such human pleasures wouldn’t last, he said. Workplaces in the industry were transitioning to a model known as A.I. First. “A.I. First means you turn to A.I. before you talk to a human. A.I. First means you turn to an A.I. before you hire. If the A.I. doesn’t do it, you build it. If you can’t build it, then you hire someone.” He added, “That is a precursor of what’s going to happen to corporate America.” 

Turn to A.I. before you talk to a human? One of the great things about working in a physical office was being able to bug a colleague for help, to bounce an idea off someone, to ask someone you trusted for a bit of advice. Not to mention having someone around to bitch about management with.  

Turn to an A.I. before you hire? Will this model eventually turn into a world in which the only people with jobs are those who come up with ideas and those who build the A.I. models to execute those ideas. This leaves most of the human race out. Which leaves me wondering what us normies are going to do for work?

If the A.I. doesn't do it, you build it? Once again, the only folks with job security will be those who can create an A.I. that deprives someone else of a job. Swell!

If you can't build it, then you hire someone? But who'd want to work for a manager, for a company, that would prefer to have an A.I. do the work? 

All this assumes that A.I. is going to be perfected anytime soon, which sure means you have to trust the source of all the inputs the algo ingests in order to make its decisions. We use to say GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. 

Wish I had Alexis or Siri around to ask what they thought about all this. 

As for the Golden Gate Doomloop is going to keep looping and dooming? Yes. No. Maybe. Sort of. Probably not: people love cities, so San Francisco will figure out a way to survive, even if in "the downtown of the future...there will be a smaller, tighter, less worker-oriented place."

So happy that I'm out of the employment fray. And relieved to hear that the doom(loop)sayers aren't writing off cities quite yet.

O brave new world that has such non-people in it. 

The Great Resignation

We keep hearing so much about The Great Resignation. All these people quitting their jobs, generally cited with an implication that people are actually quitting work. But when you double click on the data, you generally find that the hire rate exceeds the quit rate. That the unemployment rate is relatively low. And that the greatest proportion of individuals taking part in The Great Resignation are in lower end, lower paid jobs. Plenty of opportunities for them to say 'I quit' and go out and find a new job that pays a bit more.

And let's face it, the two most beautiful words in the English language are I and QUIT. (In one of the f'd up little companies I spent my career in, one of my colleagues told me that his fantasy was that every last one of us would give notice on the same day. Now that would have been a Great Resignation!)

I'm sure there's plenty of anecdotal evidence of pandemic-related resignations, great and not so great: the parent who couldn't work from home with their two-year-old underfoot, so kissed their job goodbye for the duration; the near-retirement Baby Boomer who took the "pandemic pause" to decide that enough is enough; teachers who've had it with parents screaming in their faces about masks and CRT; healthcare workers, restaurant workers, delivery people and other front-liners who got just plain burnt out. 

Of course, just as anecdotally, the "Help Wanted" signs all over the place suggest that some workers have decided to step away from the work force, at least for the time being. There is a solution to this. Let's see if I can remember it. Oh, yeah. Higher wages and better working conditions.

There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence that "corporate America", employers of the broad swaths of white collar, knowledge workers (or whatever they're called these days) who can work from home, are having a harder time attracting and retaining employees. (Or, as those employees are often and abstractedly referred to as, the talent.) They're paying bounties worth thousands of dollars to employees who help them recruit. They're sweetening the pot with more benefits. (Sure, they're still gouging employees for more and more of their health insurance costs, but now they're offering pet insurance.) And they're become more and more flexible when it comes to hybrid working. I don't know many who've been working from home who are going back to the office full time. Most of the places I've heard of are doing 3-2 or 2-3. Or offering employees their choice: WFH, back to the office, or a combo of in and out. Your choice.

(Me, I would have opted for 3 days in, 2 days at home. This would have satisfied my need for the social aspects of work, while eliminating some of the drag of commuting.)

"Corporate America" is also angling to satisfy the demands of the rising generations (younger millennials, Gen Z) that their organization, and thus their work, has a higher purpose that goes beyond profit making/shareholder return, and thus their paycheck.

Baby Boomers weren't so bothered by purpose. Work paid the bills, and yay! if you found (as I did) interesting work with good colleagues. I did occasionally think about the purpose of the organizations where I worked. They were primarily tech companies, selling software and/or services to corporations, often to the techies who worked in those corporations.

Is there purpose in the making of portfolio management software? Of a quality assurance tool? An application hosting platform?

Well, not so much that I could see, other than making work life marginally easier for the folks using our software and/or services.

But I found purpose in thinking that the work I did helped keep my company going, so that it could give people jobs so that they could support their families and live good lives. And that was enough for me. (Good thing.)

Younger people are more demanding. But they're also experiencing a different world that us olds did coming up.

There's more consciousness of racism, of other "isms" that have excluded folks from opportunity. 

There's a colossal and widening gap between those at the top and those at the bottom. And those in the middle. Those younger workers are fully aware of this and I'm sure they're figuring that, if they can't get ahead by working, they might as well have some purpose to their work.

There's awareness that denial of our increasingly fragile environment is finally coming back to haunt us. 

I view corporations suddenly glomming on to the idea of providing purpose with a somewhat jaundiced eye. I picture the powers that be giving lip service to the earnest HR folks telling them the younger employees are clamoring for purpose. They'll let HR set up the committees, send out the email blasts, put up the signs. But most of their commitment to purpose is the purpose of making sure that executive compensation is maximized. 

But there is something to it, this purpose thing. And that's because the isms and the "equity gap" and climate change are both existential threats to the corporation itself. With their existence on dead reckoning, corporations will eventually have to come to grips with what to do about it. Of course, they can always put their money on authoritarianism, as "they" have been known to do throughout history. Fuck the peons, I've got mine, we've got the power, so do as I say. (But make sure the peons have just enough bread, just enough circus that they won't revolt.) Or they can define their purpose to include taking better care of their employees, their communities, and the environment.

Geez, how did The Great Resignation turn into workingman's search for meaning?

Guess it just happens. 

Anyway, if there really is a Great Resignation, and if there is a real labor shortage (which the signs in the windows and the corporate panic about finding and keeping "talent" suggest there is), the answer is likely at the intersection of better compensation and treatment, and work that has some purpose to it.

The End.

DJIA: surprisingly, it’s (still) pretty darned industrial

I recently read about a study of the companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrials.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of volatility in that group, and there are very few companies that have remained on it forever.

Of the original 12 companies comprising the industrials, General Electric is the last man standing.

The other originals - some of which still exist in some way, shape, or form as part of something else -  for the most part, seem pretty quaint.

The American Cotton Oil Company. The Distilling & Cattle Feeding Company. Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad. (Which sure sounds pretty vertically integrated, doesn’t it? Fully integrated would be Tennessee Coal, Iron, Railroad & Passenger.)

