34 Random Thoughts About The Economy, Money, and Jobs

“Well, Saddam owed us money.” – Arrested Development

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Maybe I should get more sleep.

It’s nearly Thanksgiving, and the next few weeks will be busy.  Now that The Boy is off at college and no longer engaged in half a dozen activities, we’re down to just having to chase Pugsley around.  Not so busy that there won’t be a full slate of posts – those are planned for the next few weeks, barring a change based on current events or me being distracted by shiny objects.

Today, though, I thought I’d change it up a bit, so here are a few random thoughts on business, economics, and wealth.

  1. The last economic crash was about a housing bubble. The next economic crash will be about our “everything” bubble where money flows faster to chase smaller and smaller returns.
  2. The biggest thing to crash after the next bubble pops will be money. It’s never fun when the value of money drops to zero, since having a little inflation is like being a little pregnant – not much happens at the beginning, but by the end everyone is yelling and screaming and covered in blood.
  3. The next economic crash will be the biggest in our lives.
  4. Or not. I’ve been wrong before.
  5. But I still think 2025 will be interesting.
  6. Most jobs don’t require thinking nowadays – they are a set of procedures and rules based on the lowest common denominator employee. The best jobs like this are at the DMV, which at least allow you to be mean and unpleasant, plus government benefits.
  7. Jobs that don’t require thinking can be paid at the lowest possible wage. If you’re lucky enough to be hired at Old MacDonald’s farm, I hope you can rise to the C-I-E-I-O position, but you’ll have to be out standing in your field.study.jpg
  8. Businesses that do things immorally don’t automatically fail because they do things immorally – many immoral and even evil businesses flourish. It’s only in the movies that the good guys always win.
  9. When I gave career advice to The Boy, I advised him to build expertise and skills in things that couldn’t be done over the Internet or by an outsourced employee working in a country where the native language consists only of vowels, grunts, and humming noises but yet has 355 terms for “waddle”.
  10. Always be worth more to your company than your company is paying you.
  11. “What have you done for me lately?” is a good and fair question from any boss.
  12. The second mouse gets the cheese in the trap. No, I’m not going first.
  13. If it’s choosing between money and honor, choose honor. The bills might be more difficult to pay, but at least you can look yourself in the mirror.  Until the power company cuts the electricity.
  14. Seriously though, choose honor.cat.jpg
  15. It’s the risk that you don’t take that you’ll regret. But you only hear successful people say that.
  16. Never build a business on what you love, since no one cares about medieval Norse poetry. Build a business on what you do that other people love and will pay for.  You’ll learn to love it.
  17. Capitalism works great to allocate spoils in an expanding market. Capitalism fails in a contracting one.  There’s nothing easy about the transition.
  18. Being short of money and optimistic about the future is better than having lots of cash and being pessimistic.rain.jpg
  19. Money can’t make you happy, but you can avoid most of life’s miseries by having a few hundred thousand dollars. Not every one of life’s miseries, but most of them.
  20. Whenever anyone says it’s not about the money, it’s really about the money.
  21. Whenever anyone says cost is no object, you can expect that statement to be proven false once the estimates arrive. Make them pay in advance.
  22. The reward for work well done is more work. This is actually a pretty good deal – we tend to buy video games built around this same premise.
  23. The rewards aren’t linear – the closer to the top, the greater the rewards. But you have to fight the big boss at the end before you retire.
  24. Great bosses are rarer than you might imagine. Most bosses are okay.  Some are awful.
  25. The worst kind of boss is a weak boss. They will praise you when you don’t deserve it and sell you out when you don’t.
  26. Teamwork makes it easy to blame someone else.
  27. In America, when two men meet, they ask “What do you do?” Too often we equate ourselves with “what we do,” while forgetting we get to choose who we are.  Unless you’re Johnny Depp, in which case you are stuck being Johnny Depp.question.jpg
  28. If you find yourself dreading the alarm clock and not wanting to go to work you go anyway. It’s your job.  If it’s too much?  Find another job or retire.
  29. True story: a friend of mine had a sister that decided to retire one day when she was about 30.  She was shocked when the checks stopped coming, she seemed to think that when you retired, the company had to keep paying you.  I think she’s a Bernie® voter now.
  30. Me? I’m trying to start thinking about retirement before my boss starts thinking about my retirement.pounds.jpg
  31. When I was first hired into a job, I heard a statistic that 70% of a typical workday for a typical employee was unproductive. I was shocked that the figure was so high.
  32. Now, after working for years, I’m shocked that the figure is so low. I tried to come up with jokes about lazy people, but they just won’t work.
  33. Meetings often happen just because they’re on the schedule. Look like you’re paying attention and don’t sleep, no matter how quickly it makes the meeting go.
  34. I had a friend who worked at the Unemployment Department who got fired. He still had to show up the next day.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

