A comment came in this morning on this post from April 16th of this year, concerning the massive retirement package given to the CEO at Exxon/Mobil. The writeback was from Gordon at RealCurrents, and he makes a very important point about corporate retirement funding (or the lack thereof) and the whole mindset that seems to pervade American business these days.

The thrust of his observation is that we (Americans) don't seem to like to hold reserves anymore: either we think the rainy day will never come, or we're confident that when it does we can foist our obligations onto others. This leads to spending like there's no tomorrow.

I certainly see this, all around me, every day. Out here on the farm, if we didn't hold reserves we'd soon be broke. Our income only streams in when we sell or trade - there's no such thing as a paycheck. We've gotten to be quite the tightwads: it was a real treat to buy a $20 book from Amazon the other day even though I'm sitting on a healthy five figure bank balance. That's because I realize that the money in the bank today is feed for my cattle and hens and gas in my truck tomorrow - a point a lot of folks don't seem to get anymore. I call it the "paycheck to paycheck" syndrome, and it's bothered me for quite a while now.

I don't do this too often, but since my original post is too old to show up in my current RSS or on the main screen, I wanted to link to Gordon's blog post here. So follow that link: he hits the nail square on the head!

Mon, 22 May 2006 09:06 /Politics | 3 writebacks | permanent link