John – Page 111 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

What is Wealth? Is it More Than Money?

“Aristotle was not Belgian, the principle of Buddhism is not “every man for himself”, and the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.” – A Fish Called Wanda

This may be the most important philosophical question of our lifetime, especially if you’re haulin’ oats.

The other day I was listening to the radio and the hosts (Walton and Johnson) were discussing wealth. Since actual radio around Casa Wilder consists of a single AM station broadcasting crop reports and lean cattle futures and an FM station that is “All Hall and Mostly Oates, All the Time!” Therefore? We listen to radio stations on the Internet. Walton and Johnson are out of Houston, but we also lived in Alaska, so we also often listen to a station we like out of Fairbanks. Obviously, when the radio in the bedroom says it’s -40°F and the kitchen radio says it’s 85°F, there’s likely to be wind and a rainstorm down the hallway.

Maybe I misheard that lyric?

Anyhow, Walton and Johnson were discussing wealth. They mentioned that a recent study showed that, in Houston, a survey said that to be considered “wealthy” you had to have $2.5 million dollars in net worth. To be considered “well off” you only needed to have $1.4 million dollars – which is quite a bargain – many people work a whole year and don’t make that much money!

After a bit of research, I found the source of the story: Charles Schwab®, the investment firm. You can read the study here (LINK). In San Francisco (according to Schwab©), it’s even more money than Houston to be considered wealthy: $4.1 million.

Looking at the best numbers I could find, the median household net worth is about $100,000. To be in the paltry $2.5 million Houston-wealthy club (versus the expensive San Francisco $4.1 million club), means that your household is in better financial shape than 96% of American households.

But that’s the problem with this survey – since, at most, 4% of the people taking the survey would be considered “wealthy,” most of the people taking it have about as much idea about how much money it requires to be wealthy as a monkey trying to understand Nietzsche. I mean, apes read philosophy, but they just don’t understand it, Otto. And I imagine people who aren’t wealthy don’t understand that, either. The answer is just a bit more complicated . . . .

I’ve done about 70 posts on wealth, but I need to step back and ask that question: what is wealth? To say it’s purely a number is to show that you don’t understand wealth. Money represents not a fixed number, but a possibility.

If you measure wealth in love . . .

What is wealth?

Wealth is time. In fact, if you go to the basic equation – your life is made entirely out of time – nothing else. Your life literally is the sum of the things that you do with your time. So wealth is doing what you want to do with your time, which means doing what you want to do with your life. It’s entirely probable that a Wall Street investment banker with $10,000,000 in the bank from a job he hates and shrill wife with more implanted silicon than actual original equipment is less wealthy than a hunting guide who lives in a log cabin in Alaska who has less than $5000 in the bank.

In my case, I’ve traded a LOT of time for money in the past. My theory was to work hard while I was young so that I could build my career so I could save enough money so that my family would be secure in the future. You would say that working all the time is not a very wealthy (or in some cases healthy) thing to do, except . . . I loved the job I was doing! In many cases it was stressful. Difficult. Uncertain. Long hours. And when I did an awesome job? Yeah, it was like winning the World Junior Baking Championship. Not that I can bake, or even that there is a World Junior Baking Championship, but I think you know exactly what I mean.

I watched the documentary Lynyrd Skynyrd: If I Leave Here Tomorrow this weekend, and those guys simply loved playing music. They’d do it all day long, even when they weren’t getting paid. Being a rock star was awesome, sure, but it wasn’t the point. They were wealthy as soon as they could get paid for playing small clubs. Arenas were just the gravy.

And, yes, I’ve said in the past (and still maintain) that to support yourself, support your family you might really have to suck it up, buttercup, and work jobs you don’t like because an Alaskan hunting guide has really crappy health insurance and his spouse has neurohemoblastaphobia which can only be cured by a mouse egg (before the baby mice hatch) extract that’s been strained through bigfoot hair and breathed on by an honest politician. Yes, it’s as expensive as it sounds. Then you have to work the job you have rather than a job where you play guitar all day.

Wealth is freedom. Could you quit your job tomorrow without having a new one and still meet all of your obligations? For most people, the answer is no, either because the obligations are too high or the amount of cash they have is too low – 60% of people in the country live paycheck to paycheck. However, sometimes it’s self-inflicted.

Some people trade their freedom for a car payment. I’ve seen people who purchase a $60,000 pickup, and then have to pay $1,200 a month in car payments. I don’t know about you, but my 4,000 square foot house has a payment of less than $1,000, so it’s not making me freer to be tied to a depreciating asset that I have to pay $14,400 a year for. Plus insurance. Plus whatever taxes the state would extract for a $60,000 vehicle.

I have a pickup. It cost $6,000. I paid with cash. It didn’t cost very much because the car dealership was having a hard time selling a stick shift. The truck runs fine. Engine is a bit small, but 95% of the time it’s just being driven by a teenager to school and back.

But if your idea of wealth is a $60,000 pickup, I’ll never be wealthy in your eyes.

But I can be free without a $60,000 pickup.

And, no, I’m not a radical get rid of stuff and never buy anything sort of person – I’ve probably got more books on some topics than any library in my state. And, I’ve bought more than my share of crap in my life, but very little of it has made me happy, and very little of it has made me a better person. Except for the PEZ®, of course. And I’ve been on some incredible vacations.

Wealth is time. Wealth is freedom. And your wealth is determined by things you “need.”

The less you need? The wealthier you are, and the more choices you have.

The Fall of Texas and the Coming One Party State

“Well, I have a microphone, and you don’t, so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!” – The Wedding Singer

Thankfully, the Soviets put CCCP on the side of their ships in letters 40 feet high.

When I was a lad, I stumbled upon the book “The Ayes of Texas,” by Daniel da Cruz. In it, a wealthy Texas entrepreneur, who lives in Texas, funds work on the Battleship Texas (BB-35) to make it seaworthy again in time for Independence Day, 2000.

Alas, the sneaky USSR proposes a treaty to the United States: put your weapons up, and we’ll put ours up after you put yours up. And, led by East Coast leftists, we fell for it. Except for the Texans, who vote to secede from the Union, and fight it out alone against the USSR. Oh, and our entrepreneur, has secretly outfitted the Texas (BB-35) with nuclear reactors and particle beam weapons.

It’s a good yarn (it has the Battleship Texas surfing on a tsunami of liquid fire), and you can get a cheap copy on Amazon.

And it does, I think, highlight the lynchpin that Texas is in modern politics, and not the alternate reality where the Soviet Union is still a thing.

My consideration of this started in the hot tub. The hot tub is great – we sit and either relax quietly, or engage in conversation. And it was just this sort of conversation a few weeks ago about the Civil War (Civil War, Cool Maps, Censorship, and is Fort Sumter . . . Happening Now?) that led to The Boy saying:

“It all comes down to Texas.”

I was interested. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” he began, “From what I’ve read, Texas today looks a lot like California in 1980 or so. Look what California looked like then, it was prosperous. It was wealthy. It was a beacon for the country. Everyone wanted to move there.”

I remembered. Heck, I remembered one time when a family stopped at our house when I was young asking for a cup of flour so they could make gravy at a campsite. They were making their way from Oklahoma to California. California was a place where your economic dreams could come true.

“Now, that’s Texas. The economy is great there. They’re reliably Republican, and with that there are all of the low tax, low government interference policies that lead to prosperity. People are streaming into Texas.

“And that’s the problem. The people streaming into Texas, well, they aren’t Texan. Over 300,000 Californians (net) have made their way to Texas over the last five years, and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down. They’re fleeing the highest poverty state in the nation, which coincidentally has the greatest wealth inequality in the nation.”

