In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Jack Cade proposes killing all the lawyers, a passage that has been debated, interpreted, and re-interpreted a number of times, but which is most likely based on the English dissatisfaction in the fourteen century with the legal profession’s use of its skills to bolster the position of the gentry over the peasantry and middle class. The American legal system has not yet reached that nadir, since it appears to be equally willing to litigate on behalf of anyone, that is, so long as its healthy fees are paid.  There is, however, another profession whose excesses have gone less noticed…and whose “successes” have contributed greatly to the sad state of both the American economy and society.

I refer, of course, to the accountants, those bean-counters extraordinaire who know the cost and price of everything and the value of nothing.  Nor do they understand, unhappily, business or, for that matter, economics. I don’t think it is coincidental in the slightest that all too many of the CEOs of failing companies that in fact collapsed, including Borders Books, were accountants.  Calling in an accountant when a company is in trouble is like prescribing blood-letting for a victim in traumatic shock from loss of blood.  One of the “cost-saving” tricks ordered by Borders was to return inventory to publishers in order to gain credit to purchase new releases.  Let’s see… reduce the variety and depth of what you have to sell… and you think that’s going to do what?

On my last book tour, I signed at a bookstore where the events manager informed me that “management” had informed him that he could no longer order additional back-stock for authors who were doing signings.  This is typical of accountant-idiocy.  First, at least at my signings, a healthy percentage of book sales, sometimes as much as 50%, comes from the sale of new copies of older books – that is, where back-stock is available – largely because potential new readers prefer a less expensive paperback and won’t generally buy a new hardcover of an author they haven’t already read. Second, unsold books are returnable.  Third, they’ll likely sell anyway, if over a longer period.  Fourth, a percentage of those readers who bought paperbacks will return and buy more books.  In short, there’s very little downside and a considerable upside, but the accountant only sees an immediate cost-outlay. 

This sort of short-sightedness isn’t just something that affects bookselling.  What about the CEO of J.C.Penny who tried to rebrand the store by eliminating coupons and sales in the middle of the great recession? When Penny’s greatest appeal to its core market was just those sales and coupons? That, of course, just caused sales and revenues to plummet further and faster.  And then there are all those accountants who’ve decided that hiring two or three part-time employees to replace one full-time employee to save a few dollars is the way to go, but don’t think about whether all those part-timers will have enough money to buy the goods and services that keep the economy going. Then there was that former giant of the accounting field, Arthur Andersen, which certified the accounts of Enron… and then saw itself litigated into oblivion.

In 2006, the great and revered management consultant Peter Drucker made the point to a conference of CEOs that “No one, but no one, in your company knows less about your business than your CFO.”  Despite Drucker’s observation, the number of CEOs with an accounting or finance background is at an all-time high, and so are profits… but sales are flat, and good full-time jobs are down. 

Coincidence?  I don’t think so.

A reader recently complained about the $10.99 price on the electronic version of The One-Eyed Man being too high, but the retail hardcover price is $25.99,  and the discounted on-line hardcover price is $16.85 [as I write this].  So why do some readers consider a price of $10.99 so expensive for a just-released book?  Buying a currently published book should be about the story, not about the format.  Rare books are another question, I fully grant.  But, in fact, the amount that a reader pays for the story put forth in electronic format is about the same as what another reader pays for that story in a hardcover.  The price differential is the difference in cost of how it’s presented.  Those people who insist that ebooks should be hugely cheaper because the electronic costs of production are so much cheaper are confusing the cost of physical production with the costs of creating the story itself, including… ahem… paying the author, and getting that story to the point of physical production.

I’ve read enough self-published “stuff,” as well as enough manuscripts from writers and would-be writers, to say that all the work that’s done by publishers between the writer’s turning in what he or she thinks is a finished novel and when a final product is delivered does greatly improve the work, and at times turns something nearly unreadable into a gem.  Even those writers who could handle all those details benefit, because they take time, and they also take contacts and skill. I’ll grant that there are some writers who can produce finished work and who also have the technical skills, or can muster others with those skills, to self-publish a credible product. But such authors are very, very far and few between, and many of them have learned to do so through their experience with the publishing industry… and the time spent doing such tasks is time not spent creating the next book, and that’s another cost that’s often overlooked.

