Getting Paid To Do Nothing
I can't stand lotteries. They bring out the "being-paid-to-do-nothing mindset." That may sound like fun, but ultimately - to put it mildly - it's not good for the soul.
The recent $600 million Powerball Lottery seemed to indicate that there are quite a few of us out there who like the idea of being paid to do nothing. In some places, people waited for hours on long lines just to get a ticket at the last minute - when the odds of winning had soared to 176,000,000 to 1. (I wouldn't be surprised if lots of these folks were unemployed, or were having trouble paying their rent. Then there are those who simply have too much time on their hands...a luxury I rarely have experienced.)
Okay, maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this. But I've always hated what buying tickets to lotteries implies. If you listen to people talk about it, they seem to focus on what they won't do anymore: work. As for any other plans, maybe they'll talk about buying a nicer house, or helping out their friends and family - whatever that might mean. (On that last point, having worked with some people who won more modest amounts in a lottery - millions vs. hundreds of millions - I assure you there will be no lack of friends and family who will approach you, and rather quickly, to seek some sort of assistance for an endless list of needs, most of which will not include them starving or needing to pay their rent or mortgage. You'd be surprised how many brilliant ideas people have for starting a business or investing in some "can't miss" investment opportunity when they know you've got lots of dough.)
Anyway, while that gigantic lottery drawing is behind us (apparently there were three winners) the thing I've really wanted to talk about for some time now is an interview with the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, that was reported on the Wall Street Journal's front page on February 24th (time flies, doesn't it?). Here's the basic message:
I don't think I'm oversimplifying or exaggerating here. The article reports his message this way:
The recent $600 million Powerball Lottery seemed to indicate that there are quite a few of us out there who like the idea of being paid to do nothing. In some places, people waited for hours on long lines just to get a ticket at the last minute - when the odds of winning had soared to 176,000,000 to 1. (I wouldn't be surprised if lots of these folks were unemployed, or were having trouble paying their rent. Then there are those who simply have too much time on their hands...a luxury I rarely have experienced.)
Okay, maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this. But I've always hated what buying tickets to lotteries implies. If you listen to people talk about it, they seem to focus on what they won't do anymore: work. As for any other plans, maybe they'll talk about buying a nicer house, or helping out their friends and family - whatever that might mean. (On that last point, having worked with some people who won more modest amounts in a lottery - millions vs. hundreds of millions - I assure you there will be no lack of friends and family who will approach you, and rather quickly, to seek some sort of assistance for an endless list of needs, most of which will not include them starving or needing to pay their rent or mortgage. You'd be surprised how many brilliant ideas people have for starting a business or investing in some "can't miss" investment opportunity when they know you've got lots of dough.)
Anyway, while that gigantic lottery drawing is behind us (apparently there were three winners) the thing I've really wanted to talk about for some time now is an interview with the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, that was reported on the Wall Street Journal's front page on February 24th (time flies, doesn't it?). Here's the basic message:
The days of getting paid to not work are over.
He said Europe's vaunted social model—which places a premium on job security and generous safety nets—is "already gone"...""You know there was a time when [economist] Rudi Dornbusch used to say
that the Europeans are so rich they can afford to pay everybody for not
working. That's gone,"
Ah, tragedy! So people will have to get back to working for a living? I hope most of us can live with the idea of working for a living, but after decades of the socialist message being drummed into us, especially in universities in Europe and the U.S., I'm not so sure. I wouldn't be surprised if there a a lot of people who find this idea disturbing - working for a living, that is.
Meanwhile, the real disturbing message is what Mr. Draghi fails to mention.
Draghi is a former Goldman employee - one of the "elite" that the soon-to-be-revived Occupy Wall Street protesters will rant and rave about as the weather gets warmer. As the head honcho of the ECB, he pontificates about the little people out there who took advantage of the opportunity to get paid for doing less. What he never talks about is the governments that created these idiotic socialist programs and convinced people that they were looking out for the "social welfare" of their people. What they failed to mention was who was going to pay for all this socialism. It turns out no one really did.
Of course the rich were taxed and the government used some of that money to pay for all those pension and healthcare benefits that allowed Europeans to work less, retire early and be paid decently, if not handsomely. But there never were enough taxes being collected. So governments borrowed massive amounts of money to support these ridiculous promises.
The entire European "debt crisis" originated in these promises. And for years, those promises got politicians elected. And for years those politicians worked hand-in-glove with their bankers who promised - in exchange for privileges that paid them handsomely - to buy the debts these governments created, debts that everyone knew would never really be paid off.
So now that the you-know-what has hit the fan, Draghi tells the people who believed these promises and voted for the politicians that convinced them they wouldn't have to work too hard anymore that the game is over. And if you read the article, you'll see that his tone is one of shifting attention to the people who somehow took advantage of these promises. What about those politicians and bankers who benefited from the money and power they gained all these years? Draghi is silent on this.
But, let's face it, people did believe these hucksters, so they've got to shoulder some of the blame. It all comes down to being convinced that you can get paid for doing nothing - and that being paid for doing nothing is somehow a good thing.
Can you see why I can't stand lotteries?
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