I responded: “Yeah, California is regulations-happy. I read that it was against the law for a homeowner to change a light switch – it had to be done by a licensed electrician. And one time I was talking to a friend on the phone a few years ago. His dog started barking. He was afraid he’d get fined again. Because dogs barking in California is . . . illegal. Sadly, when the Californians leave to go to another state, they want to bring those regulations with them, not realizing that those regulations were the cause of the economic problems they have now. Heck, Californians can’t figure out that their restrictions on housing cause house prices to go crazy faster than Elon Musk with a few minutes to kill and a connection to Twitter®.”

Graph-Me. Data? Wikipedia.

The Boy responded. “California used to be solidly Republican. At some point in the near future, a Republican might not even be on the ballot. Did you know that Ronald Reagan was governor there?”

It’s amusing when 18 year olds begin to discover the world.

“Yeah, now that you remind me of that, I remember it.” I smiled

“Well, California voted solidly Republican, at least until 1992. From then on, it became a lock for the Democrats. And it happened quickly – within a decade. Once Texas flips to voting Democrat, it’s over.”

Once it flips? Will it flip? The percentages voting Republican have dropped, and with the continual influx of Californians that are heavily collectivist as well as the rising proportion of Hispanic voters, which vote Democrat on a greater than two to one margin, it seems assured that as the Hispanic population rises in Texas, the flip to permanent Democrat control in Texas will be nearly inevitable.

Honestly, if Hispanic immigrants voted 2 to 1 in favor of Republicans, Democrats would have insisted on a 200 foot high wall topped with automatic machine guns.

Looking at the map, it’s theoretically possible for a Republican to win the White House without Texas, but it’s unlikely. Once Texas becomes Democratic the presidency will become, like California, permanently Democratic.

What does that even look like?

We can see hints of it, even now.

Control of The Microphone – We Will Shut You Down

Alex Jones is many things, but the fact that the Left thinks he’s dangerous enough to silence? It’s not a great strategy. I’m frankly amazed. But it’s not just him, the Left is looking to shut down every opinion that they disagree with. The old Libertarian in me would have said, “but they’re private companies, they can do anything they want.” Well, yes and no. If they start selectively banning people, they’ve opened their companies up to liability. And it’s been proven that they’re in the business of selectively banning racist posts, most recently when Candace Owens just changed a single word from a Tweet by Sarah “Got Dumped by a White Dude and Is Just a Bit Bitter” Jeong. I won’t post the Tweet, mainly because Sarah has a potty mouth. You can read about it here (LINK).

Worse? Who is next? What is the trip wire? I’ve heard Jones say lots of things. Some of them incredibly silly.

But none of them deserving censorship. The one common ground I used to be able to find (nearly 100%) with people of the Left was freedom of speech. Now, speech has to be stopped has become their creed. Why? Here’s a hint:

Your Speech is Violence, and My Violence is Speech

Yeah, it’s like something you would read in 1984. But the violence from Antifa® has been justified because burning things and hurting people is the justified speech of a downtrodden class and or ethnicity. Check out the sentence for an Antifa™ member who hit multiple people with a bike lock at the end of a chain. A link is here (LINK).

But it’s fine that Antifa© attempts to shut down a never-Trump conservative speaker, and Berkeley has to spend $600,000 to stop violence. You can read about it here (LINK).

Your Money is Theft, My Money is Earned

The Clintons earned $240,000,000 between 2001 and 2015. All earned, right? Obama earned $20,000,000 between when he was elected to the Senate and when he left office. Al Gore went from $274,000 in 1992 to $300,000,000 today.

This is considered fair.

A dentist makes $350,000 a year is part of the 1% and is an example of the enemy.

All Animals are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

Even more important is intersectionality, which is making it more important to be part of an even more marginalized group by being parts of LOTS of marginalized groups, say, a deaf and blind gay transsexual quadruple amputee of aboriginal Australian and Hungarian descent.

I read an article where a Native American woman described when would go to leftist meetings. Generally after her first showing up at a meeting, she would be nominated for some sort of leadership position, up to and including the presidency of the group. It amused her (but not in the good way) that they didn’t even know her name on some occasions where she was being nominated to lead the group.

And Other Things Not Good

I’m not sure how socialism ends in the United States, but it really isn’t good. There are exactly zero socialist countries that have produced the level of freedom and wealth that the United States has produced. Sure, we’ve messed stuff up, but we’ve gotten far more of it right.

Back to Texas

Texas has always considered itself of outsized importance. I once worked with one of the kindest, most humble men that I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. Except when it came to Texas. If you made fun of his height (he was short) or his wife or his dog, it was okay. But if you made fun of Texas? It was personal.

I think Da Cruz was right – Texas is crucially important to the future of the United States. Almost as important as Texans think it is.

Pencils, Rocks, Attachment Objects and Socialism

“And the first question is for you, Karl Marx. The Hammers. The Hammers is the nickname of what English football team?” – Monty Python

I tried writing with a broken pencil once. It was pointless.

I have the same pencil since the Clinton administration. Not just in a junk drawer someplace, but as my daily use pencil at work. It’s not some yellow No. 2 pencil that I’ve sharpened until it’s a microscopic nub, rather, it’s a blue mechanical pencil, made in Japan. It’s a Cross® pencil, and has the original eraser but the eraser is so old that it looks more like a green petrified pterodactyl nipple rather than something that belongs in a book bag, and it’s harder than year-old chewing gum and just tears the paper rather than erasing anything.

I’ve used the pencil so much that the paint has worn off the brass and tin metal parts. It’s been dropped, chipped, and glued back together. The part that’s supposed to clip it to your pocket is loose and wobbles.

I won the pencil for a speech I gave during a corporate training program, about the time my career took off, so it has some special memories for me. I never intended to have this pencil forever, it just hung around at first. And then I noticed it was there on super-awesome days, like when I got divorced, or when I met The Mrs. And after six or so years, I decided I’d keep it.

I have a pen, too, but it’s really new. I got it in 2000, so I’ve only had it for 18 years.

Quirky, I know.

I mentioned my pencil to a friend, and she noted that she has rocks. From places. She knows where and when she got each one.

She mentioned that when she met her husband, he pointed out a closed box. It contained the rocks.

Husband to be: “What’s in that?”

“Oh, you’d better not look in there.”

Now, I believe, they’re in her garden. She knows where they are, and when she moves? She’ll crate up her rocks and they’ll go with her. Obviously, I understand.

A psychologist would call these “attachment objects.” Given the choice between my beat up, old Cross™ pencil and a brand-new and shiny Cross® pencil? I’d take my scuffed up ancient pencil any day. A new one could never replace a pencil I’ve had with me for most of my career. In my mind it has some sort of property ate differentiates it in some way from every other pencil on Earth.

This pencil is mine.

Another example – I bought a Blackberry® in 2008. Oh, sure, it was only six years old when I got a new Samsung™ in 2014. I know, how un-American of me. You should replace your cell phone weekly.

But I picked it up a few weeks ago. It felt . . . dead. It felt alien, inanimate.

I know, it’s not like the Blackberry© was a dancer beforehand, but still it wasn’t the same.

This tendency to place value on inanimate objects is greatest in people and groups that score highest in individuality, and lowest in collectivist-oriented people, so I imagine that Karl Marx went through pencils like nobody’s business.

And Venezuela? Don’t even get me started.

Perhaps that’s why socialist societies always fail: all of the means of production eventually become focused on generating replacement pencils?

