Robert Paterson's Weblog

Boomers - Seniors - Trouble - The Promise that has to be broken

But it's not a pretty picture for the first boomers who are crossing the senior line in 2011. Their prospects look grim and they feel betrayed. That should sound an alarm: "Hello Houston, we have a problem: Washington's payload is ready for launch but the boomers are coming and they're mad as hell."

The vibrant America they were instrumental in building over the last three decades is slipping away. The promised golden years are looking tarnished, and may turn out to be a mirage. Their home values have collapsed, they have scant savings, high debt, and diminishing 401K's as they draw on their retirement funds to pay for their children's education and other expenses. Others can only shudder over threats to their pensions as municipalities declare bankruptcy. And the boomers are right to worry about losing their jobs as the recession lingers and more and more jobs are shipped overseas. While economists tell them they may have to work till they drop they wonder how that will play out, even if they choose to continue to work, when over 9% percent of the population is unemployed and unemployed workers over age fifty are the least likely to find jobs.

Back in Washington, politicians and policy makers are proposing changes in Social Security and Medicare with cuts that include raising the age for Social Security eligibility, cutbacks in services, elimination of coverage for some medical procedures, higher deductibles and co-payments, means testing for Medicare eligibility, sharply lower reimbursements to doctors and hospitals that will surely force hospital closings and the withdrawal of many physicians from the system, which will severely reduce the availability of medical services, and a plan to privatize Medicare. Policy makers and pundits are also questioning the cost effectiveness of end of life care--starkly stated in the grisly title of an article in Newsweek: "The Case for Killing Granny."

So what will the boomers do? For sure, they will not play dead. It's not their history and it's not their style. More predictably they will invoke the Rostenkowski factor. In July 1989 after Congress passed a catastrophic medical coverage bill that was introduced by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Congressman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois seniors cheered at first. But when they deciphered the small print and discovered a surcharge on Medicare beneficiaries for the coverage they went ballistic. On August 17, 1989, the scene of seniors yelling "coward," "recall," and "impeach" while chasing Rostenkowski as he left a meeting in Chicago and struggled to flee the scene was played across America on the evening news. The images of seniors rioting, making threatening gestures, and venting rage terrified legislators. The bill they had passed by a three to one majority was swiftly repealed.

Those feisty defiant seniors were from the generation of the boomers' parents and grandparents -- elderly who were assumed to be submissive and fearful of authority and government. But when pushed they literally came out swinging -- and the terrified politicians frantically ran for cover.

If that generation of seniors struck back, what can we expect from the aging boomers? Keep in mind that the boomers will be the most educated seniors in history, they have high expectations for comfortable living, are computer literate and are adept in social networking.They know how to "work the system" (they were the system), will vote in greater percentages than any other age group (as senior always have), and they carry an impressive resume of protest and noise making.

All this screams out: Politicians beware -- the boomers are coming. Like drill sergeants you may bark your marching orders and expect unchallenged compliance. But this army will march to its own drum beat.

So stay tuned. For in the words of old time comedian Jimmy Durante, "You ain't seen nuttin yet!"

via huffingtonpost.com

The reality is that the "Promise" that underpins western democracies canot be kept. The few young cannot afford to pay for our healthcare or the pensions that we expect and promised to ourselves.

But we Boomers are many and we vote and we can get organized. So we are on a collision course with ourselves. Politicians that try and cut back will be attacked and then some.

But the facts remain. We cannot afford the promise.

So what to do? There can be no easy way out at the political level. We will fight our selves to keep the promise that canot be kept.

But the money cannot be there. So I fear that much that we might do collectively cannot be done. So the truth will come too late and the pain will be at the maximum.

So what to do? Set up your own life to depend as little as possible on the "Promise"

Pork Chicharron - My new fave paleo meal - cheap too!

 

A Disgusting Epidemic

How can we prevent our kids from becoming a statistic?

Should we sugar coat the most profound travesty to human health and happiness and just hope that the intellectual training we’ve provided and the skill of cooking we’ve offered is enough to keep our kids away from junk food when they grow up?

Or should we  encourage strong feelings about the fast food industry, the people who push it, and the people who eat it?

