by Barbara Casey | Aug 23, 2015 | Business, Business Book Reviews
Thom Hartmann reviews the “cycles of crisis” in the U.S. since the American Revolution
In The Crash of 2016, Thom Hartmann documents why it is no longer wise to put faith in most elected politicians, or in our once-trusted institutions, especially the public media, banks, universities and the Supreme Court.
Maybe I’m more naive than most people, seeing a half-full glass, but the documentation in Hartmann’s book looks real, sounds scary, and makes me want to find a bolt-hole where I can make my own electricity and provide my own food. Soon.
Published in 2013, The Crash of 2016 outlines very clearly how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer… in fairly predictable cycles since the United States of America was founded.
Thom Hartmann claims that the U.S. is teetering on the edge of the “fourth great crash and war” in its history and that 2016 is the approximate timing for this to occur.
Hartmann presents a convincing case for this, citing eighty-year cycles between the three previous major crises faced by United States: the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Great Depression. Each event involved “horror and bloodshed,” but also subsequently brought about changes to the status quo that allowed America to grow and flourish.
The cycles all involved periods of oppression, followed by rebellion, resulting in reformation. When enough generations had gone by for citizens to have forgotten what happened during the previous crisis, the process repeated itself. Three times, so far, in this country.
Events of the 80 years since the last depression show all the indications that the fourth big crash will come around the year 2016.
The Plan to Destroy the Middle Class
Hartmann names names, too, from the economists who steered the politicians onto a slippery slope to the banksters who engineered multiple government collapses around the globe. He cites the U.S. presidents who pushed corporate agendas over the public good… including those who started with good intentions until threatened by the financial writing on the wall.
What horrified me was the idea that much of this destruction was planned ahead of time, including the obliteration of the middle class. Meetings were held, memos were written, laws were changed. “Economic royalists” effectively rule this country, says Hartmann, who gives examples of all of this.
Instead of a strong middle class with enough money to purchase goods and services, we now have a small wealthy oligarchy on one side and a growing class of people getting poorer by the year on the other.
Hartmann includes an interesting chart from the Economic Policy Institute that compares, graphically, the rates of productivity and wage growth between 1947 and 2010. The two indicators separated dramatically during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Since then worker productivity has increased significantly while wages have stayed essentially flat. When the Reagan tax cuts were implemented, corporate profits now went to CEOs who paid less in taxes than previously, rather than to the workers on the line.
Where to Point the Blame?
Clinton gets the blame for the upside-down balance of trade by removing protections for America’s domestic manufacturing industries. George W. Bush oversaw, not just the entry into two bankrupting wars, but also the deregulations leading to banking panics and bailouts and the housing meltdowns that lost people their homes and jobs.
President Obama, who began his term with such high aspirations, has been the object of a detailed opposition plan to derail any reforms he might put forward to help the middle class in America.
Hartmann says, “With the help of prominent media outlets, the Royalists, now a political minority, would engage in a scorched-earth strategy to defeat a coming Progressive Revolution, even if it meant crashing the United States as we know it.”
Enter the Tea Party, Fox News, the Koch brothers, the Mercatus Center, the American Legislative Exchange Council’s “shadow government,” Citizens United, and the Supreme Court’s decision to call corporations “people,” thus permitting them to finance election advertising (as free speech). Until this time, corporations were seen as legal entities requiring oversight by government.
As Hartmann points out, any foreign company, organization or government could, theoretically, form a U.S. corporation and, thus, influence elections through massive amounts of advertising. He points to Justice Stevens’ 99-page dissent of the Citizens United corporate personhood ruling, where the judge suggests that “the majority of the court had just handed our country over to any foreign interest willing to incorporate here and spend money on political TV ads.”
Thom Hartmann sees the reversal of this decision as one of highest importance (after the crash, when people come to their senses).
Hartmann’s main point is that we no longer have a democracy, as we once knew it. The strings are being pulled by concerns for self-interest, rather than the public good. The pocketbooks of the puppeteers hold more wealth than most countries’ GDPs. And it may be too late to reverse the situation before it all comes crashing down.
After the Crash
The good news? According to the previous 80-year cycles, the crash will wake people up. Some of the awakening is already taking place. In December 2011, for example, the city of Los Angeles called for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood, saying that money was not the same as free speech. Hartmann recommends returning the Supreme Court to its “original” constitutional authority, which it has overstepped.
Fundamentals necessary for a strong middle class need to be addressed as well, including health care, investing in bridges rather than bombs, strengthening the job situation, reducing debt, adjusting the tax codes, decentralizing the power systems, and reclaiming the “commons” of the country, which are currently being sold to corporations at less than their worth.
One suggestion that resonated with me was the concept of co-operatives. Hartmann’s examples of this trend were encouraging and I’ll be researching that topic in some detail.
