Of course, no one wants do any job poorly, but sometimes certain jobs aren't suited for us. In my youth, I had a couple jobs that I did really poorly. Sure all those jobs were about having some pocket change. Now maybe I'd do them much better now, but I did them poorly when I was 9-12 years old ...
Mowing Lawns
I don't remember how much ... maybe $5? Although I mowed the grass fine, it was all the trimming work (sidewalks, bricks, fences) that I didn't really want to do, and I did it sloppily. My father (not the neighbors) made me go back and do the job right. ...Newspaper Delivery Route
Newsday was an afternoon newspaper then, you'd pick up the papers after school in the center of town, and deliver them on your home block. Ya know the scenes in the movies where the newspaper boy is tossing newspapers from his bicycle? Nothing like that, that would be a dream. The newspaper bag didn't sit on the bicycle well, always falling off with the 30 newspapers on the ground. And delivering newspapers on late fall/winter days is really depressing: very dark, walking through snow (still with bicycle in tow because you had to carry all the papers). I tried helping out friends with their routes (which made it more fun), but no one wanted to help with my route. My cousin had a route about a half mile away, and I'd help him when he couldn't do it. It was on Grove Street in Freeport, Long Island (now called Guy Lombardo Avenue), it was on the water/canals, and would easily flood. So with the newspapers one day, my father drove me near by ... the streets had about 2 feet of water ... I was soaked, and my father insisted that I do all the houses - picture some boy delivering newspapers in some flooded Mississippi River town with row boats and people leaving ... meanwhile some boy up to his butt in water, walking into the flood zone, and delivering the newspaper, as if nothing happened.Were these lessons that I should have been learning from my father? I'm not sure if he intended that, but "proud" would not be a feeling he felt, "yet another failure" maybe, and he'd just watch. I don't recall there being a moment of "Hey Frank, that was really messy work walking through all the cold water, the mud, and muck -- how about a hot shower and then we'll get an ice cream sundae?". I don't want to make him sound mean, because I don't think he was, it was a simple verdict of incomplete, sloppy, late, inadequate, and sub-par.
And the customers we're really fun (not!). On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we'd collect the money for the newspapers delivered that week: 60 cents with a nickel or dime tip. After I gave up the paper route for the final time, I felt relieved, I tried but I knew I wasn't good at it. But my leaving the paper route did not, in fact, leave paper route from me: family members pointed out the new delivery boy was much better than me, thanks for the family support. And my family completely ignored the fact that the new delivery boy had his father driving down block slowly as he hand a couple papers to his son from the stack sitting on the front seat ... yeah, no carrying papers, a car to pick up the whole route from central Freeport (about 1.5 miles away), and he was so good at it and efficient, he was able to do 4-5 routes with his father driving the car ... and making more than pocket change. Well my family was happier with the new delivery boy (because our house got the newspaper too) than my delivering it to my own house. Really, I didn't get a tip from my own family on days I had to collect, but the new boy did.
So maybe the lesson to learn is: one can really s*ck at a job, as confirmed by family and friends. It's not a good feeling, and you know in your heart of hearts you're doing a terrible job. But what to do about it?
Things change as you get older: some things you do better, some maybe not so. Here is me on a cold winter day (January 1) in Coney Island, Brooklyn for the Polar Bear plunge with 10,000 spectators, 3,000 swimmers. and us volunteer CERTs (Community Emergency Response Team) doing crowd control, and we're into the ocean up to our thighs -- 4-5 hour event of standing, soaked in cold water, and filled with sand ... and I enjoyed the volunteer work. (OK, maybe I'm now ready to deliver newspapers.)
Above, photos from the boardwalk, and then the craziness of walking swimmers into the water to make sure they're ok and that they exit to the sides. Yes, that's a drum marching band banging out the beat ... all too weird to describe, but sorta in the Normal Zone for New Yorkers.
For Donald Trump as President, Must Everything Be Framed As a "Deal"?