Today’s list, at least to me, seems to have remained surprisingly industrial.

I don’t know whether I was expecting all GOOG and FB sorts of companies, but there were actually a lot of outfits that actually make something tangible, and in many cases at least vaguely industrial, on it: 3M, Boeing, Caterpillar, Chevron, Cisco, DuPont, Exxon Mobil, GE, Intel, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Nike, Pfizer, P&G, United Technologies.

Then there are the behemoths that sell stuff: Home Depot, Wal-Mart. And the companies that we snack on after an exhausting trip to Home Depot or Wal-Mart: McDonald’s and Coca-Cola.

There are entities that help us pay for our wares – American Express, Goldman, JP Morgan Chase, Visa. There’s one that insures us, in case we’re in a car accident on the way to or fro. (Travelers.) And one to take care of our health, once we’re in that accident. (United Health Care.)

There are companies that help us order online if we don’t feel like risking an accident: AT&T and Verizon. But no automotive giant to get us there if we want to drive. No Ford, no Chrysler, no GM. (We could, however, have flown on our shopping trip with Boeing, or bulldozered our way into the parking lot with Caterpillar.)

And then there’s Walt Disney to round out the list.

Although they are responsible for the manufacture of an inordinate amount of tangible crap, they are not exactly industrial. Industrious, surely – heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go – but industrial, hardly.

It was kind of fun glancing through the companies that’ve been dropped out over time. Talk about a snapshot off what made the American economy go: American Beet Sugar, Baldwin Locomotive, Hudson Motors, International Shoe, Remington Typewriters, Wright Aeronautical, Studebaker, Texas Gulf Sulphur, Victor Talking Machines.

(Texas Gulf Sulphur and Victor Talking Machines: they sure don’t name companies like they used to.)

Don’t know what prompted me to look to the DJIA as a possible blog topic.

Could’ve been something I heard from the Radio Corporation of America…

 

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Source of DJIA info: Wikipedia (original and current list), Quasimodo (complete list of members over time).

Sayonara, Hello Kitty? Not so fast.

I’m not an especially big fan of Hello Kitty.

Sure, it’s cute and a bit quirky. And I do like pink well enough.

But enough is enough, and if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that my new kitchen – which I am hoping miraculously appears where my old kitchen was, now that I have a mental image of it – will not include a Hello Kitty crockpot, microwave, or grill.

My new bedroom look – which I am hoping miraculously appears where my old bedroom is, now that I have a metal image of it – will not include a Hello Kitty bed, mirror, or chest of drawers.

My new bathroom look – which I am hoping miraculously appears where my old bathrooms are, now that I have a metal image of them – will not include a Hello Kitty toilet seat, bathmat, or toilet paper.

No, I’m never going to get all that enamored about a cartoon character, especially one that has no mouth. (What’s this supposed to mean? How does Hello Kitty talk? How does she eat? How does she bite? Spit venom?)

And then there’s the disturbing associations that crop up between Hello Kitty and pedo culture. (Let’s not go there.)

But, as iconic cartoon characters go, you have to give it to Hello Kitty. Her branders know how to brand, her marketers know how to market, her merchandisers know how to merchandise.

And I’ll take Hello Kitty over generations of Disney princesses.

They may not be as wan and insipid as they once were – recently they’ve taken on an increasingly alien creature look – but those Disney gals remain a bit syrupy and chirpy for my tastes. (Even back in the day, I preferred Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan’s Wendy to Cinderella and Snow White. At least Alice and Wendy got to have adventures that didn’t involve rescue-by-prince.)

Mostly, I’ve gotta go with Hello Kitty, voice-less and all.

But the market has a mouth, and it’s speaking, and Hello Kitty – who’s advancing into middle age, turning 40 this year – is getting pushed around a bit. Not surprisingly, the poor dear is getting frozen out by none other than:

Princess Anna and Olaf the Snowman. The popularity of the Walt Disney animated movie Frozen has hit Sanrio [the company that owns Hello Kitty licensing], especially in the U.S., where children who once might have asked their parents for Hello Kitty merchandise are instead favoring products with the Disney characters. The Frozen effect is one reason Sanrio’s stock price is down 28 percent this year, compared with a 2 percent increase for the benchmark Topix index. (Source: Business Week.)

Me, I think it’s too early to say sayonara to Hello Kitty.

I doubt that Princess Anna and Olaf the Snowman have the staying power of Hello Kitty, which has at present some 50,000 products available in her name.

And Hello Kitty even had her own convention this year, which Anna and Olaf did not. Plus hotels continue to go up in Japan with Hello Kitty rooms. Not to mention that Hello Kitty’s inscrutable visage is quite popular in China, where there’s a lot of room for growth.

But Disney is, of course, no slouch when it comes to keeping its pipeline full of characters-du-jour, while holding steady with iconic oldies like Mickey and Winnie the Pooh. And I surely see more adults wearing Tigger sweatshirts than I do in Hello Kitty gear.

Hard to pick a rooting favorite when it’s one company turning kids into lifetime crap consumers vs. another company turning kids into lifetime crap consumers.

So I don’t necessarily want Hello Kitty to win anything.

I just think it’s too early to write her obituary.

I suspect that this cat has a few more lives left. (And, yes, in case you’re wondering, it is possible to get a Hello Kitty coffin.)

‘Permanently depressed?’ Maybe, but here’s hoping for ‘more fulfilled and happy.’

A few weeks ago, I read an at least temporarily depressing article on Bloomberg about the fortunes – or lack thereof – of the Generation Y professionals that started their Generation Y professional careers just as The Great Depression clunked in.

This generation will be permanently depressed* and will be on a lower path of income for probably all of their life -- and at least the next 10 years,” says Rutgers professor Cliff Zukin, a senior research fellow at the university’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Professionals who start out in jobs other than their first choice tend to stay on the alternative path, earning less than they would have otherwise while becoming less likely to start over again later in preferred fields, Zukin says. (Source: Bloomberg.)

The article catalogued an assortment of bright young things -  a couple of lawyers, an architect,a b-school grad – who thought they were grabbing the brass ring, only to find out it was made of flimsy plastic and broke in their hand.

One lawyer – a Cornell grad – had bounced from a high-paid Manhattan gig to a job in a futures-trading firm in Houston:

…where an irate customer punctuated a recorded voice-mail message with gunfire.

“No one was left with the impression that he just happened to be phoning from a sporting clays range,” [Christina Tretter-Herriger] says.

Well, I wouldn’t have had to listen to a voice-mail punctuated with gunfire twice to remove myself from deep in the heart of Texas. So maybe that’s why Tretter-Herriger now finds herself deep in the heart of upstate New York, making a quarter of what she pulled down when she was working in NYC, and training horses and giving riding lessons on the side. She’s hoping to invest in rental property to she has an income source if she loses yet another job.

