Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Automatic teller machines. Email. Self check-out lanes at the grocery store. Pay bills by phone or online.

Since 2008, the unemployment rate has dramatically increased, and despite massive federal stimulus efforts, jobs continue to be shed.  Six million people remain unemployed.

I can’t help but wonder if some of these jobs just don’t exist any more, whether people have been replaced by machines.  Is technology permanently reducing the available number of jobs?

The rhetoric has been fast and furious, claiming both that extending the tax cuts will increase our record-setting national deficit  and that ending them will cost jobs.   

Now that the tax cuts have been extended for two years, will you hire new employees?  Why or why not?

Yet our consumer-driven culture marches on. There are new iphones and video games. And our families need food, shelter and clothing.

As with most families we are cutting back. We are very upfront with our daughter about the values we chose — that it is healthier and cheaper to eat at home or that she doesn’t need 5 new pairs of shoes this summer. We talk to her about many of the economic choices we are making. Without scaring her (I hope), we also talk to her about the overall economy and how people are losing their jobs and tightening their belts.

I know a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about money, not only with their children, but with their partners. Some people are heart-broken to have to tell their kids they can’t afford something. Others have different spending and saving habits than their spouse, partner or significant other, which causes relationship stress.

How does your family handle discussions about finances and your household situation?

No question, Domino’s has been a very successul franchise. And in this economy, people losing their jobs may be tempted to go into business for themselves by buying a franchise business. You can find dozens of articles claiming that franchises are recession-proof. There are plenty of companies that will, for a fee, help you select the right franchise opportunity.

If this thought crosses your mind, there are a lot of issues to think about besides a stupid joke video tarnishing your corporate reputation. Franchised businesses, like everything else in life, have their pros and cons.

The main reasons to buy a franchise are that you are provided with a proven business model, given administrative support, trained on all aspects of the business from hiring to making the product and marketing known brands that will attract people to your location.

The main reasons not to buy a franchise are that the franchise system is new, weak or not well-developed, you won’t get enough administrative or operational support/training, you may be forced to buy supplies or raw materials from the franchisor at an inflated price, or the trademark/brand is tarnished or weak.

In fact, the main asset of a franchise is its brand or trademark. The customer’s loyalty is to the brand, NOT the individual franchisee. Nobody walks into a McDonald’s because they know the owner; they go because they want a Big Mac, Coke and fries. And the quality of these items should be the same from Murphy to Manteo because every franchisee is making Big Macs with the same ingredients and using the same system.

Chief among things to consider when evaluating a franchise opportunity is the reputation of the brand. What is especially unfair in the Domino’s affair is that every single Domino’s franchisee (local owner) suffered because of the two idiotic North Carolina employees who thought they were being cute on YouTube.

Pointing out the obvious (and new!) power of social networking is Nightline reporter David Wright: “What seems to have changed is a couple of yahoos in a pizza joint sticking cheese up their nose can threaten a global brand.”

So if you are planning to invest tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a franchise, it is important to do your homework. You should be given a Franchise Disclosure Document that contains financial information, lawsuits, bankruptcies, franchisees who have left the system and other important information.

It is crucial to have an accountant or financial advisor review the document and assess the profitability of the business, and to have an attorney review the franchise agreement. You want to know what happens after the initial term of the franchise agreement, if the franchisor goes out of business, what types of fees you will pay to the franchisor, and what happens if you under-perform.

Even so, recent events demonstrate that a prank can capture the world’s attention for a few days and tank your business because your wagon is hitched to a national brand and because any franchise is only as strong as its weakest link. Google the franchise name and you may discover just how strong, or vulnerable, it is at the moment.

Even for non-franchise businesses, it is vital to monitor your trademarks and public relations. A scathing (and perhaps unfair) review on a local business review site can do as much damage to your business as a snafu with a random franchise across the country can do to a franchise business.

March Highlights:

• The number of small business owners who say the economy is getting worse dropped to 60 percent, down from 69 percent the previous month and significantly below the all-time high of 79 percent reached in June 2008. Those who see the economy getting better rose from 12 percent to 16 percent.
• 24 percent of owners see economic conditions for their businesses improving, up from 19 percent in February and the highest response in this category since August 2008. Similarly, 47 percent see conditions getting worse, down from 54 percent in February.
• 41 percent of owners say they have experienced temporary cash flow issues over the past 90 days, basically unchanged from 42 percent in February.
• Views of the current economy remained constant: 90 percent rated the economy as fair or poor in March, unchanged from February.
• 48 percent of owners say they plan to decrease spending on business development over the next six months, a drop from 51 percent in February; while 21 percent plan to increase spending and 29 percent will make no changes.

This report surveys businesses with five or more employees, which would include the bulk of my clients. I know my business clients are closely monitoring their cash flow and bottom lines. So far, I have not had to counsel them on layoffs, and a few are actually growing. After a very slow fall and winter, I am seeing business activity pick up.

How do you feel about the local business climate?

To make my point I will have to describe considerable personal history. I was in grade school in the 40′s and high school in the 50′s in rural Iowa, living in small towns with my school teacher parents in modest rented houses. No CREDIT CARDS, TV, interstate highways, transistors, suburbs, shopping malls, satellites, sophisticated marketing to sell people things they did not need, fission and fusion bombs (at least when I was born), etc. Yet, I consider it was a high standard of living, with only one working family member being enough to live comfortably, good food, and plenty of time to learn new things and explore and enjoy life. People paid for things with cash they had in their pockets or checks drawn on money they had in their checking accounts. Some grocers let you buy food for a week or a month before being paid for (no interest charge).

