Why Fire Your Boss? (aka Bubu And The Bees)

Simply put, because you can’t prepare for what’s coming on a job income.

I’m getting ahead of myself; let me tell you a fable first.

Bubu the bear wanted more honey. That was nothing new; he always wanted honey. This time, however, he was short on funds, and Sandra the Queen Bee was not one to bargain with. Sandra wasn’t interested in Bubu’s goods; she didn’t want his grizzled salmon, pawberry preserve, or pickled prickly pine roots. (That kind of upset Bubu. He was sure he made the best; especially the pickled prickly pine roots.) All Sandra cared for was fairy orbs, the universal means of trade in the forest.

Bubu was stuck. He was out of orbs. The damn Beavers took the last one just yesterday.

Ah, the Beavers, they have it figured out all right. They were nice at first. They built pipes and got fresh spring water flowing in the back of my cave. Now they threaten to turn it off if I don’t pay them an orb every month. Maintenance, they say.

Yeah right. A slap with a large trout is what they need. I’ll get to it as soon as I have the honey thing sorted.

There was no way to get more orbs before the fairies come out to dance again at the next full moon. Bubu wanted the honey now. He wasn’t a bear of patience.

“Today I receive honey, today I receive honey”, he kept murmuring to himself. At what must have been at least the 100th repetition, the solution popped into his mind.

On a piece of parchment he scribbled “I will exchange this for 1 fairy orb on demand.” Then after a bit of thought, in small print he added “Issued by Bubu the bear, maker of the best grizzled salmon, pawberry preserve and pickled prickly pine roots.”

He took the parchment and delivered it to Sandra the Queen Bee. Bubu expected an argument, but Sandra accepted it without much hassle. She did put one condition though: under no circumstances would she keep more than 5 “brownbacks” at a time. If 5 parchments accumulated, there will be no 6th jar of honey until a real fairy orb was presented.

Bubu was happy, and he ate the honey in one go right after getting home. After all, he knew he could do this 4 more times.

He went again the next day.

And again, and again.

He had some doubts with the 5th one. The next full moon was still a couple days away. Moreover, there were rumors of the fairies moving.

Oh well. The honey was good, and he felt hungry. “Tomorrow I receive honey, tomorrow I receive honey,” he murmured to himself as he went to sleep.

He woke up early at 4 am. It was the Beavers. They handed him a 5 page document with lots of difficult Beaver hieroglyphs. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s the new contract for the water.”
“Did we have a contract..? Never mind. What’s in it?”
“Well, basically, since there are no more fairy orbs, we’ll be taking grizzled salmon from now on. Small print reads ’4 toothmarks or less and no nails please’”.

Bubu was happy about the salmon. He almost forgot to ask. “What was that about the orbs?”

“Well, the fairy orb factory got outsourced to China. All the fairies have left, so no more fairy orbs for us. We’ll have to make do with what nature provides again.”

Bubu was shocked. How is he going to pay the bees? And more importantly, what about today’s fix of honey?

Suddenly, his mouth turned into a grin. It wasn’t a nice grin. It was an evil grin.

He wrote more parchments, went to the bees, and begged, cajoled and convinced until Sandra the Queen Bee upped the limit from 5 to 8 fairy orbs.

On his way home, halfway through the newly acquired honey, he started thinking …what next?

For a moment he wished he had stocked up on fairy orbs while they were still around. He had a fleeting vision of hordes of angry bees, out for blood, chasing him to the river. But then he thought, “What the heck, I’ll deal with tomorrow’s problem tomorrow.”
“Maybe I’ll ask the Beavers to make a pond in the cave so I don’t have to run. Or something along those lines. Ah this honey is good.”

OK, so what’s the moral of the story?

The US recently upped the amount of dollars they print. It was big news some time ago.

They “solved” the problem of having too much debt by printing some more paper money with an increasingly worthless promise on it.

Much like Bubu did when he hit the limit of 5 parchments. Now that it’s up to 8, the problem is solved, right?

This “new money” has nothing but an empty promise behind it. They know the fairies have left and are not coming back. They’re just hoping you don’t find out. Inevitably, the day will come when everybody will know.

What’s happening, then?

Inflation. It’s been happening for a while, but more is on the way. A whole lot more. Poverty is knocking by having you pay more and more for the same stuff.
Hyper-inflation, even. That’s when the wheelbarrow is worth more than the pile of money in it. And that’s when savings and the middle class get wiped out, and sanity goes on a long holiday.

What Can I Do?

Separate yourself from those who may be doing OK for the moment but are inevitable going down. That would be the middle class. You don’t want to do this by becoming poor, obviously, but by securing yourself financially.

How?

Make a lot of cashola, quickly and legally (it’s no fun if you have to bribe the guards for cigarette).

[continued in the Myth of Multitasking]

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