EppsNet

Behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman suggests that we have two selves: an experiencing self and a remembering self. . . . Your experiencing self lives in the present and is happiest spending time around people you like. . . .

The remembering self cares about story, and about appearances. . . .

Your remembering self cares about money and mobility deeply. Why? No one wants to be remembered as the person who “didn’t do anything with their life.” Getting rich and moving around a lot adds dramatic, tangible plot-points to your story, which comforts your remembering self greatly. But your experiencing self can easily be less happy. What if you are unable to turn your money into people you enjoy spending time with? What if you move away from the people and places that bring you joy?

— Dave Troy

My son’s half-Asian — his mom is Thai — and he feels like he’s missing out on an important Asian tradition.

“On Chinese New Year,” he says, “Chinese kids get wads of cash. Koreans have a holiday where kids go to relatives’ houses, bow to people and get wads of cash.”

He mentions a Korean friend of his who raked in 180 bucks the last time this holiday rolled around.

“Why isn’t there a Thai holiday where kids bow to people and get wads of cash?” he asks.

“Isn’t that how pretty much every day goes for you?” I ask. “Without the bowing, I mean. Handing you wads of cash though — that part is in full effect.”

• "I thought the more money I had the happier I would become, but it was not the case." http://bit.ly/d8yDMt #

Fun for Poor People

1. Eat sweet things.
2. Run up credit card then kill everyone where you work.
3. Love the wrong people.

Fun for Rich People

1. Follow foibles of the poor on the local news.
2. Wave to the poor.
3. Talk about the plight of the poor at parties.

— @eddiepepitone

Security fears dog online banking

— Yahoo! News

Now that’s what I call lazy reporting. If they’d bothered to interview an actual dog, they would have found out that we don’t keep our money in banks because banks are run by Wall Street fat cats and we don’t trust Wall Street fat cats. Actually, we don’t trust any kind of cats.

There may be dogs online barking but there are no dogs online banking.

— Lightning

Heiress Casey Johnson dead at 30

— Los Angeles Times

I myself have an heir named Casey, the main differences being that he’s a boy and he’s still alive.

This is definitely another blow to the idea that being fabulously well-to-do is a guarantee of any sort of happiness in life . . .

• Never Say Never: http://bit.ly/75vYNw #
• r @eddiepepitone: my grandmother was such a beautiful woman, so beautiful, unfortunately she was killed by people I owe money to. #

David Brooks declares “we spend too much on health care” (on NPR) then demands “innovation” and “new technologies.” What if they cost money?

— @kausmickey (Mickey Kaus)

They were like spectators. You had a feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, “I am a mechanic.” At 5 P.M. or whenever their eight hours were in, you knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were already already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job.

— Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

We had a manager’s meeting today on the subject of employee recognition. The text we were given to read in preparation for the meeting was indistinguishable from a handbook on training your new puppy:

Behavior which is reinforced is usually repeated. . . . You risk extinguishing the positive behavior by not recognizing it. . . . Provide compliments in a timely fashion, as soon as possible after the event occurs.

That seems demeaning to me and it trivializes the work. I like to be recognized as a person who does good work but I also want to be recognized as someone who cares about his work. I know better than anyone when my work is good and when it isn’t. I’m not looking for pats on the head.

I said in the meeting that I’d rather try to motivate people by giving them the opportunity to do great work, to have some choices about what that work is, and to become the person they’ve always wanted to be.

I pointed out that we’re giving up our youth, our family — everything we hold dear — to come in to work every day, and if the work isn’t worth doing well for its own sake, then it’s a pretty poor exchange.

“We come to work to make money,” Manager A said, as though explaining something very obvious.

“We should sell off our lives one day at a time to the highest bidder?” I asked. “That seems like a good idea to you?”

“Do you really believe the things that come out of your mouth?” Manager B asked.

Manager C stated that in “the real world,” 99 percent of the people he knows are working their jobs for the money and, financial considerations aside, would rather be doing something else with their lives.

The highest-paying job I ever had — before or since — I quit after eight months. I didn’t have another job to go to; I just hated going in there in the morning and I couldn’t wait to go home in the afternoon. I never got a chance to do anything I enjoyed or anything I was good at.

I’m not doing this stuff to get rich. I am a programmer.

Thus spoke The Programmer.