I don’t teach my daughter to hate. God no. Hate hurts the person doing it just as much as the person receiving it. And most of the time there is something to love inside of everyone, no matter if they have disgusting habits or not.

via theprimalparent.com

From a mom - and now what is your view and what do you do to keep your kids safe?

What is your health like - 80% of UK workers ill? What about you?

Eight in 10 British workers are overweight or living with long-term illnesses that limit their productivity, according to early findings of a 25-year study of people's wellbeing.

Poor health and obesity is costing the economy at least £21.5bn a year and will prove a severe drag on any recovery from the recession, the study suggests.

Workers who are both overweight and have three or more health conditions – more than 10% of the total – are taking over three weeks' sick leave every year.

The findings come ahead of publication, due in October, of an independent review of sickness absence, commissioned by the government. That review is expected to warn that growing numbers of workers are living with long-term conditions and need greater support to do so.

According to the wellbeing study, based on initial telephone interviews with almost 4,000 full-time workers, only 20% are not overweight and have no health conditions, ranging from high blood pressure to cancer. Another 20% have a weight problem but no health conditions. But six in 10 have at least one condition and 16%, almost one in six, have three or more.

via guardian.co.uk

This is what is not being discussed in any Canadian election. We do talk about access to more healthcare - but we don't talk about why so many of us are ill and what so many of us being ill means.

It means that our illness and our inability to work will make an economic recovery impossible. As the trends look now, on PEI healthcare and disability costs will far exceed our tax base by the NEXT election. 3 years later it will be more than double that.

This is new. It is new that most of us will enter early middle age really sick and increasingly unable to work.

With a father who died aged 55 and a mother who has been disabled since she was in her 40's I decided last year to take charge of my own health. I did not want to be a burden to my family.

So what about you? What is your health like? Do you think that it is normal to have high blood pressure? To be overweight? To have type 2 diabetes? To have arthritis? Do you think you have no control over whether you will get cancer?

I thought that all of this was normal. But I don't now and nor should you.

Do you think that the system will be there to support you in 10 years time? How can it be? How can we have a health system that costs 2 times our taxes? How can we also pay your pension? Pave the roads? Educate our kids?

It just cannot happen if we think that it is normal that so many of us are ill.

Do you think that medicine will suddenly cure us? They have not so far. What they do is to treat us WHEN we are ill.

Do you have a choice? Of course you do. You can do nothing and you can so put your future and the future of your family in jeopardy. Or you can decide to take charge of your own health and make a contribution to your future and the future of your kids and all our kids.

You can be a kid or a grown up - what is it to be?

Queen Street Commons MBA for very small business - Getting Ready to Export

Ann Worth has a breadth of experience and knowledge that spans more than 2 decades and covers small business, not for profit organizations and large corporate entities. One area of expertise is export market potential and export readiness. Ann is going to take this expertise and apply it to assessing a small business for export readiness. Her  experience as a business owner in specialty food business brings a practical approach to examinng your own small business operations.

via queenstreetcommons.org

Today just because you are a small company does not mean you cannot be exporting. But what to do? Ann will help you get ready.

The Queen Street Commons is set up to help all the very small businesses on PEI become more successful. The QSC Academy is where you can get advice in all areas of your life business and personal and where you can get connected to others who also seek to know more and who share your interests. For we learn not only from the expert but from each other.

You will find more on the Commons Academy page on our website - check out if we have a topic for you - or if you have an expertise that you think may help others.

Junk food - how can we get off it

This addiction to processed food is the result of decades of vision and hard work by the industry. For 50 years, says David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and author of “The End of Overeating,” companies strove to create food that was “energy-dense, highly stimulating, and went down easy. They put it on every street corner and made it mobile, and they made it socially acceptable to eat anytime and anyplace. They created a food carnival, and that’s where we live. And if you’re used to self-stimulation every 15 minutes, well, you can’t run into the kitchen to satisfy that urge.”

Real cultural changes are needed to turn this around. Somehow, no-nonsense cooking and eating — roasting a chicken, making a grilled cheese sandwich, scrambling an egg, tossing a salad — must become popular again, and valued not just by hipsters in Brooklyn or locavores in Berkeley. The smart campaign is not to get McDonald’s to serve better food but to get people to see cooking as a joy rather than a burden, or at least as part of a normal life.

