6 posts tagged “pink slip nation”

New York Times today details the White House appointment of an overseer to set compensation for top executives at companies currently on what I like to call "corporate welfare." 

It seems these guys just got a caseworker.  Maybe it's time for a home visit.  In what is shaping up to be the most effective use of the title "Welfare to Work," will the titans of capital finally be subjected to the other ends of their own policies?

Obama Names Overseer to Set Pay at Rescued Companies

"The Obama administration on Wednesday appointed a compensation overseer with broad discretion to set the pay for 175 top executives at seven of the nation’s largest companies, which have received hundreds of billions of dollars in federal assistance to survive."

Snip

The mandate given to the new compensation official, Kenneth R. Feinberg, a well-known Washington lawyer, reflects the federal government’s increasingly intrusive role in the corporate affairs of deeply troubled companies."

Emphasis on intrusive is mine.  Really?  Is it intrusive when Buffet  buys a huge stake in your failing company, and than tells you that things are going to change?  We bailed them out. The tax payer stepped up and gave them more money than any of us will see in our lifetimes, barring a trip to Zimbabwe.  I recall Lehman Brothers begging for a little intrusion.
 
The article points out that Mr. Feinberg, a Washington lawyer, will receive no compensation.  How Socialist!  or Communist!  Or something worse!  We better step in with a little bonus program for Mr. Feinberg or he is just not going to be motivated at all.  Something tells me that if the tables were reversed, private industry would be incentivizing Mr. Feinberg with bonuses predicated on the amount of "fat" he could trim from the backs of the CEOs.  Sounds like a plan!

In fact, I think what these guys need is a little dose of the unfettered, free market capitalism that has come to redefine working life in America over the past several decades.  Let's furlough them, cut their hours, make them pay more for crappier healthcare and get their secretaries to start tracking their postage and use of the copy machine.  Water coolers should be replaced with vending machines (more efficient and each employee is responsible for their own consumption). 

Next up, Obama needs to appoint a cubicle Czar, who will be conducting executive reviews with a consultant.  They will be sending out a memo detailing the need for each top executive to detail their contributions to the company.

The corner office will be gone--studies show executives work much better when surrounded with the monotone environment of gray, padded walls approximately 5 feet in height.  And we will want to make sure their computers are visible to the entire office so we can dock them for any personal time. 

Their healthcare costs are atrocious, and they demand way to much pay.  We can fire them, hire younger workers, secure H1 B visas for a replacement and outsource the rest.  Or just fire 3 out of 4, and make the remaining executive cover the work of all of them: he'll be so relieved and desperate to keep his job that he will be a real company asset. 

Of course, the most efficacious time of the year to fire executives would be right before Christmas near the start of the next corporate year and before bonuses are issued.  But maybe we don't want to waste that long because everyweek's pay is a drag on the company's bottom line.  Of course, when they do receive their Friday notification, they will have an hour to gather their things and receive an escort out of the building. Better not downsize them on a Monday or they might touch down on the hellipad at work on Tuesday, all hopped up on Hennessy and ready to shoot the place up.
 

More financial bloodshed in the yuppie market: seems there is no taste for overpriced gourmet oddities like mango chili vinegar or chocolate covered goji berries--even if they are tasty.
 
Balducci's Makes a Quiet Exit From Manhatten

“Do you really need chipotle raspberry finishing sauce? What is finishing sauce?” asked Barbara Colasanti, a 45-year-old teacher who lives in the West Village, as she perused the scanty pickings at Balducci’s vaulted, marble-walled and echoingly empty Chelsea store at Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street. “People don’t need all this stuff. It’s a lesson.”

The closing of Balducci’s, the World War II-era gourmet market that was once the foremost pit stop for New York foodies, elicited myriad reactions from its customers, who met news of its last days in the city with surprise, sadness and, in the case of Ms. Colasanti, shrugs. Some viewed the closing as tragic, others as a necessary corrective in these newly pared-back times.

“They priced themselves out of the market, it was hubris,” said Ms. Colasanti, who was a devotee of the flagship Balducci’s at Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village, which closed in 2003 and is now the site of a Citarella.

While I still maintain that those stupid bowl bathroom sinks will remain the most iconic symbol of the excess, I suppose the $5 chocolate bar can't be that far behind.

At the risk of adding to the already crowded field of obscure economic indicators such as lipstick sales (up during recessions) and lotto tickets (the poor gamble more in a down economy), I'd like to introduce the cut in Yankee tickets as the latest indication that finance is continuing to take a hit, no matter talk of a pay rebound for Wall Street.

