We Here At BOOJUM! Frequently Post About 'Manglement'
Because in conflict there is drama, and it's always nice to see the truly incompetent get their just desserts with custard and cream added.
There is the other side of this coin, which we on the blog relate a lot less often, because the able performing well doesn't have much impact. Art!
Take this case as an example; a Canadian passenger jet crashed at Pearson Airport, with none of the 80 on board badly injured. Epic, yes. News, yes. Exceptional and unusual. also yes, since around 100,000 planes land safely every day. A 0.000001% statistic.
Thus it is with good, capable management, where people in positions of power are competent and experienced, or listen to those more qualified than they are.
This is by way of a lead-in to a Quoran post I've been saving for months, where a man with decades of management experience laid out what companies and businesses do when efficiently run when they get tax cuts. Art!
This is not to say that they operate with a sound moral compass, because in South Canada (where this person was posting from) the bottom line is still the top item.
DON'TS
The business won't hire more people. Since it's being efficiently run, it has just enough people to cope with daily and longer-term demands. More people would merely cost more whilst sitting around in the break room, kibbitzing. Or chatting, as we say here in the UK. Art!
"Imagine that - they pay us to gossip!"
Existing employees don't get raises. Why would they? These raises would only come about via negotiations, which might happen once a year or less often, unless staff turnover becomes unacceptably high. Art!
Tax cuts are not used to fund the creation of new factories or industrial plant, because what would the business do with the excess product that they cannot sell since there is no demand for it? New facilities might very well be constructed as part of a long-term business plan, but not on a whim with a tax rebate.
DO'S
Publicly traded stock, if it exists, is bought back. Examples of these publicly traded businesses are Apple and McDonald's. Art!
Apple's share value price over a year
What happens if there are less shares around? The ones that are around increase in value, which makes investors happy happy happy as their dividends increase, or they choose to sell on a high. As you can see from the chart above, the temptation to keep holding on to shares in the hope and expectation that their value increases is considerable.
Harley, the Quoran giving these examples, also stated that the C-Suite executives in these businesses get a major part of their income from stock options, possibly as high as 75 - 80% per annum. Thus keeping the stock value high means they can afford that new Lear Jet instead of opting merely for a Rolls Royce. Art!
CAUTION! You can only choose one
The fat cats continue to thrive. You see, the business's expenses just decreased significantly, thanks to those tax cuts. This means a performance-related bonus for the C-Suite executives, as long as they observe the "DON'T" list above. Art!
Like the Borg, major businesses like to assimilate other, smaller businesses. To do this, they need operating capital, and may use the windfall of tax cuts to buy up another company. Before you fist-bump at the prospect of being acquired by a global giant such as PayPal or HP, remember that these businesses already have an established corporate structure, with their own HR, Finance, Sales, IT, Utilities and Payroll. This means the smaller company's versions of the above are all 'let go', that is, fired. Thus tax cuts lead directly to staff cuts. How poetic! And there are countless Reddit stories on Youtube about companies being bought out, with the new owners promising that everything will remain the same, which promise lasts about twenty-four hours.
There you have it, how businesses prosecute their affairs and how they may deal with rebates from the government, none of which are going to earn the grunts at the coalface any more moolah. I did warn you about morals and scruples at the beginning of this Intro, so you can put your Aggrieved Conscience back in the cupboard, ta*.
A Bit Niche Even For Us
Yes yes yes, a further reference to Korean culture as it was over a century ago. Specifically, literature. We've mentioned "Tears Of Blood", that being the original title published almost 120 years ago, which was treated as a new type of literature at the time. Art!
Also mentioned in the same paragraph was another novel, which sounds like a rather fantastical satire, to wit: "Proceedings of the Council of the Birds and Beasts". Asian Aesop, at a guess as birds lack mutually-opposable digits with which to wield a pen, even if they are blessed with the wherewithal for endless quill versions.
The guess will have to remain. Your Humble Scribe cannot find any description of this novel, nor the author, An Kuk-Son, when Googling. Is it so long out of print that nobody remembers it anywhere on teh Interwebz? I feel cheated and may continue to look for it.
Conrad Cooks
This activity seems to have increased proportionally with the decrease in alcohol intake over the past month. Art!
Here's five slices of 'Great Australian Bite', to which I added a few cut-up fish sticks to bulk it out, and a meat loaf that rather diverges from the recipe, as I've used beef not pork, there are no hard-boiled eggs in it, I added sliced mushrooms, there's fresh rosemary in it and a few chopped jalapenoes. These last give it a bit of pique. Next week's lunches all sorted out!
No, I have no idea why the camera calendar is completely potty. Answers on a postcard, ta.
Michael The Man
I refer, of course - obviously! - to Michael Mann, the director, who has a considerable body of work behind him and both critical and commercial success. His films are different from one to the next - you can't equate 'Last Of The Mohicans' with 'Heat' nor that with "The Insider".
Conrad does not intend to do a description of Mike's career to date, because there's lots of it - and he might be an honourary Brit, since he spent six years here studying and filming - but rather a Youtube vlog that details his Top 10 Tips for film students. Art!
What you might call the willing suspension of disbelief, where you the viewer don't fret about if there are un-popped kernels in your popcorn, when the MOT is due nor if it's raining outside the cinema. Immersion! is the word Mike is looking for. When you witness the characters on screen, you empathise with them.
Come In Robert Heinlein, You Have Been Validated
Conrad remembers a criticism of a short story Ol' Bob wrote, probably in the Fifties or early Sixties, because it featured (IIRC) a spaceship powered by the 'Dean Drive' and which went to the Moon as part of a privately-funded project. Art!
Well, that was a couple of generations ago, and today we have billionaires funding space travel, albeit with enormous government subsidies (Elong Tusk my glare falls upon you), and what's this? Art!
Tut tut, poetic licence, BBC. The Blue Ghost is a collaboration between NASA and Firefly - who's a fan of the old sci-fi television series then? - but still I bet the shade of Ol' Bob is wearing a 200-watt smile.
Finally -
Back from sorting laundry. O my rock 'n' roll lifestyle.
* Don't block the cinnamon jar, I need it for baking.
