The War on Normal People

The War on Normal People: the truth about America's disappearing jobs and why universal basic income is our future
by Andrew Yang, 305 pages

Though Andrew Yang's first performance in the national democratic presidential debate may not have advanced him into the lead among candidates, this book sets makes the case that basic income should be a presidential debate topic. The central argument is clear and well made: the next technological advance into robotization will displace a much larger percentage of workers than the industrial revolution displaced. Less workers will be needed in many fields and income disparity will continue dramatically increase. In this inevitable future, a universal basic income would establish a base of economic survival for all, the means for maximize participate in the benefits of innovations, and the means to promote local educational-artistic-community entrepreneurship that would enrich persons, communities and nations.

Capital Gaines

Capital Gaines: Smart Things I Learned Doing Stupid Stuff by Chip Gaines        Audio Book: 5 hours, 7 mins     Hardback Book:  208 pages       


Chip Gaines and his wife Joanna Gaines are stars of the HGTV show, “Fixer Uppers.”    Chip loves to buy homes and fix them up and spin them or sell them for more than he paid for them by doing all the repairs and updates on them himself he saves a bundle of money and by the homes being improved upon he can get back the cost he paid for the original plus all the materials he buys (or the show buys) and turn a tidy profit on the finished abode.   That is where he is now (though he and his wife have decided to let that gig go after this season so they can focus more on their family – they are expecting their 5th child) but this book tells how he got to this point in his life.     He is excellent at running businesses and has had many over his lifetime, but his skill set does not include keeping up with the financial paperwork that is where Joanna comes in.   She is organized and a financial whiz and she kept the books at her father’s Firestone business.   Chip is a great dreamer – he can dream up all kinds of ideas to try and work out creative business ventures he is also a great motivator and has such a terrific rapport with his employees that they pretty much do anything he asks of them and even more that he doesn’t have to ask because they just volunteer.   Chip has a no holds barred gungho way of going at things, which tend to go his way in the end though the road to achieve that has sometimes been rocky.    He is not afraid to lose everything (and has a couple of times) in order to achieve a goal and this book tells about his many experiences good and bad, teaching experiences and learning experieces, things that have left him with scars (literally) and things that have put him on the path to bigger and better.    He and his wife talk freely about their faith and cite many learning endeavors throughout their lives and how these experiences relate to stories from the bible – Chip’s drop everything, take every penny you have in the world and move to Mexico to immerse himself in the culture to learn to speak fluent Spanish in order to be able to converse with his employees who speak little English allowed him to liken this event to the story of the prodigal son.    Chip’s upbeat – glass half-full attitude is contagious and I bet he would be a great friend to have.    This book is full of inspiration as well as moments you will say out loud, “What was he thinking?”   He is not afraid to admit to the crazy tight rope walking over a crevice type stuff he has done to the successful multimillion dollar businesses he and his wife and employees have given a thousand percent to make viable.    He balances his success stories with the work that got them to become reality and through it all their faith totally sustain them.   If they feel God calling them to do something else no matter how well things are going at that time,, they will drop what is to do what will be.    Very fun read and highly motivational – just goes to show what a little faith can accomplish.

The Lemonade Stand

The Lemonade Stand: What Every Entrepreneur Should Know to Succeed in Starting and Running Any Business by Ara Bagdasarian and Nick Gustavsson, 192 pages

This is the March Business Reads book, and focuses on entrepreneurs and starting small businesses. As in other business books, the authors offer up a list of principles for their "Lemonade Stand" method; what makes this one different is that Bagdasarian and Gustavsson have some fairly unorthodox principles, including forgetting about a business plan and investors, and not setting out to compete. When they explain themselves, these actually make sense, especially for someone with a small business in mind (they often use the example of someone starting a lawn-care business or car wash). There's also a LOT of emphasis on optimism and learning from problems, which are probably pretty good ideals for everyone, not just entrepreneurs.

What I didn't particularly like about this book was the fact that they pushed the "lemons into lemonade" analogy a little too hard; it got annoying pretty quickly. It's not a bad metaphor to use, but it gets old quickly. I wish they'd introduced the idea at the beginning and maybe touched on it again toward the end rather than referring to problems as "lemons that must be squeezed" on nearly every page of the book.

On the whole, however, this was an easy-to-read book with some good ideas. Anyone thinking of starting a business would probably appreciate some of what the authors are trying to say.