Tag Archives: GenNext

Work is Dead

Posted on by

Hello, Grandmas and Grandpas. Ever wonder why your kids are living at home? Or why, when they do make money, it's one-shot, scavenger deals that pick away at the edge of the economy? Our kids – gleaners, snatching the crumbs?

For an answer, take a look at the corporate executive. No, not the entrepreneur, still in charge of the company he founded twenty years ago. No, not even that new political god, the small business owner – he (or she) is so busy with cash flow that there is no time for vision. I am talking of the CEO of a publicly traded company, hired by the Board of Directors and responsible to the shareholders.

The job of this CEO is to systematically devalue work.

Why, you ask? Remember – the time horizon for a CEO is the next quarterly report, which is never more than three months away. He could spend his time dreaming a vision for the future. But – especially in these hard, competitive times – he doesn't dare. The bottom line has to look better three months hence and his only choice is to cut costs. So he merges, divests, moves work offshore, and fights unions. He cuts costs, because that seems to be the only way he can protect the shareholders.

But work, and workers, are more than just a cost to the company. They are also its most important asset. A generation ago workers were loyal, dedicating their life's work to the company that kept a roof over their heads and food on the family table. That loyalty is long gone. Today every worker is stressed as his salary and benefits suffer the Death of a Thousand Cuts. He can't quite voice it, but he knows his company thinks he is replaceable and essentially worthless.

So we have the Occupy movement and We are the 99%. We have to do something to stop this race to the bottom. But what?

We might start by asking Who are the Shareholders?

As I wrote March 18, the shareholder is most likely a hedge fund, which owns a stock, on average, for twenty-two seconds. The decision to buy and sell the stock is made by a computer algorithm.

So the Board exercises its fiduciary duty and hires a CEO, who in turn exercises his duty to the shareholder, who turns out to be no one, a chimera, a moving target.

Our work, our careers, are being devalued by an algorithm, for the profit of a very few. Sadly, no one else is in control.

Tea and The Street

Posted on by

The media are abuzz this week with comparisons of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. Many are eager to point out similarities, particularly in the trajectories of their media coverage.

The fundamental difference between them, however, is being ignored. The Tea Party is a local phenomenon while Occupy Wall Street has become a global movement.

The Tea Party proclaims government as the one true bad guy. Reduce government and cut taxes and all will be well. Occupy Wall Street, meanwhile, is accused of having no message and no demands – no recipe for reform, no cure. The two movements are speaking different languages – and now as the cause spreads this is true literally as well.

Bill Frezza, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said on NPR's Morning Edition (October 4, 2011) that “business is not run for the benefit of the country.” Nor does the corporation create jobs, he said, except indirectly as a consequence of growth. In fact business regards job creation as “expense creation” and therefore something to be avoided. The segment (and transcript) are here: Venture Capitalist Warns of Job Creation Myths. This is our local, Tea Party language.

The language of the global movement has its root in humanity. It speaks in the voices of ordinary people whose gifts are unwanted by the economy. It takes as given that society would be better off if these gifts could be given.

The challenges that face humanity are larger than the individual, larger than the corporation, perhaps even larger than the United States of America. They will not be solved today, this quarter, this election cycle, or even this generation.

Gen Give

Posted on by

document.write(" serif;">I call them GenGive.

Will they vote? Don't count on it.

Will they work? Yes – both hard and well. But not at a job the old economy offers them.

Will they consume? Yes, but in a way designed to change and even dismantle our consumer economy.

Who are they? Privileged and poor. 18 to 40. Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters of Boomers and Gens X, Y, and Next. What distinguishes them is that they don't listen to us. They don't buy in.

When we say finish your degree or start in the mailroom they smile and say sure but they see clear-eyed what we do not: our top-heavy social structure doesn't want them.

The Ivies want super-people purpose-bred from birth. The economy wants super-people, too. Only the best will do. So either you're super or you work as an associate in soul-destroying work for less than a living wage.

They, the living middle, are having none of that.

They understand their job is to give – to do good honest work with good intention, bringing to the world the fruit of their God-given gifts.

What is their manifesto?

 

Let me do the work I was designed to do. Let me, as Aristotle would say, desire the right thing, and do my work well.

 

Whether this faltering economy offers them the opportunity to do so is a matter of indifference to them. They will make their own opportunities.

 

Chris