Well, the gods’ quick response to our Christmas dinner prayer is ‘no’, the less fortunate will not be smiled upon right away. 2014 will ring in cashed out for many unemployed Americans whose benefits are likely to be curtailed. Cousin Bob’s unspoken prayer caveat is that in order to receive assistance, one must pull themselves up by their own straps. So I’m reviewing the many companies I’ve managed and served and realize there was always about 15 percent of the employees who performed little-to-naught but be in the way. Strangely these folks are almost always near the ‘top’ of their ‘chain’, ‘ladder’, or TQM track, but are considered by most to be clueless. Ask a nurse to look in on a nursing-home patient? Ask a retail store manager where to put that excess Christmas inventory? Heh. Ask the banking class what they have done with 2 1/2 trillion dollars printed since 2008 by the Fed? Certainly Wall Street is well poised and it seems the best thing a poor boy could do is get a night job at Walmart and day trade when the sun’s up. Armed with perhaps a double Master’s or a couple of graduate degrees one can earn 8-10 dollars an hour seed money stocking those shelves, or how about that blossoming field for call-center representatives? Unfortunately, retail at-home investing is a fool’s game; the high-frequency traders have few rules to keep them from sucking any loose change from enterprising Moms and Pops.

Now, if this sounds like more sour grapes being heaped into a vat already overflowing – it’s not. Everything in the Universe is exactly as it must be. We are all guilty of greed and ignorance to a degree, and our addiction to Chinese-made stuff is more than enough incentive to roust even the laziest of us out of our easy chairs and into the workplace. However, the discourse and awakening must be kept alive and pointed toward the fact that our underprivileged are not the ineffectually sedentary and our dual economy is encouraging a ruling class of politicians, banksters, and corporate slave holders who – do what for a living?