The demands for lower ebook prices don’t consider another valuable service provided by publishers. They greatly reduce the time and energy required to find a readable book.  Now… I’ve heard some writers and readers claim that there are sites on the internet that will or could do that as well. So far, I haven’t seen a single one that does.  I’ve seen many sites that comment on what the publishers do, but second-guessing what someone else has done is easy.  Plowing through thousands of self-published books and analyzing and reporting on them is anything but… and I suspect the economics of doing that will limit those who can do that, especially those who could do it well.  As for reader reviews… forget it. Most reader reviews are either by fans or by those who hate a book, and few of either are that valuable to a reader unfamiliar with an author… and how can a reader unfamiliar with a self-published author tell which is which?

There’s another side to ebooks as well.  They save on storage space for apartment dwellers or others with space issues for storing hardback or paperback books. For some people, this is a great advantage.  So why do readers who seek the latest IPhone ap complain about a format that provides advantages and is actually cheaper than the hardback format that doesn’t?  And a novel in e-format is cheaper than the latest movie, or close to it, and offers the advantage of being able to read it again… and again. And costs the same, or less, than the paperback format once the paperback is released?

Just a few thoughts…

Over the past weeks and months, I’ve encountered more and more examples of people either losing jobs or having their working hours cut so that their employer would not have to pay health care benefits as a result of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.  And like many people, I’m beginning to get outraged – but not at the ACA. I’m outraged for another reason, one based on the interplay of economics and human nature.

Let us assume you have a business, one with employees, and that you provide a service or produce some physical goods, or perhaps both.  To be successful, any business must bring in more income than what it costs to provide the goods and services that generate that income.  Those costs include what you pay for raw materials, equipment, office supplies, heat, power, rent or mortgage payments for whatever property you need, parts, taxes, permits, fees for accountants, legal services …and wages and possibly benefits for employees.

If a business owner needs a lawyer or an accountant, the owner is going to have to pay more for someone with those skills and credentials.  If the business needs a mechanic, the same is true.  The only levels of employees whose wages are not “protected” in some way are those whose skills do not require specific training or credentials or those who are professionals in fields where there are substantial numbers of unemployed individuals, such as graduate academics. No one protests, or not too loudly [and if they do, few listen] about what it costs to hire a lawyer, a plumber, an accountant, a computer programmer.  But almost every business owner I know complains about the costs of lower-paid individuals, and they complain even more when the government raises those costs, through either the minimum wage or something like ACA/Obamacare, and all too many of those same business owners do everything they can to keep wage costs low for those individuals.  The same is absolutely true of state colleges and universities, with their reliance on low-paid clerical and security staff, and poorly paid teaching assistants and adjuncts.

What this shows, quite clearly, is that, at least in the United States, a sizable chunk of business, higher education, and at least certain parts of government are quite willing to squeeze everything they can out of those employees lowest on the totem pole, whether by hiring double the number of part-timers, or avoiding providing the benefits paid the higher-compensated full-timers, all the time protesting that paying living wages and health insurance for those lowest-paid employees will put them out of business, yet expecting someone else to provide health care, either government or other employers and workers [through higher health care premiums]. And, again, for the most part, those who complain the most are those most insulated from the lack of affordable health care, which, like it or not, translates into the availability of insurance for those low-paid workers.

Yet at the same time, we, as a society, make no distinction between those individuals who work hard and cannot afford health care and those who hardly work.  As a society, we have effectively determined that no one can be denied health care, even those individuals who are clear and total freeloaders.  Is that willful blindness… or hypocrisy… or some combination of both?

Interestingly enough, I also don’t see anyone asking questions on the other side of the issue.  Why should we have any interest in preserving businesses and institutions that can only survive by exploiting people who are working hard to that degree?  Or is it that we all want everything so cheaply that we don’t really care about those people?  And why do so many people vote for politicians who support that view?

The other day I was talking with people at a wedding.  The majority of them were Republicans, and all of them opposed the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.  What floored me wasn’t so much that they opposed the ACA, but the grounds on which they opposed it.  One man told me that anyone who couldn’t afford health insurance was covered by state Medicaid.  Another person insisted that if someone couldn’t afford health instance, she didn’t want to pay for it.  When I pointed out that all of us are already paying for the uninsured through higher medical prices to cover unpaid emergency room and hospital care, she said that they could go to InstaCare, as if local acute care clinics didn’t have the same problem as hospitals and emergency rooms.

