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As the primary election season gives way to the general election I am concerned that the battle for the White House is still a war of new sound bites hiding tired ideas. Something more is needed.
How We Lost Our Vision
If you think wisdom, integrity, and new ideas are missing in our government leaders, you are not alone. That’s because both major political parties have lost their understanding of the four values America is centered on: freedom and responsibility, opportunity and equality.
America’s promise has always been that you can determine the quality of your own life. Where you start in life does not determine where you finish. We strive to be a society that promotes the key conditions to help us optimize our quality of life no matter what our circumstances. Doing that isn’t easy. It requires constantly balancing four distinct priorities: freedom and responsibility, opportunity and equality. If any one of these values are lost or even de-emphasized, our system is thrown out of balance. People lose confidence and our national mood sours. Today, lots of us are in a sour mood. The ideology of the left screams for personal freedom and equality. The right insists that personal responsibility and unfetter opportunity are America’s only true values. But these arguments lead us nowhere. Both sides are correct but incomplete. The result is a distorted, twisted gridlock of half-baked compromise in action. America’s true center is not the mid-point between big paternalistic government and greed-based free-for-all. Our founders understood it as a higher center. The optimization of these four ideals, not their compromise.
When leaders govern from the high center, they do it from a balance point that gives all of us the best chance for life, liberty and happiness. That’s why, most of the time, leaders who advocate policies that respect all four values simultaneously make the most sense to the most of us.
Jefferson’s “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” was designed to expand in meaning as our vision expands. The question today is, are we really committed to these ideals? As a nation are we really interested in removing the causes of avoidable suffering? Things like substandard education, unaffordable housing and health care, urban and school violence to name a few.
Shouldn’t we all be working to ensure that the real American Dream flourishes not only in the productive, creative expression of our own freedom, but also in our mutual responsibility to create a physically and psychologically healthy society for our children? All of our children?
So now our media-trained politicians tell us they are all for change. But is it really change? A Right-based platform of low taxes and uninvolved government and big military is hardly a plan that accounts for what’s happening in our lives and the world. And Left-based high-tax, we’ll-solve-all-your-problems program sounds like the 1960’s Great Society recycled. Perhaps there’s another way. A way that starts with the fundamentals of our founders. When we view the future through the lens of optimizing freedom and responsibility, equality and opportunity for all, a New American Agenda emerges.
The New American Agenda is simple: we must demand better from our government. Government has the central role in providing a safe society needed for Life and a fair society that is the meaning of Liberty. Together these play the major role in creating conditions for the pursuit of Happiness. According to research from the World Values survey, countries in which citizens report the most personal well-being have most of the following characteristics. As you read them, think about how we’re doing. What direction is America headed in?
1. Citizen voice.
2. Fair and equal enforcement of laws.
3. Lack of violence.
4. Leadership accountability.
5. Dependable government services.
6. Absence of corruption.
7. Effective regulations.
8. Universal Access to Capital, Health care, and Education.
9. Fair and Simple Taxation
10. Strong, Wise, and Good Foreign Policy
Well, that’s the list. If you’d like my perspective on what each one of these 10 factors might mean in terms of policy changes for 21st century America, download the 4th American Revolution excerpt. It’s free. You can read it on your computer or print it. I wrote it to help us consider what advice we might give the candidates who are running for president. If enough of us speak up, in time we may have the country we want our children to grow up in.
Will Marre
To visit American Dream Project’s home page, click here.
To see video blogs on this topic, visit ThoughtRocket.com.
If you hang around the wizards of high finance (investment bankers, bond traders, brokers, and the like) you’ll soon hear the word “monetize.” It’s a synthetic term meaning turning something of value into money. In it’s most practical sense it’s used to describe how a new company like Google can monetize their search engine technology by selling advertising connected to search results. Similarly, we can monetize our golden retriever pet by breeding her and selling the puppies. It’s not a bad thing in and of itself, but when it becomes the only way you look at the world, it transforms you into a scoundrel. Please excuse my shocking example but young girls are being monetized in countries like the Philippines and Thailand by being sold to pimps as young prostitutes by their own parents. You see when we lose sight of the inherent, spiritual dignity of human beings and lose respect for the sacred value of nature we begin to see people and our planet as “things” to be monetized. The reason we need to regulate our financial markets is that the mindset of Wall Street is to turn everything into money. There is no financial language for human, spiritual, or nature’s inherent value.
