There is a little bit of Economy in all of us (Final)

...Continued from Part 3
Second: The Need for a Servant Force

Yup, that is the harsh reality of it. And I am not one to dice words when it comes to harsh realities. It is better to say it as it is and accept it. For only then, we would be able to solve exactly that problem.

The highly planned, non-money driven, sub-environments as I mentioned in the earlier part would still drain huge amount of resources from the planet. As long as the whole planet does not follow the Path, there would always be dependency on points outside the system and there would be inefficiences that cannot be dealt with, within the above mentioned Enclaves.

This is the most dangerous point of my argument, timeline-wise. The transition phase. The point where 5 billion humans across the planet ask "Why do I suffer now? Why do only 1.5 billion people reap the rewards of my hard labour?" The questions may be mitigated to a certain extent seeing only children experience the joys in the starting phase. But, there is a need to quickly ramp up the size of the enclaves and as more and more self-transcended individuals grow to adulthood within, the excluded parts of humanity as we know it might find themselves in a moral predicament for outside children.

They'd be left outside the rapidly growing utopian Enclaves. They might find themselves having to work to actually support the Enclaves by selling supplies. Yet to avoid the "old think" and current ways of flawed reasoning from entering the Enclaves there'd definitely be regulations and efforts to stop people from freely entering. Worse, there'd actually be a need to stop people entering and exploiting the Non-Monetary Economy within to sell outside for high profits. In fact, there could be popular support (even from within) for these types of acts in retaliation against the notion of people having to "suffer outside". Of course, continued abuse would just undermine the whole system from working as it should. Controlling humans and driving them away from crime is hard when there is much money involved. Especially when there is also mass support. The best way then is to free as many humans as possible from the external economic cycle, as fast possible to enter the Enclaves.

What if... someone else had to do all the work? What if...humanity could replace the need to work thus being able to enter the Enclaves as and when needed? This is where the need for a Servant Force comes in.

Option 1: Androids - Human like robots that make use of artificial intelligence to perform menial tasks. Very cool, surgical and aesthetically sharp solution. Not to mention that it's extremely hard and well there is the whole "maintaining the robot" issue.

Option 2: Humans - Yup, I mean actually asking other people to serve the Transcended individuals. Using cash as a reward (also known as a VERY BAD IDEA), or capitalising on the natural joys of working with self-transcended individuals. An ethical extension to this idea, can be the Guru-Disciple relationship. Disciples having proven themselves in taking care of the Enclaves eventually find themselves one day initiated by the transcended indviduals to start their own lives within. This also intriduces a chance to acclimatise individuals before they're completely immersed into a new Path for their lives.

Option 3: Clones - Genetically engineered sub-humans. Fierce ethical debate here and I for one do not believe this is viable at all. Self transcended individuals of the future would then be saddled with an additional strain on the System that doesn't exist now. Especially, if for some reason those clones ended up being able to reproduce. Remember, we're trying to solve problems here and not trying to "carry-them-forward". Only reason I have it here at all is because recent stem cell research breakthroughs might have made it easier to do this as opposed to creating Androids.

My personal favourite is Option 1 definitely. This is because there would be a force that would continue to be at the control of future Self-Transcended humans. The existence of such a force would also lead to quick satisfaction of deficiency needs in humans. They would be free to pursue higher goals while menial tasks are performed by androids.

Changes can then be made to reduce the dependency on substances and materials. For example without money and an oversupply of every type of essential items, a lot of legality can be thrown out of the window including reciepts. True paperless environments then can exist, saving trees. Sharing becomes natural and no sane person would have the urge to build a big house for just 3 people to live in. Everyone would be content as long as there exists a personal space for them and this would suddenly solve "housing space crunches". And yeah, 6.5 billion people would ALL have comfortable places to stay WITHOUT having to cut trees for years to come. Space efficiency can be acheieved and maybe hey, we might have the interest to do more gardening.

Not only that. Things would start to slow down and the drilling of oil and natural gases could also be controlled; to only be used in long-distance transportations. Alternative energy sources would be the name of the game for localised energy needs. Imagine how much more potential can the human mind have in creating and refining better energy technologies when it is craving for the "peak experience" of having contributed to the progress of Humanity, as opposed to mundane things like 'making more money' and 'becoming succesful' in relativity to others?

