It’s been a tough week. There’s really no other way to put it. Layoffs at work have hit closer to home than they ever have before and the overall mood in the office is absolutely horrible. Since last Friday I’ve been slowly hearing about many friends and really good employees that have been given their layoff slips. Why? Because the company has decided to try to outsource as much as they can to improve the bottom line. Did they have to? No. We showed a very good profit last quarter and I believe we’ll continue to see very good returns. I definitely feel a bit bitter about the whole situation and am really kind of mad at my company right now, and I didn’t even get a layoff notice! Okay, enough about that.
I read an article today that talks about a recent Slate commentary from Charlie Munger titled “Basically, It’s Overâ€. If you aren’t familiar with Charlie Munger, he’s been the sidekick of Warren Buffet for decades and I consider him to be pretty damn smart. While you can always find gloom and doom articles out there about the end of America etc etc, I’ve always been impressed with both Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger. They have always seemed incredibly honest and they have a great way of putting things. So, when I read the article, I have to admit, it put a bit of fear in me. I’ve often wondered how long we can sustain the massive debt levels that we’ve seen over the last decade (and beyond). There is not a limitless supply of money or resources in this world and sooner or later all the excess spending at the government and personal level is going to come back to haunt us. It appears that it might be sooner than later. I found the comments about “blind optimism†to be very interesting. While I haven’t studied history as much as I should have, I do know that we’ve seen many societies rise and fall. It’s fairly likely that eventually the US will fall from world dominance and now seems like as good a time as any. With trillion dollar deficit spending, the rise of a global economy and educated global workforce, rising unemployment and consumer debt levels that have never been seen before, it’s not a tough case to make for a rather gloomy future.
On the plus side, I just saved a ton of money on my car insurance……
Anyway, go check out the Yahoo article and the original Charlie Munger article as well. Definitely worth reading.
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Things are definitely going to change. The problem is that everybody thinks it’s OK to move jobs overseas to increase profits, but that’s only a short term fix. Why? Because you gain in the short term but as the jobs disappear, you have people that are unable to buy the goods and services, so in the short term the benefit is erased and we go backwards. Outsourcing greed has changed our way of life. I still have hope that we can eventually find balance before it’s too late. Cheap labor can only get you so far, and unfortunately companies and our government haven’t learned that, but the writing on the wall is getting clearer. I still have hope that our national pride that built us and made us strong is there somewhere, and that we’ll reclaim it before it’s all gone.
I definitely believe that some of the outsourcing and other short term gains are going to have long term consequences. All these highly paid executives seem to be playing the short game to maximize their pay and look good. They know they won’t be around 25 years from now so they don’t have to worry about the long term issues. Henry Ford knew that he needed to employ people for a solid living wage to create the buyers for his cars. While we certainly have global customers of many of our US products, we also rely heavily on US consumers. If you listen to all the talk about our US economy, it all hinges on the consumer spending here. As we continue to create jobs in other countries and kill off all the jobs here, it’s not hard to see dark clouds forming!