Dave Crushes It at the Gym
Lately-- due to my foot injury-- I've had to resort to using the various aerobic exercise machines at LA Fitness; my favorite contraption is the rowing machine but I can't row for a sustained length of time due to a dire and rather discomfiting situation: the machine is lacking an infographic diagram on an essential technique, a necessary procedure in arrangement that I just can't seem to master-- and apparently many people share this same problem-- what happens is that I'm rowing along, minding my own business, but every third stroke or so I squash my testicles.
What We've Got Here is a Failure to Communicate
My buddy Rob has written a sincere and excellent post over at Gheorghe the Blog about grappling with the difficulties of our times-- the thrust of it is that our current government, who are behaving like "third world banana republicans" are something of a kleptocracy, redistributing wealth to the rich, at the expense of the uninsured, the immigrants, the rule of law (especially the powers of the FBI) and the "darker, the weirder, the more foreign among us," and people of good conscience are going to have to take a stand against that behavior; I have something to report on this issue and I'm not going to do it justice so I suggest you read the articles, but several Indonesian immigrants are taking sanctuary in a church around the corner from me in Highland Park-- one of the immigrants, Harry Pangemanan, has been here since 1993 (he entered on a temporary visa) and has been involved in a project rebuilding homes devastated by Hurricane Sandy since 2012 (he won the 2018 Martin Luther King award in HP for this) and while this has been a terrible time for these people, I'm proud of the role my friends and the the community have played in the situation . . . meanwhile, while the immigrants were seeking sanctuary, someone got wind of their absence and their homes were vandalized and ransacked, and passports and money was stolen-- it's still hazy how this happened, if ICE leaked information as to where they lived, or if people saw the homes on the news (but not all of them were on the news) and took action-- but there's something awful going on in this country and everyone needs to have a frank discussion about it . . . as usual, I have a couple of recommendations if you want to get deeper into this issue: The Weeds "The White Genocide Episode You've Been Waiting For" explains how some of the current immigration policy being considered offers concession for "undocumented immigrants" but there is a push to curtail legal immigration, especially to families . . . the subtext is the discussion that needs to be had: it seems the ethnic constituency of America changing too much and too rapidly for many people in the nation and there have been previous, restrictive and rather racist policies to preserve the racial constituency of America (most notably the Immigrations Acts of 1917 and 1924) so we've done this before . . . I live in central New jersey, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse places in the world, and I thought this debate was over in my area-- but the vandalism and ransacking of the homes of the immigrants seeking sanctuary obviously refute this . . . this is an issue on the purpose of America: is it a place for immigrants to come and thrive or are we building a wall and locking our doors; the interesting thing is that economists universally accept that immigration, legal or illegal, is a boon to the economy-- more workers, more jobs, more consumers, more people to pay taxes and buy property, etc. etc. a more diverse economy-- but it seems that certain white people are willing to take the hit to the economy to preserve the racial integrity of the country (or what's left of it) and if you really want to take a deep dive on this cultural divide, check out the second season of The United States of Anxiety, a podcast that does a fantastic hob tracing the roots of the current dichotomy; the climate change episode is especially informative, as it traces the evolution of conservative climate change skepticism, which did not exist twenty-five years ago when Bush Sr. announced that we would all have to band together and solve this global and existential problem, but then became a conservative bona fide once the Republicans realized it was not an environmental issue, it was a political issue . . . thinking about this stuff is going to make you angry and depressed and indignant, but we have to discuss it as a nation because there's actually a reasonable middle ground on issues like climate change policy and immigration (unlike, say, nuclear war) and if we can get beyond the rancor and the hatred and the utter disdain that people are feeling for those with different opinions, maybe we can elect some people that will hammer our some reasonable policy . . . I remain optimistic that people are not as stupid and narrow-minded as the folks representing them in our government right now.
The Irony (and the Stupidity)
After limping around for several weeks with what I thought was plantar fasciitis (self-diagnosed, of course) I finally went back to the podiatrist to get checked out and he quickly diagnosed my ailment as a sprained tendon on the inside of my ankle, just under the ball of my foot (this tendon has a fancy anatomical name, but you're not going to remember it and neither am I, so I'm not going to bother to look it up) and this is great-- he give me a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and said I'd be better in two weeks but the irony (and the stupidity) is that all the crazy stretching I was doing to alleviate my self-diagnosed plantar fasciitis was actually aggravating this sprained tendon, causing me a great deal of pain, and making me depressed and me cynical about the rest of my boring, monotonous life, sans basketball, tennis, and soccer.
Luigi Explains Capitalism For Da People!