College Funding, Value and Grade Inflation: Should Your Kid Go? Should You Pay?

“You had rich parents. You got to go to that expensive community college.” – South Park

If you do college right, you end up being able to travel to cool places. Literally cool, like Alaska. Do it wrong? You’re stuck on some hot beach in Florida during spring break.

I’ve posted several times about college here, but mainly from the perspective of the student. The other major perspective to catch is that of the parent – whether their child is asking only for advice (in a dream world – 18 year olds know everything so why would they ask an old person for advice?) or you are paying full tuition for them to attend Harvard®, you’re involved. What questions should you be thinking about when they come looking for money advice?

I think the first and most important question is if your kid should go to college at all. In 1960, it wasn’t a given that kids would go off to college. Only one kid out of twenty would go to college and graduate with a bachelor’s degree or more.

The line goes up and to the right. So, everyone is getting smarter because here in America EVERYONE is above average!

And, possibly, some folks weren’t going to college because they had been inappropriately excluded. But now? 70% of high school graduates start college. 70%!

By definition, AT LEAST 20% of the people who go to college are below average in high school. And 84% of kids now graduate from high school. Assume the dumbest drop out (not really a good assumption, but we’ll go with it). Let’s assume that the dumbest of the high school graduates don’t start college (again, not a good assumption, but we’ll go with it). Still, 20% of the people starting college would then have an IQ of less than 100.

The overall college graduation rate is now 60%. Which is ludicrous. Even more ludicrous? At Harvard©, more than half of the students have a GPA of 3.67 or more, meaning even at Harvard™ the challenge isn’t surviving Harvard©, it’s getting accepted. Admittedly at Harvard the average IQ is 125 (decent), but it sounds like the grade fairy visits there often.

So, if your kid can get into Harvard™ (or Yale©) (or Stanford®) (etc.) they should go there. If they’ve got decent study skills they’ll pass. The reason you go to Harvard™ to learn, really, you can get just as good of an education at Iowa State© for much less money. No, the reason you go to Harvard™ is to hang around with really, really wealthy people and make connections so that you’re hanging out with Mark Zuckerberg’s kid in 2032 or whatever. If you’re besties with a Zuckerberg because you had a car and Daddy Mark wouldn’t buy him one so you drove him to strip clubs? You’re set for life. They will make sure you have an awesome career, even if it just involves hanging around with their kid driving him to strip clubs for a ludicrous salary.

Think what Mark Zuckerberg might have accomplished if only he had finished college at Harvard!

The second reason that your kid should go to college is that they’re studying some sort of real science (not a fake one like sociology or anthropology) or engineering. You have to go to college, and since these degrees have (at least in the past) weeded out the intellectually inferior, well, they will generally lead to much higher wages. Ditto being a doctor or nurse. Now, as soon as we start asking how the bridge feels? Yeah, engineering will be done for. If we haven’t done that already.

See, this is an example of creative engineering. I’d pay to watch people drive this . . .

But a lot of college degrees are worthless – college becomes a four (or five, or six) year day-care for those unwilling to head to real life. And it costs and amazing amount of money for day-care. I’d just as soon give the kid enough money and send them to France for six months, not because I like my kid, but I think that France should be inundated with mouthy self-entitled 18 year olds. It’s my gift to them.

I used to think that all bright kids with good character should go to college. I don’t think that anymore. I had one kid I worked with (in a volunteer position). I asked him what he wanted to do after he graduated high school. He described a career option, where, as a journeyman, he could live in rural North Midwestia and still make at least $80,000 a year after five years, and probably more like $100,000 after the all the overtime that you can generally pick up is figured into this. When he started his apprenticeship he already had competing job offers for when he graduated.

My knee-jerk reaction (programming wears off only slowly) was to tell him, “No! Go to college! You’re so smart!” And if I had given that advice and he had taken it, well, when he graduated he’d have $60,000 in debt and (if he was lucky) would have to fight to get a $40,000 a year job. His idea was way better.

So, consider, should your kid even go to college?

Let’s say that you decide it’s worth it. College won’t be a four-year boondoggle filled with lattes and climbing walls and easy A’s – it will actually mean something.

How do you pay for it? Do you pay for it? Should you pay for it?

This is why I’m against government paid college. Then you’d have to get two doctorates and dress in an outfit made of bigfoot hair and unicorn sweat to get noticed in a job interview.

Part of the reason that college becomes a long-duration fun-fest is the problem of skin in the game. Kids are having fun at college – why would they want to end it? The colleges are making great profit off the kids. Why would they want to end it? The only people who want to end it . . . are the people paying for it.

Incentives are very bad, indeed, especially if you’re the parent footing the bill for it.

I guess I have to leave it up to the parent, but there are other options (for many people) outside of paying for it or saddling your kid with a massive debt. They could be a great athlete, and get a full scholarship. And don’t kid yourself – some engineering and technical schools have sports teams and need people that can play reasonably well. Not NFL® talent. Not University of Alabama™ talent. Just well enough to not get hurt against the smaller NCAA Division II schools they play against.

ROTC is another one. ROTC is the Reserve Officer Training Corps. It depends on the service, but in some cases they’ll pay for your kid’s college, train them to be a military officer, and then guarantee them a job. The Army will be happy to take them as an active duty officer, or will offer them a slot in the Reserves. For the Air Force? If you’re Air Force ROTC, you’re going active duty. The nice thing about the Army? For one weekend a month and two weeks a year, you get your school paid for in just a few years of reserve duty. Assume it’s four years, and that’s over a thousand dollars a day they’re paying you, and some people don’t even make that kind of money during a summer job!

Both The Boy and Pugsley are reviewing this option. It would probably work well for both of them.

Of course, there are loans. But these can backfire amazingly. I was reading a few years ago about a guy who borrowed enough money to become a medical doctor. Downside? He owed upwards of $500,000, and wouldn’t be able to pay the loans off.

That doctor is gonna die in debt, because that’s just about the only way to avoid repaying a student loan. Or maybe he could make friends with Warren Buffet’s kid? Know where the strip clubs are?

Hmmm.

Civil War, Cool Maps, Censorship, and is Fort Sumter . . . Happening Now?

â€œWe might find the abandoned furnace room, or the old Civil War amputorium!â€ â€“ Malcom in the Middle

No problems in this map.Â None at all.Â Everything is as right as rain . . .

The following is (more or less) a discussion that occurred over several days as we sat in the hot tub.Â Iâ€™ll note that our speculation reflects things that we as observers and students of history and current events think are might happen, not what we want to happen.Â Itâ€™s edited for clarity and readability â€“ itâ€™s not a transcript, itâ€™s a blog post.Â In some cases a half an hour of conversation is only a sentence or two.

Honestly, this speculation is chilling enough to use as an air conditioner on a hot day . . . .Â Previous posts similar to this can be found here at The Coming Civil War (United States), Cool Maps, and Uncomfortable Truths,Â The Coming Civil War Part II, and a (Possible) American Caesar,andÂ Immigration, Freedom, Wealth, Corruption, and More Cool Maps.

The other day when we were in the hot tub, I rudely interrupted The Mrs.

John Wilder:Â â€œThatâ€™s enough of what you want to talk about.Â I have something to discuss.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œWell that was rude!â€

John Wilder:Â â€œAnd thatâ€™s exactly how Iâ€™ll describe it in my post.â€

And yes, Internet, this was pretty close to the real conversation, but The Mrs. is used to it after being married to me for what she calls â€œan eternity.â€Â I guess time flies when youâ€™re having fun, right?Â Wait a minute . . . that eternity comment might not be a complement?