Thom Hartmann doesn’t portray what life will be like during and immediately after “the crash of 2016,” though he gives clues with his observations of the previous three cyclical crashes. It won’t be pretty, at any rate.
Will we be fighting in the streets over food? Who of us will be living in tent cities? Or garbage dumps? When our money is worthless, what do we have to barter for the necessities of life?
Or do you think everything can carry on as it has been? Has the tipping point been reached? Or will we pull ourselves together to make/demand the necessary changes in the nick of time.
Life in the 21st century…
by Barbara Casey | Aug 23, 2015 | Business, Business Book Reviews
Why would Mike Rowe write a “fake” book?
Profoundly Disconnected by Mike Rowe
Mike Rowe calls Profoundly Disconnected
a “fake book” containing just one single paragraph. Well, that’s true…and it isn’t.
If you’ve seen Mike Rowe’s television show “Dirty Jobs,” you’ll know he has a quirky sense of humor, and that comes through loud and clear in his “non-book.”
In fact, the book contains 154 pages, including a foreword (written by his mother), a proper – and hilarious – preface describing his first “dirty” job, an introduction that explains the reason for this book, the 1-page confession alluded to in the book’s title, the afterword, 35 blank pages (actually half of them are lined), a 98-page appendix of articles and previously published pieces, a 12-point “sweat pledge” and 2 pages of acknowledgements.
You could skip to page 3 and read the “real” book, or sit back in your recliner like I did and enjoy the Rowe-isms we fans have come to know and love.
Mike Rowe’s PR campaign for skilled labor
Profoundly Disconnected is a fundraising tool. While the book revels in sewer jokes, animal fertility quips and various on-the-dirty-job faux pas, Mike’s reason for publishing Profoundly Disconnected is to raise money for his non-profit foundation MikeRoweWORKS, an organization he launched in 2008. Initially started as a message board for skilled jobs, MikeRoweWORKS grew into a foundation, a scholarship fund and a PR campaign for skilled labor and alternative education.
For 8 years, the Dirty Jobs show on Discovery Channel sent Mike Rowe into hundreds of somewhat out-of-the-ordinary job sites where he played apprentice to seasoned workers who knew what they were doing. He worked in sludge, poop and other icky stuff while delivering his quips and describing the frequently interesting inventions portrayed in the episodes.
During the series, Mike gained an appreciation for people who worked hard at jobs that made life easier for the rest of us. As he said, “Somebody’s gotta do it.”
Starting a PR campaign to reduce the stigmas around certain kinds of jobs grew out of his TV show experiences. As Rowe researched further, he saw how vocational education had been downgraded and ultimately removed from most school systems. That led him to question how America would be able to repair bridges or fix old roads without skilled laborers.
And, for the most part, the skilled labor pool is NOT available in the United States at this time. When there are 3,000,000 unfilled jobs existing alongside record-high unemployment, there’s a disconnect, says Rowe.
Further, after decades of pushing students to get 4-year college degrees that teach no job skills, the education system (parents and politicians, too) is now faced with the reality that no one is learning how to repair the country’s infrastructure.
Innovation and technology in the skilled labor workforce
If it sounds like Mike is stuck in the past, that’s not the case at all. He’s tremendously excited about the role of innovation and technology in the workforce. If you remember the show, it featured a lot of inventors and truly creative entrepreneurs who saw a need and found a unique way to fill it.
In Profoundly Disconnected, Mike Rowe gets his message across, with lots of humor, his usual candor, and heartfelt requests that we think differently about the nature of work. In the appendix, Mike revealed some of the more controversial subjects he has tackled over the years, including the OSHA versus farmers “ladder incident” and the “Safety Third” kerfuffle.
Mike Rowe doesn’t mince words and this helps him get conversations going about what’s important to him. And that’s valuing hard work and skilled labor.
He’s a man on a mission and he wants us to join him. If you’d like to help out, here’s the link to Mike’s book Profoundly Disconnected
Currently, it’s only available on Mike’s page on eBay.
by Barbara Casey | Aug 22, 2015 | Business, Business Book Reviews
What you need for your dream job or business is… MORE cowbell!
The authors of The Cowbell Principle were inspired by – you guessed it – the Saturday Night Live sketch called “More Cowbell,” (YouTube link) featuring Christopher Walken and Will Farrell.
In the skit, Walken (playing record producer The Bruce Dickinson) calls for “more cowbell” as the fake Blue Oyster Cult band does take after take, trying to get it right.
Only when Will Farrell (fictional cowbell musician Gene Frenkle) begins to joyously play his heart out, does Walken’s “more cowbell” exhortations make sense… and bring the music to life.
The idea for this book’s content arrived somewhat serendipitously during author Brian Carter’s PowerPoint presentation at a social media marketing conference. He jokingly included a slide about “The Cowbell Principle” as a way to make a point: to succeed at marketing, you need to give people “something they have a fever for.”