Here comes the real "radical" idea. We can also stop useless chemicals from entering our bodies like coffee and tea. (I'd say cigarettes too but hey, we need something to kill people off fast in the society of the future too, right?) So, why do you need coffee and tea anyways? To keep you awake? To give you a 'kick'? (You can do that by getting married and over-sleeping on a school day). You do understand the implications of what I am saying? Whole tea and coffee plantations can be returned to Mother Nature to be rainforests again. Yup, that's how we start reversing environmental pollution. Radical ain't it? A beautiful, green planet without tea & coffee.

When you think about this, you would realise how there is much more unneccesary strains on the System now. Why do we still need leather tanneries with improving fabric technologies? Why do we still need polythene plastics or even paper bags for that matter when you can make bags out of re-usable materials like 'rattan' (and they last longer too)? Detergents and cleaners too can be replaced with natural stuff when we stop feeling that chemical solutions are "better". That is easily done. No commercials to influence people to buy. Oh yeah, the gravestone of the printing and advertising industry is an ESSENTIAL foundation slab for the society of the future. Remember. No one needs convincing to part with their money then.

Back to Option 1. The guy who creates the Androids has to share my vision of Utopia (or have a grander plan himself). He shouldn't sell them to households or businesses or governments to make profits. He should use them to create the Enclaves straight off the bat! But, wouldn't this be a hard sell to his stakeholders? I say "No"

Businesses

1) Tax breaks for businesses that invest in Androids and Tax-holidays for businesses that invest up to 40% of their profits directly into Enclave construction efforts.

2) Exclusive citizenship in the Enclaves of the Future, for the CEOs. (CEO's having the money to satisfy Deficiencies Needs would be closer to operate in the Self-Actualiser state, easily reaching the Self-Transcendence state)

3) Activities within are not going to be generating, transfering or consuming money. Profits can still be made supplying to the Enclaves in their initial stages of internal inefficiencies.

Non-profit, Non-Governmental organisations

1) Among the first things these Enclaves would do is repatriate orphaned, homeless children from the streets. It needs people without ties, without 'excess baggages' totally dedicated to fulfilling the vision. The Enclaves must SERVE the society from Day 1.

2) All NGOs, NPOs have an agenda in the betterment of humanity anyways. The Enclaves as a focus of their efforts would definitely benefit them.

3) There are no Governments within the Enclaves. LoL... where else can they operate to their heart's content?

Governments

1) The Enclaves would be a symbol of the future. Any government that has the nerve to call itself "developed" should be interested in developing these symbols.

2) Politicians would definitely think about the flow of resources that would be coming in to support the construction of the Enclave and how they can take their 'piece of cake' from all the action. Yeah, let them feed while others are busy freeing themselves. The things you own, end up owning you - Tyler Durden. Fight Club.

3) The United Nations could finally come to good use, by becoming evangelists for the Enclaves, in getting fundings to flow to developing nations as well.

I personally prefer a new Planetary Organisation to be in charge of the Enclaves. Yeah I'd prefer the term "Planetary" as opposed to "Global". The latter is very much tied into the current global economy, that causes global financial meltdowns affecting citizens globally who are all on a one way street to a global catastrophe, the day global warming passes the climactic 'tipping point'. You get the point.

We don't live on a GLOBE do we? Nope. Not a simple sphere. Yeah, for the longest time we even thought it was flat. And NO, it does not suddenly become "flat" one day because Thomas Friedman woke up and realised that every individual now can contribute to the global economy, thus rendering the US economy irrelevant. Read his book (and throw it away) someday. But, at least it got him thinking about how the global economy needs to go green. At least someone is thinking along the correct action plans. Reasoning is flawed though.

It is now high-time we use the ACTUAL word. We live on a Planet. A Planet is an increasingly complex, wonderful system the smaller you become. Each and every "flow" has an origin and a destination on a globe. In a Planet though, everything eventually goes back to where it started. Every particle has a way of flowing back to its origin, even if it takes thousands of years for one revolution.

All Self-Transcended individuals would be able to see these Nature Flows and know exactly how to tap, harness and harmonise with them. These individuals would also operate under the full realisation every move has a butterfly effect which touches ALL particles within the Planetary system; thus taking decisions for the greater good everytime.

They may need a servant force to keep their efforts focused on the big picture first, but to avoid how some popular fiction portray humanity as becoming lazy (which I believe would pretty easily happen), there has to be one Final clause in the Vision of the Enclaves. The reliance on Androids MUST be phased down and eliminated as time goes on. Humans have to embrace their chance to equally contribute to Nature's Flows at all levels...

