ADVICE #1 TO GRANDCHILDREN

While fishing with Spencer, my grandson, he asked me a very interesting question.  He asked "Grandpa, what Forrest Gumpisms do you have for me?"  After clarifying that a Forrest Gumpism was a saying like "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.", I gave him a few learnings from my life experiences. 

That was the end of that experience until I recently heard former Governor Mike Huckabee on the Today Show promoting his new book: Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlett".  He made the comment that he felt he had an obligation to his grandchildren to pass on the wisdom he has accumulated over his lifetime.  I reflected on Spencer's question and realized that I agreed with Mike Huckabee.  That is the genesis of this portion of my blog.

In his book, Mike Huckabee says "Like every grandparent, I hope to give even better counsel ("to my grandchildren") than I did with my own kids.  After all, when I was raising them, I was a total neophyte at being a parent and had to learn everything as I went along." I feel likewise, so for better or worse, here is the first installment of several with my advice ( (i.e., Gumpisms) to my grandchildren and great grandchildren:

1. Choose Your Heroes Carefully- It's important to have heroes who you admire and want to emulate.  They are an important part of the maturation process. But, you need to choose your heroes carefully and not choose an empty-headed athlete, pop star, politician, or movie star as a hero.  Choose people as your hero who have made or make a positive, real difference in your life and the life of others.
   
   I have several heroes to suggest to you:
   
   Your Grandmother-From your grandmother, learn how to cope with adversity. Your grandmother is one of my personal heroes.  In addition to being the love of my life and my "soul mate", she is extremely brave. She has battled metastatic breast cancer for almost 19 years.  During her battle she has endured many debilitating treatments and many disappointments.  Throughout, she has maintained a positive attitude and has never once given up.  These are attributes well worth emulating.
   
   Your Great Aunt Donna-From your Great Aunt Donna Weibel, you would be wise to emulate her work ethic.  Even though she has serious health problems, she works 60+ hours per week at two jobs.  You would be very wise to emulate her.
   
   Your Parents-Just like Mike Huckabee's three children, your parents are very different from one another.  But, they have all been successful in their own way.  They are working hard to raise you the best way they know how. Make them your heroes and emulate their best qualities.
   
   Rita Lynch-From Rita Lynch, you can learn the importance of family.  Rita is a friend who has devoted herself tirelessly to her family at a great personal sacrifice. She has been an inspiration to me and is one of my personal heroes.
2. People Are Unique-Treat Them That Way-Every person is a unique set of feelings, knowledge, ambitions, and goals.  It's a difficult skill to learn, but learn to treat each person as an individual, not as a member of a particular group.
   
   When I became the head of the Louisville Office of Meidinger & Associates, I had several administrative assistants reporting directly or in-directly to me.  One of the administrative assistants came to me and said that she wanted to learn more about our business.  I gave her reading material about our business and I encouraged her to take college classes, which she did, ultimately earning a degree in marketing from the University of Louisville. She progressed rapidly within our firm and went on to become Vice President of Marketing for a major firm.
   
   I thought to myself that my personal administrative assistant should emulate the behaviors of the previously mentioned administrative assistant.  So, I gave her reading material to take home at night and I encouraged her to take college courses.  After several months, she came to me and said "Pat, you want more for me than I want for myself."  She went on to say that she wanted to go home at night, forget about work, and enjoy herself. 
   
   I learned a valuable lesson from her.  Don't assume you know what people want for themselves.  Make sure you are helping people achieve their goals, not yours. Treat them as the unique individual that they are. 
3. Learn The Distinction Between Different And Wrong-Just because a culture, technique, practice, etc. is different than what you perceive to be correct, learn to distinguish as to whether it is wrong or just different.
   
   Meidinger & Associates instituted a quality review process of its offices to try to assure uniform quality among the offices.  I was part of a team that went to each of our offices to access the quality of the work of that office. One of my first quality assessment visits was to an office that we had recently acquired.
   
   While conducting that review, one of the actuarial assistants in that office made the comment that I was being too critical of the practices of their office.  She said that I was evaluating their office based on my Meidinger experiences and "Pat, you need to learn the difference between different and wrong". She went on to say that their practices yielded comparable results to the Meidinger way but were just different.
   
   She taught me a valuable lesson.  She taught me to focus more on results and less on process, unless the process was significantly "wrong".  Her advice helped me in later life to better relate to people who thought and acted far differently than me.
4. Don't Fight Too Many Battles Or You Will Lose The War-It's important that if your objective is to win the "war", you should conserve your strength and only fight those "battles" that are truly important. To put this into a easier context to understand, if you have a goal to achieve and there are obstacles to achieving that goal, it is at times best to avoid those obstacles rather than confront them with a direct assault.
   
