Somehow, I think this one fact says something essential about Americans and why we believed that Reagan would lower taxes, increase spending and balance the budget.

• 62% of American workers expect to receive a pension upon retirement
• 41% of American workers actually have a pension plan

Life just doesn’t work that way people.

Source: Employee Benefit Research Institute, 2007 Retirement Confidence Survey, cited in “In the Vanguard”, summer 2007.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Generally, I find that career advice books fall into one of two categories. One set deals with tactics and present the career question in terms of “Landing Your Dream Job”. I find this category particularly annoying because I don’t dream of jobs and, if I did, it would be a nightmare. I dream of leisure. The second category deals with strategy. This is the What Color is Your Parachute category and deals with the question in terms of “How to Figure Out What Your Dream Job Is.” Po Bronson’s book hints that it will offer something new and pays lip service to the idea that it is, in fact, offering something new. Instead, it’s a rather annoying set of vignettes of various people, mostly a lot like Bronson himself, who have struggled with the career question.

I normally don’t write reviews of books or movies that I’m going to pan. (more…)

Popularity: 11% [?]

I was listening to a Wal-mart critic on Air America radio the other day, and I couldn’t help but notice that he kept talking about what Wal-mart should and should not do. Wal-mart should pay its employees more, Wal-mart should provide health coverage for their workers, Wal-mart should not buy from sweatshops and so forth. Most groups like Wal-mart Watch and others also have a legislative agenda, but too often when they speak in public, they focus on just one single company (Wal-mart) and they focus on applying social pressure to that company rather than to our legislators who need to craft good laws governing the work place and health care. I’m not at all criticizing their overall agenda, which I fully agree with, but the way it seems to get presented whenever I hear them on the radio.

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Popularity: 8% [?]