...Going back to Dawn of Man

Every human in a tribe having needs to be met to live; contributing to get what was needed.

Except now, at the Noon of Man.

Every human on the Planet got what each needs; triggering a process of contribution to Life, aided by thousands of years of scientific understanding and technological advancements.

Leading to a glorious Dusk...

There is a little bit of economy in all of us (Part 3)

(Continued from Part 2)
...As beautiful as it may sound, we are unable to move towards this Utopian idea, even in small phases, at least until 2 things take place.

First: The Need for a Unifying Paradigm Shift
Yup. Frankly said, something else other than MONEY that has the power to glue humans together and trigger a movement to discard the idea of 'money' as obsolete. This in my mind would most definitely have NOTHING to do with race or religion. Their very nature being divisive between the "are" and "are nots". Except if you've read Dune. In Dune, whole new unified religions arise once humans become spacefarers and discovered other habitable planets. Facts and figures collected in space, forced discarding of earth-bound "divisive" truths and beliefs. Thus a new unifying "world religion" may be able to bring people across the globe together, but without strong focus, continued opposition from contemporary religions would dilute and maybe even reverse its unifying impact, breaking it apart from within.

Another way to approach this puzzle is to figure out what motivates people to change. Between extrinsic motivators, fear is stronger than greed. Someone may be inclined to perform better due to a threat as opposed to a cash reward. Yet, a unifying principle built on a "Focus of Fear" (Pestilence? Tyrant? Climate shock?) so universal that it affects everyone to forget their Focus of Greed (Money) is pretty questionable in these times. Also, if the focus of fear was created by Man, then others would only be driven to think how to solve/ destroy/ undo the fear, thus freeing themselves of the fear, instead of changing. Example: Doctors worldwide have been running around trying to kill the HIV virus for years, instead of spending that time and energy to educate and guide fellow humans to change/control their sexual behaviours which would have been a better solution in the long term.
Intrinsic motivators are then better able to pull everyone through change. This means giving either a sense of Duty or a sense of Joy internally that drives the individual to change. Intuitively, it is better to sell the idea of a new unifying pradigm shift to the young crowd with a "Focus on Joy" and the mature crowd appealing to their "Focus on Duty". I am not saying it doesn't work the other way round or it doesn't work in tandem. Just that this sequence would feel natural for both groups to adopt in changing and accepting the new unifying paradigm and eventually forgetting the importance of money.

What could be a successful unifying pradigm shift? For that I looked at Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Briefly it states there is a hierarchy of 5 needs for humans, where each of the first 4 Deficiency Needs leads to the next as they are satisfied; from the basic Physiological, to Security, to Belongingness and finally to Self-Esteem. As we can see, all these can be satisfied by the presence of money in our lives. With money we can eat, then have personal and financial security. This leads to having a lifestyle attracting friends, family, collegues and potential partners, who then make us feel good. These and our self positive feedbacks solve the deficiency needs in layers 3 & 4. Having satisfied all these the 5th layer is open where the Being Needs of Self-Actualisation lie. That comes from needing to be completely balanced, centred and knowing what we want to achieve and create as individuals, without it being an objective to satisfy any of the lower deficiency needs. Thus the importance of money for an individual diminishes.
There is a lesser famous but equally ground-breaking part of Maslov's work in 1969 where he mentions beyond the Self-Actualised layer; there exist "Self-Transcended" individuals. Maslow's landmark 1969 article, “Theory Z” (re-printed in Maslow's basic text on Transpersonal Psychology, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, NY: Viking, 1972) has one interesting comment to make about Self-Transcended individuals:-
["Transcenders are interested in a “cause beyond their own skin,” and are better able to “fuse work and play,” “they love their work,” and are more interested in “kinds of pay other than money pay”; “higher forms of pay and metapay steadily increase in importance.”]

I don't completely understand the definition of the words he uses, (having no access to his full text) but the first point to note is that Maslov mentions mystics/holy men are not the ONLY self-transcenders. There are other mature individuals who display these qualities as well. Secondly, he coins the term "peak experiences" and "plateau living" as elements that satisfy their Being Needs. It hints self-transcenders are driven by higher goals and operate in a serene and holistic mode. Lastly, he mentions how we need to study, understand and de-mystify them in order to strive and achieve what they have shown us as the currently observed pinnacle of humanity. The excerpt below underlines what is the first step to identify a unifying paradigm shift:-
[“Human history is a record of the ways in which human nature has been sold short. The highest possibilities of human nature have practically always been underrated. Even when 'good specimens,' the saints and sages and great leaders of history have been available for study, the temptation too often has been to consider them not human but supernaturally endowed…. If we want to know the possibilities for spiritual growth, value growth, or moral development in human beings, then I maintain that we can learn most by studying our most moral, ethical, or saintly people.” — Abe Maslow.]