So now we have a growing economic crisis. Economists hope it’s simply a modest tidal wave. They want it to hit quick and recede so the mess can get cleaned up and they can get back to monetizing things, people, and the planet. Business as usual. But their economic problem is likely to be more like global warming submerging our coastline rather than a single wave. The melting icebergs are the declining values of trillions of dollars of residential real estate. Sure the sub prime mess might be contained at losses of $200 billion or so. But now prime borrowers who used their good credit on bizarre loans that encouraged interest only or even minimum payments that added interest to a loan’s principle every month are in deep yogurt. Eighteen months ago a client of mine was offered a $1.5 million loan to buy an overpriced house in San Diego for $1465 a month! The true 30-year amortization of the loan was over $10,000 a month but not to worry. He was assured he could always sell in 6 months for $2 million. When he asked me what I thought, I told him my mother taught me whenever “my eyes were bigger than my stomach” I would get a bellyache. Yes he could afford $1465 a month; what he couldn’t afford was a $1.5 million house. He passed. Well lots of other people didn’t pass, and they’ve got a looming heartache. Some estimate there are more than $500 billion of over-bloated prime mortgages that are at risk in the next 4 years. If prime borrowers start walking from their homes, the impact on the global economy and our children’s well-being could be staggering.
I, of course, don’t know what‘s going to happen. What I do know is that all this was caused by Wall St. trying to monetize our homes. Yours and mine. The idea was simple. American homeowners on average owned nearly 60% of the equity in their homes in 2002. They represented trillions of dollars of “locked up” value…money. Banks began to offer home equity lines in the 1990’s to get at this value by creating secured, interest-earning loans. But that was chicken feed for Wall St. They got federal regulators to relax oversight of the mortgage market then they trained an army of retail mortgage brokers to sell homeowners on refinancing their old fashion mortgages with a new variable rate, payment option loan to “monetize” the equity in their homes. Free up cash for us to pay for granite countertops, Hummers or just blowout vacations. The financial wizards made billions in fees and we got suckered into thinking there was such a thing as a free lunch. Now we’re paying for it. All of us. Not just those who took out loans, but also our children who are already having a harder time finding jobs in a frightened economy or are paying higher credit card interest for gas they can’t afford.
Could all of this been avoided? Absolutely. The hyper-inflated real estate boom made our whole nation Enron 2. The lack of oversight and regulation of Wall St.’s monetization of our assets is a direct result of a failure of leadership. Leaders of financial institutions and regulators who are supposed to insure our financial markets have integrity completely failed. Meanwhile, today oil speculators have driven the price of oil to at least $20 a barrel higher than real demand says it should be. You see prices of nearly every commodity from wheat and corn to oil is going up faster than demand because financial wizards are now focused on “monetizing” the essentials of our lives. No, it’s not a conspiracy. It’s simply the result of only seeing the value of things as money. When powerful people operate without rules, we all pay more than we should. It would be great if the world could operate on the honor system. But it can’t. We need real leaders who can’t be bought and who aren’t afraid.
And speaking of fear, it doesn’t hurt to look inside. We also have our own inner “Wall Street Banker.” An inner voice calling us to monetize our own lives. To work at jobs we don’t value or to work too long and too hard for money at the expense of our relationships and peace of mind. We need to take care to regulate ourselves lest we become corrupted by our own fears. All of us need to stand for the quality of our lives rather than quantity of what we can produce. We need to own 100% of the equity of our souls.
To visit American Dream Project’s home page, click here.
I sincerely appreciate your many emails and other expressions of encouragement for the messages of the American Dream Project. As you share and forward our blog, our community steadily expands. And that’s what makes it worth it. So, first of all, thank you.