I get home from the gym and say to my wife, “I’m in such great physical condition, it’s a shame I’m not having an affair with 10 women like Tiger Woods.”

“Women care about money,” she says. “You don’t have 10 billion dollars so forget it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The way to get rich in this world is mainly by making people feel large hope about a small exertion (i.e. “six-second abs,” lottery tickets, voting in an election, maturity models, and stuff like that). If you want to get rich, do not tie yourself to the truth.

— James Bach

When the guy comes by my office with my pay envelope, I raise my hand and say, “No thanks. The work is its own reward.”

“You’ve said that before,” he says.

“Doesn’t it get funnier every time I say it?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

I’m not trying to have a career, I’m not trying to be rich, I’m just trying to learn.

— Francis Ford Coppola

I got this email at work today:

Due to an erroneous payroll submission by ADP (our payroll service,) a duplicate deposit of your paycheck was entered today for those who have direct deposit. Expect these funds to be retracted tonight by ADP.

Well the joke’s on them because I already spent it haha . . .

My fellow Americans –

Perhaps it was unfair of me to be critical of President Obama’s healthcare speech without having heard it. There’s not much to do on a Saturday night when you’re dead, so I read the transcript:

We’ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. . . . The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies . . . Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.

And how much money are we talking about, sir?

Now, add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.

WTF?!

I will not accept the status quo as a solution.

OK — cut the bullshit, my friend. Your “plan” vs. “the status quo” is a false choice. You’ve just said so yourself. If you’ve figured out how to eliminate $900 billion in waste and inefficiency from the current system, GO AHEAD AND DO IT! Why are you tying that to 1,000 pages of unrelated “reforms” that no one has even bothered to read?

If you can eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency — I don’t believe that for a second, but let’s say you can — you will have no greater supporter than old Tom Jefferson. AND — you will have acquired so much credibility that you’ll be able to pass any reforms you like.

Don’t present false choices to us like we’re a nation of fools. Cut the bullshit and DO something.

— Tom

My fellow Americans –

Did you watch President Obama’s healthcare speech tonight? Neither did I. But I did learn from msnbc.com’s First Read that he hoped in his speech to explain to ordinary American voters — “call them Joe and Jane from Kansas City” — that his health-care reform will 1) cover nearly everyone and 2) cut costs in the long run.

So let me get this straight — we’re going to spend money to save money!

Does he think everyone in Kansas City is that stupid or just Joe and Jane?

What — you don’t believe we can insure 50 million more people and cut costs at the same time? Well then, you’re an uninformed kook!

You’re scared that those cost savings will come from drastically rationing access to care, particularly for people who are chronically ill and/or near the end of their lives? You’re un-American! Probably a Nazi!

I’m going to tell you something about myself that you probably didn’t learn in school: When I died, I was deeply in debt. Do you know why? Because everyone, including successful politicians like yours truly, struggles to keep up with the demands of organizing and managing the daily realities of their own lives, let alone trying to micromanage the entire goddamn United States healthcare system.

Let me leave you with this final thought. Don’t believe everything your leaders tell you. Use some common sense, as my old friend Tom Paine used to say. Think for yourself.

— Tom

• Best Undergrad College Degrees by Salary – http://bit.ly/qaRn1 #
• Lowest paying college majors – http://tinyurl.com/lnx5fn #
• RT @capricecrane: Enough already, Mr. Gosselin. We hate your wife too, so we just stopped talking about her all together. Give it a shot. #

My son and I are watching a TV commercial for Love Happens, which seems to be about a man forced to choose between financial gain and the love of a woman.

This is one of those “teachable moments,” because the boy, who’s 15 now, may someday find himself facing the same choice as the guy in the movie, so I look at him with love and hard-earned wisdom and with a voice of great sincerity, I say:

“Take the money.”

The nation would be forced to borrow more than $9 trillion over the next decade under President Obama’s policies, the White House acknowledged late Friday, bringing their long-term budget forecast in line with independent estimates.

The new projections add approximately $2 trillion to budget deficits through 2019. Earlier this year, the administration had predicted that Obama’s policies would require the government to spend $7.108 trillion more than it collects in tax revenue over the next decade.

An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the report will not be formally released until Tuesday, said the change is due primarily to updated projections of economic growth that are far less rosy than data used when the White House released its first long-term budget outlook in February.

— washingtonpost.com

I think I’d be way more upset about this if the numbers weren’t beyond human comprehension . . .