I believe this is a logical argument hinting at a valid path for humanity to explore and to realise its own highest potential. The dire need to study the currently rare self-transcended individuals who are pioneering the next era of humanity, and to learn HOW they achieve their states of being/bliss, cannot be understated. It must be revealed that this is not a pseudo-religious experience but something that all humans are capable of achieving. Imagine a whole generation of young people focusing on the joy of exploring and embracing a lifestyle of higher morals not because it is preached by some religion. They do it after all their deficiency needs are already satisfied in highly planned, non-money driven, sub-environments where they are guided by the few existing self-transcended individuals along new paths of self-discovery. Having experienced the joys, later as adults they'd be able to focus on the duty to maintain, enhance and expand the same environment for youths worldwide to be guided in generations to come.
Each generation then is slowly removed from our way of life, ascending to a different level of understanding. Hopefully relooking at the impact of Humanity on Earth's systems. Finally devising ways of decreasing and even reversing the long term pollution we caused in the last few hundred thousand years, since we started standing upright. Harmonising ourselves with Nature; thus reversing the self-induced onslaught of Naraka on Earth and constructing the avenue leading to Svarga on Earth.

Second: The Need for a Servant Force
Continued in Part 4...

There is a little bit of Economy in all of us (Part 2)

(Continued from Part 1)
...And thus started the Economic Cycles as we now know it.

The elements were there. Taxes, Money and its supply controlled by the government. Products and Services becoming more and more complex as individuals became more and more interested in showing off their wealth; Art, Servants, Architecture, Fashion, Land, Timepieces and a whole host of things unrelated to living life came into play. Wants became more important than Needs. At this point, Premium pricing was natural. After all, how can you price something which people didn't really need? And it was socially "ok" to still want it even with people demanding unreasonable prices. Using Debt you could acquire something that was beyond your normal means and pay for it later. Debt was no longer used to address basic needs. It was used to address wants and gambling on investments (wanting more money).

Greed grew. Greed flourished. Greed trapped humans into a cycle of wanting and guilty pay back. In some, greed drove them to search for more riches to be made theirs. The Spanish set sail exploring crying "for God, Glory and Gold!
GOD: I've purposely omitted this can of worms from this commentary. It would have come into play back when I said the first Services industries appeared. Shamans being able to 'understand' the mysteries of life and educate the olden Warriors.
GLORY: Humans would have heard about the heroes who were kings. Heroes who were brave in the early economic wars. Rich people who lived their life in luxuries. They would want that for themselves as well. Their name to be in history (and there were still many places to be explored in the world then anyway)
GOLD: Need I say more? Sigh...

They colonised lands. Taking local wealth back to their kingdoms in triumph, as what their patrons expected. They then sent labourers and convicts to the new world as pioneers to establish the rules and lifestyles from the conquering countries. As if that wasn't bad enough, a worse phenomenon was that expanding businesses in home countries sent products to the new lands to be sold. They didn't care about the need / want / relevance of the product they sent. What businesses knew is that there is a market and products must be mass produced and sold. Increasing production, and thus profits. Managers were encouraged; given huge bonuses. So, managers rinsed and repeated this ad nauseum. They had to. It was the only way Investors (ie: People who were earlier patrons with lots of money, who wanted more money, and would have fired any management who failed to deliver) could be appeased.
The process repeated until all markets got saturated. Nobody wanted to buy and everybody saved money instead. No amount of pestering convinced people to buy because they had whatever they needed & wanted. Yup, ladies and gentlemen!! Supply had FINALLY caught up with Demand and there was excess supply, with factories still mass producing. At that point, production lines came screeching to a halt. Warehouses were bursting at the seams. Consumers switched to cheaper alternatives. Marketing budgets swelled to hide poor forecasting calculations. Wages were cut, even though workers were being paid overtime just days earlier. Eventually many experienced loss of jobs. Leading to further decrease in consumer Expenditure, and a vicious cycle ensued where at the end, the economy contracted.