From the NYTIMES, Yankees Slash the Price of Top Tickets
"The Yankees cut by up to 50 percent the price of the $2,500-a-game Legends Suite seats for full season-ticket holders at their new stadium on Tuesday. They also announced that holders of the ticket plans behind home plate would be given an equal number of tickets free."

snip

“A few weeks ago I indicated that in light of the economy we would review the pricing of a small number of our premium locations at Yankee Stadium,” he said. He added that the team had sold 85 percent of its 4,000-plus premium seats.

While New York may be ground zero for the financialization that got us into this mess, the affects of the economic destruction Wall Street set into play is only now starting to impact the source of this mess directly. 

Of course, with the Yankees the cost of "take me out to the ball game" is more like take me out to the cleaners: $2500 bucks a pop is pretty steep.  Something tells me hot dog sales are pretty stingy with this crowd, too.  And for the record, Pink Slip Nation hates baseball, and dislikes hotdogs--though if one must indulge, she endorses Pinks.

Tough economic times can impact all levels of your life.  Not only are many stressing about keeping their job or struggling to pay the rent or mortgage, but even day to day concerns like the food we eat present a layered challenge.  While there are many for whom the challenge remains putting food on the table, the rest of us face the increasingly daunting task of eating healthy at a time when cost and time constraints, coupled with the stress of worry, make it that much harder.

From Newsweek-- The Economics of Eating:

Living off a dollar menu may save you money now, but you'll pay for it in the long run:

Lean times lead to bad diets. Bad diets lead to obesity. And obesity leads to diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses—not now, but sometime later in life, when today's recession is a memory but Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers are still groaning under its weight. "People are eating cheaper, more fattening foods; care is more difficult to find; and as a result we're going to have more and more people presenting at a later stage of the disease process," says Roslin. "If you're concerned about paying your rent and making ends meet, it's very hard to think about the future implications of diabetes and other illnesses."

Of course, even in flush times we face a smorgasbord of bad choices that are cheap easy and plentiful.  But a bad economy can make that worse:

But one of the most insidious health effects of a downturn is in the area of diet. Eating healthily can be expensive and time-consuming—two qualities Americans currently have little appetite for. Hitting up the drive-through is cheap, no-hassle and easy to rationalize; those off-the-charts levels of fat, sodium and sugar feel like they can be dealt with in better days. Owing in part to psychology like this (lower fuel costs helped too), McDonald's Corp. this week announced that it has defied the worldwide economic downturn, posting a first-quarter profit of $980 million, up percent from last year. Burger King's most recent U.S. sales figures were also up 1.6 percent, according to the chain.

Of course it's not a "happy" meal if it will eventually kill you.  So add food and health to the list of major impacts this recession brings home.  But it also may provide an opportunity to finally do something about the public health issue that processed fast food presents.  If you're interested in the politics and policy behind food, check out Recipe for America.  Change can be slow, but as we reevaluate the role of government and the safety net so many depend on these day, it's worth looking at the root of the problem. 
 

One of the interesting things about modern work life is that it brings one into contact with people of different backgrounds, life experiences, races and cultures.  Most importantly, it introduces people of different financial circumstances to one another--even if they aren't always aware of it. 

 

It's an unspoken rule that in America, we don't talk openly about our finances; no one admits to the type of credit card debt the average American family holds.  And yet work often exposes you to subtle cues about how other people live.  The secretary who will be taking an 18 hour bus ride to visit her boyfriend for the weekend because the $250 for a flight is too high.  It doesn't matter the ticket is still $100 bucks and will cost her almost 2 days travel time.  Or the lady who works downstairs who doesn’t have a credit card, but a Nick’s Check cashing card.  Then there is the secretary whose kids are constantly calling to say the electric company has turned off the power, despite the fact that she explains to the electric company every month “I pay my bill on the 15^th, not the 5th." But they just don’t get it so every month they turn off her power for a few days because the bill comes due sooner. 

In one of my first jobs out of college, I find myself very aware of money at work.  Especially when accounting drags its feet in reimbursing mileage and expenses.  I turn in my card with every pay sheet only to find that the check covers only a portion.  Sometimes a pay period will come and go with nothing.  “Next time, it comes next time,” the accountant always nods, slightly annoyed.   

” Since I just got paid for July, will August’s check come in October?”  I ask.  She looks at me, deferring “No.  Next time.  You get paid next time.”  Work currently owes me $110.  I can cover it but it annoys me to have to keep track and remember--least they never repay me.  For many employees, this would be a problem, but I am lucky. 