Get ready, this is a really long one . . . I just finished A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity and it's one of my favorite books . . . not just because it's written by a guy named Luigi Zingales and I'm an Italian-American hailing from North Brunswick (home a da Carnivale Italiano! you gotta getta some zeppole) although Zingales' perspective, as an expatriate Italian, is essential to his critique of the current American Italian system-- he's like Tocqueville in that he can see things we take for granted . . . here are a dozen things I took away from his analysis and his solutions:
1) the thesis of the book is that the US free-market system has degenerated into crony capitalism, and Zingales uses Silvio Berlusconi as the paragon of this model; Berlusconi ran an insulated system of business and government corruption and comparisons between Berlusconi, who essentially ran Italy like his own private business, and Trump are inevitable and easy to make, so while the book was published pre-Trump, in 2012, Zingales does make the Berlusconi/Trump analogy in this episode of Conversations with Tyler . . .Trump succeeded in the real estate business, where it is more important to have strong relationships with government entities rather than creating something new in the market (and he's always relied on bankruptcy and the kindness of that system) and like Berlusconi, Trump has rewritten what is appropriate for a politician and member of the government;
2) Zingales starts with the proposition that fair markets are hard to manipulate and markets- while not perfect-- establish more efficient and accurate measure of value than say, an academic committee creating tenure requirements or statist regime doling out consumer products;
3) the problem is when large institutions, corporations, conglomerates and firms become "too big to fail" and both politicians and institutions recognize this because politicians, who aren't in office forever, would rather quell the chaos during their term-- avoid Armageddon, even if it's only a five percent chance of Armageddon-- with a bail-out, rather than be the person who lets the economy tank . . . but this doesn't allow the markets to do their job and accurately measure value;
4) he then explains how institutions that get "too big to fail" and understand this decimate the system-- he explains this with an analogy: if you play roulette yourself, you've got the same pay-out odds and vigorish whether you bet red/black or bet on a single number . . . for every hundred dollars you play, over time, you are likely to collect back $94.73-- the $5.27 is the amount the 0 and 00 extract . . . but if you pay an agent to play for you and promise him 20% of the winnings, but he doesn't have to pay anything if he loses, that agent is going to take risks and hope for a big payout . . . if he bets red with the $100 dollars, he only makes twenty bucks, but if he bets a single number, he stands to $700 . . . and if he loses, he loses nothing; so managers of funds take big risks, and the big investment banks encourage this because they know that either the lenders will lose out, as they are over-leveraged, or the taxpayers will bail the entire mess out;
5) lobbying is a monkey wrench in keeping markets fair and keeping large financial institutions and the government from becoming inexplicably intertwined-- and Zingales proposes something scary-- since the government controls trillions of dollars in subsidies and monies, the 3.5 billion spent by companies to lobby Congress and the 2.5 billion spent in political contributions may grow larger and larger, as business learns just how important it is to control the government . . . and this political climate of winner-take-all and fuck the other party isn't helping things;
6) with all this lobbying and bailing out and government/business intertwinement, we're not getting the beneficial long-term consequences of markets-- the accurate measurement of value and the benefits of competition . . . imagine that any time your kids are acting up and there's a conflict in the family, grandma and grandpa rescue the kids from any discipline . . . in the short term, these interventions lead to harmony and happiness, but in the long-term, you end up with spoiled kids and unhappy parents . . . Zingales uses another analogy to explain this analogy-- you gotta love all dese metaphors!-- he says that at the Grand Canyon, there is a sign warning people not to feed the wild animals, as if you do they lose their instincts and their ability to feed themselves . . . now the animals would love if people fed them but we need to "protect" them from the corruption of free food, for their own good . . . Zingales has seen this go down in Italy, and he sees America headed down the same road;
7) cronyism and unfair markets lead to winner-take-all scenarios, instead of healthy diversity and competition, and this is especially prevalent in the race to get into college-- while the number of people attending colleges in the US has skyrocketed, the size and amount of colleges has not . . . so there's winner-take-all competition to get admitted to the best schools and parents are spending much more time and resources on their children in order to get them in . . . this hasn't happened in Canada, where the admissions process isn't as competitive; so a tiny head-start when you are young can be very very important and wealth ensures this; Zingales uses a sports analogy-- if you allow professional teams to spend as much as possible, the riches teams will amass the best players and defeat everyone handily, which is great for one team but not particularly fun as a spectator or participant, so a salary cap-- which sounds non-competitive-- actually preserves competition . . . this is true for education and for lobbying, if money can buy success, then lots of money will be spent to ensure success and rules and social norms must be enacted to prevent this and encourage competition;
8) Zingales is certainly more conservative than me, and he's in favor of school voucher systems-- which I am not, for various reasons-- but I understand the logic of why he is in favor of the system, he brings up Finland, which has a much more rigorous method of selecting teachers-- in essence, they have to be smarter than American teachers-- and this means you're going to have to pay teachers more to attract smarter people; I do agree with him on this account-- if we could just get rid of the worst teachers, the bottom ten percent, that would help things enormously; I think it's hard to measure the difference between fairly good and good teachers, because it depends on the metric . . . some teachers are better at improving test scores, others at making kids passionate about a subject, others at letting kids learn on their own . . . but there's no question that some teachers are just terrible and probably get too much protection from the union, and it's also true that the best teachers tend to be in richer schools, so vouchers can change this balance and create a "salary cap" situation that makes things more fair and competitive for more students;