As with any addictive behavior, this one is most easily countered by educating children about the better way. Children, after all, are born without bad habits. And yet it’s adults who must begin to tear down the food carnival.

The question is how? Efforts are everywhere. The People’s Grocery in Oakland secures affordable groceries for low-income people. Zoning laws in Los Angeles restrict the number of fast-food restaurants in high-obesity neighborhoods. There’s the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, a successful Pennsylvania program to build fresh food outlets in underserved areas, now being expanded nationally. FoodCorps and Cooking Matters teach young people how to farm and cook.

As Malik Yakini, executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, says, “We’ve seen minor successes, but the food movement is still at the infant stage, and we need a massive social shift to convince people to consider healthier options.”

HOW do you change a culture? The answers, not surprisingly, are complex. “Once I look at what I’m eating,” says Dr. Kessler, “and realize it’s not food, and I ask ‘what am I doing here?’ that’s the start. It’s not about whether I think it’s good for me, it’s about changing how I feel. And we change how people feel by changing the environment.”

Obviously, in an atmosphere where any regulation is immediately labeled “nanny statism,” changing “the environment” is difficult. But we’ve done this before, with tobacco. The 1998 tobacco settlement limited cigarette marketing and forced manufacturers to finance anti-smoking campaigns — a negotiated change that led to an environmental one that in turn led to a cultural one, after which kids said to their parents, “I wish you didn’t smoke.” Smoking had to be converted from a cool habit into one practiced by pariahs.

A similar victory in the food world is symbolized by the stories parents tell me of their kids booing as they drive by McDonald’s.

To make changes like this more widespread we need action both cultural and political. The cultural lies in celebrating real food; raising our children in homes that don’t program them for fast-produced, eaten-on-the-run, high-calorie, low-nutrition junk; giving them the gift of appreciating the pleasures of nourishing one another and enjoying that nourishment together.

Political action would mean agitating to limit the marketing of junk; forcing its makers to pay the true costs of production; recognizing that advertising for fast food is not the exercise of free speech but behavior manipulation of addictive substances; and making certain that real food is affordable and available to everyone. The political challenge is the more difficult one, but it cannot be ignored.

What’s easier is to cook at every opportunity, to demonstrate to family and neighbors that the real way is the better way. And even the more fun way: kind of like a carnival.

via nytimes.com

This says it all for me

The smart money knows that we are toast

 

At last clarity - Governments cannot save us. It is up to us to look after ourselves.

Neil Perry's big beef with cheap meat

"Also called 'lot-fed' beef, this type of beef is akin to battery chicken and intensive pork farming; the animals don't do much moving around and are usually fed twice a day, so they

gorge themselves when the food is there," Perry writes.

"These cows are sort of athletes on steroids, with the aim to maximise growth so the return is better.

"This can't be good for them (or us)."

Perry, who uses grass-fed beef, wagyu and some specialist, slowly raised (not lot fed) grain-fed beef from Rangers Valley, said that while slow-raised beef was more expensive, there were ways to stay on budget.

"Everybody has a budget and I get that," he said. "But there are ways of dealing with that that can be more about balance. You don't have to eat meat every day."

He said quality meats, as well as fresh fruit and vegetables and quality milk, were becoming harder to find as farming skills were lost.

via dailytelegraph.com.au

You can create the market for real meat here and change farming so that farmers can make a living and the land can heal

Why Banks as we have now ALWAYS get into trouble and what might work better

We have new media as a result of the network. The network and web is affecting all aspects of life. It will surely transform credit and banking too. Here is why and here is what might take banking as we know its place - a much older version of credit but now networked. This matches also the new BIG business - many very small networked to be large

The Economy - Banking and the Future - A Flight to Safety - The chickens are coming home to roost for the "full service bank". While the big banks may be too big to fail, the retail depositor is very nervous. Europe is on a knife edge. There is talk at a very high level about "Ring walling" the deposit side of banking.  We know how weak the US major banks are too. But I have no optimism that reform will be easy. But I do see the depositor looking for safety already. There is a lot of chatter about "maybe I should look to my credit union?". People are not stupid and know that there is a lot of uncertainty abut the big banks and little room now to support them. This I think is the environment that could offer Credit Unions a huge opportunity.