Something exciting has recently happened. Mark Effinger, the founder of Rich Content, which is an internet media company, has discovered our extensive library of American Dream event DVD’s, speeches, and interview video footage. He has asked to “broadcast” them as short (1 to 3 minute) segments all over the world wide web. He has also asked me for daily video commentaries on a wide range of topics that affect all of us ranging from politics, the economy, careers, relationships to book reviews. All related to issues that impact our quality of life right now. Doing these daily video blogs is a big commitment. And, I agreed. So, I converted part of my basement to a very simple “studio” and am starting these test videos. I am more used to talking to live, see-your-face audiences so it’s a new and challenging experience to just “let it rip” in front of a single camera in a musty basement.
The name of the daily super short video commentary is “ThoughtRocket – Ideas that Boom.” And it can be found on a new dedicated website – www.thoughtrocket.com. What you’ll see are short clips of professional video from speeches and on other days you will see my comments on important topics. It’s absolutely free and you can automatically receive new video posts by clicking the RSS link on the home page of the site. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time if it gags you to see my face everyday.
The American Dream Project blog will continue just as it has been, usually once a week. So, if you want to stick with that, you don’t need to do anything. We’ll keep sending you our American Dream Project blog, calling for a new American agenda based on the “pursuit of genuine happiness.”
The voice of the American Dream Project, and now daily videos on ThoughtRocket.com will continue to creatively confront the issues of our time and how our responses can save our future and enrich our personal lives. Please be assured that neither the current American Dream Project Blog, or the ThoughtRocket videos will become obsessed with politics to the exclusion of coaching and comments on enlightening our lifestyle and strengthening our relationships. Although many of you like to engage in the great political debate of today, others of you appreciate a discussion on our personal lives and how to improve them no matter who is in office or what they are doing. We will seek to keep a healthy balance between these two and connect the dots wherever we can.
I encourage you to reply back with your thoughts, hopes and dreams. It is by coming together that we can amplify our individual voices so the future will be built on our united wisdom.
Oh yes, if you decide to view the daily ThoughtRocket videos, I’d love your feedback. I especially need help with my basement commentaries. I had no idea that talking to a camera would be so challenging. No matter what I do, I just can’t seem to get that tiny digital camera to laugh!
Thanks again for your support and comments,
Will Marre
There is nothing you can buy that is worth the price of peace of mind. If you want a dream life, live in a place you can afford, working at a career you love, now. Not twenty years from now.
Last August I wrote about the upcoming “financial winter.” Well, it’s evidently arrived. Suddenly everyone is talking about inflation, job losses, foreclosures, and a drop in consumer spending. This is a big deal. The ratio of household debt to income is now 130%. Fifteen years ago it was 80%. Gulp. In my view, all of this was avoidable, but when we have policies that promote endless borrowing and buying instead of producing and saving, we’re bound to be hit by a blizzard of woe. A consumer economy simply creates a culture of dependence, a producer economy a culture of self-sufficiency. So why not create your own economic world in 2008? One that is largely self-sufficient and independent of the hand-wringing whining of policy makers.
Here’s how I think about it. Get on a healthy financial diet. Financial adviser Ann Morosy (http://www.moneta.com.au) says your fixed costs (mortgage or rent, credit card, car, and personal loan payments, insurance, taxes, etc.) ought to be no more than 40% of your income. Variable expenses (food, clothing, cell-phone, gas, repairs, etc.) ought to be no more than 30%. Fun expenses (vacations, entertainment, presents, jewelry, etc.) ought not to exceed 20%. And savings, 10%. Sounds great, right? But in our consumer economy an increasing number of people pay nearly 50% of their income to housing related costs alone! Throw in gas and medical insurance, and it seems hopeless. That’s exactly what many forces in our economy would like you to do. Surrender to the inevitable. It’s called debt slavery. Wait for 100-year mortgages. It will be part of the “solution” to our mortgage crisis. The idea is like modern sharecropping. All your work will go to pay minimum payments on debt that never disappears. Live different.
The first part of the solution is a healthy financial diet. Get serious about reducing variable and fun expenses to pay down fixed expenses. Be aggressive, steady, and consistent. But even then your financial mountain may seem too huge to save your way to sanity. If that’s true, invest in yourself. That’s right; your best investment is usually in the economic opportunity you have the most control over. That’s you. That’s where the second part of the solution comes in.