9) if you can wrap your request for subsidies and protection in a noble cause, you'll really screw up the market . . . Zingales uses student loans and Pell grants as an example-- government-backed subsidies that have helped make the price of college double, as there is more demand, space constraints at elite colleges and a high cost and difficulty in starting new institutions;
10) the SEC and other regulators have had trouble enforcing inside trading, and Zingales sees the onus of responsibility for stamping out this on business schools and alumni networks: they need to publicly shame and disavow people who participate in these practices, instead of only celebrating whoever makes the most money . . . it's tough because those are the people that donate;
11) Zingales is in favor of fewer regulations and simpler regulations-- but not the Trumpian dismantling of all regulations without a counter-balance; the way to offset the removal of regulations is with Pigouvian taxes . . . so instead of having insanely complex environmental codes, which leads to employment for lobbyists and lawyers, and costs the taxpayers money in the form of the government agency and all the market distortions caused by the big-business lobbying . . . instead, tax pollutants, tax the amount of harm a factory does, and you are much more likely to capture revenue (or curb pollution) so this is a compelling example of a conservative thinker proposing a "good" tax . . . as opposed to a bad subsidy; subsidizing ethanol enriches ethanol producers, but a tax on gas could curb driving, could lessen greenhouse gases, could capture revenue, and could incentivize the electric car industry . . . without redistributing wealth and enriching the ethanol producers for doing nothing more vital than having a noble idea . . . I'm sure no conservative thinker has made it this far in the post, but this is a really important concept which Trump and his lackeys seem to be totally ignorant;
12) while it is in a voter's best interest to remain uneducated in most political forums-- it's not worth the time and effort-- Zingales does illustrate how shame, muck-raking, and a little bit of knowledge can go a long way in affecting policy and political outcomes . . . and deep into the book, he acknowledges that some people have an interest in public affairs, or they wouldn't have read his book, which tackles a complex subject in a detailed manner . . . anyway, these ideas are really important to understand; we need to harness the power of markets in America, often by separating big business and government; as anyone involved in sports knows, making things fair and competitive means more than simply removing all the rules . . . it takes thought, creativity, flexibility, and rigor; Zingales makes a fantastic case for a market-based ethic and hopes that breaches of this, in the form of cronyism and incestuous relationships between business and the government, will someday be stigmatized the way smoking is today . . . I hope he's right.
1) the thesis of the book is that the US free-market system has degenerated into crony capitalism, and Zingales uses Silvio Berlusconi as the paragon of this model; Berlusconi ran an insulated system of business and government corruption and comparisons between Berlusconi, who essentially ran Italy like his own private business, and Trump are inevitable and easy to make, so while the book was published pre-Trump, in 2012, Zingales does make the Berlusconi/Trump analogy in this episode of Conversations with Tyler . . .Trump succeeded in the real estate business, where it is more important to have strong relationships with government entities rather than creating something new in the market (and he's always relied on bankruptcy and the kindness of that system) and like Berlusconi, Trump has rewritten what is appropriate for a politician and member of the government;
2) Zingales starts with the proposition that fair markets are hard to manipulate and markets- while not perfect-- establish more efficient and accurate measure of value than say, an academic committee creating tenure requirements or statist regime doling out consumer products;
3) the problem is when large institutions, corporations, conglomerates and firms become "too big to fail" and both politicians and institutions recognize this because politicians, who aren't in office forever, would rather quell the chaos during their term-- avoid Armageddon, even if it's only a five percent chance of Armageddon-- with a bail-out, rather than be the person who lets the economy tank . . . but this doesn't allow the markets to do their job and accurately measure value;
4) he then explains how institutions that get "too big to fail" and understand this decimate the system-- he explains this with an analogy: if you play roulette yourself, you've got the same pay-out odds and vigorish whether you bet red/black or bet on a single number . . . for every hundred dollars you play, over time, you are likely to collect back $94.73-- the $5.27 is the amount the 0 and 00 extract . . . but if you pay an agent to play for you and promise him 20% of the winnings, but he doesn't have to pay anything if he loses, that agent is going to take risks and hope for a big payout . . . if he bets red with the $100 dollars, he only makes twenty bucks, but if he bets a single number, he stands to $700 . . . and if he loses, he loses nothing; so managers of funds take big risks, and the big investment banks encourage this because they know that either the lenders will lose out, as they are over-leveraged, or the taxpayers will bail the entire mess out;
5) lobbying is a monkey wrench in keeping markets fair and keeping large financial institutions and the government from becoming inexplicably intertwined-- and Zingales proposes something scary-- since the government controls trillions of dollars in subsidies and monies, the 3.5 billion spent by companies to lobby Congress and the 2.5 billion spent in political contributions may grow larger and larger, as business learns just how important it is to control the government . . . and this political climate of winner-take-all and fuck the other party isn't helping things;