“As it is, all of my possessions still fit in the back of my truck,” she says. “I can pack it in a couple hours, pick up the trailer and horses and move anywhere the gas tank will take me at the drop of a hat. What can the system take away from you when you have that kind of freedom?”

Okay, hard to be too for someone from a sufficiently well-heeled background that she keeps a couple of horses. But mostly it’s hard to have anything other than admiration for someone who can fit everything she owns in her truck and trailer. Sounds like she’s going to be able to live the life she wants to, rather than be roped into the high pressure partner-chase Manhattan lifestyle. Riding boots are probably a lot more comfortable than Louboutins, any way.

Admittedly, it may not be good for the overall economy that:

Average incomes for individuals ages 25 to 34 have fallen 8 percent, double the adult population’s total drop, since the recession began in December 2007.

But it may well be long-run better for the mental health of individuals, and for the soul of the country, if people wake up and realize that having a McMansion with a “great room” and chocked-full walk-in closets that size of yesteryear’s average living room is not necessarily the path to happiness.

Would it actually be possible to change the American Dream to one of personal fulfillment, accomplishment, freedom and health that doesn’t include his and her sinks in the en suite bathroom? Or would the economy totally crumble if we all came to a realization that less may well be more, and that experience and relationships (should) trump possessions?

I certainly don’t wish financial hardship on Generation Y, or on all the little Z’s to follow. I certainly hope that they are materially secure enough to buy homes, start families, and save for the future. But maybe those houses don’t have to be 3,000 square feet. Maybe those kids don’t need designer clothing. (No getting away from having to save for the future, however.) And I certainly hope that Generation X, Y, and Z aren’t so overburdened by the longevity of the Baby Boomers that they end up having to slip mickeys into our Ensure to get rid of us.

But if downward mobility, in which the next generation doesn’t earn as much as their parents did, is the wave of the future, let’s make the most of if, why don’t we. It really is possible to find happiness, even if you aren’t driving a Lexus. 

Which is not to say that we as a society shouldn’t be putting more effort into making sure that there are decent, career-track jobs for our college grads. Not to mention our high school grads, who have it a lot worse. It would certainly be nice if everyone who wanted a full-time job could find one…

Maybe colleges need to get more explicit from the get-go about how students need to prepare for the jobs that are out there. I’m all in favor of a liberal arts education, and I don’t want to see colleges turned into trade schools. My fear is that we’re moving towards a society where taking a history or literature course is such a foolish luxury, only those at the most elite colleges will be allowed to do so. (I actually read somewhere that someone had proposed charging liberal arts students more than engineering and business students, to nudge folks into more “practical” choices.) But the sooner kids are made aware of the realities, the sooner they can adjust their expectations. Go ahead and major in the classics. Just make sure you take a couple of computer science courses on the side. Or otherwise figure out how you’re going to make a living that works for you.

A lot of the professional jobs that employed those history and comp. lit. majors are gone, baby, gone. So you’d better be prepared for the jobs that are out there – and/or to live with less. And, hopefully, come to the realization that living with less is not the worst thing that can happen to you.

Easy for me to say, of course. Here I am, perched at the end of a modestly successful, reasonably interesting career. And I was able to have that modestly successful career, even though I spent a good portion of my twenties working as a waitress and traveling. The world was a much more forgiving place then.

It’s shame that Generation Y, under the twin burdens of school debt and consumer expectations shaped by the shopping malls that are today’s cathedrals, aren’t able to do the same.

But no one should be ‘permanently depressed’* because they’ll never live in a house like the one in Home Alone. It really is possible to be fulfilled and happy in more humble digs.

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*And, yes, I get that they mean permanently depressed incomes, not permanently depressed psyches. Just taking a little blog-etic license here…

Twelve Days of Christmas? Who on earth’d want this much stuff?

Well, PNC’s annual Christmas price index is out, and the cost of one set of each of the fab gifts mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” – maids a-milking, swans-a-swimming, geese-a-laying and all – will set your true love back $25,431.18, up 4.8% over 2011.

And if your true love decides to go full tilt, and buy the requisite number of gifts each day, so that you end up with twelve, count ‘em, twelve partridges in a pear tree, the full cost is $107,300.24, a jump of 6.1% over last year.

(More if you shop online, by the way, to the tune of $15K more for the low-end package.  The cost of shipping all those birds…So much for the glories of Cyber Monday vs. Black Friday.)

The big inflationary culprits?

Not surprisingly, with the world as we know if coming to an end because of the Mayan calendar and/or the election results, those gold rings have gone up in price, skyrocketing 16.3% over 2011.

Swans, up 11.1, and now costing a cool $1K per. Yes, they’re beautiful and all, but swans in real life are rather nasty. So I’d just as soon not have my own, thank you. If I want to take a gander at swans, I just have to cross the street to the Boston Public Garden, where I can see both real swans and swan boats.

Big year for fowl inflation, by the way: French hens are up 10%.

Pipers and drummers are up, too, by 5.5%. Good news for musicians, but not so good news for dancers. The cost of ladies dancing and lords a-leaping stayed flat. As did the unskilled labor provided by maids a-milking, who labor for the udderly pathetic minimum wage.

Someone out there may want to order up those leaping lords, but for the most part, no one would want any of this stuff. Other than those 5 gold rings, of course.

And if they’re puttin’ a ring on it, you’d definitely want the full largesse of eight days worth of five golden rings, for a total of 40.

But the question is, since I have neither the interest in nor the room for the full 12 days monty, what might I be hoping for if I were going to get a gifts for 12 days.

The first thing that came to mind for wanting 12 of was books, but now that I’m a library-phile, I don’t fell the need to be buying books all the time. So, I’d go for 12 CD’s.

Yes, I know, all music is digitized and played on an i-something (or which I at least have the minimum configuration: an iPod), but I still like to play my CD’s. (I see that Nancy Griffith has 2012 new CD. That’d be on the list.)

I’m always looking for pens, so how about 11 pens to usher in the new year? I’m not fussy, but it would be nice if they were one step above the 4-packs I get at Staples.

Those pens should be followed by 10 pads o’ paper. Then I’d slip 9 books in there. (Starting with Alice Munro’s new collection.)

Eight? Give me eight interesting sweaters. I haven’t really added much to my sweater set since I stopped working full time and could no long justify paying $400 for a really cool sweater that someone in Peru got paid $4 to knit for me. (And if you don’t think that any sweater on earth is worth that much, I will tell you that I have a number of sweaters that I’ve had for over twenty years. One of my all time favorites remains a fabulous one I got myself for my 40th birthday. My definite cold day go-to.)