Invest in your own earning power. In today’s global workplace you really have no choice but to become an expert at something. It should be something that you’re naturally good at and that holds your interest. It could be nearly anything from being a bookkeeper, tailor, sales person, project manager, and dog groomer. It doesn’t matter much what you choose if you are absolutely great at it. Even in depressions there is a wealthy class that will pay for the great, the unique, and the dependable. When I say expert, I am not saying merely good; I mean you devote yourself to excellence. To be great requires intelligent effort. The formula is learn-do-teach. Be an eager student of your interests and a constant developer of your gifts. Never settle for a final plateau. Next, be excellent on the doing. And finally, teach others what you know. Write, blog, lecture, publish—just tell the world. It doesn’t matter what it is; there is always room at the top of any profession. Hey, the world still needs cowboys. Ty Murray makes millions being a rodeo star. The world also needs train engineers, nannies, diesel mechanics, and copywriters. And the people who are great and dependable at nearly all of these jobs often make close or better than $100,000 a year. (Yes, even world-class nannies. And if you’re already making $100 K but are still broke, don’t despair. My experience is that nearly anyone can triple their income if they are willing to become a truly amazing expert and be dependable.)
The point is it’s easy to get derailed by stress when gas is $5 bucks a gallon and politicians are calling for bailouts for this and that. But don’t be distracted. No one is going to bail us out. At best they can help change economic and trade policy to foster a production economy instead of a consumer one. And that’s what we need to do with our personal economy. Become a producer of your maximum value. And don’t waste money on stuff whose true cost is your own piece of mind.
To visit American Dream Project’s home page, click here.
As I look forward to 2008, I stare into a crystal ball and see…..fog! It could be a real stinker. I just read that the number of natural disasters (flood, fires, etc.) last year was 43% greater than the average from 2000-2004. Real inflation is raging, foreclosures mounting, the war is unresolved, Africa is in turmoil, and of course we have an interesting Presidential election. OK, OK. There is a lot to be stressed-out over. But if we channel that stress energy productively, that’s a lot to be energetic about. No, this isn’t anything like the Great Depression or World War II no matter what the media says. It’s vital we don’t let all the feelings of overwhelm over what we can’t personally change distract us from what we can. Today we have more resources at our personal disposal than ever in history to take control of our destinies and impact change.
All of us have our own hero’s journey to face. We all have a choice. As author Joseph Campbell pointed out, there is only one life story. It is the hero’s journey. This one story is the foundation for all great literature, myth and popular film. The hero’s journey is simple. All of us, individually and collectively, eventually find ourselves faced with something in our life that is intolerable. Or at least should be. One of our chronic challenges is that we are so good at adapting we mal-adapt. We accept that which we should not and tell ourselves it’s normal, or we have no choice. But every day presents a choice.
Every day we can take the coward’s way out or choose the hero’s response.
The coward’s choice focuses on what we don’t want. We invent excuses as to why we can’t change and instead just try to dull the pain of our lives. Usually with superficial pleasures like shopping, sports or T.V. Or dangerous ones like alcohol and extramarital affairs.
But the coward’s choice always results in more loss and more pain, more confusion, a shrinking of vision, a dumbing down of our life.
The hero’s response comes from a vision of what we do want. It always creates a higher-level solution. A hero’s response arouses open-mindedness and a willingness to change. It means questioning our assumptions. It means looking for the grains of truth in new points of view rather than clinging to familiar opinions. Heroic thinking creates hope, optimism, and energy to take us toward a higher level of life satisfaction.
So this is how I am advising myself as I face 2008:
What are the best parts of my life that I want to magnify or expand?
What parts are not working for me?
What thinking, circumstances or fears are holding me back from changing what should be intolerable?
What have I gotten used to that I shouldn’t have?
What am I willing to stop doing that will improve my life?
What am I willing to over-invest in that will make life extraordinary?
If my life was a clear reflection of my unique traits, talents, interests and relationships, what would it look like?
I have found these questions deserve deep, regular reflection. And then action. Pick one thing you want to stop and one thing you want to do more of. Then, stop and do. Keep stopping and keep doing until your life feels more extraordinary. We are alive to grow, so let’s grow. It’s a time to stop just thinking and start doing. A time to turn up the volume on your life.