Donald Trump considers himself as top deal-maker. Whether or not he is actually a good deal-maker, is a separate question ... but let's grant Mr. Trump that he believes himself to be a good deal-maker. The objects of deal-making have been real estate, companies, and brand licensing.I'm reading a NY Times article today (see top link) and it occurred to me that Mr. Trump feels deal-making is his strong suit, and thus everything should be portrayed as "deals" and real estate talk, in contrast to discussing policy-making, which Mr. Trump is certainly poor at. Here are some quotes from Mr. Trump:
"[...] And you know, don’t forget, China, over the many years, has been at war with Korea — you know, wars with Korea. It’s not like, oh, gee, you just do whatever we say. They’ve had numerous wars with Korea. They have an 8,000 year culture. So when they see 1776 — to them, that’s like a modern building. The White House was started — was essentially built in 1799. To us, that’s really old. To them, that’s like a super modern building, right? So, you know, they’ve had tremendous conflict over many, many centuries with Korea. So it’s not just like, you do this. But we’re going to find out what happens."And another on bad deals, which is a set-up for Mr. Trump to fix them:
"[...] Very important to me with China, we have to fix the trade. We have to fix the trade. And I’ve been going a little bit easier because I’d like to have their help. It’s hard to go ***. But we have to fix the trade with China because it’s very, very none-reciprocal. [...] Nobody has ever said it before. I say it all the time. Somebody said, what cards do you have? I said, very simple — trade. We are being absolutely devastated by bad trade deals. We have the worst of all trade deals is with China. We have a bad deal with South Korea. We’re just starting negotiations with South Korea. South Korea, we protect, but we’re losing $40 billion a year with South Korea on trade. We have a trade deficit of $40 billion. The deal just came up.Mr. Trump has a really poor understanding of economics, so even if he thinks about playing to his strong suit ("deals"), he doesn't understand these deals ... like the $40 billion trade deficit. It's questionable whether or not a $40 billion trace deficit hurts our economy. For example, let's say you're a high-tech company making a billion widgets at year, you import a necessary component for $4 each, well that's a $40 billion deficit. And maybe your US company has revenues of $100 billion, with $50 billion spent on labor, and $10 billion in profits. Well that's $50 billion spent on local labor.
I'm not sure what Mr. Trump's suggestion is: Bring the $40 billion products/services back to the US? Given the US labor and business climate, that $40 billion won't be spent on labor. And even if it were, maybe that Korean company still manufactures it cheaper than the US, which means investors and financial markets are going to put pressure on US firms to increase profit, which moves some of the manufacturing and integration off shore.
I can't see Trump's potential offer as solution because economic "gravity" still moves the money were things are most efficient, as in the illustration above: even if there were some way to force the company to bring the $40 billion trade deficit back on-shore, the lower profitability might make for higher costs ... and then the whole company fails. Essentially, this was the problem with the Rust Belt and its belief the economic protectionism would shelter it from global competition.
Here's another doozy from Mr. Trump:
"No, I think, first, I want to do — well, we have a few things. We have a thing called healthcare. I’m sure you haven’t been reading about it too much. It is one of the — I’d say the only thing more difficult than peace between Israel and the Palestinians is healthcare. It’s like this narrow road that about a quarter of an inch wide. You get a couple here and you say, great, and then you find out you just lost four over here. Healthcare is tough. But I think we’re going to have something that’s really good and that people are going to like. We’re going to find out over the next — you know, we just extended for two weeks. Which, that’s a big [...]"Healthcare more difficult than peace between Israel and Palestine? Here's the simple understanding of healthcare:
- Government services get paid for and provided by taxes, tax revenue needs to be >= government expenses.
- Health insurance is a kind of insurance; insurance is a financial services product to spread the risk across those insured; collectively the Pay-In equals the Pay-Out, but individually that is likely not to be true.
- Thus (see collectively vs. individually above), health insurance is most efficient and least costly when the insurance pool contains everyone, rather than just those with higher risk (which creates an insurance death spiral).
- Having lower and differing standards of insurance (substandard, "bare-bones" as it's called recently) concentrates risk rather than distributes it, which makes it more costly, and can push it towards an insurance death spiral.
- Wealthier people can self-insure and take larger deductions because they have the assets to cover the cash flow (like large deductions), poorer people can not. So not only do wealthier people have better cash-flow, their costs are lower: e.g., Silver $150/month with $10,000 deductible vs. Gold $300/month with $3600 deductible vs. Platinum $600/month with no deductible. Wealthier people are paying $150/month, but poorer people (who can't afford the $10,000 or $3,600 deductibles) are paying $600/month.
