Do, How & What

There are basically three kinds of jobs: Do, How & What. "Do" jobs are basically blue collar jobs, they get the actual work done. "How" jobs are the white collar jobs, engineers and teachers, who figure out how to do the work and teach other people how to do it. "What" jobs are performed by our fearless leaders, or those who just have the financial resources at their command. They decide what is going to be done. Are we going to build cars or steamships? Houses or factories?

There is nothing inherently wrong with beginning rich, though there are certainly enough examples of rich people behaving badly. Having more money at your command allows you to make bigger decisions. If all you have is $5 you choices are pretty limited. Cheeseburger or beer? Gasoline or bread?

The way our market works, if anything in the way of useful is going to be done, some person has to put up their own money to make to it happen. (We'll leave government out of this for now. Though the government does do some useful things, it takes months or even years of wrangling and bungling and fooling around before the results become apparent.) If you want to build big, you need to put up large quantities of money, which means you need to have large quantities of money. Sure, there are promoters who talk other people into putting up their money for some project, but in the end, actual people have to reach into their actual wallets and pull out some money.

What we have seen recently in the financial news is the result of people making a great deal of money, and then looking around for places to invest this money where they can make even more money. They are not interested in actually making anything except money. Problem is that when you get too far removed from making actual stuff it is like flying in the upper atmosphere. Your support is tenuous. Heavy weather comes in and your high flying aircraft gets thrown to the ground. Your fabulous imaginary profits evaporate.


Meanwhile all the stuff on the ground, people, buildings, farms, cars, are still there, still going about their daily lives. Yes, an airplane crashes occasionally, and sometimes it's a real high flyer, but it doesn't have any real impact, unless or course it lands right on top of you, and as we all know the odds of that happening are pretty slim.

Weather comes and goes. Right now it's raining, financially speaking.