So no matter the circumstances of our society, or despite the many excuses we could have to give up, we can still make the hero’s choice in our own lives. We can make the difference that is our difference.
That is all we can do. And if we all did it, it would be more than enough.
Happy New Year.
To visit American Dream Project’s home page, click here.
Last night my wife and I took our 80-year-old Jewish widow neighbor to her daughter’s holiday party. It turned out to be a “Noah’s Ark” gathering of human beings who represented the full spectrum of belief and non-belief. We all had a wonderful time. I would call it a celebration of human holiness.
My spiritual journey has been long and intense. I’ve been a Christian all my life. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic schools for 12 years. And I have to say I pretty much enjoyed it. I was never physically tortured or browbeat with fear. What formal religion training didn’t prepare me for was that life would be hard, often disappointing, even tragic and that there isn’t a damn thing we can do to avoid much of the worst stuff. Death, illness, accident, divorce, business or job failures often show up like a blitzing line backer driving you into the ground, spitting in your face and taunting you. Our physical experience of life is absurdly uncertain. But, I have learned that it is neither hopeless nor random. In fact, what over five decades of intense “seeking” has taught me is that my spiritual life is my ultimate source of wisdom, judgment, and energy. It is the literal power to swim in a pool of hope and meaning no matter how often sharks attack.
Today, my wife and I attend a gospel-centered community Christian church. We like it because the pastor is a teacher, not a preacher. We never talk about Christian belief as manifesto of an exclusive club. Rather, that followers of Christ are remarkable for their love, service, and inclusiveness. I like it. The truth is there is much we don’t know. That’s why we seek. I am guided profoundly by my father’s words on his cancer-ridden deathbed. I asked him if he had any “concerns” about his impending death. He replied, “It’s pretty simple son; love God and love your neighbor as yourself. All the rest is just ideas about what the truth might be.”
Seven years after Dad passed away he came to visit me. I have read a lot of “scientific” literature trying to explain away direct spiritual experience. Let me say it’s a complex area of human experience. And emotional humans can easily deceive themselves when their own brain chemistry creates a moment of “enlightenment.” That, however, does not mean all spiritual experience is delusional any more than flawed scientific experiments mean all experiments are flawed. All I can tell you is that Dad was full of an indescribable love and that he affirmed that my legacy was my character rather than my accomplishments. He encouraged me to “fulfill my unique nature.” And not to worry about anything. At all. That happened ten years ago. That’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since.
As for my beliefs, I don’t get caught with what’s wrong with religions. History proves that man’s lust for power, authority, sex and wealth can corrupt any organization. Religion, government, academia, and business are all victims of human weakness. But that doesn’t extinguish the flame of belief.
So why do I celebrate Christmas? For me, the core of Christ’s message is that we are created equal. He upset the thinking-as-usual of his time and culture. He expanded the idea of a “chosen people” with the truth that we are all chosen. He spoke of the supremacy of compassion, peace, and giving. He offered dignity to the poor, sick, and disfigured; to women and people of all races and professions with whom he came in contact. And finally, I believe he gave us the best news of all. That since the dawn of history human beings have done all manner of horrible things to each other. Murder, rape, child abuse, betrayal, war, genocide are but a few. And the suffering caused by flood, famine, death, earthquake, and hurricanes is unimaginable. Christ’s message is that although all of our suffering is real, it isn’t final. It doesn’t matter in the way we think it does. (And I believe if there could be less suffering, there would be.) It’s because what matters is not material or physical because our spiritual identity is immortal. What matters is who we become. What matters is our inner motives. What I understand from Christ is that in an inner-sense, heaven and hell already exist in each of us. If what we really desire is to express love and compassion and to contribute our unique gifts to bless others, we are already in the outskirts of heaven. Or, if our hidden selves seek primarily to simply avoid pain, label unbelievers, and manipulate others to serve ourselves, welcome to hell.