   The Chairman and CEO of Meidinger taught me this lesson.  I would regularly offer my opinion to him on various issues.  After one of my memos, he called me into his office and said "Pat, you are fighting too many battles and losing the war." He said that by fighting so many "battles", I was becoming regarded as a person who couldn't be satisfied.  Instead, I should focus my attention only on those things that were most important and thereby win the "war"--i.e., achieving my desired goal on the things that were most important to me.
5. Learn The Art Of Compromise-This is a corollary to my prior Gumpism. When you do choose to fight a battle, learn the art of compromise.
   
   As an example, if you are to have a successful relationship with your spouse, friends, co-workers, and people in general, you have to learn the art of compromise. 
6. Learn How To Lose Gracefully-This is another corollary to avoiding unnecessary battles. Some times, you will find yourself in a battle you don't want to fight or, as frequently happens to me, you didn't see the battle on the horizon. In these cases, you have to learn to lose gracefully.
   
   These types of battles frequently happen between spouses, other family, and sometimes friends.  If a compromise is not available, you have to learn to lose the battle so you can "live and fight another day".
   
   You will have a lot of battles with your parents over your lifetime over "boundaries". Your parents will set a boundary and you will rebel against that boundary.  If you can't find a compromise (for example, adhering to one boundary if they ease another boundary), lose gracefully and perhaps that will earn you political capital for the next battle you fight.

That's enough "Gumpisms" for today.  More later.

REACTION TO THE ELECTION RESULTS

Thank God the election is over!! I could not have looked at one more political ad or hung-up on one more political telephone call.  Now if we can just get past the end of the world in December, it should be smooth sailing with no political nonsense until the mid-term elections in 2014.

I'm a fiscal conservative so I'm disappointed in the election results. My impression is that the message sent by voters was "stay the course", which I believe will lead to long-term problems for our country. We can't continue to have trillion dollar deficits. Also, I don't believe we can solve our fiscal by increasing tax revenues alone, we need some serious cuts in Federal entitlement programs, like Medicare. But, we lack the political will to seriously address these programs.

As previously noted, I'm also disappointed by the lack of understanding of the issues by the electorate.  I read the position papers of each candidate on their websites.  I wonder if others did likewise?  I realize I have a greater proclivity to read than others and more time to do so.  But, I wonder how many of the 90+% of the African-Americans and the 70+% of the Hispanics who voted for President Obama really understood the policies for which they were voting or did they simply vote based on their superficial impressions of the candidates?

The Republicans maintained control of the House of Representatives so I'm not overly worried about runaway spending.  Hopefully, they will compromise with Democrats on spending and revenue issues but not "give away the house".  The downside is that I anticipate that little progress will be made in reducing our debt.

To summarize, the election results were as I for told last December--see my December 26 post. I'm sorry to say that my 2013 prediction is that in four years our economy will be in worse shape than we are today. I fear for the economic health of my children and grandchildren.


 

MY BELIEF SYSTEM

To provide context for my blog, I believe it's important to share my belief system.

Some of my core beliefs are:

• People, companies, and governments must "live within their means".  That means that: Income-Savings=Expenses. Prolonged periods of deficits don't work for people, companies, or governments.
• Savings are critical to overcome future financial difficulties which will surely arise from time-to-time.
• I saw first hand the effect that pollution had on the town in which I lived.  I support the efforts of the EPA but believe their regulations need to be tempered with common sense.
• I know this will upset my Catholic friends and members of my own family but I believe in a woman's right to have an abortion.   I greatly value life but I also believe that a woman has the right to decide if she wants to bring a life into this world. I don't believe that the government has a role in that decision.
• I believe that we need support programs for the aged, the infirmed/disabled, and those who are unemployed. But, I believe that we need tighter controls on governmental programs which implement our desire to provide a social support system.  As an example, the current abuse of Social Security disability programs is ridiculous. I also believe that our support programs must be needs-based.
• Government should be small.  I have seen the exponential growth of government over my lifetime and the expense of government has significantly increased as a percentage of our GDP.  If our nation is to prosper, that trend cannot continue.
• Immigration laws need to be updated to reflect the current environment.  I have no problem with opening our borders to all non-criminal people.  More on that later.

These are a few of my beliefs that shape my thoughts about our current environment.

I CAN' T WAIT

I can't wait until the election is over.  I got dragged into two political conversations last week and both made me even more concerned about the direction in which our country is proceeding.

Both conversations were very vitriolic.  Each person expressed hate for positions that didn't agree with their opinions.  I don't see how a consensus can ever be achieved when people refuse to listen to any opinion that doesn't agree with their own.

I know that their have been very contentious elections in the past, even with armed assaults. I may be too optomistic but my impression was that we have progressed as a country to tolerate a wide variety of viewpoints.  I was mistaken.

