Back in the 1800’s, if an ordinary person wanted to meet the President, he or she could walk in and see him unannounced. One such President was Grover Cleveland. On an occasion he met a little boy who was brought to the White House by his mother. After a chat, President Cleveland, impressed with the little lad, bent down and cupping the boy’s face in his hands said, “I have a very special wish for you. May you never be President,” obviously hoping his wish would spare the boy from the burdens of being President. That boy was Franklin Roosevelt.
Of course, there are people who wish that President Cleveland’s wish had come true, but even so, there are myths about Roosevelt that persist where upon he gets the blame for all of the socialism and financial woes in America.
One myth is that President Roosevelt invented the American welfare state. In fact Roosevelt hated welfare. He started the New deal to get people off relief, a welfare system where people got checks without working. Likening welfare to a narcotic, Roosevelt’s programs required all healthy people to work.
Now he did invent Social Security, but he made it without a means test. Everyone contributes, and everyone gets it. This was done to insure no class warfare. It was also paid for by the recipients as insurance. (I know it's debatable that it's insurance, but that's not the point of this blog).
Roosevelt also did not invent the New Deal. Marriner S. Eccles, a Republican did. A Utah banker who saved his bank in the Great Depression, he came to the conclusion that the basic economic problem in the United States was that you could not have a real consumer economy because too much money on the top was saved, not spent. He also felt people saved too much money on the bottom.
Eccles convinced President Roosevelt that money should be taken off the top income earners and put into the hands of the poor at the bottom. This would generate prosperity. Of course, the fact of the social degeneration this would cause as the first generation receives help with gratitude and the second as a right was not taken into account. Nor was the fact that other Presidents would use this philosophy and not attach work to it like Roosevelt.
So how does this apply to you getting a job? Answer: the type of steady consumerism this invented. Warren Buffet made billions on the philosophy that with our non-self-reliant consumer economy, we will always have to spend on necessities, even in bad times.
This may sound obvious, but we take for granted in the United States the necessities we use like clean water, toilet paper, tooth paste and the likes, things we don't make as individuals. In other parts of the world, necessities are finding food and heat by deforestation for wood to burn at night. Clothes are hand made as cash is non-existent. In America, to a lesser extent, the same can be said about cash in the hands of the poor, except there are programs where the poor receive the benefits of necessities. And while the poor as individuals get little cash directly, the businesses associated with the programs, like grocery stores do. Also, the little cash the poor do get ends up being spent on necessities like detergent as we are no longer a self-reliant people.
So use the skills you learned in finance to pick growing companies to send resumes to; companies that are involved in providing basic consumer products. Some jobs for particular companies involve the same licenses as a stock broker, though these may also require accounting or finance degrees. Be creative. Use your skills to hone resumes and cover letters to the jobs that these companies offer.
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By Jeffrey Ruzicka
Jeffrey Ruzicka is a retired executive of a small company that specializes in industrial water treatment. He lives happily with his wife in Western Pennsylvania and is a contributing writer to Nexxt.
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