 

My boss had explained,  “We'll pay for your mileage out, your parking.  If you stop to get a coffee, we’ll pay that too.  No one ever takes me up on it but we will."  He added, "It’s totally appropriate if you get out of a meeting at noon to go get lunch and expect the company will pick it up.“  But as I quickly learned, there is a big disconnect between the boss and the accounting department.  “They shouldn’t make you wait." He told me, "If you need to be reimbursed right away, use a check request to get the money in advance.”

 

All over America, wages have not kept pace with inflation and you can see it at the workplace if you know where to look.  I pay close attention to my coworkers cars--not because I'm particularly interested in horsepower, or sleek lines and name brands, but because of what it no longer signals.  Everything is bought on credit these days, especially vehicles.  The boss drives close to the same car as the secretaries.  A few of the workers have older cars that are a little beat up, but most drive $30,000 or more vehicles.  One secretary drives a shiny new oversize SUV she leases because she can’t afford the purchase.  But as she told a friend one day over a coffee break, when she goes on trips she rents an Escalade from a friend that runs a luxury car rental,  “A one-hundred-and-twenty-dollar a day car, I get it for sixty.”

 

My eye wanders to clothes, purses, shoes--trying to dissect the hidden financial lives of these people.  I know that even the lowest paid among them can’t earn less than 30-40 K yet some of them can’t pay the bills and many carry debt.  What do they spend it on?  Are they just bad with money?  Hidden expenses?  Some of them have had bad breaks.  One woman in particular, I think she just doesn’t know how to deal with money.  She cashes all of her checks at Nick’s check cashing and uses it as her bank.

Gas prices, I am sure, haven’t helped.  Most of my coworkers commute. I was coming in from a conference at 10 am one morning.  As the elevator door slid shut one morning, a woman staggered on.  She caught my eye. “Traffic.”  She pauses dramatically, “Was horrendous.  It normally takes me one hour to get here but it was hell today--took me an hour and a half.”

 
”You know," I calculate,  “If you commute an hour each way every day, you’ve essentially worked 10 hours you weren’t paid for ever week.” 

Her eyes lit up,” I know.” She said, “Isn't it crazy?”

 

I didn’t have the heart to tell her I lived a mile and a half away.  One of the things I am realizing is that most people just don’t think about these things from the perspective of what it is costing them.  She got it, yet she acted like she didn’t have a choice.   

When I first started working at Initech,I mentioned to a secretary that I only lived a short distance away.  “Oh, my god, we hate people like you!”  she joked, calling to an admin assistant.  “But you rent, right?  I own a home, so I’m out in Valencia.”  The other woman lived in Fullerton.  I should have been geographically shocked, but I once had a friend who lived so far away then when she went on job interviews the firms she interviewed with had never even heard of it.  "Monrovia?” they asked incredulously.  Two hours is too far even by LA standards.

*

I remember reading a series of articles in the LA Weekly about living in LA titled “The L.A. Dream Revisited.”  Since most people in the LA area rent, the series contained the curious subtitle “Beyond the house and the yard…the apartment as object of desire.”  It focused on the people who rent, which the reporters struggled with against a backdrop of record home ownership and housing prices.  As Robert Greene writes, “A majority of Angelenos don’t live in cottages, mansions, or tract houses but in apartments, and there is no living unit more emblematic of LA than the three-story dingbat apartment building, parking spaces underneath, stucco covered…” I read with some amusement an article on a couple who have sold their house to rent because it is such a comparatively good deal.

And yet more and more people have added the additional burden of a long commute into the mix.  More and more people have felt compelled to jump into the real estate market, moving further and further out for affordability, never questioning whether home ownership is a good investment when you calculate the cost of commute times and high prices on lifestyle.

 

With the rise in gas prices, the effect has been two fold; a loss of time and a money.  That house now costs many more than they realize.  The job that pays 40 K and takes 40 hours a week now pays less for more time when you factor in gas and the 50 hr work that commute creates.  And that assumes you never come in early or leave late, an increasingly difficult balance to strike.

 

It's the hidden financial lives of coworkers that are changing in subtle ways the American worklife.  It has to affect productivity, and one questions the societal toll as we look to schools to baby-sit and raise the children whose parents are stuck in traffic or the cubicle and can't get back until dinner. Can we reclaim our work lives and roll back the clock?  

Sometimes, the hidden lives of coworkers don't remain so hidden.  The girl who used to cruise to Vegas in the rented Escalade didn't come to work one Monday and rumors swirled about an arrest.  With the skills I'd gleaned from a previous contract job, I looked her up on the LA County jail site: she'd been arrested for check forgery.  Becuase she was in jail and couldn't come to work, she was fired later the next week for failing to come in. 