Anyway, as we luxuriated in the warm swirling waters of the tub, I threw out my discussion topic.

John Wilder:Â â€œAs we look at parallels from todayâ€™s developments to the last Civil War, I know that events, places and people wonâ€™t be exact matches, but they seem to rhyme.Â If you look at the contentiousness of, say, the presidential elections, thatâ€™s a pretty big parallel.Â Lincoln got only 40% of the popular vote, and that was against the first female candidate for president, John C. Breckenridge.â€

I think this map was influenced by the Russians since they wanted to sell us Alaska and knew only Lincoln was stupid enough to buy it.Â Thankfully the Russians seem to want it back.

â€œIf you look back in the past, Abraham Lincoln was elected president by a party that was only six years old after an election that was so divided that one side actually refused to acknowledge the results.Â If thatâ€™s not a hallmark of a society unravelling, Iâ€™m not sure what is.â€

â€œBut,â€ I continued, â€œthe people didnâ€™t just drop everything one morning and yell at their neighbor and say â€˜THATâ€™S IT!â€™ Â There were a series of escalations that society went through that made it seem like it would be a good idea to blow up Virginia.Â And one of those events was Bleeding Kansas.â€

Bleeding Kansas was that period when violent groups (on both sides) ended up fighting each other over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free state where slavery would be illegal or not.Â Things got heated.Â On the floor of the United States Senate:

â€œSumner ridiculed the honor of elderly South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, portraying Butler’s pro-slavery agenda towards Kansas with the raping of a virgin and characterizing his affection for it in sexual and revolting terms.â€ (Wikipedia)

The next day, Butlerâ€™s cousin (A congressman named Preston Brooks) showed up and nearly killed Sumner by beating him with a cane.

So, if youâ€™ve never been â€œbeating a guy nearly to death with a cane mad,â€ maybe Congress wasnâ€™t the place for you in the 1850â€™s.

This was originally published by CNN â€“ the Cane News Network â€“ all canes, all the time.

Eventually Bleeding Kansas ended up as a big mess, with multiple battles (death toll total of 56, per Wikipedia), with there being multiple elections, crazy vote manipulation, and at least four territorial constitutions sent to the United States Senate for approval.Â And it gave us the album cover for the debut album of the prog-rock band KansasÂ®, which might make up for the death toll?

Tragic Prelude, by John Stewart Curry – John Brown is the crazy looking dude with the ZZ Top beard and Eraserhead hair in the middle.Â True fact:Â John Brown was really 12 feet tall, and the reason that basketball was invented in Kansas was so he could have a sport to play.

So, back to the hot tub.

John Wilder:Â â€œIâ€™m thinking that FergusonÂ® and Black Lives Matterâ„¢ is the Bleeding Kansas of today?â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œI donâ€™t know.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œMaybe AntifaÂ©?

The Mrs.:Â â€œYes.Â AntifaÂ©.Â The level of violence that they initiate is amazing, and they think that their violence is justified.Â Their violence isnâ€™t real violence because they think they have a good reason to be violent.Â Just as Antifaâ€™sÂ® racism isnâ€™t real racism because they have a good reason to be racist.â€

I nodded.

The Mrs. continued, â€œBut I wonder if a civil war is possible at all.Â There isnâ€™t the same geographic concentration that there was during the 1850â€™s.Â You donâ€™t have a group of industrialists in the north competing against the agricultural south.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œBut you do have the rural-urban divide.Â Heck, our county here went 80% for Trump.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œAnd our county has all of the guns.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œWe do now.Â But groups like Anitfaâ„¢ have shown that theyâ€™re not afraid to use violence.Â In our county we donâ€™t even lock our doors because either weâ€™re too nice to steal much or the thieves know that behind every door is a 12 gauge shotgun or an AR-15.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œTrue.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œGuns arenâ€™t that hard to get, or hard to learn how to use.Â Oh, sure, you have to really work at being able to do a 500 yard shot with a 20 mph crosswind (15 kilometers with a 20 liter crosswind for the metric-impaired) but half of Africa was conquered by revolutionaries who couldnâ€™t even read with AK-47s that were built in factories in Bulgaria whose idea of a precision tool was a sledgehammer.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œI can see that.Â But weâ€™re not as concentrated as we were back then.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œHave you seen this map?Â We are divided geographically â€“ and one side lives in a really small area, while the other side lives in the country.Â Coincidentally, thatâ€™s where all the soldiers come from â€“ rural places like where we live.Â And we make all of the food and most of the energy.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œYeah.Â Non-Trump counties make television shows and TeslasÂ®.Â Oh, and they lead the country in corruption, poverty, and crime.Â So I guess it could happen, but it would be a lot more chaotic than the first Civil War.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œSure, I think the chaos is pretty much a given.Â No way to predict where will be safe.Â So, whatâ€™s our Uncle Tomâ€™s Cabin?â€

Uncle Tomâ€™s Cabin, a book that was instrumental in setting the stage for the Civil War was the most popular book in the United States (besides the Bible) in the 1800â€™s.Â However, not long after it was published, it was strictly censored across the many Southern states.Â One man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for owning a copy of the book, and that was before the Civil War started.Â The book would be wholly censored across the Confederate States during the Civil War.

John Wilder:Â â€œIs it Alex Jones?â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œYes, that feels right.â€

Alex Jones is a radio talk show host that specializes in fringe news stories â€“ news stories the regular media doesnâ€™t cover, and news stories that are at times thinly checked (at best) and at times far in advance of â€œmainstreamâ€ news.Â And Jones has been an equal opportunity political poo-flinger.Â Heâ€™s gone after Clinton, Bush, and Obama.Â Republican or Democrat?Â He doesnâ€™t seem to care.Â To be fair, Jones has been a fairly consistent proponent of Trump.

Free speech is important, itâ€™s written in Silicon Valleyâ€™s DNA, right?Â No.Â On a single day, Jones was banned or punished in some fashion from FacebookÂ®, YouTubeÂ©, SpotifyÂ®, Amazonâ„¢, and PinterestÂ©.Â Soon enough LinkedInâ„¢, YouPornÂ® (huh?) and MailChimpÂ® (whatever that is) followed.

No one in the hot tub felt that Alex Jones represented the gold standard for journalism, but his silence was a sign that ideas outside of those of the gatekeepers could simply not be tolerated.Â I spent some time looking for examples of â€œhate speechâ€ that was supposedly the cause of his being banned.Â I found nothing worse than the usual hyperbole of the left, and certainly nothing as personally threatening as many things celebrities and journalists said in the heat of the moment following Trumpâ€™s victory in November of 2016.

The concept that he was censored amazed me.Â Bombastic?Â Yes.Â Over the top?Â Sure.Â The WWEâ„¢ of news?Â Absolutely.

Something to be suppressed and censored?Â Wow.Â Speech an entire party (nearly) agrees should be banned?Â Double wow.Â But free speech seems to have few fans on the left now.

Now I know where my wallet went . . . George Soros has it!

But back to the hot tub.Â By this time, The Boy had joined us.Â I think Pugsley was inside napping, or maybe working on connecting his brain directly to the Internet through a device he was making based on a YouTube video.Â Pugsley had been looking for a drill, some hydrogen peroxide, and an N-size battery, so he might by a cyborg by now.

John Wilder:Â â€œWhat other events were there on the way to the Civil War?â€Â Since The Boy had taken US history most recently, perhaps some things were fresher in his mind, and since we were in the hot tub, it was easier to ask him than to GoogleÂ® it.