6) with all this lobbying and bailing out and government/business intertwinement, we're not getting the beneficial long-term consequences of markets-- the accurate measurement of value and the benefits of competition . . . imagine that any time your kids are acting up and there's a conflict in the family, grandma and grandpa rescue the kids from any discipline . . . in the short term, these interventions lead to harmony and happiness, but in the long-term, you end up with spoiled kids and unhappy parents . . . Zingales uses another analogy to explain this analogy-- you gotta love all dese metaphors!-- he says that at the Grand Canyon, there is a sign warning people not to feed the wild animals, as if you do they lose their instincts and their ability to feed themselves . . . now the animals would love if people fed them but we need to "protect" them from the corruption of free food, for their own good . . . Zingales has seen this go down in Italy, and he sees America headed down the same road;
7) cronyism and unfair markets lead to winner-take-all scenarios, instead of healthy diversity and competition, and this is especially prevalent in the race to get into college-- while the number of people attending colleges in the US has skyrocketed, the size and amount of colleges has not . . . so there's winner-take-all competition to get admitted to the best schools and parents are spending much more time and resources on their children in order to get them in . . . this hasn't happened in Canada, where the admissions process isn't as competitive; so a tiny head-start when you are young can be very very important and wealth ensures this; Zingales uses a sports analogy-- if you allow professional teams to spend as much as possible, the riches teams will amass the best players and defeat everyone handily, which is great for one team but not particularly fun as a spectator or participant, so a salary cap-- which sounds non-competitive-- actually preserves competition . . . this is true for education and for lobbying, if money can buy success, then lots of money will be spent to ensure success and rules and social norms must be enacted to prevent this and encourage competition;
8) Zingales is certainly more conservative than me, and he's in favor of school voucher systems-- which I am not, for various reasons-- but I understand the logic of why he is in favor of the system, he brings up Finland, which has a much more rigorous method of selecting teachers-- in essence, they have to be smarter than American teachers-- and this means you're going to have to pay teachers more to attract smarter people; I do agree with him on this account-- if we could just get rid of the worst teachers, the bottom ten percent, that would help things enormously; I think it's hard to measure the difference between fairly good and good teachers, because it depends on the metric . . . some teachers are better at improving test scores, others at making kids passionate about a subject, others at letting kids learn on their own . . . but there's no question that some teachers are just terrible and probably get too much protection from the union, and it's also true that the best teachers tend to be in richer schools, so vouchers can change this balance and create a "salary cap" situation that makes things more fair and competitive for more students;
9) if you can wrap your request for subsidies and protection in a noble cause, you'll really screw up the market . . . Zingales uses student loans and Pell grants as an example-- government-backed subsidies that have helped make the price of college double, as there is more demand, space constraints at elite colleges and a high cost and difficulty in starting new institutions;
10) the SEC and other regulators have had trouble enforcing inside trading, and Zingales sees the onus of responsibility for stamping out this on business schools and alumni networks: they need to publicly shame and disavow people who participate in these practices, instead of only celebrating whoever makes the most money . . . it's tough because those are the people that donate;
11) Zingales is in favor of fewer regulations and simpler regulations-- but not the Trumpian dismantling of all regulations without a counter-balance; the way to offset the removal of regulations is with Pigouvian taxes . . . so instead of having insanely complex environmental codes, which leads to employment for lobbyists and lawyers, and costs the taxpayers money in the form of the government agency and all the market distortions caused by the big-business lobbying . . . instead, tax pollutants, tax the amount of harm a factory does, and you are much more likely to capture revenue (or curb pollution) so this is a compelling example of a conservative thinker proposing a "good" tax . . . as opposed to a bad subsidy; subsidizing ethanol enriches ethanol producers, but a tax on gas could curb driving, could lessen greenhouse gases, could capture revenue, and could incentivize the electric car industry . . . without redistributing wealth and enriching the ethanol producers for doing nothing more vital than having a noble idea . . . I'm sure no conservative thinker has made it this far in the post, but this is a really important concept which Trump and his lackeys seem to be totally ignorant;
12) while it is in a voter's best interest to remain uneducated in most political forums-- it's not worth the time and effort-- Zingales does illustrate how shame, muck-raking, and a little bit of knowledge can go a long way in affecting policy and political outcomes . . . and deep into the book, he acknowledges that some people have an interest in public affairs, or they wouldn't have read his book, which tackles a complex subject in a detailed manner . . . anyway, these ideas are really important to understand; we need to harness the power of markets in America, often by separating big business and government; as anyone involved in sports knows, making things fair and competitive means more than simply removing all the rules . . . it takes thought, creativity, flexibility, and rigor; Zingales makes a fantastic case for a market-based ethic and hopes that breaches of this, in the form of cronyism and incestuous relationships between business and the government, will someday be stigmatized the way smoking is today . . . I hope he's right.
A Sentence Wherein Dave Preserves His Retinas
The sentence is canceled today: I used up my allotted screen time during exams.
LA Fitness: The Nexus of the Vector
My son Ian got braces this morning, and while they were being installed, I went to the gym . . . otherwise known as "the place where we all agree to get together and efficiently spread the flu."
The Test 105: Stacey's Songs #5
This week on our podcast The Test, another one of Stacey's inscrutable song quizzes: listen to the seven audio clips, identify the artists, contemplate the lyrics, and then endure the haphazard, illogical guesses that Cunningham and I make about the overarching theme . . . when you hear the answer, you'll kick yourself, as it makes perfect sense.
