Green Leaf Report

What is the difference between using a tax cut to create an economic stimulus, and determining where the stimulus money will be spent at a government level? (Answer: A lot!) These are two very different ways of spending huge amounts of government money, and the subject of apparently never-ending congressional debate.  Tax cuts will bring us more money to spend in current markets- does that really get us out of the mess we’re in?

Yesterday I spent a while on the phone with a friend whose telecom employer recently declared bankruptcy.  My friend just accepted another job within that same company that required her to travel a lot more, away from her small children.  She’s a positive person, and continued to say positive things about the company, how she didn’t think she could find another position that let her work from home so frequently, the new certifications she was getting seemed to position her for other jobs, etc.  One thing I asked her, but she talked around, was whether she really felt interested in her product lines and industry.  She plans to spend another 18 months in her new job until her employer is past this bankruptcy mess, before finding another job that requires less travel.  I don’t know why her company should recover, but she’s holding onto the belief that business goes on, whether or not a market exists for the product lines.

We have created a nation of people who like their benefits, lifestyle, seniority and other such peripheral aspects of their jobs, but they don’t really seem to care about the business itself.  How else can we explain the thousands of people who work for Frito-Lay and Coca Cola- are employees at those companies because of their love of bringing highly preserved salty snacks and fizzy drinks to the needy world? Or what reason do people give for spending years of their life working on financial products on Wall Street that no one can understand- does the money created from and lost into thin air generate cancer research funding in some hidden back office? 

Or are we a nation of people who love a lifestyle and don’t really care about the vehicles that bring us to that lifestyle? At a job fair last week, recruiting for wind power jobs, I stood near a woman recruiting for oil and gas positions. We didn’t talk very much, but at one point she turned to me and said, “You know, sometimes I feel a little guilty about what I do…” I nodded and told her to listen to her little voice.

We can drown out our little voices with anti-depressants, alcohol, shopping sprees and various hobbies, but as a nation, we are overdue for re-evaluation.  A deep “recession” could be the best thing we’ve seen for decades.  A possible depression can be just the breath of fresh air our planet needs.  Sure it hurts, and I don’t want to lose my house either, but it won’t destroy me to share a home with my parents or in-laws either. Or share a car, carpool more, walk to get groceries, and dress my kids in hand-me-downs. 

This is our opportunity to let some business fail and rebuild a better market structure.  We need to build better infrastructure for travel, communications and energy. It’s time to clean up the mess from decades of irresponsible business practices, and create jobs in the practice of cleaning and improving again. Let’s embrace this opportunity and come out better, instead of coming out the same, but poorer, desperate, and creating products no one wants or needs.  Imagine how powerful we could be again if we, as a nation, actually paid attention to our next generation’s tomorrow, in addition to our today.