Meanwhileville USA

Caution. You are approaching Meanwhileville USA.

The Times reports today that millions of retirement-age Americans are starting their own businesses. Some of them got bored with retirement, but many more had been forced to retire, could not find a job or even get seriously interviewed, and finally decided to hire themselves instead.

The WSJ reports today that corporations are sitting on nearly $1Trillion of cash and that they will soon be using that cash to go on a mergers and acquisitions "shopping" spree.

Employees of those corporations being merged and/or acquired might want to begin to cut back on their own shopping. Also, they would do well to begin thinking of starting their own businesses soon. One of the reasons that Wall Street loves M&A, besides the hefty no-risk fees it "earns," is the cost savings achieved by reducing "headcount" after a deal has been closed.  The people who invest 401k and pension dough love these job-busting deals as well. Go figure.

Meanwhile, in Washington D.C. (it is always Meanwhile there) politicians are seriously thinking that incentives will create jobs. Their idea of incentives to counter the lost heads: relaxing the 6.2% Social Security tax for employers who hire for the rest of this year, and, now here is a real incentive, paying them $1,000 if they keep the hired person for a year. That, my friends, is not a typo: $1,000.


The country's corporations have $1trillion of private money to invest, and they are very likely to have huge incentives to invest it where the result will be more jobs lost. Yet, in Meanwhileville USA the best that they can do to encourage job growth, while they are busy reforming healthcare (wink, wink), is this dinky joke of an incentive plan.

Will someone please explain to me once more exactly why Afghanistan and Iraq should adopt our system of government and capitalist economics? Will someone please remind me why a Dictatorship by even a half-wit titan would be worse than having Meanwhileville in charge here? Will someone please tell me why banks cannot focus more attention on lending to entrepreneurs who can actually build new businesses and hire thousands of people?

Everyone is busy dumping on the ethically-blind New York Governor, David Paterson. May I suggest a scary thought: that he is probably more capable than many of our representatives in Meanwhileville or some of the occupants of corporate corner offices, based on the evidence?

It may be a while before we come to a stop and begin thinking and acting like an intelligent, vibrant culture. Meanwhile....