I think it is inevitable that we will see a flight to safety for depositors. This will be a long term flow as the major banks cannot get fixed fast and confidence always takes a long time to restore. 

Absorbing this flow of share will be a challenge though. Can Credit Unions scale without doing what the banks have done? How can they scale and still be rooted in community? How can Trust be maintained? Also how can Credit Unions serve the new market for the very small?

The Complex Nature of the Business World today - Our banks have fully adopted the machine or "Ford" model to cope with the Machine and Ford economy. This worked when we all played by the Ford rules. But here is the problem, Ford Banks" can only deal with the simple because they use machine rules. The Big banks like Big Business. It's easy to follow. They like "simple" like mortgages and credit cards - they are easy to follow.

What they cannot do easily is to get a handle on where most people and business is going today. That is the very small and personal business. This is very complex and being Complex, cannot be evaluated by simple rules

This new economy is based on networks of the very very small. It is emerging quickly and is ignored by banks as they are structured today. These enterprises are very human and so very complex. They don't have traditional assets. They don't operate in a simple linear way. The "rules" don't apply.

These new businesses also sell into a new market. A market that is based on the value of Trust. For a growing number of people no longer trust the offerings of the big. They want services and products that they can trust. Real soap - Real Food - Real anything. These businesses cannot scale traditionally and maintain their key advantage, trust. So they too have to learn how to scale using networks.

For many of us now know that the Big cannot make or offer Real.

Nor will they offer the jobs back. As the big get bigger, they have to shed labour. For in the machine model it is the only way to keep your ROI. You take the real out of your product and you replace your labour with a process of a cheaper source. There is no stopping this process. 

This is the future, just as the Ford Model was the future in 1905.

The Opportunity for the "New/Old Bank - Our banking system has evolved to match the Ford system. A new banking system will evolve to match the system that is itself emerging. 

We don't know how to evaluate this kind of tiny networked business by using the machine rules approach. But we did know how to do this in the past when we had local banking.

In 1900 most business was local and operated like this. They did not use the web to network but network they did. They used face to face locally. Banks developed extensive personal relationships not just with each person - as we talked about on the phone - but participated in the health of these local networks as well. Like a good gardener, they helped their local community get stronger

We used to know how to do this. But of course "it" does not scale if we use a machine/industrial model.

To meet the opportunity of the new market, we also have to discover how to scale this older process. How can we do this? We know that all natural systems are fractal. If we can design a tiny model based on network principles, we can have confidence that we can scale it.

The Pay Off - A Virtuous Cycle of Return - There is a systemic reason why Traditional Banks fail - There will be a systemic reason why a network model will prevent this Ford Banks end up taking on too much risk.One of the reasons why Banks take too much risk is that as they grow, the pressure on the ROI grows too. This is not corporate stupidity but an outcome of the design. In the model, the structural expenses grow in lockstep with assets. All resources have to be purchased. So when earnings get squeezed, they have to take more risk to keep up the ROI. By taking on riskier assets, they lower the threshold for default and so increase the future risk of pressure on earnings and capital. It's a vicious circle. For a while, this can be offset by scale. Hence more mergers. But in the end, there is no where to offset the risk and all the costs are locked in. Today all the big banks own too big a chunk of the risk. This is where we are in Europe. There is no where to run anymore.

But in a real network, most of the resources are attracted in for free. Look at Visa or Interac. If we use a real network, we can find ways of scaling that breaks this connection between structural costs and assets. In a real network, the resources and revenues scale exponentially while direct costs scale at a modest linear rate. Nearly all the value in a network is not on any members balance sheet. As the total network value scales, so each member gets more value. We can see this in staffing. Back in 1995 Visa had 3,000 employees and B of A had a 100,000. Visa did a vast multiple of transactions to B of A. B of A now has 300,000 employees and is laying off 30,000 in a vain attempt to get its costs in line with its revenues.

The OpportunityJust as the Ford Model replaced the local artisan model and was adopted by every organization, so the network will do the same in our own time. It's evolution!

Now she makes sense!