I know I take great risk of angering or disappointing some of you who either don’t believe in any god or those who only believe in a specific version of God. Today, please don’t get sidetracked by that debate. Recently my 25-year-old son, Nick, suggested that God is ultimately very personal. He is what every individual needs him to be. For some, it might be an all-knowing judge, for others, a loving grandfather, or a benign spirit. And for some, God might show up as a scientific order or the energy behind evolution so my beliefs are personal and powerful. But the reason we cannot agree on whom or even what God is is because God is infinite. That doesn’t mean whatever we choose to believe is true. It only suggests that what we call God is much bigger than we know or can know. Beyond our fears that separate us is the quiet assurance of the common thread of transcendent love and we sense that life has a noble purpose. At least that’s my experience.
For believers Christmas represents an infinite God’s ultimate empathy with the human condition. For non-believers Christmas can still be a celebration of a moral and ethical commitment to live for love.
So for me, the message of Christmas is a message of unlimited hope. A way to see reality through the tinsel of materialism. A way to celebrate the inborn dignity of life. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!
Will Marre
To visit American Dream Project’s home page, click here.
My wife and I were flying back from nine degree Minneapolis this past week when it struck me. It was a slap to my own forehead moment. Something I already knew. I had just given a speech to about 300 businessmen and women for the Masters Forum. It was Renewal Day, an end-of-year meeting to consider the 2007-year and look forward to 2008. They asked me to speak on work/life balance. So I gave them “Lifeology: How to Change the World and Still be Home for Dinner.” It turns out that the “how to by home for dinner” part of this speech gets a lot of people sitting up in their seats. Whenever I speak on this topic to business audiences, it’s often the most personal topics that peak the most interest.
The core message of Lifeology is for us to integrate career, lifestyle, and relationships into a seamless life that nurtures all three arenas. The topic that gets the most comments is relationships, particularly marriage and romance. That’s because most marriages are “on fire.” Either they are ignited by constant loving energy or they are burning down consumed by their own toxic smoke. That’s because many, many marriages are the story of the 3 ways of thinking: analytical (reason), practical (common sense), and intrinsic (intuition). When we fall in love we are using intrinsic thinking. It is non-judgmental. It focuses on the uniqueness of the other. It idealizes that uniqueness. A nasty mole is a distinctive “beauty mark.” A baldhead is sexy. We simply can’t imagine anything undesirable about the other. If this blind euphoria of intrinsic thinking is surrounded by planned positive experiences found in courtship, this “unreal” way of thinking lasts about two years. This is about as long as a “Hollywood” marriage. It seems that the romantic feelings caused by our intrinsic thinking about the unique value of the person we love causes positive brain chemicals to host a three-ring circus in our brains. Every day is a good day. Every look, touch, and kiss is a high.
When this feeling dies it’s because practical thinking takes over. When we use practical thinking we ask, “Am I getting what I want?” Feelings of “we” give way to the feeling of “me.” When practical thinking dominates, we begin to focus on our own needs. Things we once delighted in doing for the other, like running errands or cooking a meal, become resented drudgery. We start to negotiate. We demand our relationship be “fair”. Conflict becomes more frequent. Often couples fall into roles of dominance or peacemaking. The person who cares the least has all the power. Bullying, manipulating, guilt tripping become practical (although damaging) strategies to get what we want. When couples’ relationships are ruled by practical thinking, romance evaporates. Loyalty, duty, and habit keep it together. But it’s work. When people say marriages are work, this is what they mean. It doesn’t have to be work. It only is because of how we are choosing to think.
Marriages get really troubled when analytical, black and white thinking becomes the voice that narrates our experience. We cling to rigid definitions of what a husband or wife should be or do. We’ve picked up these definitions from our parents, our religions, or worst, our popular culture. Our judgments become sever. Our spouses are either fair or unfair, mean or kind, strong or weak, pretty or ugly, good or bad. These either/or judgments justify our contempt, our whining, our separation, and our emotional intimacy with others. Marriage becomes a prison we endure. No relationship can thrive when people are primarily using judgmental thinking toward the other. All of us are flawed. When we fall in love, the flaws contribute to our uniqueness. They make us interesting. Using analytical thinking, our flaws make us intolerable.