I left the job a few months later, but sometimes I think about my old coworkers and wonder where they are.  What my boss is doing.  But not very often.  You never know what's really going on in the cubicle next door, or in the millions of cubicles beyond it.  BUt everywhere you look--there's money, a real person, and a story hidden behind them.

Cross Posted at Daily Kos.

Fired up and ready to go?  The typical American consumer is tired and fed up, and some of those lifestyle changes we are seeing in the face of high gas prices, growing inflation and the rising cost of living are quickly becoming habits that may have long-term staying power. 

Republicans are brutally effective at taking advantage of whatever conditions present themselves to push forward their odious agendas, but in the face of the economic squeeze, here's a look at what the situation may portend for the long-term progressive agenda, and an opportunity to harness the positive changes for the advance of society.

First off, MissLaura made an interesting observation in her book review from yesterday of the recent predilection for the term "squeezed."   It seems to be popping up everywhere recently.  And it's a term I think that's specifically in vogue because the overall sense of economic hardship has thus far seemed to lack any meaningful single event. 

Yes, there have been days of Dow droppings, or events such as IndyMac's failure but the catalysts for the ill ease Americans feel with the economy are numerous--and in the face of the lengthy, drawn-out economic clusterf*ck we seem to be in, the term seems highly appropriate.  In fact, the economic situation itself has seemed so diffuse, that most of the responses we have seen have come in the form of more difficult changes in habits and lifestyle, rather than the empty gestures we so often see (Freedom fries anyone?)  People aren't out boycotting France by pouring Beaujolais in the street: they're making the tougher choices to trade in their cars for better mileage or conserving energy in all the ways that Republicans used to ridicule: combining or reducing trips in the face of high gas prices, cutting back on extraneous purchases, or staying home for the summer vacation rather than travel.

But there is emerging evidence that the trend toward conservation, cutting back and a new thriftiness among consumers may represent a more seismic shift in the American lifestyle: maybe this isn't a short term patch after all, but a drastic readjustment to the new reality of American economic life that will extend into the coming decades and maybe even beyond.

From an AP article article by Anne D'Innocenzio, via my own local Ventura County Star:

Consumers Thriftiness May Linger

NEW YORK — Adrienne Radtke plans to keep riding her bike to work even if gas prices drop. Steve Pizzini got rid of his Cadillac Escalade in favor of a 16-year-old Acura and doesn't expect to have another gas-guzzler.
"I had a paradigm shift," said Pizzini, a financial analyst. "I spent the money on a nice car. But to me, it's not worth it. I don't think I will go that route again."

Every economic downturn changes shoppers in some way. But this time, experts say the new behavior — fueled by higher gas and food prices, tightening credit and a slumping housing market — are the most dramatic and widespread that they have seen since the mid-1970s.

So retailers, marketers and investors are all trying to figure out which habits shoppers will keep and which they drop when the economy recovers. 

And the question for us is the implications those choices are going to have on both the current and future progressive political agenda.  From the same article:

According to a survey released recently by market research company Nielsen Co., which tracks consumer habits, about two-thirds, or 63 percent, of consumers are cutting spending because of rising gas prices, up 18 percentage points from a year ago.

The study queried 50,000 consumers by e-mail during the first week of June.

We already know the conservative reaction to the current economic crisis has been to utilize what Naomi Klein refers to in this month's Nation Magazine and her oustanding book The Shock Doctrine as "disaster capitalism," in which "today's preferred method of reshaping the world in the interest of multinational corporations is to systematically exploit the state of fear and disorientation that accompanies moments of great shock and crisis."  We've seen the current calls for drilling in ANWR despite over 68 million acres of current oil leases that sit undrilled, or a demand for tax cuts to the rich and Treasury Secretary Paulson's calls for increasing executive powers for the fed. 

But what does the progressive agenda look like and what possibilities will be open to us as new habits and lifestyle changes are taking place among the American consumer and voters?

Already, we see the public calling for both more energy exploration AND alternative energy funding.

With more Americans riding bikes and flooding onto transit, there is a potential for increased funding and more ambitious transit solutions.

And it is going to drive Republicans crazy, because in the face of all these changes Americans will be confronting, it will expose the true extent to which their ideas are based on divisive but ultimately distracting issues such as race, gay marriage and immigration.  But we will need to be careful to keep the terms of the debate open and honest: while the American people may support both drilling and alternative energy exploration in polls, they won't support it when they realize it as the land grab it is and hear how many millions of acres big oil is already hoarding. 

The changes presented by the current economic situation are tough and challenging, but ultimately the American people are showing through their actions and words that they are ready to take on the tough challenges and do the hard work politically to make it happen.

Open to suggestions of changes we should be pushing for to help make this happen.  Especially things that we might not have previously thought were possible.