In finance terms, a particular country's economy is said to be in recession if contraction happens for 2 quarters consecutively. 6 months. In my definition, I think the recession starts the moment EVERYONE is making insane profits. This means consumers across the board are hoarding; which then leads to the fact that VERY SOON they are going to stop buying. This is where companies still make mistakes. While they have very aggresive ramp-up strategies; No one thinks about phase-down strategies. Everyone says the other guy is going to bite the dust and I am going to take his share so I have to STILL ramp-up in a slump time. Besides, that's the only way I can keep the profits from last quarter going strong. Greed.

But, a phase down across the board is what is needed at that point. A PRODUCTION phase down. A sales TARGET phase down. A marketing BUDGET phase down. A managerial KPI phase down. And yes as counter intuitive as it sounds, a WAGE phase down across the board. Think about it, how can a company go into survival mode in a slump time if the people want to be paid as they were being paid in the boom time? Can you imagine a ship crew experiencing storm in the middle of the sea eating their rations at the same rate? The other alternative is of course to lay-off workers. But, this is a very irresponsible way for businesses to deal with the crisis. "For a few to continue eating as much as they did before the storm, we'd like the others to walk the plank into the middle of stormy seas" ?
At the least, they should get to a port and drop the excess crew off. A responsible way of retrenching staff. Leave them in a safe place where it's more feasible to look for a job. This is where Government I feel can actually help by having a rotation of projects. When the economy is going into a slump, launching a flagship project where the Government hires workers to work on it would be a great boost. Money would go straight into the hands of needy citizens and there would be a demand for daily products that arise from their employed pockets. Companies can make it easier by actually helping their employees find jobs in batches, with the Govt.

Of course, those who feel they are not interested can always do their own thing. Sadly people would do their own thing because of the ultimate need of humans. To live and to be safe. To be cherished and remembered. To be ambitious and leave a mark. They would try their hand at entrepreneurship / freelancing to make lots of money. Again, this is a situation that can be avoided if people did not need to buy what they needed. The developed economies have got the right track in mind by having Social Security schemes. Citizens unable to work are paid Social Security money by the Governments. They just haven't went on to the next step. Instead of giving people money to lift their burden of buying, the people should in fact given those items they want to buy for FREE; thus releasing more and more people from the need and "trappings" of money. I am not talking about abolishing the concept of money. I am talking instead about humans having enough to live. Then, having money would purely be for pleasure and the pursuit of happyness (pun intended!). People would then look at money as the tool it really is. Economic cycles would not dictate our livelihoods.

As beautiful as it may sound, we are unable to move towards this Utopian idea, even in small phases, at least until 2 things take place...
(Continued in Part 3)

There is a little bit of Economy in all of us (Part 1)

Hey Guys,

At the dawn of time, Everybody had needs to be met to live (Demands). Everybody could contribute to get what was needed (Supply).

In the olden times, there was this barbaric act of just abandoning or killing lame / disabled babies. That was a way of getting rid of unwanted strains on the System. There will not be a Demand which is more than the Supply that it can give. In fact, a lame baby would not have been able to defend itself and thus create the situation where others in the tribe were endangered, while trying to protect it as well.
Eventually, love and compassion stayed the hand of some and these lame children grew knowing full well that they were not able to hunt/gather/carry as much as the others. They had time to apply their brains, observe, analyse and come up with better ways of contributing. They would always have had strong opposition from the Warriors who were physically contributing to the tribe. But, eventually by becoming shamans and medicine men and toolmakers, these drain on resources were suddenly suppliers for a different set of needs. Previously unexplored, and non-essential to life sustainment (Wants). Thus, the Services industry was born.

This could have been the first instance of a serious physical Demand-Supply gap in the System. The gap would have existed earlier when not all people got the food they needed in the earlier System. That would have drove them to their first fight for food, water and land (hunting grounds); the first economic wars for limited resources. Once both sides realised that it was mutually harming chances of survival, either one would have given way or both would have decided for a mutual cease-fire. Either ways, the first barter Trade would have happened at this point with a little bit of early Diplomacy / Alliances thrown in.
This developing serious gap though could not be solved with just fighting and winning. It also required more than trade, especially in a large locality where they were in total power, with no others to grab from. This scenario along with developing methods of farming would have set off the first Agrarian economies. People realised that they could get more done if each other found his own type of specialty farming and then traded with others his excesses. internal trade flourished within communities. Of course, when you Specialise you get more of a better product and markets were there to facilitate trade.