And that’s what The Cowbell Principle is all about, whether it’s to land your dream job or make a splash in the business world.
What’s a cowbell (other than a thing on a cow’s neck)?
In the context of the book, a cowbell is a unique, profitable talent that people want badly. It’s something that creates joy for you and other people at the same time.
It’s NOT a cowbell if:
- It doesn’t bring joy to yourself or others
- No one has a fever for it
- It is not valuable to other people
- It isn’t in demand
- It’s a bagpipe instead (something we love to do but don’t have a great proficiency in or that others aren’t demanding)
A cowbell COULD be:
- Something you’ve never done before
- Something that helps people at a transformative level
A cowbell NEEDS:
- Mentoring or coaching, especially by authorities in your field
- Laser focus
- Practical creativity (innovative solutions to real-world problems)
- A strong reason for doing it
- Confidence (being perceived as confident works, too)
- Sacrifice (it takes 10,000 hours to develop true expertise in an area)
- Daily action
- Hard work
- Your service to some segment of humanity
What do you do that gets people really excited? What gets you excited?
Throughout The Cowbell Principle, the authors use metaphors and numbered lists to make their points stand out. For example, they compare a “cowbell” talent to the icing on a cake and ask readers to make a list with two columns.
Label the column on the left “Cake.” In this column, list the things you do that lots of other people could do equally as well.
The column on the right is “Icing.” Here you’ll list those unique things that you do that are irreplaceable.
And, yes, you can have more than one cowbell. Also, your cowbell might be something you’ve never done before.
Identifying your cowbell and your audience
Each chapter includes tough questions to help you clarify your cowbellian talents. I made pages of notes for ideas that jumped up as I was reading. The co-authors – Brian Carter and Garrison Wynn – balance the toughness with positive motivation and practical advice about finding the people who are most likely to connect with your cowbell, once you figure out what it is.
In fact, they write like the motivational speakers they are, like the very intelligent business persons they are, and like the very funny comedian one of them is.
They won’t let you slide by the important bits of their message, either; they hammer home their points with wit and humor.
Defy mediocrity, yes. But, like Will Farrell with his tummy hanging out, it’s okay to look foolish, too, if you provide unequalled music to the ears who love it.
And who doesn’t love more cowbell?
Click here to read more reviews for The Cowbell Principle
by Barbara Casey | Aug 22, 2015 | Business, Business Book Reviews
Why I like The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau
I appreciate books that push my buttons, making me look at things in new and slightly offbeat ways.
The case studies Chris Guillebeau showcases in The $100 Startup are of regular people, mostly in jobs, who unexpectedly found ways to create businesses in unique niches that suited them to a “t.” And that provided really useful products or services to clients who were willing to pay for them.
There’s the story of Michael, a sales professional, who was downsized after years in the same job, Sarah, who created a business because she couldn’t find what she wanted in the stores, and Susannah, whose hobby began generating more income than her day job. All three launched businesses very quickly – with very little startup money.
Michael accidentally became a mattress guru, delivering his products by bicycle. Sarah opened a yarn store that was profitable within half a year and acquired an international following. Susannah taught photography classes for fun… until it paid more than her job as a journalist.
The $100 Startup contains dozens of stories like these, each one motivating and instructive.
Chris Guillebeau researched 1,500 applicants to arrive at the business owners he documents in this book.
Each business owner chosen fulfilled these requirements:
- The business owners were following their passion
- They had low startup costs (mostly under $100)
- Their annual NET income was $50,000 or more a year
- No special business skills were required
- The business stayed small – under 5 employees
A practical… and motivating business book
The $100 Startup isn’t a “touchy-feely” business book, either. The information is practical and well-researched as much as it is motivational. And it IS motivating. That was proven to me by the business ideas that kept arriving for me as I was reading about other people’s businesses.
Guillebeau provides some excellent “to-do” lists, such as “The 39 Step Product Launch Checklist.” And his “Seven Steps to Instant Market Testing” is very helpful for deciding if you really have an audience that will buy what you’re selling.
The book essentially walks you through the thinking process of launching a micro-business successfully, including how to price products and services.
Make sure you read Chapter 8 on product launches, where he tells the very cool story of how he launched his Empire Building Kit while traveling (and blogging) on Amtrak’s Empire Builder train. The launch earned $100,000 in 24 hours and a legion of fans who followed his story about the train ride.
This is why I read his book The Art of Non-Conformity next and pre-ordered his newest book The Happiness of Pursuit. I like the guy’s style.
Click the book to read more reviews
Enriching the world with every business transaction
Guillebeau’s key concepts throughout the book reminded me of Wallace Wattles‘ idea of “enriching the world with every business transaction” by giving more in use value than you receive in cash value for your products and services.
The $100 Startup emphasizes that business owners are really searching for more freedom in their lives and they get it by providing increased value to others. This theme runs through the book and it’s what captivated me… I’m now a Chris Guillebeau fan.