I heard an interview of Alan Greenspan on CNBC yesterday.  He stated that compromise is necessary for a democracy to be successful.  He further commented that Congress has forgotten how to compromise. I agree.  Regardless of who wins the election, compromise has to be an essential part of the post-election process.  I just hope our elected officials can re-learn this very valuable art.

While I am very opposed to illegal drug use, perhaps we need to issue tranquilizers to every member of Congress.  Or, perhaps we need to advocate the use of medical marijuana for members of Congress so they can learn to "chill out". Then, through their example, other people will do likewise.

UPCOMING ELECTION

I recently traveled with one of my friends and, unfortunately, he turned to politics as a discussion topic.  I knew we had different political views so I had hoped we could avoid this topic on our trip but no such luck.

Our conversation confirmed my dissolution with our political system.  My friend does absolutely no research of the issues and simply believes the sound bites he hears on TV. My friend believes in simple problems to a complex world. 

As an example, one of his grandsons is looking for a high paying manufacturing job. His grandson is 19, has a high school education, and has no meaningful work experience. My friend was lamenting the lack of high paying jobs for people with a minimal education and no experience. He referenced a large, local employer whose employment is down substantially from its peak in the 1960s.

He said that this employer has "shipped all those jobs overseas."  What's interesting is that I know a fair amount about this employer because they were a former client.  Their production levels are actually higher than they were in the 1960s and they don't hire as many unskilled workers because of the use of robotics in their manufacturing process.

My friend further said that another problem is foreign workers producing goods at lower costs than US workers.  He said we need to implement tariffs on all foreign produced goods.  After a discussion of the effect of tariffs on international trade, US consumers, and the probable response of other countries to tariffs, he remained committed to protecting the salaries of US workers through the use of tariffs.

To summarize, I remain skeptical that we can find common ground among our political parties to fix our country's problems when people, like my friend, don't really think seriously about problems and propose quick fixes.

THE ROAD AHEAD?

About 30 years ago, my wife and I began traveling to other countries. We saw people living in very poor conditions: one-room homes made of sticks and sheet metal, dirt floors, no running water, no sanitary facilities, and most people had inadequate food for their family.  I said to my wife " The greatest challenge the US will encounter in the years ahead is how can we raise the standard of living of the people around the world without decreasing our standard of living?  If we don't raise their standard of living, we are going to be constantly engaged in economic conflict or armed conflict."

Unfortunately, we have not been able to significantly raise the worldwide standard of living for many people and we are now seeing the results of our failure to do so:

1.    An increase in illegal immigration to the US;

2.    Increased economic competition from China, India, Indonesia, Europe, and other countries;

3.    Armed conflict in Afghanistan and "dicey" relationships with Iran and North Korea; and

4.    A significant increase in terrorist activities around the world.

I wonder what conditions will be like 30 years from now for my children and grandchildren?

I'm not sure that politicians, the public, or anyone has the solution as to how to increase worldwide prosperity.

I am not a socialist.  I  am a firm believer in the capitalist system. But, it seems to me that it is inevitable that the more prosperous nations (and the US in particular) will have to reduce the standard of living for their citizens if the standard of living for citizens of other countries is to improve.

If my hypothesis is correct that the standard of living for the citizens of the prosperous nations must decline, those nations have a tremendous communications problem confronting them. How do they convince their citizens to sacrifice for the greater good?

How will we:

1.    Convince US workers and the workers in the developed countries that they must accept lower wages to match those of workers with comparable skills and knowledge in China, India, Mexico, Brazil, etc?

2.    Convince our citizens to reduce their consumption of the world's limited resources (oil, food, etc) so that people in other nations can increase their consumption?

3.    Convince the citizens of the "third world" countries that they have to engage in population control if they hope to feed their citizens?

It will be interesting to see what the road ahead is like.

2012 Predictions

As we prepare to enter 2012, I offer my fearless predictions:

1. The world will not come to an end in 2012.
2. Romney will be the Republican nominee for President.
3. Obama will be reelected as President.
4. Republicans will not win a majority in the Senate but will continue to control the House.
5. The Supreme Court will rule in favor of Obamacare.
6. The economy will not improve significantly as Congress will not make the tough decisions necessary to solve our debt problems.
7. European debt problems will continue--politicians in Europe don't have any guts either.
8.  The protests of 2011 will continue into 2012 and will be expanded.
9. The stock market, as measured by the S&P 500, will be flat or slightly negative for 2012.
10. Iran will develop a nuclear weapon and we will impose more sanctions but do nothing else.
11. We will still be involved in the war in Afghanistan.
12. Gas will cost over $4 per gallon as we will not have expanded our domestic consumption due to environmental concerns.

It will be interesting to view these predictions a year from now.  Of course, if I'm wrong on prediction #1, none of the other predictions will matter. The Walrus