Dad's Famous and We're All Socialists

OK, the happy stuff first. My dad was in the newspaper today. He was quoted in a story about local golf courses. Here's his picture with his buddy, Mel. (Dad is in the golf cart.)

Today's second happy thing is that my work department made a tree using wrapping paper tubes, coupons from our company's main product, and the handy man's secret helper, duct tape. It turned out pretty good in a "I can't believe I'm actually wasting time to do this at work" sort of way. One of our company's key results areas for the year is innovation. Instead of doing something really innovative and impactful, each department was charged with making something out of a bunch of coupon books. The HR tree theme was "money doesn't grow on trees but coupons do". It was fun to see what all the departments came up with but for long term company success I don't see too much added value. Still, the results were pretty cool. I didn't have a camera with me so there's no picture here but I'll try to get one on Friday. I know everyone who reads this would be thrilled to see our HR tree. By the way, there were no prizes given which disturbs me. I'm a rewards professional. I want to see rewards for achievement even if I don't necessary get them.

Now for the bad stuff. The financial markets. Since I won't ever be able to retire, I figure I can spend time at work reading about how bad things are. I've been reading commentaries about the US government bailout of financial companies - AIG being the latest. One common theme is how strange it is that as a capitalist nation, we're subsidizing failing companies. Here's a link to an MSN money commentary today which gets to the point. http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2008/09/16/the-fed-is-not-our-sugardaddy.aspx

One other article I read said that we're now a socialist country only instead of supporting the little guys, we're supporting big business. I wonder if we can mandate that the executives and boards of directors of these failing companies give back their golden parachutes to subsidize the severance of all the people who will be laid off because of their poor decision making.

It makes me angry to think that if I make bad decisions, I have to pay for them. While I recognize the pain that would be caused by letting these companies fail, I also wonder how long we'll be able to continue on this course of action.