The Boy:Â â€œWhat about the Dredd Scott decision?Â That was a biggy.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œYes, even the courts were involved in the unravelling before the Civil War.Â But with the people divided as they were â€“ Dredd Scott could have been decided either way and would have inflamed one side or the other.Â In this case, it drove the North nuts.Â If they had decided the other way?Â It would have driven the South nuts.Â A no-win situation.Â The sides werenâ€™t even talking the same language at that point.â€

The Boy:Â â€œWell, I guess that leaves Fort Sumter.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œSo what does our Fort Sumter take place?Â Or has it already?â€

Fort Sumter was the spot, on April 12, 1861, at 4:30AM, Confederate soldiers fired on the Union Fort.Â (Spoiler, they won.)Â Fort Sumter is notable because even after Southern secession, several months passed before the first shots were fired there.Â It was as if there was a hope that things could be brought back together, that there was some alternative to war.

John Wilder:Â â€œSo what is it, what does it look like?Â Does it occur after a Trump 2020 victory?â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œWell maybe sooner.Â If the Republicans continue to hold the House after the 2018 election, I think that might make California secede.Â From what I seen on FacebookÂ®, theyâ€™re in a frenzy already.Â They canâ€™t even stand the idea of Trump finishing a single term.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œWhat if . . . what if Fort Sumter is going on right now?Â Letâ€™s look at it:Â there was a part of the government, in that case the states, which denied the legitimacy of the sitting president.Â Okay, they might have thought him legitimate but they decided that they didnâ€™t want be a part of it.Â Isnâ€™t thatâ€™s whatâ€™s going on right now with the Deep State?Â Insurance policies?Â Investigations into people not because of a crime, but investigations of people to find a crime to prosecute them for because they donâ€™t have the right political belief, that theyâ€™re not part of the right club that gets bacon-wrapped shrimp at the Friday get-togethers?â€

The Boy:Â â€œNot sure if that fits.Â Maybe.Â Maybe.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œAn attack doesnâ€™t require that the militia brings out cannons and shells Dallas.Â No, if you look at that, plus the sanctuary cities, plus the judiciary routinely ruling against Trump on things that they would have rubber-stamped for Obama?Â Is this open insurrection right now, just not with cannon?â€

The Boy:Â â€œIâ€™m not sure.Â But I do think I know the end point of all of this.Â Iâ€™ve been thinking . . .â€

And he had a pretty insightful observation.Â More on that next Monday, I think.

Medical Advances, Pop Rocks, Agriculture, and Nic Cage

â€œNews team, let’s hunt.â€ â€“ Anchorman

The view from the coffeemaker (story below).Â No coffee was injured in the making of this post.

I was talking with a coworker at the coffee machine back when I was working in Houston.Â Our offices were in the 45^th story of a gleaming skyscraper.Â Very futuristic.

â€œSo, Mr. W, what do you think the most important invention was?â€Â I have no idea why he called me Mr. W, but itâ€™s been a theme â€“ Mr. W.Â No idea why.

â€œEver?â€ I asked.Â This was the setup.

â€œSure.Â Most important invention ever.â€

â€œAgriculture.â€

I love it when I look into a personâ€™s eyes and literally watch their brain slowly melt from the answer they just got.Â That was the case here.Â For a full fifteen seconds he didnâ€™t move, blink, or breathe.Â I think his brain was rebooting.

After he got past the login screen:Â â€œThatâ€™s . . . thatâ€™s a good one.â€

I had that answer ready because Iâ€™d been thinking about just that.Â What was the most significant invention in history?Â Heck, even the Bible talks about it â€“ the story where Cain (the farmer) killed his brother Abel (the sheep herder)?Â Itâ€™s potentially an allegorical story about where agricultural civilization replaced the earlier pastoral civilization thatâ€™s come down to us over thousands of years.

Or maybe Cain was just a dick.Â I kid.Â We all know Abel had it coming.

However, agriculture was transformative.Â Prior to that, it was hunting, gathering, and herding.Â Or starving if you didnâ€™t know how to hunt, gather and herd.

Notice that I didnâ€™t say that agriculture was good for us.Â There are plenty of ills that came from agriculture, but it was undoubtedly the most significant transformation that humans have ever encountered, with the possible exception of the invention of Pop-RocksÂ©.Â I heard a kid ate a whole bunch of Pop-RocksÂ® and then drank a Pepsiâ„¢ and his stomach exploded.

I found this, oddly, at the Pop RocksÂ© website, where they assure me that their product hasnâ€™t killed anyone recently.Â That they know of.Â I kid.Â Pop Rocksâ„¢ has a website to assure you that you are in no danger of a stomach rupture eating their product â€“ itâ€™s here (LINK).

I heard that they experimented with a product called Pope RocksÂ©, but it was made illegal because it reportedly turned water into wine, which is totes illegal in Utah.

Oh, yeah, I was talking about agriculture.

Agriculture was an important step â€“ it made people stop moving around.Â If you planted a crop, you had to stay there and grow it.Â And if you stayed there, and had food?Â Now you had to defend it.Â And you had to have houses.Â And you could make pots.Â And buy furniture from StoneAgeIKEAÂ®, which was largely abandoned by 3000 B.C. because no one had invented screws or hex wrenches.

Just that one invention changed economics, developed division of labor could exist.Â Mankind now had farmers, soldiers, generals, and developed taxation and accountants.

Yeah.Â Taxes.

But this didnâ€™t make mankind a bit healthier.Â In fact, it made the average person die sooner.Â Oh, and when they died?Â They had new diseases like arthritis.Â And they didnâ€™t grow as tall or as robust as their nomadic ancestors.

Why did we do it?Â Dunno.Â Women like houses, probably.Â And men could brew beer (which happened to show up about the same time as the first agricultural settlements.Â That same downfall occurs throughout history â€“ women and beer.

I assure you that you didnâ€™t want to mess with this guy.Â And he was probably average.Â Not sure that TwinkiesÂ®, cars, and air conditioning helped his overall health . . . . and Iâ€™m sure that GoogleÂ® now thinks I want to see pictures of shirtless men.Â Oh, the things I do for you, readers.

Letâ€™s face it, not everything that modern medicine has done has helped our health.Â Some studies have shown that the nomads and herdsmen, on average, lived longer than the farmers that followed them in history.Â Oh, and donâ€™t forget, if you donâ€™t have farms, no need for slaves, right?

But letâ€™s look at medicine more directly:

What actual changes have made life healthier?

Well, agriculture has increase the overall amount of nutrition. We wouldnâ€™t be able to feed everyone on Earth if we didnâ€™t have that.
Maternal vitamins and nutrition make healthier and smarter babies. Thatâ€™s good.
Sanitation is amazing. Not living in poop somehow makes you healthier.Â Who could have imagined that?
Cheap food. Hard to be healthy if youâ€™ve starved to death.
Pest control. Vermin are also not real healthy to live with.Â Plague and all, right?

Clean drinking water is much better than the alternative, but not as good as Scotch, which I guess is another alternative, so clean drinking water is second.
Antiseptics are good. Much less Civil War surgery.

Antibiotics are also pretty good. Iâ€™m pretty sure that theyâ€™ve saved my life more than once.

Trauma surgery is now awesome â€“ many things you would have died from 20 years ago are now survivable, from gunshots to car accidents.
Vaccinations are, on balance, probably good. Is there proof that they kill people?Â Â More people have died from HPV vaccinations than from HPV.Â So, yeah.Â But Iâ€™ll skip the small pox, thank you.Â Oh, they donâ€™t vaccinate for that anymore?