Dave Spends $5 Dollars on Future Human Capital
I recently showed my college writing class The Big Short-- we just finished a paper on Karen Ho's illuminating (but rather long and repetitive) essay on Wall Street culture in the aughts: "Biographies of Hegemony: The Culture of Smartness and the Recruitment and Construction of Investment Bankers" and I wanted to show them what happened to this insulated system that Karen Ho critiques-- and my son Alex saw the cover of the DVD and decided he wanted to watch it . . . I told him it was a great movie, but long and complicated, and he said, "My favorite movie is Inception, Dad, I think I can handle it" so I sweetened the deal and told him if he endured a short lecture from me before the film started-- on mortgages and subprimes loans and stocks and bonds-- and then, at the end of the film, if he could explain the systemic failure and how the financial crash of 2008 actually happened, I would give him five dollars, and-- withour irony and in the spirit of the movie, he agreed to this; Ian also watched and endured several of my financial asides, but when it was all over (and they watched the entire thing last night) Ian declined to try to explain it for five dollars (though he claimed to understand the plot) and also declined to make a sidebet on whether Alex would be able to successfully explain the origins and nature of the crash, but Alex rose to the challenge and gave me a fairly accurate portrayal of the crisis, including mortgage backed securities, CDOs, credit default swaps, fraudulent ratings, how to short the market, premiums eating into your account, the big pay-out and the bail-out . . . the only thing he had trouble with (which the movies glosses over) is the idea that the banks were unloading toxic securities they had created onto investors before they accurately marked the price, then shorting those same investments in order to attempt to balance their books -- creating a crazy conflict of interest feedback loop . . . you can learn about it in this special episode of This American Life, "Inside Job," which details the arbitrage, fraud, and corrupt strategies and tactics that Magnetar used during the crash-- and Alex was suitably annoyed with the result, a taxpayer bailout that funded the very institutions that created the crash and paid big bonuses to many of the engineers of the bubble, a bailout that so enormous that it might be incalculable and probably resulted in the election, oddly, of Donald Trump . . . because, as Jared Vennett clairvoyantly explains at the end:
In the years that followed, hundreds of bankers and rating-agency executives went to jail . . . the SEC was completely overhauled, and Congress had no choice but to break up the big banks and regulate the mortgage and derivative industries . . . just kidding! . . . banks took the money the American people gave them, and used it to pay themselves huge bonuses, and lobby the Congress to kill big reform . . . and then they blamed immigrants and poor people, and this time even teachers . . .
In the years that followed, hundreds of bankers and rating-agency executives went to jail . . . the SEC was completely overhauled, and Congress had no choice but to break up the big banks and regulate the mortgage and derivative industries . . . just kidding! . . . banks took the money the American people gave them, and used it to pay themselves huge bonuses, and lobby the Congress to kill big reform . . . and then they blamed immigrants and poor people, and this time even teachers . . .
the end of that little bait and switch speech surprised both my students and my children-- but it makes sense, as it too boring and complicated to completely understand the forces tearing apart our economy-- so it's much easier to blame the other, the barbarians at the gate and the freeloaders within; anyway, I'm proud of both my kids for making it all the way through-- Ian could have defaulted to The Walking Dead and Alex has decided he's going to read the book . . . maybe if enough youngsters understand what went wrong, they'll vote some people into office that will enact some policy to prevent this kind of thing . . . or maybe they'll blow all their savings on cryptocurrency and we'll all have another great movie to watch.
Two Hipster Recs
There are two kinds of people, those who listen to my hipster recommendations and those who don't . . . here are two for the weekend:
1) the comic book series Saga . . . here are ten reasons to read it . . . my kids love it (and so do I) but it's probably not appropriate for them;
2) the jazz trio The Bad Plus . . . if you don't like jazz with piano, give these guys a try and see if it that changes things.
1) the comic book series Saga . . . here are ten reasons to read it . . . my kids love it (and so do I) but it's probably not appropriate for them;
2) the jazz trio The Bad Plus . . . if you don't like jazz with piano, give these guys a try and see if it that changes things.
Dave Beseeches the Millenials to Fix This Shithole Country
One of the strangest things about the political divisiveness of our times is that amidst the misinformation and the acceptance of idiocy, amidst the low standards of morality, veracity, accountability and the ignorance of facts and the denial of science-- amidst all this gross unfiltered miasma of shit, there is so much intelligent debate and discussion and so much astounding art and literature that grapple with these very same issues in a non-partisan, intelligent fashion . . . I'm not sure if I find hope and solace in this duality, or if it's a phenomenon like the Weimar Cabaret . . . art, satire, and intellectual freedom didn't stop Hitler-- but that was before the Internet . . . so if you need a refuge from Trump America and the 24 hour stupidity cycle and if you want to actually think about some of the issues and the logic behind them-- which apparently plenty of people do-- here are three things:
1) The new Sam Harris episode (#114 Politics and Sanity) is excellent, mainly because Sam Harris doesn't talk much-- he mediates a debate and discussion between two logical, well-spoken, reasonable conservative thinkers (David Frum: senior editor at the Atlantic and speechwriter for George W. Bush, and Andrew Sullivan: who edited The New Republic and founded The Daily Dish) and they discuss topics as various as Trump, hyper-partisanship, Henry Kissinger, religion, and the legalization of marijuana . . . listening to the quality of this thought and discourse among folks with different political persuasions and the fact that Harris's podcast is quite popular will give you some hope for America (Conversations with Tyler is another hopeful indicator);