17 thoughts on “34 Random Thoughts About The Economy, Money, and Jobs”

  1. Who does a list of only 34? Why not a list of 35? Or better yet, 37. The number 37 is prime and prime numbers are very special indeed. Cue spooky Twilight Zone music and go order these books:

    http://www.secretsofcreation.com/

    No, I’m not joking. Really, go order these books and read them. They are serious math books for people who are not mathematicians. And they brilliantly explain that there are some truly profound mysteries embedded in the simple number line of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10……..37…… Reading these books will make you truly believe that Something Is Out There. This stuff didn’t happen by random chance, and since it is in the number system it is embedded in our very structure of reality.

    But enough daydreaming. I’m not gonna win the Clay Prize of $1 million by proving the Riemann Hypothesis about prime numbers that is the newly-discovered window into the jaw-dropping mystery of quantum mechanics and much, much more.

    https://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/riemann-hypothesis

    I’d better get ready and go to work. I need a paycheck.

    1. Rule 34, of course! I’ll give a look at those books – the Clay prize? Those proofs are left for the reader . . . 🙂

  2. Number 6 is my favorite. Most corporate jobs, the awesome and fulfilling careers that cause so many women to dump their kids in daycare, are mind numbingly boring and meaningless. I made a ton of money working in banking and financial services, relative to most other careers, and it was a rare day indeed when my work was accomplishing something worthwhile. This is by design, it keeps us all under tight control so we don’t start expressing naughty thoughts or getting too uppity. I am working on a post about this, many of our “best” careers are wage slave prisons and we are terrified at the thought of losing those jobs we hate because then how would we save for retirement?

  3. 2003, I retired at 51 after my VerySignificantOther got sick.
    We sold everything.
    We acquired a box truck, then converted it to a TinyHomeOnWheels.
    We traveled south America twenty-four months twenty-four thousand miles. Alaska Panama, all over north and central America. Winters in Baja.
    2009, my VSO went off to TheGreatBoondockInTheSky.

    In a few weeks, I turn 68.
    I have a small organic teaching farm near Eugene Oregon.
    I rarely spend more than eighty hours a week puttering around the place, well-pumps bugs greenhouses farmers-markets.

    I highly recommend retirement.
    Although, occasionally, you may wish for the peacefulness of a forty-hour-a-week job.

    1. It sounds very busy, and sounds like time well spent. I have more things planned to do than I could ever do in a lifetime. I’m looking forward to it (some day)!

  4. #6: The people I have dealt with at every county office where I live have always been at least business like, that is, professional; they did their job with a minimum of fuss. I have never had one be rude to me. On several occasions at the building permit office an inspector told me exactly how to do something so that it was correct and would pass inspection the first time.

    2. Honestly, here, too (except the DMV). The Mrs. had to get her license when we moved back here (she was born in this state) and she had to prove that she was married. The irony: she had a previous license from this state after we’d been married, and it was IN THE FILE. The DMV clerk looked pretty smug. Not so smug when I had all of my documents. Nobody passes on the first trip!!!!

  5. John – Very good points. Number #10 is key, and many people don’t understand or forget it. The meme by the pool is priceless.

  6. #32

    I spend a significant amount of my day fixing things that don’t work before I can complete a productive task. And, being a good unionized employee there’s no way I’d use my own home equipment that I maintain to make up some time at home. That would violate… Um.. Employment equity?

    Coming soon, a system-wide training initiative on Race.

    Your tax dollars at work.

    1. P.S.

      I’m going to make graduation cards for the next crop of nieces and nephews with this quote on it, unless you object

      Never build a business on what you love, since no one cares about medieval Norse poetry. Build a business on what you do that other people love and will pay for. You’ll learn to love it.

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