So, whatâ€™s not on this list?

End of life care. Itâ€™s expensive.Â And it barely makes life longer.
Many cancer treatments are difficult and require hacking and poisoning the sick person. Some really do extend life, for decades even.Â (Some donâ€™t do much of anything.)Â But none are more important than clean water, exercise, and PEZâ„¢ to human health.
Most really expensive diagnostic tech. Sure, some of it is awesome, but Iâ€™m not sure an MRI machine is all that awesome.

What societal changes are actually hurting health?

Cheap food. Yeah, itâ€™s a paradox.Â Starve or be fat.Â Sue me.
Automatic stuff. Â As a whole, we have to do much less work than 20 years ago.Â Much, much less than 40 years ago.Â And 100 years ago?Â Oh, my.Â Elevators replaced stairs.Â Natural gas replaced firewood.Â Cars replaced bikes.Â Exercise drops through the floor.
Climate controls. Iâ€™ve got a theory that if you turned off the air conditioning and the heat in your house youâ€™d actually be healthier.Â But this theory will never be tested because I have The Mrs., for whom climate control is a right up there with free speech and free shotguns.Â Thankfully she likes it about 60Â°F in the house all the time, too.
What is in Doritos?Â 40 different ingredients, many of which have never been incorporated into the diet of a human until the last 50 years.Â Whatâ€™s in a steak?Â Cow, which weâ€™ve been eating as soon as we developed spears.Â Because steak is worth building a spear and chasing a wild, untamed giant auroch through the forest.
Lack of genetic culling. Iâ€™m not in favor of this as a policy, but it is a fact that the genetic pool is degraded over time when people who would have died out reproduce and pass along defective genes.Â Letâ€™s look at me:Â I wear glasses, and developed the need about age 20.Â I would have made a crappy nomadic warrior, so, unless I was smart, I would be squinting at the horizon while Ugg and Trevor chased the hairless caribou across the frozen tundra of the African veldt.Â And no food for my family.Â So we died off.Â But wait!Â This is 2018, and Iâ€™ve got lots of kids because I donâ€™t have to squint, but glasses?Â Yeah, thatâ€™s a thing for half my kids.Â Ugg and Trevor had kids with keen eyesight.Â Again, not a policy since I like my life and the kids I have, but as we save more people with health issues like my nearsightedness that can be passed along genetically?

Like anything, there are good and bad effects of changing our civilization.Â Without agriculture, we never get to the Moon, but we also never get Nicholas Cage movies.Â A tradeoff?

Friends, Flexibility, and Value Creation: Keys to a Corporate Career

“The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.” – Office Space

I’m glad cats don’t run corporations. They like to play with their prey before they kill it.

The economy is changing. That’s a newsflash from every decade since Sunday in 12,241 BC, when Chieftain Brad Von Thundernose (he snored) invented bacon-wrapped shrimp. Unfortunately, Brad was allergic to shellfish, and puffed up like Elvis on carbohydrates. Brad aside, if you look back in the distant past to the year 2000 (which, for some of us, used to sound futuristic) you’d see that the largest five companies were:

Exxon-Mobil®
General Electric™
Ford©
General Motors®
Wal-Mart™

What were the largest five companies in 2018?

Apple™
Amazon©
Google®
Microsoft™
Facebook©

They’ve all changed. And these are the five biggest!

I’ve been fortunate to (so far) to be able do the same thing for most of my career, admittedly not with the same company. I’ve generally been okay doing it – in at least one place I’ve worked some things I set up literally saved the company a few years after I left. That’s nice – the thought that hundreds of folks still have a job because of something I did.

And at a different company, I saved a career. Pay attention and it might help yours, too.

Let me explain:

A friend of mine was offered a chance to move out of our department and move into recruiting. She took the opportunity. Then the economy took a downturn. And she didn’t get along with her boss. And was close to getting fired. I told her she was over thinking it – no way that they would fire her.

This particular person was smart, talented, and personable – not smelly, irritable, and brooding like your humble author. I checked around and found out how close she was to getting fired. The answer was very close to being fired – they’d started the 90 day clock before the final paycheck.

As a department head, I knew that she was better than many folks everyone that I had in my department. Her boss, however, “didn’t want to transfer a problem” and “this person isn’t a good fit with the company’s values.” That’s HR speak for “it’s personal.”

Thankfully, I managed to drag my boss into the idea that she’d be perfect for our department, and he was able to go up three levels of management to convince his great-grand boss that she’d be a great fit.

Today? She’s an executive VP, hauling in the big bucks (seriously big bucks), but she had to change career focus after leaving my group. Essentially now she’s a corporate ninja-nun who goes around the company smacking people’s knuckles with a metaphorical ruler

Do not make my friend angry.

Lessons:

Have friends that can help you.

In a big corporation if your intent is to move up the ladder, you need friends. Let’s face it, we all screw up. If someone higher up in the company can vouch for you when they’re looking for a designated victim, a highly-placed mentor (or sponsor, or friend) can tip the scales in your favor. That being said, if your role has put you in a spot where you were the designated bad guy (“no, you can’t spend that money for elephant rides, PEZ®, and pantyhose for the welders in the assembly line”) then sometimes you won’t be able to survive after your sponsor is gone.

Why do I put this one first? Despite how good you might be, having someone to cover your back is huge – it’s sometimes the difference between unemployment and the executive suite.

The reason they say, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”? It’s true.

When you look above you in the org chart and don’t see anyone who would go to bat for you? Your time at that job might be short, my friend.

Be able to change what you do.

Chances are you have skills, unless you’re at the DMV, and heck, they have skills, too, if you count seething rage and the ability to take literally the worst possible picture of a human being. Understand that during your career you might have to take those skills and transfer them from making people who are attempting to get a driver’s license miserable to, say, making people who need a new license plate miserable. If I could write one thing on a billboard, the idea that “What you’re doing today might have no value in the future” would be second on my list. Sadly, “Do you know where my car keys are?” would be number one.

But it’s true. Just as Exxon-Mobile® has been replaced by Apple™ in valuation (and in my gas tank – sadly my car only gets four miles per iPhone®), the idea that you’ll spend your career doing the same thing is becoming less common. How many people started their career in nuclear engineering and ended up running a carpet installation company staffed entirely by nude circus clowns? More than I can count!

Be able to create value.

At one place I worked, there was an employee that watered and dusted plants. That’s all she did. The company had a huge office, and it had plants on every floor. I had no idea that you had to dust plants, but, apparently if the plants live only by the dull fluorescent light of corporate America, you do. One day (when profits dropped from enormous to merely massive) the plant lady (and the plants) were gone. I think someone figured out that plants in the office building didn’t add a single dollar to the company profitability, so they let the plants (and the plant lady) become free-range.

One person in the company was notoriously difficult to work for and with, made business decisions like a drunken leper in a fish factory (I have no idea what that means, but it can’t be good), and smelled vaguely of gin and regret. I asked my boss, “Why don’t they fire him? He stands against literally every value that management says they’re in favor of.”

My boss: “But he makes SOOOOO much money for the company. Millions.”

That’s a huge defense. If you make piles of money for the company and can prove it? They’ll never fire you until the Grand Jury indicts.

In the end, my friend met all three of the criteria up above – had friends, had a flexible skill set, and could demonstrate how she made money, which is why she flies around on the corporate jet to eat bacon-wrapped shrimp. Thankfully, I was able to help her avoid being a free-range plant lady . . .

The seven deadly sins and society. How do they fit together?