2) but not too much hope . . . I just finished Brian Alexander's new book Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town and I'll be honest, I thought this was going to be an easy and clear read that would give me some insight into Middle America, like Sam Quinones' Dreamland and J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy . . . but while Alexander's book has elements of those texts, it does something that's less fun to read and probably way more important to understand-- it details the exact reasons that the town of Lancaster was decimated and went from one of the most desirable places to live in America (as long as you were white) to an underfunded town with a rampant drug problem, lack of jobs and human capital, and a sharp and vast divide between the haves and the have-nots . . . he delineates the entire Anchor-Hocking glass factory story in inglorious detail: the investment from private equity, the battles with the unions, the leverages, the buyouts, the lack of maintenance, the safety issues, the methods used to turn a piece of a conglomerate around and make a quick profit, the detached executives from companies like Cerberus and Global Home Products, the debt, the gutting of salaries and pensions, and the effect of global economics on an American factory; the change from factory that could make great ware for far less than it cost to sell it, things like Pyrex bakeware and auto headlight glass, and then share that profit with skilled workers in the form of salaries and pensions, into a entity in a weird conglomerate, bought by corporate raiders, put on the books in any number of ways . . . and all this for the American pursuit of cheap stuff, something of which we are all guilty-- Americans have been shopping harder and harder for the cheapest stuff-- and though apparently, if things are working well, we can make glass products in the United States and sell them here-- mainly because glass is heavy and breakable, so it's tougher to ship from overseas-- but not with the global race to the bottom fueling things, the nadir of prices, wages, and detachment; there's a short version of this story in The Atlantic, with the reminder at the end that it's not about making a product any more, it's about making money-- I'd probably recommend reading the article over the book, which was a bear-- but there is a poignant moment at the end of the book that's worth checking out:
"Corporate elites said they needed free trade agreements so they got them . . . manufactures said they needed tax breaks and public money incentives to keep their plants operating in the United States, so they got them . . . banks and financiers said they needed looser regulations, so they got them . . . employers said they needed weaker unions-- or no unions at all-- so they got them . . . private equity firms said they needed carried interest and secrecy, so they got them . . . everybody, including Lancastrians themselves, said they needed lower taxes, so they got them . . . what did Lancaster and a hundred other towns like it get? job losses, slashed wages, poor civic leadership, social dysfunction, drugs . . ."
and so you had the lawyers and consultants plotting the sale and break-up of the Anchor-Hocking plant and getting paid one hundred times more an hour than the lowly $12 and $14 dollar an hour glass-workers, in a town where at one time everyone rubbed elbows, the factory workers, the company board, the doctors, the lawyers, and they weren't separated by a vast economic chasm . . .
3) which brings me to The Big Short-- you should read the book, of course, but Mark Baum's speech near the end of the film really sums this up; Baum is based on a real person (Steve Eisman) and played brilliantly by Steve Carell . . . he says:
"For fifteen thousand years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never, ever worked . . . not once; eventually you get caught, things go south . . . when the hell did we forget all that? I thought we were better than this, I really did"
1) The new Sam Harris episode (#114 Politics and Sanity) is excellent, mainly because Sam Harris doesn't talk much-- he mediates a debate and discussion between two logical, well-spoken, reasonable conservative thinkers (David Frum: senior editor at the Atlantic and speechwriter for George W. Bush, and Andrew Sullivan: who edited The New Republic and founded The Daily Dish) and they discuss topics as various as Trump, hyper-partisanship, Henry Kissinger, religion, and the legalization of marijuana . . . listening to the quality of this thought and discourse among folks with different political persuasions and the fact that Harris's podcast is quite popular will give you some hope for America (Conversations with Tyler is another hopeful indicator);
2) but not too much hope . . . I just finished Brian Alexander's new book Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town and I'll be honest, I thought this was going to be an easy and clear read that would give me some insight into Middle America, like Sam Quinones' Dreamland and J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy . . . but while Alexander's book has elements of those texts, it does something that's less fun to read and probably way more important to understand-- it details the exact reasons that the town of Lancaster was decimated and went from one of the most desirable places to live in America (as long as you were white) to an underfunded town with a rampant drug problem, lack of jobs and human capital, and a sharp and vast divide between the haves and the have-nots . . . he delineates the entire Anchor-Hocking glass factory story in inglorious detail: the investment from private equity, the battles with the unions, the leverages, the buyouts, the lack of maintenance, the safety issues, the methods used to turn a piece of a conglomerate around and make a quick profit, the detached executives from companies like Cerberus and Global Home Products, the debt, the gutting of salaries and pensions, and the effect of global economics on an American factory; the change from factory that could make great ware for far less than it cost to sell it, things like Pyrex bakeware and auto headlight glass, and then share that profit with skilled workers in the form of salaries and pensions, into a entity in a weird conglomerate, bought by corporate raiders, put on the books in any number of ways . . . and all this for the American pursuit of cheap stuff, something of which we are all guilty-- Americans have been shopping harder and harder for the cheapest stuff-- and though apparently, if things are working well, we can make glass products in the United States and sell them here-- mainly because glass is heavy and breakable, so it's tougher to ship from overseas-- but not with the global race to the bottom fueling things, the nadir of prices, wages, and detachment; there's a short version of this story in The Atlantic, with the reminder at the end that it's not about making a product any more, it's about making money-- I'd probably recommend reading the article over the book, which was a bear-- but there is a poignant moment at the end of the book that's worth checking out:
"Corporate elites said they needed free trade agreements so they got them . . . manufactures said they needed tax breaks and public money incentives to keep their plants operating in the United States, so they got them . . . banks and financiers said they needed looser regulations, so they got them . . . employers said they needed weaker unions-- or no unions at all-- so they got them . . . private equity firms said they needed carried interest and secrecy, so they got them . . . everybody, including Lancastrians themselves, said they needed lower taxes, so they got them . . . what did Lancaster and a hundred other towns like it get? job losses, slashed wages, poor civic leadership, social dysfunction, drugs . . ."
and so you had the lawyers and consultants plotting the sale and break-up of the Anchor-Hocking plant and getting paid one hundred times more an hour than the lowly $12 and $14 dollar an hour glass-workers, in a town where at one time everyone rubbed elbows, the factory workers, the company board, the doctors, the lawyers, and they weren't separated by a vast economic chasm . . .