The first Markets would have sprung very soon after the first barter trades happened. Trading posts which eventually became centres for their empires or smaller points in between empires that served as Consolidation Points of that particular area's specialty merchandise. This is where true Marketing would have started as pricing, positioning, product and with manual promotions.
To control everything, the inherent power structure from the tribal era would have evolved to support Monarchy systems. This system along with the people who support the monarchy would have formed the first Governments. An important part of Governments would have been the introduction of Taxes. People who lived in one area had to give something to the local monarch as a token. This also would have been a carry over from tribal days where the chief was given the "lion's share". A real example, Siam's (present day Thailand) holdings had to send them a "Bunga Mas" every year. Bunga = flower; Mas = gold. It literally was a symbolic little tree and flowers made of gold. Another meaning for Bunga = Interest (as in the interest paid on debt) presumably for living on the "borrowed land" of Siam.

This of course led to an interesting point in the development of economy as we know it. The discovery and manipulation of precious metals, Monarchies, inequalities inherent to barter trades, the need for tax collection in a form where lots of vegetables didn't go bad in the Royal coffers. All these would have led to the introduction of the Currency system. Money.
And so now we had Supply & Demand for Specialised Products & Services focused at the Markets. Exchanges were being done using Money and Monarchs were being paid Taxes by everyone in their domain. They needed someone to keep track of everything and Accountancy was born. The day that happened, every transaction done outside the "books" became the Black Market. Untaxable, untraceable yet physically money flowed from one to another for goods/services that never really "existed".

But, traders were more preoccupied with the money that was flowing in to their coffers. They could not run around and carrying all thier wealth in precious metal coins. They became the source of money that fed the black markets. Most of them found themselves in a pool of their own blood at the end of such transactions. Banks would have been formed at this point. Strongholds that kept everyone's valuables for a Fee. Eventually, seeing all those valuables in there just lying being unused would have led some clever banker to go on a "shopping spree"; Investments. Or it might have led him to think it would be ok to give money to someone who needs it and ask him to repay higher later (before the original owner came to reclaim it); Debt + Interest. The art of managing all this would have been Finance, as it is a different creature from only record keeping like accounting.

Now, there is a little philosophical bent to my story. I feel that as humans until that point in History we would have had our natural greed. Greed to survive. Greed to eat more. Greed to live in better conditions. Yet without focus, there was no strength in this human emotion to trap humans. Once Money was there. It was easy to see, to feel, to hear its 'jingle' during sleep. Anyone who had money had everything. Monarchs being the prime example and then the traders (proving the common man could have it too). The presence of a focus for greed amplified the emotion. Humans (who are great hunters!) became trapped in the hunt for money; only for money's sake. Children picked up the wrong message from their parents. Instead of hunting for enough food, enough land to live on and enough security; they were driven to hunt for money not really knowing the reason. Not really enjoying the fruits of the labour. For having money is pointless if you don't know what you want the money for, right?

And thus started the Economic Cycles as we now know it.
(Continued in Part 2)

The current economic situation

Hey guys,

Yeah, it might be a little bit too cliche to talk about the economy when all blogs could be talking about the very same topic. In fact, I feel there could be a lot of financial experts, and others blogging about this with a vengeance... They could take the stance of:-

the Naive: It's not that bad...there's just a minor correction and things will pick up... wha..* ..!~ Another flying shoe and this one doesn't miss. People realising they get only two-shots to "shoe-boo" their favourite politicians accurately, have started practicing.

the Know-it-all: It's just as I've been telling all this while. Nobody listened to me yesterday when I started saying it. Nobody is listening to me today. The economy is so bad now that it can only get worse. It may get better on a short term (<-this sentence embedded, to be a loophole if situations suddenly pick-up). But, I still maintain.... bla bla bla...

the Politically Correct: It is a tough in these turbulent times for the employment-challenged. We see equity-challenged companies going belly-up(..oh? ..wha? ..sorry...) I meant, forced to take legal recourse to protect their debtors from the inability of the management to grasp reality.

the Management: Please understand that the multi-million dollar bonus I got is in no way related to the way the economy is behaving at the moment. That is for my past performance, ensuring the company behaved as it should. We would definitely have not taken the bonuses if we did not earn it (...using your blood, sweat and tears. Oh, and I am going to fire you now)

the Employee: ....

And yeah, the employee most probably got it right.