- Poorer people need help with the monthly amounts (e;.g., up to $300/month subsidy) to make $600/month now $300/month.
- The cost of medical services can easily bankrupt the non-wealthy. Because of this kind of worry, people avoid treatment, which can make the condition worse, and then land them in the hospital - which causes everyone else (who are insured) to pay, and the costs are more than had the condition been treated earlier - doubly bad.
- Health insurers used to take a sizable profit out of health care delivery, but Obamacare capped that at around 18% "profit".
- Decide on the services, and provide taxes to support the costs. Many politicians have difficulty with this, they only see tax cuts, and they don't understand that wealthier people need to pay their share.
- Single Payer saves lots of money because most insurance companies are no longer in the business, which makes healthcare cheaper.
- Make healthcare a Right for All, i.e., not tied to employment.
- Just like car insurance that is required for all drivers, health insurance should be required for all people.
- People making below 100% AMI (Area Median Income) should have significant support for health insurance because below that housing costs are consuming more than a third of income (which is why rent is capped at 1/3 of income in Section 8 housing).
- The health insurance cost range between younger (typically healthier) and older (typically sicker) needs to be flatter, e.g., a factor of 3, not a factor of 5.
- Stop playing one group (e.g., woman and pregnancy costs) against another. This works against a simpler scheme to spread the risk by creating exclusive schemes (opting out of pregnancy costs) that just concentrates risks and makes it overall more expensive. Which means: states that have large opioid addiction population should be treated similarly and fairly as those having little opioid addiction problems.
So How Might I Screw Up Being President?
I'm going to use a caricature of myself as an IT guy: everything must have an IT focus, just like Mr. Trump's Presidency must have a "deal" focus.- Education Policy: All students need a laptop and high speed internet.
- Healthcare Policy: We all need to wear Fitbit devices tracking our body measurements and processed by Big Data Analytics with push-technology healthcare expert systems.
- The Arts: Virtual reality goggles for everyone.
- Military: More computers, micro-drones, and better batteries.
- Transportation: Smart Cities infrastructure, require HOV lanes to use automated driving systems.
- Housing: Smart homes, utility controlled appliances (let your electric company tell your clothes dryer when to turn on)
- Educational Policy: How to we educate all students for tomorrow's world?
- Healthcare Policy: How do we contain rising medical costs?
- The Arts: How do we support a diversity of aesthetics in the arts?
- Military: Can economic or diplomatic solutions be more cost-effective, less-risk, and longer lasting than military solutions?
- Transportation: What is the right kind of City/Suburban design that increases social interaction, but decreases traveling time/expense?
- Housing: How do we create and preserve more affordable housing?
Just don't make me deliver newspapers to the Whitehouse. :-)
I think the world of tomorrow is going to be unimaginably different than the world of today - the speed of innovation is going to increase.
ReplyDeleteProbably some of the focus of efforts 20 or 30 years from now will be to make the planet livable, if global warming does really result in significant climate change and sea level rise forces residents of large coastal cities to move inland, there will need to be massive development projects worldwide to house billions of people who can no longer live in coastal communities. Constructing new cities/infrastructure virtually overnight might be a focus for mankind. Probably nature/climate will dictate much of what mankind devotes creativity, time and energy to in the coming decades.
I do not think there will be large scale catastrophes in connection with climate change so the population will continue to grow, but there will be less land available. Core cities will need to be "recreated" inland. Even with automation there will be a huge amount of work and labor shortages, since the "flyover" zone will be the redevelopment area, the zone where the cities that will have flooded out will need to be recreated. It may not be possible to prevent inundation of coastal areas. The land area will shrink and ways will have to be found to accommodate more people within less land area.
There will need to be increased food production with the increased population but given that there will be less land, land that was previously not considered agriculturally productive/feasible will need to be converted to farmland. There might be high-tech terrace farming on hillsides, and some sort of new way of growing crops in poor desert land, maybe within artificially humid greenhouses, somehow the problem of where water will miraculously materialize will be solved.
