"The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behavior control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers."
Lewis Thomas
Forgive me for being inattentive to such extra-accommodating bells and whistles, but I only noticed it yesterday night: after you finish watching a TV show's episode or a movie on Hulu Plus, a little window with both facebook and Twitter logos/links appears in the middle of your screen. I take it that this is Hulu's offer to its subscribers to share the news of just procured entertainment experience with their personal social network.
My God! Do people actually do that? Like in self-admiring way, or something? I just watched an episode of "Brooklyn 99" on Hulu Plus. So fucking cool! Or: "Persona" on Hulu Plus, just now. Fucking rad! Attention seeking much? How boring are these people's lives? How heartbreakingly pathetic!
The Frustrated CFO goes to a corporate party and during cocktails mingles with bankers, all kinds of brokers, execs from various industries, business owners, etc. Everyone exchanges cards, handshakes, hugs, or cheek-pecks depending on the length and the warmth of the relationships. Some people talk shop, some solicit business and/or advice, some boast about themselves and/or their children, some discuss the Super Bowl without much enthusiasm (it's NYC after all – we only got excited when we saw our very own Eli Manning in the stands watching the event turning miserably for his brother). Many, of course, discuss the weather – it has been an appropriately cold winter, which makes the clueless schmucks unhappy.
The Frustrated CFO does her duty of actively participating in this business-social hubbub. She doesn't even have her cards out, because in this room everyone knows her and she knows everyone. This is great – no pressure, no awkwardness, no need for ice-breaking: she freely rotates herself around the space joining a conversation here and there, mostly listening to others chattering away.
The party is not very large – just 60 people. So, it is a testimony to the prevalence of the trend that she catches two independent dialogues, which support one of her it's-only-gonna-get-worth observations: that there is no such thing anymore as a "secure" profession.
A VP of Acquisition and Investment from a Commercial Real Estate Brokerage humorously tells a story how at a recent RE conference she met a middle-aged gentlemen with a double-sided business card. One side introduced him as a licensed commercial property broker and another… as a cardiologist. He told her that he'd been a practicing heart specialist for 25 years before getting into selling corner delis, Korean restaurants, and warehouses. People didn't know how to react and, therefore, they snickered – a typical response. Someone said, "I wouldn't trust that guy with my heart."
Well, I've been saying for some time now that HMO's together with malpractice insurers did a pretty thorough job of downgrading the medical profession from one of the highest-earning trades to a regular struggling-to-survive occupation. This is why it's so hard to find a good primary physician nowadays: the insurance pays $8-$25 monthly allowance for PP patients and the only appointment you are allowed to bill to the provider is the annual full physical. Every single privately practicing doctor that I know, including specialists, feels obligated to tell me how he is about to lose everything and how he cannot afford his kids' tuition anymore. But I have to be honest: A cardiologist going into real estate? That was surprising even to me.
In another conversation The Frustrated CFO's corporate attorney was explaining how they had to push one of the partners out because "he wasn't bringing enough business." His arrangement gave him rights to share in the combined profits, while the other partners didn't feel that he was pulling his weight. So, they simply didn't renew his contract. Now, the attorney said, the ousted ex-partner went to work for a law firm that kept all attorneys strictly on the eat-what-you-kill basis. No more sharing in each other's efforts – if you don't bring any business on your own, you don't earn anything at all.
Well, this has been a shift in many partnership-based professions: not just law firms, but also accounting, managerial consulting, architecture & design, web development, advertising, and some-such companies. It's not that important anymore whether you are a good lawyer – it's all about the salesmanship, the "rolodex," the ability to snatch a new client. I keep waiting for the time when these entities start hiring sales execs without the required professional backgrounds and pay them humongous bonuses for selling services fulfilled by someone else.
As recently as 10 years ago parents still thought that as long as they force their children into being a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or a money manager (regardless of the kids' actual talents and dreams), they did their "duty" of making sure that these young men and women were financially comfortable and could provide for themselves and their future families. But it's not true anymore: there are no more cushy jobs, no security in any profession, no guarantees.
"An unworthy and tiresome thing money, at best, but it can at least ease the heart of the lover. When he lightens his purse he lightens his heart, though this can hardly be accounted a virtue, for such giving is perhaps the most insidious form of self-indulgence that is known to mankind."
Radclyffe Hall
From CNN's Breaking News:
"EXCLUSIVE: President Barack Obama told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday that some of the country's largest corporations have signed on to a White House plan to boost the hiring of the long-term unemployed.
'What we have done is to gather together 300 companies, just to start with, including some of the top 50 companies in the country, companies like Walmart, and Apple, Ford and others, to say: Let's establish best practices,' Obama said in the exclusive interview…
Obama's move is in line with his pledge to use executive action on his agenda items that he hasn't been able to get through Congress."
The Frustrated CFO Comment:
Alrighty then! So, this is how we are going to deal with overpopulation and economic stagnation: Instead of cutting down government spendings, ceasing the preposterous fueling of the financial sector, ending the subsidies to failing industries, letting the stock market to finally adjust to its real value, providing incentives to domestic manufacturers for repatriating their productions from overseas, and reducing business taxes in order to reignite small-business growth, the President proposes to create a new form of Welfare, i.e. to force big-time employers to absorb long-term unemployed people - in exchange for some tax credits, no doubt.
Hmm… Not that I'm concerned for the overgrown business superpowers with their blown out of proportion stock values and unjustifiable multi-million-dollar executive salaries, but if they don't experience a labor-force deficit, why would they accept extra employees? That goes against every single principle of a market economy, even in its degenerative form we have right now! And where they are going to employ them? Walmart is planning on opening more super-stores? They are everywhere already. So is Apple. And Ford? Do you mean Ford Motor Company, the one that posts $5-$6 billion losses every year; the one in Detroit – the city declared bankrupt by US judge Stephen Rhodes two month ago? You must be kidding!
And how these companies are going to pay these people? I can't imagine the execs will let their ballooned compensations to be slashed by 80%. So, what then? Everybody, except for a handful of the privileged, will take the same percentage cut to accommodate the unnecessary additions? Let's make most people equally poor, so that everyone can be "employed" and bring home something? Wait a minute! Didn't somebody already tried this experiment? Oh, yes, communists in the socialist camp did! Worked like a charm: destroyed their economies and created hordes of lazy, unmotivated, and unskilled workers! Welcome to your future, people, courtesy of your elected leader!
The Frustrated CFO 