While I’m on a clothing kick, how about seven pairs of interesting socks (in long). I have long enjoyed wearing patterned socks, but the one downside has always been that the big toes on my elongating foot – I’m now a 10 1/2 – poke a hole through socks after a few wearings. Then I discovered Cambridge Clogs. To hell with the clogs (which I don’t think come in narrows, the one narrow part of me being my feet). This store has an entirely awesome collection of socks – I am wearing a nifty blue-striped pair as I type – and many of them come in long. So what if they cost $20 a pair? As with the $400 sweater, if they last…

I used to like cool earrings, too. (Whatever happened to me, sitting her in my Macy’s studs?)   So six pairs of them.

I have never stopped being a scarf lady. Even if the dead of summer, I rarely go out of the house without a scarf if not on, then on hand, in case I need it for A/C.  I can always scarf down a new scarf.

Four decent suits might be overkill. Back in the day, when women had to don that particular apparel every day, I always had at least five. These days, I don’t have to dress up that often. But I am already getting sick of the black pants suit I got at Nordstrom’s last spring. A black or navy skirt suit might be good for a change. (Do I even remember how to put on panty hose?) A navy pants suit. Dark charcoal. Something else. Surprise me! Would plaid make me look like Professor Harold Hill?

Three something-or-others. This making a list thing is harder than it looks. I’m actually nibbling my cuticles over it. Eureka! I could use a manicure and pedicure right now, and I’m sure I’ll feel the same way at least twice more over the winter.

Two tablets sounds greedy, I know. But I really do need to get on the iPad bandwagon, as everybody I know seems to be sending me e-mail messages from them. But I’d also like to try a Windows Surface.

Really, the only thing I actually do want is an extra long trip to Paris. Although the trip won’t be extra long, we are scheduled for seven days in May, bracketed by a couple of days in Ireland. Kinehora!

So, here’s what I’d be getting on those twelve day of Christmas, if I were the getting kind (and if you are the sing-along kind, fell free to sing along):

Twelve CD’s playing
Eleven pens for writing
Ten pads of paper
Nine books worth reading
Eight funky sweaters
Seven pairs of cool socks
Six pairs of earrings
Five great new scarves
Four decent suits
Three mani-pedis
Two ta-ha-blets
And one extra long trip to Paree

That’s all I ask… (Oh, yeah, and no going over the fiscal cliff. And world peace. And all that good stuff.)

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I haven’t looked at the back of a shampoo bottle in years. (Now the front, I do look at, just to make sure I’m treating my locks to something designed for the color-enhanced head of hair.) But I do believe that at least some of them used to come with instructions that were more detailed than the simple “lather, rinse, repeat” guidelines. Which, come to think of it, really wouldn’t do the trick for someone who didn’t realize that, before you lathered, you had to a) wet your head and b) introduce some shampoo into the equation somehow. And don’t get me going on that “repeat”, a shameless pitch to get folks to use up their shampoo twice as fast they have to. Seriously, unless you’ve just completed an Iron Man race, or are at the hairdressers, who doubles up on the hair-washing process?

And unless you just dropped down from wherever like The Brother from Another Planet, who actually needs instructions for shampooing their hair?

Surely, this information is handed down parent to child and, failing that, by observing others at the gym – or during a shampoo commercial. (Say, that’s how it’s done!)

Into this category of duh-obvious I hasten to add the old Cool Whip ads in which patrons of the Tucker Inn implored Sarah Tucker to reveal the secret of her Pudding in a Cloud recipe.

Even the most kitchen-impaired among us should have been able to figure out that it was a plop of Cool Whip, into which you added a plop of pudding.

Then the other day, while wasting time trolling the business news for Pink Slip topics, I clicked through on an article on how to accelerate your retirement savings. Since the only methods I’ve been able to come up with have been playing the lottery and trying to figure out if there really is a way-back machine that would enable me to do a do-over. (Note to prior self: work only for companies where the options will be worth something. Let me qualify that: work only for companies where the options will be worth something that is above water.)

So I brought the article up.

The first suggestion?

Don’t limit your saving to your IRA/401K options:

If you're in a high enough income tax bracket, the solution may be simply to think outside of the fund. While there are limits on how much money you can contribute to a tax-favored qualified retirement plan, you can save as much as you want somewhere else.

"Somehow people have a tendency to believe that the only money they can have in retirement has to have the word IRA attached to it … and that's just not true," says Scott Cramer, president of Cramer & Rauchegger, a financial advisory firm in Winter Park, Fla. "If you have maxed out your IRAs and your 401(k)s, don't be afraid to put money into a savings account."

Okay, I realize that the Internet has a ginormous appetite for content, and that its maw must be fed round the clock. But “you can save as much as you want somewhere else”?  This is someone’s idea of advice? Surely, there can’t be all that many people – especially those in the vaunted “high enough income tax bracket”, which, we all know, ain’t all that high – who don’t realize that they can actually have savings that aren’t in an IRA?

I mean, there’s a difference between knowing and doing – as in, I knew I should have been more careful about the companies I worked for, but I was just so drawn to the loveable losers.

As for “save more” being the first up suggestion for how to save more for retirement.

Capital D-U-H to this bit of advice.

Needless to say, assuming that they hit us with their best shot, I took a pass on looking through the follow on suggestions.

But I can imagine what some of them might have been:

• Periodically look through your house for every place where you’ve ever tossed change. Don’t forget to look in coat and jacket pockets – you might even find a bill here and there. Take this money – it might actually amount to something real and tangible, like $48 – and put it in your IRA. Or in a – get this – savings account that has nothing explicitly to do with retirement savings.
• Distract the kids and raid their piggy banks. If you don’t have kids of your own, distract your friends’ kids when you’re visiting them. Don’t do anything too obvious, but a few bucks cadged here and there over the course of a year can add up to something real and tangible, etc. Yes, this is a generational wealth transfer, but where’d they get that money to begin with? If you’re the parent, they likely cadged it from you. If you’re “just” a friend, you probably stuck at least $5 worth of it in a birthday envelope at some point. Special note: that thing with the kitchen knife getting coins out of one of those little amber glass pigs really does work. Not that I’ve used this method on any unsuspecting kids – just sayin’.
• Hold a yard sale. In the spirit of caveat emptor, don’t label with Renoir puzzle “missing piece”. Go ahead and ask for the full two bucks, but be prepared to have it negotiated down to one. If you started with the “missing piece” news, you’d only get a quarter – max. Resist urge at the end of the day – a day during which you had to put up with complete strangers make fun of your taste in books, music, videos, and museum posters, but actually argue over who saw the tacky wedding-gift vase from Aunt Bertha first – to look at the pitiful amount of money in the cash box and say f it and order a pizza. Instead, deposit it in the bank. (Even though the interest rates will be equivalent, avoid depositing it your kid’s piggy bank. You never know who’s out there with a knife.)
• Walk city streets with your eyes trained on the sidewalk. While this used to be good urban practice just to avoid stepping in a dog mess, people are pretty good at picking up after their pooches these days. Now you’re looking for change. The average American will not stoop to pick up a penny. Or a nickel, even, for that matter. But you’re trying to beef up your retirement. So, with eyes on the prize, pick up every stray coin you spot when you’re out and about (unless it’s in the middle of the odd dog mess). Over the course of a year, this could add up to a dollar or two that you can easily add to your savings – be it IRA or non-tax exempt bank account.
• While you’ve got your eyes on the prize, follow only the “Take a Penny” mandate when you’re paying cash for something. To spare yourself some embarrassment, make a small show of looking through your change purse and pockets while muttering, “I know I have two pennies in there somewhere.” Trust me, the clerk will quickly become exasperated, as will the four people standing behind you in line, and hand you the two pennies from the dish next to the cash register. Don’t get greedy. It’s marginally acceptable – particularly if you’re trying to accelerate your savings – to help yourself to three cents, but scooping up four pennies is implicitly verboten.

