Downsizing Hysteria
Caldwell, Christopher
Books Downsizing Hysteria By Christopher Caldwell I am, I believe, the only American who has actually read through all seven of the articles in the New York Times multi-author series on...
...Actually, the series itself gives the lie to its own central theory...
...Then there are "the new nomad dads," those left to wander the country in their private jets: Monday mornings, Cinda Woodward rises early, very early, so she can send her husband, Jeff, off at five-thirty on the first leg of his weekly commute-the ninety-minute drive to the Cincinnati airport...
...Woodward-who left his Dayton job at Mead Data Central in May of 1995 after it was acquired by Reed Elsevier PLC, a Dutch-British conglomerate-is one of the new nomad dads...
...And this in turn has produced an unrelenting angst that is shattering people's notions of work and self and the very promise of tomorrow...
...The study reveals a key problem with the series-namely, that the phenomenon it purports to describe doesn't exist...
...Sharlow for lamenting his new, downsized existence, or scorned Mr...
...The bulk of their nest egg is in a 401(k), an ever-changing mix of mutual funds, stocks and bonds...
...Tragedy...
...The witnesses, the people who stay employed but sit next to empty desks and wilting ferns, are grappling with the guilt that psychologists label survivor's syndrome...
...I think I'll start by crawling inside Robert Miller's $700,000 house...
...The transmission in the Mercedes slips so badly that sometimes he has to beg it to roll...
...That financial flexibility made the mechanics of adaptation a good bit easier in the spring, when he began flying his own plane to Gainesville...
...You bet, and Miller is not alone...
...By noon, he arrives in Gainesville, Florida, where he goes to work as the chief financial officer for Gold Standard Multimedia, an electronic health-care publishing company...
...Consider the experience of the un-downsized: "Those who have not lost their jobs and their identities, and do not expect to, are also being traumatized...
...Take this harrowing story of how the other half lives: Robert Miller is yielding only reluctantly to the likelihood that, at 52, he will never again command his past income...
...They live in a new neighborhood of custom-built homes in Centerville...
...That angst seems particularly acute among the multimillionaires the Times interviewed-and it's about time the paper showed some sensitivity to the needs of the multimillionaire community...
...Knecht and her husband, Mark, who quit his job at GIS last fall for more satisfying and lucrative work, have four children...
...Muse because he wanted to hold on to a shifting way of life, I could not turn away from them once I had come to know them...
...we need to downsize more,'" she said recently...
...Private sector payrolls grew 8.7 percent between January 1993 and March 1996 (faster employment growth than in any other G-7 country...
...Knecht is living in there...
...He juggles them now and then, trying to squeeze out every penny...
...Sharlow and his wife have to face: "Now the two ride to work together some days," Bragg tells us...
...Only recently have the Millers even contemplated moving...
...Woodward said, adding that, at 48, he considers himself fortunate to have the education and the financial flexibility to adapt to the new world...
...The publication is an unfortunate bit of timing, considering the April 23 study issued by the Labor Department and the Council of Economic Advisers...
...Rick Bragg says, "I have a high threshold for tears...
...Muse and Mr...
...Now Times Books has brought the series out as a 356-page paperback...
...The trauma does not end there...
...We are the new homeless," said Mrs...
...Those who think that two incomes will protect them from the horrors of downsizing should think again: Karen Myers is 40 years old, a lawyer and the mother of three...
...Sharlow cry in anger and shame and at their own futility, and while some readers blasted the once-so-prosperous Mr...
...Mr...
...If comparing not being fired from a high-paying job to surviving Auschwitz doesn't get you, how about the agony the journalists who wrote this misbegotten thing had to go through...
...A special appendix tells us of their trials...
...Even though, according to the Times, "there has been a net increase of 27 million jobs in America since 1979, enough to easily absorb all the laid-off workers plus the new people beginning careers, and the national unemployment rate is low," we're still living through "the most acute job insecurity since the Depression...
...If so, that's one hell of a homeless shelter Mrs...
...Her husband, Robert, is a pediatrician...
...But I saw Mr...
...Books Downsizing Hysteria By Christopher Caldwell I am, I believe, the only American who has actually read through all seven of the articles in the New York Times multi-author series on "downsizing" published in March-and I only did it because I got paid to do so by Forbes MediaCritic...
...Mrs...
...Myers was talking over coffee and muffins with her neighbor, Mary Ellen Knecht...
...The withdrawals, countered by profits on his investments, have left him with about $250,000...
...But mere numbers cannot convey the assaults on their dignity that Mr...
...My job was to crawl as deep inside their lives as I could...
...I'd rather be the one to be the nomad than drag the whole family around the country," Mr...
...Knecht...
...He continues to live with his wife and two children in a $700,000, six-bedroom home in a rarified [sic] gated community on Sawgrass Island in Ponte Vedra...
...When Pulitzer prizewinner Rick Bragg interviews a downsized corporate executive, he shows what it really feels like to be down to your last quarter of a million dollars: Behind the front, there have been difficult choices...
...Many of these kids I see are on their fifth or sixth move because the company keeps saying, 'We're not making enough money...
...Mine, too...
...Sharlow got a year's severance pay when he was laid off, so only in the last two years has he had to peel from their original savings of about $300,000...
...Mr...
...They have their eye on another gated community, where they might scale back to four bedrooms...
Vol. 1 • May 1996 • No. 36
