william chen my thoughts, ramblings, rants on this ever-changing world

Slumping economy

It seems to me that every other day, I’d hear some company is slashing 200 or more employees. It’s rare to see green up ticks across the stock market board these days. The large sums of debt and government fundings of 100 billion are becoming numb to me. Nevertheless, there’s always another side you can look at this

Hard as it may be to believe, the crash will also help a lot of young families. The stocks that they buy in coming years are likely to appreciate far more than they would have if the Dow were still above 14,000. The same is true of future house purchases for the one in three families still renting a home.

The second reason is government policy. The Obama administration plans to raise taxes on the affluent, cut them for everyone else (so long as the government can afford it, that is) and take other steps to reduce inequality. Franklin D. Roosevelt did something similar and it had a huge effect.

Of course, these two factors both boil down to redistribution. One group is benefiting at the expense of another. Yes, many of the people on the losing end of that shift have done quite well in recent years, far better than most Americans. Still, the shift isn’t making the economic pie any bigger. It is simply being divided differently.

Which is why the third factor — education — is the most important of all. It can make the pie larger and divide it more evenly.

Source: NYT

Haha, I should probably start saving up money for investments. I also got to thinking, what careers won’t be affected in a global economy meltdown, such as this one? Doctors, professors, and debt collectors

The banks need another bailout and countless homeowners cannot handle their mortgage payments, but one group is paying its bills: the dead.
…
The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.
…

Dead people are the newest frontier in debt collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. Those who dun the living say that people are so scared and so broke it is difficult to get them to cough up even token payments.

Collecting from the dead, however, is expanding. Improved database technology is making it easier to discover when estates are opened in the country’s 3,000 probate courts, giving collectors an opportunity to file timely claims. But if there is no formal estate and thus nothing to file against, the human touch comes into play.

New hires at DCM train for three weeks in what the company calls “empathic active listening,” which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental tones of a friend. The new employees learn to use such anger-deflecting phrases as “If I hear you correctly, you’d like…”
…
Not everyone has the temperament to make such calls. About half of DCM’s hires do not make it past the first 90 days. For those who survive, many tools help them deal with stress: yoga classes and foosball tables, a rotating assortment of free snacks as well as full-scale lunches twice a month. A masseuse comes in regularly to work on their heads and necks.
…
If a relative is more focused on denial or anger instead of, say, bargaining, the collector offers to transfer him to the human resources company Ceridian LifeWorks, where “master’s level grief counselors” are standing by. After a week, the relative is contacted again.

DCM executives say some of the survivors not only gladly pay but write appreciative notes. They offered up a stack, with the names deleted, as proof.

Source: NYT

Back to “Slumdog” life

Truthfully, I’ve never heard of the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” until Oscars, and I wouldn’t have watched it if it weren’t for the eight or so awards Oscars that were given to this movie. I decided to have a looksie, and it turned out not to be half bad. (Some things were left unexplained, so I didn’t feel completely satisfied by the end of the movie.. more on this later). The movie itself wasn’t extraordinarily touching, but what really changed my heart was the article published by Huffington Post:

Meanwhile, both Rubina and Azharuddin continue to wear their Oscar clothes and pine for life in America:

For Rubina, the highlight was her new pale blue dress, which she is still wearing. She says: “When we got to America, Uncle Danny (Boyle)) arranged for some clothes for us. I had never been given so many clothes. I picked out seven dresses and four pairs of shoes. I felt so special in my party dress that I never want to take it off. I felt like a princess walking down the red carpet.”

Rubina also said:

“I don’t want to sleep on the floor anymore. I want a proper bed and live where the air does not smell of poo. I have seen what it is like in America. Here, there is garbage everywhere, people get angry, swear and shout. I have realised how bad life is here. I just want to get out.”

Sounds like spoiled children, but can you blame them? They were taken from the lowest class to a rich and glamorous life, living the American dream, and after tasting a week of that life, they get dumped back to their slumdog lives. You can tell everything looked so fresh and exciting to them: they wouldn’t stop to take a breath during the Oscars red carpet interview, trying to score a teddy bear at Disneyland even though they just won the Oscars. The producers and the director, Danny Boyle, already sent the kids to school, set up a trust fund, and are also in the process of getting them a new home.

Who would’ve knew a small budget movie would change someone’s life forever?

Anyway, onto the unexplained things in the movie that made me go, “wait, how? who? when, what, where why?” (and apparently, I’m not the only one. As I turned to Google for the answers, Dear Cinema shared my confusion)

• How exactly did Jamal get on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
• Why did the show host want Jamal to lose so badly? What’s in for him if Jamal didn’t get the million dollars? If any, he should hope Jamal wins – the number of viewers will spike up –> TV company can charge more for the commercials –> bonus pay
• So that night when Salim was drunk and kicked Jamal out, what did Salim do to Latika? And why didn’t Jamal just wait outside the door – saves the trouble of losing and finding Latika years later.