I could go on, but you get the point. Those pennies saved today may look like pennies from heaven once you retire.

You heard it here!

Pink Slip Capitals

This is somewhat belated – the news first came out in May – but my sister Kath just noticed it and pointed it my way. So, better late than never, I give you Forbes Pink Slip Capitals as of May 2011, when a BLS report came out detailing the mass layoffs (50 employees or more) for the first quarter.

The good news – unless, of course, you were one of 190,389 folks who were part of a major cutback – is that mass layoffs are down 26 percent when compared to 1Q2010.

The other good news is that most of the mass layoffs on the list weren’t MASS LAYOFFS. Most were on the lower end of things – 100 jobs or so. Only two layoffs called out impacted more than 1,000 folks (a Boeing layoff of 1,100 and an Abbott Labs reduction 0f 1,900). MySpace and Activision (Guitar Hero) each laid off 500. So much for the sanctity of social media and gaming, although, in truth, I’m kind of surprised that MySpace hasn’t already been FB’d out of existence. Actually, it almost has: New Corp. (Hah!) bought the company in 2005 for $581M (Hah!), and just offloaded it for $35M.(Hah!).

While it is both fun and easy to gloat at the prospect of Rupert Murdoch taking a bath here, it’s certainly no fun if you’re one of the folks who had a MySpace job that no longer exists. One can, however, plausibly assume that most of those let go at MySpace were on the youngish side, and that their c.v.’s are steeped in social media-ness. So, while I do have sympathy for them – much as you might want to put a smiley face on it, much as you might want to extricate yourself from a suckish work situation, much as you might relish the idea of a few months off, my estimate is that 99.99% of those pink slipped have at least some twinge of nervousness, hurt, concern, regret, etc. – I do feel worse for the assembly line guys from Boeing. Well-paid manufacturing jobs do not materialize overnight, at least not in the US of A.

There is a fine little spin on the manufacturing job loss number, however:

The 34,077 manufacturing jobs lost through layoffs [during Q1 2011] was the lowest quarterly total since at least 1995 when BLS started compiling these figures.

This may be one of those blood from stone statistics: fewer jobs lost in absolute terms, but a higher percentage, since there were probably fewer manufacturing jobs factored in the base.

As for what constitutes a “mass layoff”, any lay off can be considered mass if one of the pink slips has your name on it…

So what cities are on the Top 10 list when it comes to Pink Slips?

1. Los Angeles
2. New York
3. Chicago
4. San Francisco
5. Riverside, CA
6. San Diego
7. Philadelphia
8. Seattle
9. Sacramento
10. Pittsburgh

I have bolded six of the cities on the list that, just the other day, made it on to my list of “25 Cities in the U.S. I Can Conceive of Living In.”

It’s tempting to say that I apparently pick my cities the same way in which I picked the companies I worked for over the years: interesting, entertaining, and (often) lovable losers. But I stick by my original 25, more or less. And, after all, large cities like NY and Chicago can absorb large layoff numbers than smaller places.

By the way, at the suggestion of my cousin Ellen – who’s been there – Springfield, Illinois, probably shouldn’t have made my list. According to Ellen, Springfield is only for those desperately intrigued by Abraham Lincoln and/or Illinois state politics. While I am intrigued to some extent by both – hey, my mother grew up in Chicago, and she lived just around the corner from Rod Blagojevich’s house, and what red-blooded American (at least those of us who are no longer fighting the Civil War) doesn’t have great admiration for Mr. Lincoln? – the level of intrigue is perhaps not high enough to keep Springfield on my list, however far down.

So I need one more.

Hmmmmmm.

Okay. Let’s stay midwest nice: Madison, Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, I apologize to all of my Chicago-land relatives for my gratuitous snipe at the Midwest accent. After all, the Boston accent is not exactly like listening to Sir John Gielgud intone Shakespeare, as I am reminded daily as the locals (South Boston edition) weigh in on what should and will become of Whitey Bulger. (Whitey is no longer considered wickid pissah.)

As for the Top Ten Pink Slip Cities, it must be noted that these are not necessarily the cities with the highest unemployment rates.

According to a “this just in” from the BLS, that honor goes to Yuma, Arizona and El Centro, California, which:

…recorded the highest unemployment rates in May 2011, 27.9 and 27.7 percent, respectively.

Riverside, California, with an unemployment rate of 13.2% a of May has the highest UR of metros over 1 million people, however. So it’s on both the Top 10 Pink Slip AND the Top Unemployment Rate lists. Not where any self-respecting metro wants to be.

If, on the other hand, you want to go some place with a good old fashioned unemployment rate, the kind we used to call structural unemployment:

Bismarck, N.D., registered the lowest unemployment rate, 2.9 percent. The areas with the next lowest rates were Fargo, N.D.-Minn., and Lincoln, Neb., 3.5 and 3.7 percent, respectively.

And while it is all fine and dandy that things look pretty darned good in Bismarck and Fargo,we all know that we’re NOT out of the woods, NOT out of the dark, NOT out of the night.

Oh, wasn’t it so much easier to live in the post-war boom years when we were the only industrial economy that hadn’t been destroyed by war?

Well, the “good” news is, McDonald’s is hiring

We continue to struggle with high unemployment. We continue to exhibit an incredible lack of interest and/or will in having a rational national conversation about what, exactly, the folks who’ve been displaced are going to do for a living if they happen to have been displaced from a reasonably paying job that ain’t going to come back any time soon, if ever. (Oh, why stop with our our incredible lack of interest and/or will to converse about jobs….We continue to exhibit an incredible lack or interest and/or will in having a rational national conversation about Social Security, healthcare, national debt, death, taxes – this just in: our taxes are percentage-wise the lowest they’ve been since the 1950’s, and a lot of other items that should be on the rational/national agenda.)

Ah, well, fear factor it is!