Automation will never end, and given the ongoing population grown, certain social arrangements/compromises will need to be made - especially as billions of people may lose coastal property to the waves. There will be a loss of real estate value, and jobs may become much more scarce as machines take over more & more of the drudge/mechanical work. People might be encouraged to focus on creative work, and there may also be a new focus on work that improves mankind - so that education as a lifelong pursuit, scholarship, might be considered a legitimate field of work in itself. There might simultaneously be a labor shortage and a lack of work, depending on what people are either equipped to do, or wish to take on. Some might not want to be "pioneers" living in out of the way areas working on agricultural production in some capacity, or working on construction/infrastructure projects. There might be a whole new field of work involved in helping large populations of people flooded out of whole countries adjust to new environments - folks from tropical islands might need to adjust to living in Central Asia etc. The work might be akin to social work, but might also involve the folks trying to reconstitute or at least archive their former culture. There might be many people needed for this sort of ecological refugee/readjustment work since the scale of migration might be immense, and some of those fleeing would need to migrate to other continents. Although this is already going on to some extent, the pace is sure to pick up. Suppose a billion coastal Chinese need to move to Mongolia or Siberia. This is really a big deal - an entire culture might need to be recreated in a rather barren new landscape (although even desert regions might be more humid/rainy by then). This isn't hundreds of thousands of migrants or even a million - there are probably going to be billions of people affected by climate change, that may need to be relocated elsewhere. So there won't be a shortage of work, but the catch will be figuring out exactly what talents/skills might be needed, and so forth.
Part II
ReplyDeleteThere may be large-scale social disruption until centers of commerce are recreated in other areas. There might be an alternative system - perhaps a return to some form of "commons" - at least on a temporary basis, until economies can be reconstituted. This might be a necessity in newly developing areas that are suddenly the new home of millions of transplanted people. There are probably going to be new ways of earning what might no longer be called money, and spending probably will be tied to an app - as it is already increasingly. Until economies are recreated (imagine how difficult it may be to transplant millions of factories from one part of the world to another, or to reconstruct them thousands of miles away) and "real" jobs emerge in the newly developed areas, there will probably need to be more of a "sharing" economy, with no real claim to specific ownership. The principle of bike share may spread to other things, but without a monetary deposit or membership fee needed. This will be necessary with the lack of paying jobs initially. A bike share like app will make it possible to share quite a few things that people once may have individually owned. They will not be able to own many things at first because of the large scale disruption due to ecological migration - they will have left behind workshops, factories, offices, schools, hospitals, housing, transportation infrastructure, cars, trucks, buses, and subways. Imagine creating a new country in the middle of the Sahara Desert (for example) with millions of people, and the land seemingly arid with no visible water supply. These are the sorts of unimaginably vast challenges that may face mankind in the coming decades. Perhaps the cost of energy will be free by then - if solar panels replace carbon energy sources. But there is still work involved in growing food, and work involved in clothing production and so forth. Entire economies will need to be recreated far from flooded areas alongside or within established cultures. There probably will be endless work despite the automation. There probably will be a need for creative multidisciplinary scholars who might collaborate on projects to re balance the eco system such that a new "Ice Age" could be initiated and thus hopefully refreeze some of the excess moisture/rainfall which would lead to receding sea level and the re-emergence of the (unfortunately more or less muddy devastated areas) flooded out coastal cities. Thus, people could return to the Greek islands (for example) but except for the land being still recognizably land, all traces of that land having been a Greek island will have been washed away. If global warming reversal were made permanent then migrants returning to their home countries might then need to recreate their cities, which would have been essentially destroyed by sea level rise. The work would really never end but by then there will be many more people around to do the work.
Part III
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, if Earth does survive the climate change catastrophes, I think mankind will realize that much of what occupied mankind for millennia - competition for markets, enrichment, warfare/enslavement/pillage - was all wrong, the emphasis was on the wrong things due to brainwashing about making various countries "great again" and that the really valuable or important thing in life is a non-competitive/peace-oriented ethos, given that peoples would need to cooperate on rebuilding, sharing, and in general supporting each other through the intense difficulties of migration and redevelopment. The realization will finally dawn on mankind that courage can mean kindness. People will realize that watching the sun set over the Aegean, while sitting at a seaside cafe, sipping an ouzo aperitif, nibbling on some greens, or some such similar quiet experience in any environment or culture, watching the world go by with or without friends nearby, perhaps is the end-all & be-all of life, when all is said and done. Philosophical thought - for its own sake - may at that point be seen as the "goal" in life, rather than accumulation for its own sake, out-doing others etc. Climate change may lead to mankind becoming more humane, and human- rather than money- or military-oriented.