Today about 10% of existing marriages are mutually viewed as “highly fulfilling.” Intrinsic thinking plays a large part in these marriages. It turns out that romance and even positive brain chemistry can be rekindled in a nearly constant healthy fire when two mature people remain focused and even idealistic about the most positive aspects of the other. There is little effort to fix each other’s flaws because the flaws are viewed as irrelevant. In these marriages, courtship never totally ends. There are plenty of planned positive experiences: thoughtful dates, fun trips, and regular authentic communication. Turns out that for highly satisfying love to thrive there is no substitute for time spent focused on each other. The exact thing we did when we fell in love in the first place.
If all this seems “impractical” that’s exactly what it is. It’s intrinsic.
To visit American Dream Project’s home page, click here.
Wall Street is not Main Street. Not any more. Have you noticed the stock market has malaria? Its temperature is constantly rising and falling causing economists to hallucinate about what tomorrow will bring. Well it’s going to be very different for some than others. You see, the fortunes of large multinational corporations and banks are now driven by very different forces than what drives smaller American business, which employs over 90% of U.S. workers. The U.S. economy can be like an ever-growing snowball hurtling off a cliff while big corporations are sitting in the ski lodge sipping martinis in front of the fireplace.
No, I am not saying that all large company leaders are evil wizards who don’t care what happens to the rest of our economy. I am only stating the obvious. These relatively few big global companies and financial institutions have their own economy. When the dollar plunges in value, these companies are exporting faster than tourists fleeing a Tsunami. This enables them to earn bigger profits in Euros or other currencies. As our economy slows down, they’re expanding. Not in the U.S. but in China or India where the consumer economics are just getting started.
None of this is secret. Nor is it a conspiracy. It’s simply the new economic logic of globalism. Capital, investment, jobs all flow to countries where the greatest economic rewards will be earned. Economics is rational, self-interested, and mostly short-term. This wasn’t so bad when the interests of Wall Street and Main Street were aligned. This meant economic bad news was bad for all of us. So we could all row in the same direction to get back up river. But it could be very bad now that our fortunes are disconnected. Since our biggest economic institutions can be hugely profitable even when our economy is sinking, they can safely row their stockholders to the “bank.” As for many of us, we’re speeding down river toward the falls.
Today, anyone who can face the truth looks at our true inflation rate of food, oil, education, healthcare, and housing running at over 10% and gag. They look at our zero savings rates, our individual and national debt, the growing epidemic of foreclosures. Gulp. The days of using our home equity to buy Hummers like they were Tonka Trucks are gone. According to the Economist, the ratio of household debt to income is 130%. 15 years ago it was only 80%. We are over spent.
The waterfall we’re heading for is called stagflation. Rising prices, rising unemployment, high interest rates, and sagging pessimism. The difference between this version of stagflation and Jimmy Carter’s in 1977-80 is that it may not matter that much to America’s biggest companies. They’ll keep right on making money in foreign economies. Am I overstating the case? Well, perhaps, but consider a vivid example. If you or I make a catastrophic investment, we go broke. If Citibank does, they get $7.5 billion from Saudi Arabia. This is courtesy of the $3.00 a gallon gas we buy every day. Let’s see, we buy gas on Citibank credit cards at 17% interest sending billions to the Middle East so they can buy Citibank. No wonder we’re hallucinating!
No, Wall Street is less like Main Street than it’s ever been. If you have a business you better get busy with your export strategy. For the rest of us, we need to hold on to our wallets. We’re going to need whatever’s in there.
My oldest married son, a father of three, works full time for a household name media company. He has also suddenly become a gourmet family chef. He recently read an alarming book titled The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It tells the story of a catastrophic decline in the quality of our food supply. Seems most manufactured food is full of stuff that makes us obese, messes with our metabolism, and dials down our immune system. Our body can’t even recognize some of the synthetic foods we ingest as food at all. It doesn’t seem to matter though; most of us are eating more calories than a football team at an all-you-can-eat buffet. We all know this. Even famous fatty Charles Barkley recently commented that drinking a 44-ounce soda is like “sucking a cake through a straw.”