“There are 7 deadly sins, Captain.” – Se7en

So, here are the movie versions of sin. Except Pride. Is Pride really blonde?

Some time ago I read a book that my friend wrote (there is a link below where you can get it from Amazon – I make no money from that) about sin. I enjoyed the book, as well as one can enjoy a book that makes you feel absolutely horrible about how sinful and wretched you are. And I mean that in the best way – how often do you have the benefit of self-reflection on your faults? Thankfully, the author doesn’t leave you hanging, and gives you a path forward on the whole salvation from sin thing (note: he’s a priest, so the word “Jesus” just might be a spoiler). I heartily recommend the book.

Is sin at the problem with current society? Maybe. But first let’s discuss the sins.

As I recall (it’s been a while since I read it) one construct that Father Joseph used for discussing sin was the Seven Deadly Sins. He used the mnemonic “PALE GAS” to go through them. I’ll do the same.

Pride – Pride is the big one, perhaps the source of all the other sins. An example: If you’re religious, you’d accept that your intellect was given to you by God. If you’re not religious, you’d accept that your intellect was a happy genetic accident. In either case, no matter how smart you are, you’ve done nothing to be that smart, so taking pride in your intellect is, well, bad. That’s why pride is the primo sin – it takes all the glory for who and what you are and wraps it up into your own ego. It puts you and your ego at the center of the universe, when in reality no one thinks about you as much as you think they do. Unless you’re Donald Trump. Then people (from both sides) totally obsess over you.

Anger – This is also known as Wrath, but PWLE GAS doesn’t sound so good, unless you’re from some Eastern European country that uses colored wrapping paper for money and has a vowel shortage. Anger is feeling and wishing for unjust or excessive punishment – execution for parking offenses, that sort of thing, or punishing the innocent, just because they are weaker than you. Again, Wrath separates you from both God and reality by making the righting of wrongs (real or not) not about justice, but about you. You can see how Pride echoes here . . . .

Lust – Lust isn’t love, it’s a deep and intense passionate desire that throws morality, propriety, and sometimes legality to the winds. As sins go, this one at least (in some forms) is mutual, so it’s not as strong as pure Pride. In some forms, it’s considered the least serious of all mortal sins, but, you know, it’s still a mortal sin. Outside of religion, allowing Lust to drive your life tends to lead to a lot of poor decisions – just ask anyone in Hollywood®.

Envy – Like any of the sins, Envy has various gradations. First you are jealous that your neighbor has a complete set of PEZ® dispensers of every United States Secretary of Agriculture ever. Then you find out he has all of the United States Secretary of Commerce PEZ™ dispensers. Then you go all Cain on his Abel. Yup. Envy brings you farther from God, but it also fills you with hate.

Gluttony – Generally, Gluttony is considered more of a sin when your consumption (or overconsumption) of resources will starve someone else – but it really boils down to an unbridled passion for selfishness. Eating and drinking as the purpose of life, rather than to support it. It’s fairly obvious how this is both bad for you, and drives you farther from God.

Avarice – This sin is also known as greed, but if we called it that, then the mnemonic would be PWLE GGS. And what does that even mean? Where lust is for a person, and gluttony is for food, avarice is for stuff. That just makes it worse. Pop Wilder described avarice best when he told me, “A farmer doesn’t want all the land in the world, son, he just wants that which adjoins his.” This pulls you away from God though making you focus on the things only of this world. This focus turns men into machines – focused only on owning (not creating) wealth. See reason number 53 that I don’t want to live in New York City . . . .

Yeah, it sucks to be a sloth.

Sloth – Sloth isn’t just about being lazy – Sloth is giving up. It’s abdication of responsibility for whatever reason, often as a result of the other sins, or through giving up due to depression or despondency (which used to be one of the eight deadly sins, but got voted off in the semi-finals). It’s obvious on how this sin hurts you whether you’re a believer or not.

I heartily recommend Father Joseph’s book, whether or not you are a Christian or an agnostic or an atheist. I think the truths that it speaks to are so fundamental in our society that this could be one of the better books on self-improvement available today. Seriously. I read this book, thinking I was doing okay. (Pride will do that to you.) Every page that I read I kinda cringed when it described me, something I felt, or something I was doing as tied into one of these sins. I promise you – there’s not a week that goes by that you (and I!) aren’t attracted to and tempted to commit each of these sins weekly.

Oh, and my copy is signed! (See, I just used my Pride to Envy all over you.)

And these sins are important whether or not you are religious because these sins and our universal-ish understanding of them in the Western world form the basis of Western culture. Are there analogues in Chinese Confucianism, Shinto, or the tribal religions of Africa? Or Islam?

I have no idea. And it would require like a zillion Google® searches to sort that out. But it’s irrelevant.

I do know that the culture of the West was founded on this shared concept of sin.

And we agree that these things are bad, right?

Have we managed to rebrand many of these sins as virtues?

“Check out my InstaFace® selfie!”
“He had it coming to him.”
“If it feels go, do it!”
“You deserve what the 1% have.”
“Have another piece of cake – YOLO!”
“We’re not Boy Scouts®, we’re here to make money.”
“Let somebody else do it. You’ve done enough.”

One of the virtues of the Seven Deadly Sins is that the common belief in them is the basis for a shared morality in a stable civilization. One can infer that that shared belief (beyond the salubrious Christian effects on your immortal soul, if you’re into that sort of thing) is beneficial because it evolved with Western civilization.

Can the West live without the concept of sin?

I’m not sure that it can. Let’s just take one of them: Envy.

The biggest evil of the twentieth century was communism. I’m not saying that because it’s an opinion – it’s an objective fact. More people died because of communism than any other ideological cause during that century – over 140,000,000.

Communism was built on Envy; the concept that “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” And Ivan needs Pyotr’s farm. And Ivan’s wife needs Pyotr’s wife’s new butter churn. And so on.

Nearly a billion people died from gluttony – it causes heart disease along with a host of other diseases.

Anger led to war and murder. 240,000,000.

So, deadly wasn’t a euphemism – outside of spiritual conditions, these sins actually lead to real and temporal misery and death.

So there appears to be some limited anecdotal evidence that virtue is better than sin.

Which brings me back to society. If society doesn’t agree on the same cultural precepts which have driven the creation of knowledge and wealth for several thousand years . . . nah, never mind. I’m sure it will be fine.

Health, Wealth, and Boundaries. Complete with fake IDs.

“We’re out of towels and I’m too old to go diving into lockers.” – Minor League

It would be nice to have Morgan Freeman narrate your life. Except for after you did stupid stuff. Or boring stuff. Nevermind – skip that.

A number of years ago my boss called me at 11pm. There had been an incident at work. As it was a Thursday and I was planning on taking Friday off, The Mrs. and I had already consumed the better part of a bottle of wine. I decided that I’d go to bed – certainly vacation was off.

In fact, I worked the next 45 days, straight. I averaged at least 12 hours a day, every day.

During that time, we worked really hard. Stressful situations daily. New decisions daily. But the team met all the goals that were set on that first day, and then some. We even ended up at budget. But 540 work hours in 1.5 months is about 225% of a typical work week (40 hours).