3) which brings me to The Big Short-- you should read the book, of course, but Mark Baum's speech near the end of the film really sums this up; Baum is based on a real person (Steve Eisman) and played brilliantly by Steve Carell . . . he says:
"For fifteen thousand years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never, ever worked . . . not once; eventually you get caught, things go south . . . when the hell did we forget all that? I thought we were better than this, I really did"
and that is the final reminder: we did all this to ourselves, we created these systems, and it does not have to be like this . . . we are in control of how we run our government and our economy, we are in control of how we treat our workers and our citizens, and while it might be too late for my generation to fix things, perhaps if enough of the Millennials take advantage of all this clear, logical, and quite profound art, thought, and discourse that is readily available, they will change things.
Conjunction or Preposition?
The ladies were making a posterboard sign for the Elective Fair (because I was incapable) so that we could inform the students in attendance about the various English Electives available and we needed to include my friend Kevin's class but we weren't sure on the name: I insisted the class was called Sports in Literature but the ladies thought it might be Sports and Literature . . . but I convinced them that the middle word was "in" because Sports and Literature is a class where each day you read a bit and then play some kind of sport; perhaps Monday you tackle a passage from Brothers Karamazov and hit around a shuttlecock, Tuesday might be "The Wasteland" and flag football . . . and Sports in Literature is the class Kevin teaches, a class about books like Friday Night Lights and Moneyball, literary works that contain sports (and though I convinced them with my vivid and logical argument, I was totally wrong-- the name of the course is Sports and Literature . . . absurd).
Sergeant Powell Gets Back in the Saddle Again
We watched Die Hard the other night with the kids, and while the movie totally holds up-- it's perfectly plotted and everything detail is important: the foot exercises, the tipped photo, the Rolex watch-- there's a celebratory moment at the end that indicates just how much times have changed; Hans Gruber's henchman Karl (who seemed to expire when John Mclane wrapped a chain around his neck and threw him over a railing) emerges from the building with an automatic rifle, and just as he is setting his sights on McLane, Sergeant Powell-- the African-American cop who trusted and believed McClane-- pulls out his gun and shoots Karl before he can fire a round . . . and we're supposed to be especially ecstatic that Powell kills Karl not just because he saves McClane, but also because Powell has been hiding behind a desk for years, as he lost his mojo when he accidentally shot a thirteen year old kid who was carrying a toy ray-gun . . . and this quick draw and execution of Karl indicates that he's back on the horse, once again confident with the gun and ready for unbridled street action.
This Makes More Sense Than the Whole Dipping A Baby in the River Styx Theory
Last week, I was discussing heel pain with my friend Greek friend Argiris-- we were both lamenting the fact that we couldn't play Friday morning basketball due to foot pain-- and he came up with an interesting theory: perhaps Achilles legendary heel wasn't metaphysical at all, perhaps he simply had plantar fasciitis or Achilles tendonitis, this would explain why he did all that melancholic brooding in his tent during the siege of Troy . . . I can certainly attest to the fact that heel pain leads to brooding, as I played indoor soccer yesterday and aggravated my plantar fasciitis and I've been depressed and brooding since then, as you can't do anything with any kind of alacrity or good spirits when every step you take hurts; as a bonus, both of these ailments are due to tightness in the calf and Achilles tendon . . . so maybe the legend about the bum heel that laid a great hero low was a simple (and very common, especially if you're wearing footwear without support . . . sandals!) physical ailment which gained mythical status after many years had passed.
The Test 104: Vitamin D+
This week on The Test you'll get your daily dose of Vitamin Cunningham . . . and though she's a little short on information, she makes up for it with attitude; bonuses: a much-needed cameo from God, Stacey cleans up dog vomit, and Dave uses the plural of the word "piranha."
People: Obstacles to Obesity
The new episode of Plant Money delves into the Beige Book-- the Federal Reserve's treasure trove of economic anecdotes that offer a more human report on current economic conditions-- and one snippet of information from Cleveland is that when people ordered fast food at an electronic kiosk, rather than from a human cashier, they ordered (on average) more food . . . so perhaps when people are ordering on a screen, they are less embarrassed to supersize their meal, or order three bags of fries, or add bacon, because they don't have to confess their gluttony to an actual person . . . nearly twenty years ago-- long before automated kiosks-- my friend Whitney solved this problem; after a late night at the Corner Tavern, we were waiting in line at Giovanelli's and Whitney-- a native of Virginia-- couldn't decide which Jersey specialty in which to indulge, the cheesesteak-with-egg or the fatcat, and so when he got to the front of the line, he said, "We'll have the cheesesteak and egg and the fatcat," a brilliant maneuver to disguise his decadent order . . . unfortunately, the next person in line was our friend Rob, who caught his use of the "royal we" as a tactic to order two sandwiches without the shame and publicly called him out on it: "We? Who the fuck is we? You! You are having two sandwiches . . . there's no we."
Duh Dad . . .