I have retained almost all the healthy eating, no credit (save before you buy) habits I had role modeled for me then. So I have never bought a car on credit, have never had any credit card debit (I do have one credit card and one debit card for convenience), and have enough personal savings to educate my two daughters and provide income for my wife and I until age 100 (my mother did it, why not me). My oldest vehicle is 46 years old (owned by me for 44 years), and the newest is 13 years old. Both are pleasant to drive and easy to maintain. I will own my house with an acre of trees outright in five years. We took the TV out of the house in 1995 when my second daughter was born and it has not returned to date.

After decades of salaried jobs as a PhD research engineer (some of the titles were more prestigious), I now own a small business (that’s where Donna comes in) which has societal benefits, and which if I am lucky will allow me in a few years to start giving away a considerable amount of money to causes that I can choose and monitor (mostly to individuals and small organizations). Philanthropy with a very low overhead. Maybe my daughters will be able to continue this after I am gone, if they choose to accept the responsibility. Dream big, says this optimist.

I think that I live a sustainable lifestyle, very comfortable with a slowly improving standard of living, based on the best of the habits from my childhood role models. I try to act locally and think globally. I am not a relic of the past, although I have certainly learned from it.

It is my opinion that our recently RAPIDLY EXPANDING ECONOMY that most everyone sees as the norm, has been fueled by two or three decades of unethical marketing and unethically stimulated increasing consumer debt, to achieve what is thought to be a rapid and desirable increase in standard of living.

And as Joe Markowitz points out in his comment, “in an economy that is about half driven by consumer spending, every decision to cut back on spending only sends us deeper and deeper into recession.” Most people are now going to have to pay dearly for that artificial standard of living bought with plastic cards and other insidious forms of borrowing. And probably their children and grandchildren, hopefully not beyond that.

As Russell Lawson comments, “debt was the house of cards that caused many of our businesses to expand, homeowners to overbuy and brokers to downstream questionable investment instruments. Last year, consumer debt was 100% of GDP. The last time that happened? 1929. This correction will be painful.”

So I suggest, as a better path, promoting a SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY, in parallel to the suggested sustainable energy and food scenario currently being worked on (and viciously opposed). This path will have to turn around decades of role modeling experienced by people who were born into the “growing” (read “too rapidly expanding”) economy that most everyone has come to expect, including excessive consumption. Hopefully that can be done partially by education and not by the world of hurt described by Russell. Plastic is not beautiful. Sustainable consumption is. Certainly morals and ethics are required.

Most Google definitions of sustainable economy are not what I mean. This site, although under construction, may be a good place to start. Here is another site with some interesting links. Confusion about what the broad term “sustainable economy” means may warrant that a more distinct term needs to be invented. I have just (by writing this tonight) begun to explore what societal and political (and other) means could further this cause. My interest in this topic was inspired first by listening an hour on NPR about basic accounting used to describe the causes of the credit mess, and given a place to present what I have learned and thought about by Donna’s blog.

So, do you agree with Bruce that we need to rethink our economic thoughts and move from a consumption-based economy to a sustanable economy?

Local economists and the likes of Business Week and CNBC have been telling us that Durham is better positioned economically than most areas to survive the recession because our main industries are higher education and medicine. In line with this thinking, foreclosure filings actually decreased in Durham County from 1,706 in 2007 to 1,678 in 2008.

Those statistics don’t matter, however, if you are facing foreclosure. If you are having trouble meeting your mortgage payments or other bills, here are a few tips:

1. Cut unnecessary expense and trim your spending.
2. Look for additional income (part-time job).
3. Stay in contact with your lender. Make what payments you can and be up front with them about your situation and ability to pay. Then do exactly what you said you would do.
4. Open your mail, even if you can’t pay all your bills. You need to know what is going on. The lender/creditor might have sent you information on programs it has to help folks in your situation.
5. Know your rights. Even though you are behind, you do should not be harrassed, threatend or cursed at. Here is the federal law that governs all debt collections.
6. Be very leery of organizations or companies that say they can re-negotiate your loan, or reduce your interest payments. Unfortunately, many of these companies are not legitimate, and will simply take your money without doing anything.

According to the Home Builders Association of Durham, Orange & Chatham Counties, first on the agenda should be addressing the free-falling housing industry. At the association’s installation of officers last week at Hope Valley Country Club, incoming president Bo Root encouraged the crowd to write their elected officials to “Fix Housing First.”

The premise is simple:

The housing market collapse is pulling down the entire economy, creating a credit freeze and putting hundreds of thousands of American jobs at risk. To get our economy back on track, Congress must address housing.

A housing stimulus would include a short-term incentive for qualified home buyers in the form of a meaningful tax credit coupled with a permanent low mortgage rate.

The program encourages supporting and strengthening existing foreclosure prevention programs to stabilize home prices, enhancing the Home Buyer Tax Credit, and creating below-market 30-year fixed rate mortgages. For more details, click here

Construction accounts for 3 percent of the Durham County, North Carolina economy, and is even more of the Wake County, North Carolina economy. And the bottom is falling out of the local housing market, according to the Triangle Business Journal. It reports pending sales of existing homes were off by 35 percent in November, and the inventory of homes for sale continued to increase, with the average home sitting on the market for 100 days versus an average of 72 days two years ago, according to Triangle Multiple Listing Service.
So, support our local construction industry. Check out FixHousingFirst.com, and if it makes sense to you, write your congressional delegation. And, let me know what you think.