Well, my son decided to do something about it. So he and his wife began to plan original, home cooked gourmet meals for every night dinner. They carefully shop for fresh, high quality real food. And then he prepares dishes like wild salmon with white wine sauce and fresh asparagus-squash mashed potatoes. He loves doing it, and his 3-year-old son has amazing food stories to tell his pre-school friends. As for the family, the food shopping, preparation, dining, and clean up has become a positive family ritual. There is only one drawback. It costs more in time and thoughtful effort. It doesn’t matter. Not at all. After he told me what he cooked for Thanksgiving dinner for 20 members of my daughter-in-law’s family, which included ingredients like truffle oil and some sort of caramelized fandango, he said he’s never going back to factory made food. He reminded me that healthy eating can be a great source of intense pleasure when paired with thought and enthusiasm.
It strikes me that this is true of about all forms of consumption. The day after hearing about my son’s artistic Thanksgiving dinner, my wife and I found ourselves in one of Phoenix’s new super malls. What a scene. Store after store with an astonishing abundance of stuff. In many ways the obvious excesses of hyper-consumerism is like obesity. Store after store full of empty calories. Aisles and aisles filled with things we might buy and take home for a few months or years before they end up in a landfill. Our homes are like a halfway house for garbage. But then I thought about my son’s example of savoring quality, uniqueness, and taste. It occurred to me that the upside of all of this material abundance is our unprecedented choice to enjoy prized possessions. If we carefully shop for things the way my son shops for food, our lives can be enriched. It seems that each of us have preferences and interests that bring us continuous, genuine enjoyment. Things that give us a buzz no matter how often we use them. What’s important is that we notice what few things are really important to our conscious enjoyment. For those things we need to carefully and thoughtfully select like a gourmet shopper picking the perfect fruit. For everything else we need to minimize. Consumer obesity occurs when we load up on “door buster” junk just because it’s a good deal. It’s not. Nearly all of us have way too much stuff we don’t derive either satisfaction or utility from owning. It’s just clutter. It’s much more satisfying and fun to be a slow, thoughtful consumer of a few things that matter rather than inhaling the infinite varieties of double-cheese burgers served up by our over-retailed society. More is not better. Better is better. And less allows us to savor the better.
Yesterday I went to a funeral. Mary was the 94 year-old grandmother-in-law of one of my best friends, Michael. Mary is a fearless soul that left a big impression by simply being herself. Her life was the great American Dream. Italian immigrant. Little education. Came to San Diego from Chicago with her husband, Tony, in the 1940’s with zero money. Despite her and Tony’s lack of education, they did what they shined at. Cooked. They opened and ran Italian restaurants. Mary’s secret was her sauces. They were so good you’d want to fill up a hot-tub with one, turn on the jets, climb in and simmer so you could soak in the flavors. You think I am kidding. But once when she sold a neighborhood restaurant, the residents forced her to take it back because the new owner couldn’t get the sauce right even though he was using her recipes! Of course Tony and Mary saved, bought apartment buildings and built a comfortable life from nothing but their own work and mystical talent.
Mary’s funeral was not so much a memorial to her cooking, and it certainly wasn’t about her real-estate prowess. It was instead a celebration of a fearless woman. A woman unafraid to be who she was. To say what she thought with love and warmth, but most of all gusto. She understood how to create rituals for family and friends especially around food and talk. No one ever left her apartment without coffee, a home made pastry and a spirited conversation. Somehow our lives are most often a tapestry of small things that end up being the big things.
What I reflected on at Mary’s funeral is that so many of us are frustrated by our big ambitions: to be rich, influential, famous, or even just get promoted, recognized and appreciated. But life seems to have its own plan for us. I’m sure Mary didn’t know the difference she was making across the thousands of people she served, her friends, family, down to her great grandchildren. What Mary did was take the time to live her life in her way, at her pace. Her personal style was reflected in her total lifestyle. Mary was powerful. Inspirational because she was unafraid. She knew there was one thing she could not fail at if she chose not to. And that was to be herself. Her best self. The big loving self that comes from our deepest part. And of course to make her sauces.
When I work with powerful executives, the biggest problem I find is that they are afraid to be like Mary. So many expectations to meet. So easy to lose track of our own secret recipe. Perhaps our big ambition should be to live minute to minute more authentically. Surely at that we cannot fail. So what’s your sauce?