I was unloading the dishwasher and listening to Conversations with Tyler, a podcast where brilliant libertarian/conservative economist Tyler Cowen asks very smart guests profoundly long, allusion laden questions and then actually gives these very smart guests time to answer, without interrupting or interjecting very much at all-- if your upset about Trump and the Republicans and all that, it's a good reminder that not all conservatives are insane . . . and my son Alex came into the kitchen while I was listening and he asked me what I was listening to and I gave him the previous explanation, pretty much word for word and this was his reply:
"That sounds interesting,"
and I said, "It is interesting,"
and he said, "I was being sarcastic, dad,"
and so I told him I recognized that he was being sarcastic (and then I won't transcribe the rest of what I said to him, in case DYFS reads this blog).
"That sounds interesting,"
and I said, "It is interesting,"
and he said, "I was being sarcastic, dad,"
and so I told him I recognized that he was being sarcastic (and then I won't transcribe the rest of what I said to him, in case DYFS reads this blog).
I'd Rather an Oscar
This afternoon my acupuncturist happily awarded me the "point" of the week, which means when she stuck a needle into the anterior ligament on the inside of my left foot, I jumped, my foot jumped and she jumped . . . because my foot reacted so strongly to the stimulus . . . I accepted this honor as graciously as I could (not very . .. it hurt, but my foot feels a lot better now).
A Miracle of Biblical (and Logical) Proportions
I gave it the ol' college try (actually more like the ol' middle school try) but Pulitzer prize winner Frances Fitgerald's book The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America is just too comprehensive and detailed for a dilettante like me-- she really gets into the weeds about the fundamentalist-modern conflict in religion . . . I made it about 100 pages in and I certainly learned a lot; the main lesson, which always astounds me, is that people seem to wholeheartedly and sincerely believe in God and the Bible and Jesus, not in an abstract "this is a good way to live and prosper" kind of way, but as a serious discipline, to be debated and and delineated, point-by-point, in a logical matter, which strikes me as absolutely insane . . . the best example of this in the book (from the pages I read) is a piece of impenetrably brilliant specious logic conceived by the Princeton scholars in the late 1800s: they determined that "the doctrine of inerrancy" in the Bible refers only to the original autograph-- the "manuscripts that came from the hands of the prophets were infallible" but since those original documents don't exist, there may be errors in translation . . . so while this hypothetical primary source Bible is the Word of God, since it has been translated, there are certainly errors . . . this is a genius strategic move because then you get to have your Eucharist and eat it too, as you can claim the Bible might be fundamental and infallible but if someone does point out a contradiction or logical conundrum, then you can blame the human translators for that particular bit.
Robinsons Crusoe: The Ocean is Half Full
I was inspired to read Daniel Defoe's early novel Robinson Crusoe by the stubbornly lovable steward from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins . . . and while I recognize that it is odd to get literary recommendations from a fictitious narrator, I'm glad I read the book; Crusoe is the eternal optimist, he's happy with his original station in life-- the middle state, or what "might be called the upper station of low life"-- but he's not so content that he stays at home, instead he disobeys his father and goes adventuring at sea; he makes the best of things when he is captured into slavery; he does even better for himself on his deserted island, which he tames with his patient capability in all the skills of survival, agriculture, husbandry, and good living and where he realizes that "the fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself" and ends up befriending the ex-cannibal Friday and that's where I thought the story would end, but then there are a surprising number of action-packed adventures after Crusoe is rescued from the island, in Brazil and Northern Spain, involving guns, powder, explosions, cannibals, bears and wolves and when Crusoe finally returns to England most everyone he knew is dead, he is rewarded financially by various investments and could possibly live out the rest of his days in peace and tranquility, but instead-- in a move reminiscent of when Huck Finn decides he's going to light out for the territories-- Crusoe blithely mentions the death of his wife as the reason he goes back to sea with his nephew and revisits his island in order to see the progress the natives have made since he was gone.
This Sentence Indicates That I Am Old
On the way to the nursing home (to visit my 95-year-old grandmother) my son Ian explained the complexity of the new dice system in the Star Wars RPG game they were playing later in the day-- the dice are 8 and 12 sided and have odd symbols on them; during the course of the discussion, I asked him if he knew the percentage of a side coming up on an eight-sided die and a twelve-sided die, respectively, and while he knew how to figure this out and eventually arrived at the correct answers, his mental math was fairly slow and shoddy, and then later in the day (after I took a nap) I went to the hipster coffee joint up the street and pulled out my gift certificate, an envelope sized piece of cardboard with a ledger on the back, and I bought a medium coffee for $2.94 . . . there was $11.26 left on the certificate and the barista-- a college dude-- was struggling to do the math so I quickly did it for him and said, "$8.32" and he said, "Ok . . . but let me make sure" and he took out a calculator and checked my work, pronounced it correct and then laughed and said, "the crazy thing is . . . I'm a math major" and so I told him I was giving my own kid a hard time about mental math earlier in the day and then he told me that while he couldn't subtract in his head, he could do proofs and could program a computer to do math, which I admitted was pretty impressive . . . certainly more impressive than subtracting three dollars from $11.26 and then adding the six cents back, which is what I did . . . and knowing how to do that is like knowing how to program a VCR or recall a friend's phone number and dial it on a pay phone or play Dragon's Lair, a skill that has lost its value and only indicates that you are from a previous generation.
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