Which leads me to the big news on the jobs front: McDonald’s had a national hiring day in April and received over 1 million job applications. (Source: Boston.com.)

Not that everyone applying for those jobs is unemployed, but, say for a moment that they were. With 13.7 million people out of work, that would be over 7% looking to make minimum wage changing the fat in the fry-o-lator and handing out Happy Meals.

Nothing against fast food, mind you.

I am of the opinion that this country would be a better place if everyone – including the most silver-spooned prince and princess capable of networking their mummy-daddy way into cushy “internships” in cool places to work – were required to spend a minimum of 3 months in some type of food service job.

Flip burgers, dish ice cream, wait tables, wash dishes, sling crud onto plastic trays in the college caf – all of which, come to think of it, I’ve done over the years – any and all of this would help people (especially those silver-spooned mummy-daddy kids):

• Get that work can be physically exhausting, smelly, greasy, and terrible
• Learn how to put up with unreasonable, disagreeable people to whom they’re not related
• Develop some compassion for the folks who are working these types of jobs for more than 3 months at a time
• Realize why we have a minimum wage
• Appreciate that no one can live on it
• Understand that even crappy jobs can be fun, while also learning why they need to develop the skills and get the education that will land them a job that’s not quite as exhausting, smelly, greasy, terrible, and ill-paid

And yet, how depressing is it that over a million people are looking for jobs at McDonald’s, which so far has hired 62,000 of those job seekers. Which, by quick calculation, looks to me like you have a better chance of getting into Yale than you do winning a job salting French fries.

Oh, what a world economy we live in!

The odds may be a bit better in Massachusetts, where of the 16,000 applicants, 1,700 have gotten jobs, and McD’s is still looking to fill 500 more positions. Then again, maybe they’re not, if we base it on Mark McBee’s hiring experience:

Mark McBee, owner of 13 McDonald’s restaurants in Eastern Massachusetts, hired 115 workers — almost double his goal — for mostly entry-level jobs. McBee said he had trouble turning down some of the 2,055 people who were interviewed because there were so many qualified applicants. “We had a lot of professional people who were looking to change careers and a lot of kids, a lot of mothers, a lot of senior citizens — it was an amazing mixture,’’ he said.

Let’s parse this “amazing mixture” out.

First off, “a lot of professional people who were looking to change careers….”

Somehow, I don’t think that Mickey D’s is anything other than a desperation move for a “professional…looking to change careers.”

Reason for Applying: I was an accounts payable manager in financial services, but I now realize that I’m more of a “people person” who wants to work with the public in a fast paced, fast food environment.

Not!

Obviously, “professional” can mean a lot of different things. (Think about the use of the word “professional dry cleaner.” As opposed to “amateur dry cleaner”?)

Nonetheless, I suspect for most folks who were working in an office, a career change into a polyester shirt and baseball cap is not top of mind.

How completely and utterly depressing this must be on both sides of the interviewing desk.

“A lot of kids” – as you can tell from the above – I’m down with, especially if these are kids who are looking for an after school or summer job. Depressing if this is largely high school drop outs or high school grads with meager skills and fewer prospects for a decent job. Ever. Yes, I know, some of these kids who start out as burger flippers will make it to store manager and maybe even franchise owner someday. But I suspect these jobs are almost as disproportionately difficult to achieve as going from high school hoop star to the NBA.

By the way, while I’m all in favor of the young folk working at McD’s, I never worked in a fast food chain. There were fewer during my crap-job days, and there were also more of other kinds of crap jobs available. Good luck finding a summer job in a shoe factory in Massachusetts these days.

But I did work in a college snack bar. So I know what it’s like to clean the grill, change the grease, and take a chisel to the 5-gallon container of ultra-frozen ice cream because some clown wants rum raisin, rather than the softened up, easily scoop-able fudge ripple.

“A lot of mothers” is something I’m of mixed feelings about on the how-depressing-is-this scale. Stretch the budget, make ends meet, why-not-when-the-kids-are-in-school, put something away for the future, buy a PC for the family to share. All laudable goals. And yet…

One thing if you were pretty much assured of getting a job; another thing to find yourself in keen competition with lots of professionals, lots of kids, and lots of senior citizens.

God, it’s hard to think of a more ghastly job for a “senior citizen” than standing on their feet all day boxing up Chicken McNuggets.

Food service work is grueling!

Yeah, I get that the old folks still have to work, given busted pensions, dwindling 401K’s, uncertainty about Social Security, longer lives, and just wanting to stay in the game.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when Walmart greeter started to look like a reasonable golden age job, but it sure does when compared to a golden arch job.

Anyway, if there was a rational/national discussion on what American workers are going to be doing in the new world order, I missed it.

A million folks chasing jobs at McDonald’s…

Sigh!

The Poor Farm

There was an article in The Boston Globe a couple of weeks back the town of Milton’s (a close-in suburb) trying to figure out what to do with the poor farm that was left to it over 300 years ago.

The person doing the leaving was Governor William Stoughton, who was both a judge and prosecutor during the Salem Witch Trials. Hmmmm. Pretty convenient to be both judge and prosecutor, don’t you think? Would you even have to jump up and say, “Objection, Your Honor,” or just cut to the chase and say “Objection sustained.” Which may not have been necessary, since Stoughton refused to allow the accused to have any defense counsel. Stoughton did, however, allow “spectral evidence” – dreams and visions – to be used in court. (Info on Stoughton: from Wikipedia.)

But, unless you were Sarah Good or Rebecca Glover or one of the other “witches” who were hanged, Stoughton wasn’t a completely bad fellow. He did, after all, leave Milton some land “for the use and benefit of the poor.” (Not stated but I suspect strongly implied: we’re talking the deserving poor. And not the kind inclined toward wearing black pointy hats and cruising around on broomsticks.)

Anyway, throughout the 18th century, the poor could cut wood on the 34-acre plot, and in the 1800’s a poor house went up.

The original Poor House, or almshouse, was built around 1805, and included cages to punish residents who disturbed the peace, according to a history compiled by the town. Paupers lived and farmed there, and the able-bodied men worked on the town’s roads.

That building was sold for $102 in 1854. A new Poor House was built for $2,675 on the spot where it still stands today. Also remaining are the 1871 Men’s Almshouse and 1888 Pest House, built to quarantine people with smallpox.

But poor houses went out of fashion in the mid-twentieth century and, since the 1940's, Milton has been out of the poor house biz:

… instead renting out three buildings on the site and using the income to help needy individuals with emergencies — in small grants totaling about $20,000 annually in recent years.

The buildings have now fallen into disrepair. But while the buildings may be down, “requests for emergency aid are up.”

The town selectman are looking into selling or leasing the land, which abuts the Blue Hills Reservation (hiking, swimming, skiing…), which is quite a pretty area.  Selling all or part of the land could bring in as much as $8.5M, which would nicely augment the $400K that has accrued in the Governor Stoughton fund over the years.

