Economic making of an old, white male !

[FROM BILL LIFKA - Lightly edited and published based on Bill's prior blanket approval. Bill is about nine years my senior. I too was trained to appreciate real productive labor, helping my dad with woodworking, plumbing and electrical work. I credit my several summers selling ice cream on the beach in Brooklyn, carrying dry ice coolers on my shoulders and shouting, "Hey! Ice Cream Here! Good Humor Ice Cream and Orange Drink!" with helping me develop a strong speaking voice. My final two summers of college were spent gaining incredibly valuable knowledge working as a technical writer.  Ira Glickstein]

TO MY ADULT GRANDCHILDREN

This is another tale of how I became an old, white male and, therefore, became hated by political leftists. In this story, I recall how business experiences, starting at age 9, shaped my adult economic views. It’s likely that other old, white men had similar experiences.  !

On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed and America entered the Great Depression. Nineteen days later, I was born into a world vastly different from what my parents had expected it to be. The prices of stocks recovered somewhat, but the bad economic times lasted until 1939 and some argue 1941.

Economists are still disagreeing over what caused the collapse, so it’s clear the financiers and politicians of the time were wasting their time in applying what they guessed were corrective measures. Since then, banking and government gurus have developed techniques of predicting economic trends much better and applying remedies that may soften the fall but these are more like taking an aspirin than getting a shot of penicillin. !

DINNERS OF HOT DOGS OR CHEESE AND MACARONI

The Depression accounted for many dinners of hot dogs or cheese and macaroni which made no impression on me at the time since kids like that kind of food. I’m approaching ninety years of age, so I guess inexpensive food wasn’t all bad. Now I look back and understand how the mothers/wives of that time handled hard times. When I entered the business world big time, I already knew good times are followed by bad times and it’s wise to save something in the good years to soften the coming blow. I knew the way to deal with a fixed or lowered income was to spend less, eliminate waste and recognize most “needs” were really only “wants”. !

WORKING IN THE BUSINESS WORLD

I entered the business world at my ninth birthday by delivering newspapers: Chicago Daily News after school on weekdays and Chicago Tribune on Sunday mornings. It was a business because newsboys purchased the papers at a discount and received earnings only after they collected the full price from customers. Delinquent account receivables were the biggest challenge: some people have no conscience problems, even if the person they’re cheating is only nine years old. That irritated me but was good to learn at an early age.

Before I could go into the newspaper business, I needed a bicycle with an oversize front basket. If I would pay back the loan with earnings, my mother provided the money which gave her the idea our family needed my earnings after the loan was repaid. Therefore, my personal income was only the five or ten cent tips, less uncollectible accounts receivable, of course. I learned the use of business loans and bargained harder with bankers after that. Also, I became a bit hardnosed in collecting unpaid bills.   !

SUMMER AND WEEKEND JOBS

Through High School and College, I had summer jobs and jobs on most weekends during the school years. All these required a back stronger than a brain but, from all jobs combined, I learned more about business from them than I did in school even though I had many business courses with my engineering degree and my MBA was all business. (You may have noticed I titled this letter with the word “economics” and I repeatedly use the word “business”. I know there is a difference in the dictionary, but not in my mind.)  !

For two summers, I was a day laborer on the truck farms surrounding the greater Chicago area. In the first year I worked mostly for the worst boss of the lot. It was a miserable experience but taught me much of how to be a good boss. In the second year, I worked mostly for the best boss which
confirmed what I’d learned from the bad guy. I worked with day laborers of identity groups other then mine (young, white male) and shared the insecurity and frustrations of being a day laborer. The next two summers, having reached adult size, I was a railroad section hand, replacing worn ties, rails and switches. Close teamwork was required to perform work that was fundamentally dangerous if one of the team members had poor timing, poor accuracy or paid poor attention. More than farming, this impressed me with the skills required to succeed at a lowly job. The foreman became my model in later years when I was selecting foremen.  !

FACTORY JOBS

For two summers I worked in a large factory that fabricated steel casement windows and doors and steel roof trusses for industrial and commercial buildings. I was a material handler, welder and quality inspector in this factory crowded with noisy machines, acrid smells and overhead cranes trundling by with dangling loads. I loved it. Like all my summer jobs, this exposed me to a different kind of worker but that’s in another letter. More than my other jobs, this showed me how the various operations and departments in a factory must relate to each other to produce products profitably.

Years later, I could walk through a factory and instinctively avoid hazards while pointing them out to foremen who had lived with them for years; this was another thing I learned in my first factory experience. !

My final summer was spent in a brewery in the bottle shop. Here, all work was machine paced. The fillers, crowners and canners determined the rate at which we had to hand-load them into crates or boxes and then stack the containers after their long conveyor belt ride to the shipping area. One man had the sole job of replenishing the cold quart of beer besides each worker. I mention the drinking because this enhanced the hazards of working close to moving machines, exploding quarts after they left the pasteurizer and the need to scramble up a narrow ladder and across a shaky catwalk if the conveyor feeding cans jammed and was spewing them over the floor 16 feet below. It was a grand introduction to assembly line production techniques, the beginnings of automation, near disregard for safety measures and how workers felt working in those conditions. A short explanation is that the job paid well. !

PROFESSIONAL JOBS

As an adult, I worked in four companies practicing marketing, engineering and manufacturing disciplines and then led twenty eight companies of which twenty were troubled. These were in eight countries in the Western Hemisphere and five in Europe. I had five manufacturing relationships in Asia. My companies’ products were used in dozens of different industries. Obviously, I had broad exposure to many different business cultures and different governments.  !

THE PARTY THAT HATES OLD, WHITE MEN

The party that hates old, white men is led by folks who aim to change business. Two are 77 and 78 years old who’ve been politicians all their life. Another is 50 and a lifelong politician. One is 70 and she’s been a law professor all her life except being in politics for the last seven years. My least favorite is 1/3rd my age, spent her life in NYC and Boston and worked as a waitress and bartender until becoming a politician 2 years ago. None have had any experience in business but they’re out to change it because they think they know it better than old, white men like me who learned from the bottom up and practiced it successfully for a long time. These pretenders are like those who screwed up businesses in their ignorance and then made it worse by trying to cover up, often illegally. I cleaned up after these frauds and recognize the species, which is one reason to be hated, I guess.  !

Bill Lifka