I break my time into a triangle:

Work – Ideally, work should server multiple purposes. It should put money in the bank and food on the table. Another, very real purpose of work is to create value for society. A well-run business generates wealth for the owner, sure. But the jobs that it creates can generate wealth for a community. And most businesses can’t stay in business unless they serve a need in the community. A power generation plant has to make power to stay in business, but if it operates well and efficiently, it produces power at a low cost, which allows people to have the relative luxury of electricity cheaply, so they can read this blog, or watch Green Acres®.
Family – As a husband and father, taking care of my family is a primary responsibility – it means more than the money from work, it means being there to be dad – both as a bad example of the kind of dad you don’t want to have, as well as teaching children responsibility through situations that force them to figure things out. I mean, what 12 year old shouldn’t know how to make a fake id so he can buy smokes?
Personal Health – If I’m not healthy, I’ll die, and that makes it hard to shower consistently. Also, I won’t be able to lead my family, or work amazingly long hours. Health may be its own reward, but it also supports the other two legs of the triangle.

I’d say “bad dog,” but I am out of beer . . . and thanks to practice and parental neglect, Pugsley makes a much better fake ID.

So during this 45 day period, a big stretch of the triangle was possible. Heck, I was in the best shape I’d been in for at least six years. Life was good. I’d focus on work, but put my second focus on family. Personal health can wait, right?

And during those 45 days, I didn’t exercise like normal. Also, I don’t eat lunch (I hadn’t since fifth grade) and in those days just worked through lunch. But we had team meetings (complete with lunch) pretty much every day. It turns out I can gain 2 pounds a week just by eating lunch more than once. Yeah.

So, forty five days later, we finished. And we were exhausted. And 45 days later? I entered into yet another work death-march that lasted a year and a half.

Yeah, and that second death-march ended with 45 days straight, too. And then time required for activities related to The Boy and Pugsley multiplied. It seems like when the work demands went down, the family demands went up. And I could safely ignore the health demands, right?

My take on this is that I’ve set my boundaries too far towards work in the past, but the bright side is all the hard work and family stuff seems to be paying off.

But it’s always (a bit) irritated me that Hollywood types get so buff. I saw Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 12 (or whatever) this last weekend, and it’s undeniable that the man is in great shape, not only for his age, but for any age. Cruise was certainly in better shape than he was during his early movies. He’s seven or eight years older than Simon Pegg, but manages to look ten years younger. I guess maybe Scientology® might pay off, if you can deal with whole “completely made up” parts.

And Tom Cruise has a luxury that most of us don’t – he has the ability to spend 2,000 learning to fly helicopters so he could do it for this movie, plus countless thousands of hours of training. I’m lucky to get 250 hours a year to myself for training. And more power to Cruise! But most people don’t have that option. The iron triangle of work-family-health keeps showing up.

In the end that’s part of why I named the blog wilderwealthywise.com – it focuses on that triangle of important things in the average person’s life. Wealth buys time, and time buys health. And health . . . buys more time (on Earth). And with health and time? One would hope that you can end up with wealth.

And then you could have Morgan Freeman narrate . . . but hopefully not these lines:

It will all be worth it. Now, back to the elliptical . . .

How much money should I save? Depends on if you want to be free . . .

“Lost in oblivion, dark and silent and complete, I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom. It’s OK.” – Fight Club

Alia S. Wilder, showing her prowess at falling into debt holes.

My daughter, Alia S. Wilder, texted me today.

“How much money should I be saving? Is 20% enough?”

My response?

“Depends. I’m going to try to end a World War. Are two bombs enough?”

Oh, sure, the question sounds simple, but the answer is more complicated. Unless you’re Japan.

“Is 20% enough?”

Certainly, and certainly not.

Savings is good. I’m throwing that out there as an absolute. Saving money represents potential. If I use my money to buy a pile of PEZ® today, well, when they come out next week with the President™Millard Fillmore® Commemorative MegaPEZ© dispenser? I won’t be able to buy it.

If ever there was a head that was made to be a PEZ® dispenser it’s Millard Fillmore, who looks exactly like Alec Baldwin. Fillmore, when running for reelection (he became President when Taylor died) won only . . . Maryland, which is the only State to be named after Mary Poppins©.

I won’t go too much into detail, but Alia S. Wilder has debt. Mountains of it. Not the Himalayas. Maybe more like smaller mountains, like the Alps.

Should you save money when you’re in debt, or pay off the debt? Yes, save money. Save money until you have at least six months’ worth of living expenses in cash available to you.

Why six months? Given six months’ worth of time and space, you can make miracles happen. You’ll be able to work your way through the emergency. Oh, and the emergency? Yeah, you’ll have one. You’ll get a flat tire and accidently run into the town statue of Tom Petty and then it won’t back down, but will be freefallin’ over onto your 1972 VW® Bug™. And then? You’ll have to pay, or they won’t allow you to come ‘round here no more.

So, emergencies happen. Even Petty ones.

And if I were young and had debt, the first thing I would do is build that emergency fund. There’s nothing worse than having no money and no options when an emergency strikes. Not if. When.

After that, I’d save money in my 401K, if the company offered a match.

401k’s are awesome – generally you can save 6% or so of your salary, and the company will match some percentage of that – say, 50%. And there is no place on Earth where you can get an immediate 50% return on investment, unless you’ve managed to marry into the royal family of England. Then? Yeah, that lip gloss and the Pilates class paid off.

So, you’ve got an emergency fund. You’re taking full advantage of 401k matching. Next?

Get rid of the debt.

Debt is perhaps the most evil thing we allow in society today except for Harry Potter© themed AR-15s. I mean, I like guns, but Harry Potter™ guns? But back to debt – it allows stupid current you to sell future you into slavery. You have to pay the debt. Mortgages and car loans are bad, but the worst? Student loans.

You can declare bankruptcy and get rid of mortgage and car debt. But in order to get rid of student loan debt? You have to pay it off or die. I’m not kidding – that part isn’t a joke. Student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Like herpes, it’s almost forever. Unlike herpes, you can pay it off.

Why is debt so very bad? Well, for every dollar you have in debt, you have to pay interest. So, if you have $100 in debt, and are paying 5% interest, you have to pay off $5 every year. No problem, right?

Actually, that interest is insidious. Let’s pretend it’s a house, and you owe $200,000. At 5% interest, that’s $10,000 a year. That $10,000, divided by 12? In year one that’s most of your mortgage payment. Your debt remains – you only pay a little bit off in the first year.

Interest on debt destroys your happiness.

In a logical world, you’d pay off the highest interest rate debt first. That gets rid of the most interest, right?

Nah. Pay the one that you can pay off first. The smallest one. That allows you to feel good about digging yourself out of the debt hell you dug yourself into. Then? The next biggest one.

And this works. How do I know that? I’ve been there.

When my first wife and I decided that a mixed marriage wouldn’t work (I was human, she was a demon from hell) we mutually decided that she should move out. Nice!

She handed me a plastic grocery sack. In the grocery sack was a half a cubic foot of bills. She then handed me a checkbook.

“I don’t know how much money is in there.” Meaning the checking account.

She walked out the door.

I pulled the first bill off the stack. It was a credit card statement from a gasoline station.

It was over $700. And my soon-to-be ex-wife hadn’t paid them anything in months. Sadly, this story kept repeating as I went down the pile. I had massive debt.

I started paying them down. One at a time.

Seven years later? The only debt left was my mortgage. I remember the day – it was January 15^th. I remember writing the check. I felt like I was Batman™ Kirk©. Like if Batman® had a starship, or if Kirk™ could fight anyone in a realistic way. Yay! But paying down those first few cards and bills was huge. It gave me a sense of control. It was saying that I could take small bites and make them matter.

But one day you sign the last check to pay off the last debt, and you realize that you’re no longer working for someone else – every dollar you’re making is going to you or things you want.

And at that moment you’re free.

So, is saving 20% enough?

I have no idea. How soon do you want to be free?