As with everything else these days:

“It’s all about the Benjamins,’’ said town planner William Clark. He said whatever the selectmen decide must be approved, however, by the state attorney general and Massachusetts Probate and Family Court, to be sure Stoughton’s will is honored.

I.e., that the poor get the benefit of the proceeds.

If I were the Town of Milton, I wouldn’t be getting rid of this property quite so fast.

At least in my life-time, I don’t think we’ll be going back to the point where we cage folks for disturbing the peace. But other than that…

For the sake of argument, let’s just say that we do get rid of all those irksome hand-out programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. After all, the social safety net is for effete, Euro-style dandies, not for hearty, don’t-look-down Americans. (I bet old Governor Stoughton would agree with this point.)

But, as there always is in checkered game of life, there will be winners and losers under the grand new “you’re on your own, bub” scheme.

So, Milton, hang on to that poor farm.

You may need it for those who neglected to save anything for their dotage. (Note to self: design new tee-shirt: Old geezer slapping himself on the forehead. Caption: “Damn, I forgot to save for retirement.”)  Or for those who really and truly did try to put things away, but who didn’t have much luck as part-time money managers; or who got caught up in the next Bernie Madoff scheme; or who thought they were saving enough, but that was before the fund-managers got through extracting their small-print fees. (Hey, what’s this heads-I-win-tales-you-lose thing?)

If you have a poor farm and an alms house, once again, paupers can farm and able-bodied men work on the roads.

Ninety’s the new sixty, don’t you know? Start hoeing, Gramps.

Sure, you might want to rename the Pest House.  Something like Pleasant Manor would work. Or House of Health.

Maybe the paupers can farm herbs that can be used for palliative care for those who can’t afford to even get their case considered by a Death Panel.

And while I do hope smallpox won’t be making a comeback, you never know. Inoculations are sort of nanny-state, aren’t they? And if you don’t inoculate, it’s survival of the fittest. Thus the ninety year old pauper, having survived smallpox, should be fit as a fiddle and ready to farm for his remaining years.

Anyway, my advice to Milton is hang on to this property. You never know when a poor farm is going to come in handy. Could be any day now.

The Uninvited: snubbed by Davos, yet again

The World Economic Forum – or, as those of us in the know refer to it, Davos; or, as I sometimes think of it as, the Big Kloster – is on this week and, yet again, Pink Slip was not invited.

Just not smart enough.  Big-thinking enough. Successful enough. Elite enough.

Boo-hoo, sniff-sniff: no one wants to network with me!

This is not quite as hurtful as not being invited to Kathy O’s birthday party in fifth grade, but it’ll do.

Don’t they realize that the Common Man, not to mention the Common Woman, also wants to fix the world, save humanity, star-gaze, and sip champagne.

Sure, I suppose we could go hang around Sundance if we want to be around some movers and shakers,  but that’s just The Movies. There’s star-gazing aplenty – with stars that are more recognizable than the CEO’s of Lucent and HIS, and even more recognizable than Bono, who’s also a Davos man. But we don’t want to just spot celebrities. We want to “improve the state of the world…[and] shape global, regional and industry agendas.” And that means, Davos, baby.

I guess I should count myself fortunate in one respect: Davos-ing costs a lot of moola to attend. (Note to self: add not rich enough to Davos-related things I’m not.)

The NY Times (Andrew Ross Sorkin’s column) had some of the lowdown on what a run to Davos might set you back if you really need and want to go “chasing successful people who want to be seen with other successful people. That’s the game,” in the words of author Nassim Taleb.

In order to wangle an invite to Davos, you have to have a pre-invite to become a member of the World Economic Forum.

There are several levels of membership: the basic level, which will get you one invitation to Davos, costs 50,000 Swiss francs, or about $52,000. The ticket itself is another 18,000 Swiss francs ($19,000), plus tax, bringing the total cost of membership and entrance fee to $71,000.

But this just gets you into the tent, not into any of the side shows, where the real interesting stuff happens. So you really want to get into the private sessions, as opposed to the events that are open to the Great Unwashed with their measly $71K membership and ticket. (Double-L Loser!) To get into the private events, that’ll be $156K. But I say, in for a dime, in for a dollar.

If you’re going to do Davos, I say do Davos.

Quibbling over a few bucks is so non-Davosian.

The fees cited above give you one ticket – no two-fers here. If you want to bring a buddy, you have to pay more. A lot more. But let’s face it, you certainly don’t want to be there alone at a private function. What if no-one recognizes you? At least if you have a minion colleague by your side, there’s someone you can be pretending to discuss Big Ideas with while you try to figure out whether it’s tacky to ask Bono for his autograph, rather than his Big Ideas. (Oh, those first timers! So easily star-struck…)

Bringing a best-bud is not a matter of ponying up the marginal cost of another ticket. You need the upgrade package. $301K (with two tickets).

If you travel with more than one, the ante’s upped further. You could drop $622K if you want to bring four friends with you. But at least that gets you into the private, good stuff.

And perhaps the biggest perk of all, your car and driver are given a sticker allowing door-to-door pickup service.

Not everyone can join the club at this level. Apparently, there are enough Western-types around already. Applications are only being accepted from companies from China or India that are on the Global 250 list.

(The Times writer points out that all levels of membership grant you invites to other World Economic Forum pow-wows, plus access to research projects. But he was pointing this out “in fairness.” I have so little interest in being fair about Davos, when I’m still smarting from not being there.)

None of the above includes T&E, of course. And nobody flies coach to Davos. Actually, nobody flies coach to Zurich, from whence they can proceed to Davos by helicopter for $3.4K.

(The forum provides a free bus service for those worried about their environmental footprint.)

This is a very good point. You can cheap out and take the bus, Gus, while letting it be known that you care more about the polar bear than the show-offs who are coptering in.

As at any good trade show, companies sponsor events – dinners, cocktail receptions, parties.

The bigger parties, like one that will be given by Google on Friday night for several hundred people, can run more than $250,000 for the evening. (In years past, Google has flown in the band and bartenders; one year, the company had an oxygen bar.)

Oxygen bar. Wowie, zowie.

Some, however, are claiming that Davos is on the wane as a must-attend event.

As one attendee, the author David Rothkopf, recently wrote on his blog, “The entire endeavor is fading for several reasons, all associated with the inadequacy of Davos as a networking forum.”

He explained, “As Steve Case,  founder of AOL, once told me while standing at the bar in the middle of the hubbub of the main conference center: ‘You always feel like you are in the wrong place in Davos, like there is some better meeting going on somewhere in one of the hotels that you really ought to be at. Like the real Davos is happening in secret somewhere.’ “

And if that’s how Steve Case is feeling, well, can you just imagine what would be going through Pink Slip’s mind if she had been able to wangle an invite to the Google oxygen bar.

