Is it too early to start planning ahead?
Not that I'm one who normally does that, but it sounds like – economically, anyway – it's a bandwagon that's drawing more interest every day the stock market doesn't tank.
But not all of the planning is as optimistic as mine (and, again, I admit, a little out of character).
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While the cries for health benefit taxation grow louder in Washington (thank you, Sen. Max Baucus), employees continue to expect the worst. Less than a third of them actually expect pensions or bonuses to ever be reinstated, according to the number crunchers over at Harris Interactive, while only 30 percent of employees expect to see 401(k) matching ever again.
Not exactly Charles Dickens-caliber expectations there, but it does hint at the lingering cloud of pessimism that continues to choke the overall mood of the workforce.
Washington's not helping, with weekly bailouts, more health care reform ideas than Susan Boyle's got Web hits and regulatory scrutiny that's going to get a lot worse before it ever gets better.
But that's where you come in. The slightest bit of good news makes you look like a hero. Clients are already expecting the worst, so the bar's pretty low right now. So surprise them with something small. It'll probably never get this easy again. I mean, surpassing low expectations always seems to work for me.
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