 While my wife and I are fortunate enough to have health insurance and in a position where we cannot be denied coverage, we both have seen and continue to see the array of problems.  There’s the college student born with hydroencephalitis, who works minimum wage jobs and cannot get insurance nor meet the criteria for Medicaid.  There are the scores of self-supporting college students who have injuries or long-term health problems whose parents refuse to include them on their own health insurance, or whose parents themselves have no insurance. There are the Walmart employees whose hours are capped so that they cannot have health benefits.  There was the wife of a friend whose cancer treatments were not covered by his company’s health insurance policy and who died because the cancer spread while they tried to raise money for a deposit demanded by the hospitals in order to prove they could pay for the treatment.  Or the full-time retail employee who did have health insurance, but was hospitalized, required surgery, and even after insurance, still ended up owing, as a result of deductibles and exclusions, more than most of his yearly take-home pay. I could give a very long list, and not one of those I listed would be either a so-called welfare queen or deadbeat.  Beyond that, my list wouldn’t begin to deal with all the problems faced by the over 40 million Americans without health insurance.

 I can’t begin to solve these problems, but I am very much aware of them, and we’ve helped where we could, yet most of the people to whom I talked at that wedding refused even to acknowledge that such problems exist, almost as if they occurred in another world.  I’m seeing more and more of this, especially in recent years, and the current Congressional impasse over the federal budget reflects, I believe, the growing trend of Americans – and perhaps those in other industrialized countries – to deny what is happening outside their “world” – or their “bubble,” as the comedian Bill Maher terms it.  The problem with such denial is that compromise is impossible when people in different worlds refuse even to acknowledge the events that are happening to others because those events, and even facts, don’t fit into their own world.

 Put in another way – we don’t need space travel to find other worlds;  there are more than enough alien worlds right here on earth, even if no one wants to admit it.

As I write this, I’m winding up the last legs of a comparatively short – 11 day – book tour that’s beginning to feel a bit longer than that.  Last night, I ate dinner in a small and rather odd restaurant/bar at the edge of the campus of an enormous university.  The restaurant was located in a former flower shop that still retained the burned-out exterior neon lights proclaiming its previous inhabitant; the inside was loud and cacophonous; and the décor was third-rate thrift shop downscale.  The food was far better than all of those, despite the fact that the cook/chef had run out of both chicken, in all forms, and most beef. In fact, the dinner was good.  Not great, but good, and better than some meals I’ve had in far more upscale eateries.

What totally astounded me, however, were the young men I witnessed.  The young women looked, at least to me, pretty much like young female college students have looked for at least the past generation, perhaps a shade more casual, but clearly all had given some thought to their attire and personal appearance and apparent hygiene.  The men, however, were largely the most unwholesome, grubby, grimy crew I’ve witnessed in years.  I’ve seen third world poverty more than I care to remember, and these male college students looked more impoverished and certainly less well attired than most impoverished males I’ve seen in far more destitute locales. I wondered if it just happened to be the restaurant, but, no, there wasn’t too much difference between those males passing on the street and those inside.  These collegiate inhabitants – I hesitate to call them students – made the hippies of the 1960s, by comparison, look well-groomed and like sartorial savants. I’m not against beards or long hair on men, either.  Some men look far better that way, but wearing a rat’s nest on your head or chin doesn’t do much for anyone. Nor does three-and-half-day stubble.

I couldn’t believe it’s just the economy, although I know college students these days are struggling financially, but I also know that, for the most part, women students have to struggle harder financially than do men, yet the women dress far better and are far better groomed.  Is it a matter of priorities – that men now value their tech toys more than their appearance and hygiene?  Or is it other priorities – that video games and tech toys have replaced young women as the highest item on their priority list? I hadn’t the faintest idea, but I couldn’t understand where those male creatures came from, because the young men on the university campus in my town certainly didn’t look like that.  Nor could I fathom how young women could find such men even remotely attractive and interesting.

But here’s the interesting part. The next morning, when I went through the campus again, the vast majority of the collegiate males were just like the ones in my own university town… but that night, the scruffy ones returned.  Are they the new vampires… only out at night? Is it only at that one university?  I can’t really say, but it’s perhaps just as well that I don’t know.