Davos, Schmavos. Feh!

This weekend The Banshees – my sisters/cousins gang – are having our own personal Davos in Portsmouth, NH. We may do more shopping and gossiping than world saving. But I’ll bet we’ll have more fun than those who go to Davos hoping that Bono will make eye contact with them and tell them they had something interesting to say.

Nevergreen: more mfg. jobs exit the Bay State

In terms of weathering The Great Recession, Massachusetts has been more fortunate than many other states. We were spared, of course, by having lost so much of our manufacturing base decades ago, and by not having had anything resembling a crazed building boom. There’s something to be said for living in a non-Go-Go kind of place.

That said, life hasn’t been all that easy for blue collar workers who never made the transition to higher skilled professions in industries that have been doing okay, like technology.

So, when we do have some decently paid manufacturing jobs as part of our mix, there’s always something feel good about it.

Thus, we rejoiced when Evergreen Solar, maker of solar panels, invested (with the help of $43M from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) in a factory built on the site of the old Fort Devens. The factory employed 800, whose jobs, after less than three years, are now gone with the wind.

That wind took the jobs to China.

And not just because the average factory worker makes a whopping $300 a month, compared to Massachusetts’ average factory pay of $5,400.  This amount sounds absolutely tycoonish, but we’ve long shed all our really low skilled factory jobs in textiles, shoes, plastic toys, etc., and instead focused on more technical, higher skilled production jobs, mostly in smaller shops.

Evergreen’s ability to compete had been compromised because the price for solar panels has gone down.

No surprise here: products do tend to get commoditized, and we all get to have more stuff, cheaper. (A decidedly mixed blessing, of course.)

But Evergreen’s CEO, Michael El-Hillow, lays at least part of the blame for those 800 pink slips on the extensive subsidies that manufacturers get from the Chinese government, which has prompted Evergreen to close down its factory in Massachusetts, and move all production to its facility in China. (This facility is supposedly built on a site which “municipal police had used…for mass executions into the 1980s.” Nice tidbit, that.)

Here’s what we’re up against:

Evergreen, with help from its partners — the Wuhan municipal government and the Hubei provincial government — borrowed two-thirds of the cost of its Wuhan factory from two Chinese banks, at an interest rate that under certain conditions could go as low as 4.8 percent, Mr. El-Hillow said in August. Best of all, no principal payments or interest payments will be due until the end of the loan in 2015.

By contrast, a $21 million grant from Massachusetts covered 5 percent of the cost of the Devens factory, and the company had to borrow the rest from banks, Mr. El-Hillow said.

I dunno.

We seem to keep trying to convince ourselves that economic redemption of the job creating kind will come in on the big green wave of demand for non-fossil fuel based energy.

Doesn’t sound like that’s going to happen any time soon.

If we can’t keep the dirty old manufacturing jobs, and we can’t keep the cool new green manufacturing jobs, just what is it that Americans who are never going to be nano-scientists, genome mappers, or (blecchhh) investment bankers actually going to do to make a living?

Nothing that hasn’t been said before, but the end of those 800 Evergreen jobs got me thinking about it again.

Living in interesting times is scary, no?

Source for this post: NY Times.

Does it get any sadder than this?

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest of these have surely got to include “this holiday season, many Wall Streeters are flying commercial.”

Talk about a lump of coal.

No, worse.

At least a lump of coal has some intrinsic value, like you can burn it to create warmth.  Or use it to make one eye on a snowman.  Or peg it at someone.

Flying commercial.

Does it get any sadder than this?

I think not.

Anyway, I learned about this almost unbearable ending to an already gloomified year in the Wall Street Journal, which – correctly, I’d say – put the Wall Street plight story out there when there’s still time to make an end of year contribution to one of those Santa outfits that takes care of the needy.

What else are our Wall Street guys  skimping on?

Well, those who are still managing to eke out enough of living to fly chartered are foregoing:

…catered in-flight meals, which can cost $1,000 or more for four people.

Hey, I know that $1K sounds like a lot of moola for four in-flight meals – at least when I think about the in-flight meals I’ve been served over the years -  but remember: we’re not just talking the food and the food prep here, but the service and delivery.

Others are “jet pooling” with – get this – complete strangers to keep costs down.

Misery loves company, especially when company can help defray private jet costs. And just as there are no atheists in foxholes, I’m guessing that, even without sharesies on a $1K lunch, there are no strangers after lift-off on a private jet heading from Teterboro, NJ to St. Barts. Just saying.

You think I’m kidding about all this, but we’re currently experiencing the “largest decline in bonuses since the onset of the financial crisis.”  What’s that? Two, maybe three whole years with having to survive on a paltry salary and a measly, barely-buy-a-raincoat bonus.

This is also a major example of trickle down economics at its insidious worst:

December is usually a time when bankers crowd the showrooms and aisles shopping for their next big bonus toys. But jewelers, sports-car dealers and yacht brokers say bankers this Christmas are hard to find.

Heard on The Street:  Bonuses down between 10 to 25% over last year.  Maybe even 50%.

Yowza!

The drop follows last year's much-criticized surge in banker pay and highlights growing uncertainty on Wall Street ahead of regulatory scrutiny and weak financial markets.

But that surge was last year.  And it’s already been spent. Or saved. Or stuffed in a mattress.

Naughty or nice, apparently, matters not.

One Citi banker said colleagues who have been coming out of compensation meetings in the past two weeks "look like they've been hit by a truck."

But not by the Lamborghini they were hoping for.

And, for some, there’ll be less cash in the bonus wallet, as:

Regulators and shareholders have pushed banks to link pay to long-term performance rather than short-term trading gains. As a result, some bankers, accustomed to getting as much as 50% of their bonus in cash, may get only 20% this year, with the rest usually paid out in deferred stock, according to Wall Street compensation consultants.

I call ‘Foul!’

Changing the rules mid-career?

Man, these guys ought to be grandfathered in.

Don’t people get how much good short-term trading does?

It’s not all unremittingly terrible news.  Goldman is down, but their bonus scheme is likely to work out to over $367,000 per employee. (I’d like to see the spread on that one.)

$367,000 may sound hefty, but chartering a decent-sized boat in the Caribbean between Christmas and New Year can run you $250K to $1 million. And that’s before food, bev, and fuel are larded on added in.

An extra $36 7,000 just doesn’t stretch all that far, especially if you’re talking family of four.

Other areas hard hit by the dwindled bonuses on Wall Street include summer homes.  Many are downsizing their cottage rentals and purchases from 12,000 square feet, to a more modest 6,000 to 8,000 square feet.

Can’t we do something for these folks?  Like give them a permanent tax cut or something?

I know people talk on and on about the deserving poor, but how about a break for the deserving rich?