The Retirement Problem
A Los Angeles Business Journal poll last week asked at what age people planned to retire (or already retired). The biggest number of respondents – 35 percent – said “never,” and 28 percent plan on retiring well after age 65.
Granted, this is a decidedly unscientific poll, but still, a total of 63 percent are planning to blow well past the age of 65 before they hang it up, if they do so at all. That’s pretty amazing. (What prompted the poll question, by the way, was a recent special report in the Business Journal, “Eight Over 80,” which profiled eight Angelenos, all 80 or older, who are not just still in the game of business but still throwing heat.)
I bring this up because of a pet peeve of mine: all those consultants out there striving to persuade business owners that they have a big problem on the horizon because of the tsunami of retirements of baby boomers.
Trump’s Force Majeure Problem
Donald Trump is trying to finish building his massive Chicago International Hotel and Tower along the Chicago River, but his consortium of commercial lenders has pulled the plug. The lenders sued Trump and Trump sued them back for refusing to finish providing the loan funds previously agreed upon, necessary to finish the huge project which should change Chicago’s skyline.
The lenders, led by Deutsche Bank, sued Trump for $40 Million on his own personal guarantee (payable in ‘The Donald-Dollars’), his individual promise to pay his own money – chump change by today’s TARP BailOut standards. But, as anybody in real estate development will tell you, there is a world of difference when the money is coming from a source other than OPM (Other People’s Money), like out of your own pocket perhaps.
Fighting intolerance with intolerance
One day, historians may write of this period of gay-rights history that the movement began to fight intolerance with more intolerance—and in the process fell further behind.
My strong opposition to Prop. 8 was posted on this Web site more than once prior to Election Day. My pieces earned praiseworthy comments from other pro-gay marriage Californians and disdain from people who disagree with me.
I continue to be disappointed that Prop. 8 passed. I am further disappointed that instead of working to change peoples’ minds so that we can get a majority of Californians to support gay marriage, the movement has decided to single out an irrelevant $100 donor who works at a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles. And now the movement is attacking Barack Obama for selecting Rev. Rick Warren to lead the nation in prayer during the presidential inauguration.
(Would you guys have preferred Rev. Jeremiah Wright?).