Wealth – Page 23 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Time: It’s all you have. How are you using yours?

“I’m not going to kill you. Your job will be to tell the rest of them that death is coming for them, tonight. Tell them Eric Draven sends his regards.” – The Crow

You would have thought that Doc Brown would have warned Marty about the Parkinson’s.

I was at my job in Alaska, talking with a co-worker, Jim. We were talking about finances – Pugsley had just been born, so I was probably whining about how babies are expensive and that The Mrs. and I were running out of corners filled with oily rags for children to sleep in. I suppose I was thinking about selling Pugsley to the Iranians for some of their spare enriched uranium, and Jim said, “Well, that’s just money. You can always make more money.”

For whatever reason, that phrase struck me. It took the way that people normally think and feel about money and inverted it. Money was available, and there was no shortage of ways to get it. Most people feel the opposite – that money is as scarce as evidence in a House impeachment inquiry.

After thinking about it, I decided Jim was right. There are dozens of ways to make money, and some of them are even legal according to my lawyer. Does this philosophy apply to more things than just money?

I was going to tell another time travelling joke, but you guys complained about it in the comments. Also, Einstein didn’t kill himself.

Yes. In my experience, almost anything you need, including money, you can get more of. This is especially true if you have a lawyer in a wheelchair with rabies – they play well to juries. I’m not saying that it’s always easy to get money, and I’m not saying that money isn’t important. But you can get more of it. But not everything is like that. But the one thing you can’t get more of is time. The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote about just that nearly 2,000 years ago:

“You are living as if destined to live forever. Your own frailty never occurs to you; you don’t notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply, though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”

So, of all the things that you can have, the only one you can’t get more of is time.

Bill and Ted is an underrated time travel movie.

Why is that important? Well, to toss out another quote, Benjamin Franklin said: “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.” It’s important because time is all you have – it is the single most precious commodity, after PEZ®.

So, what to do?

Stop wasting time. Every minute you waste is a minute you’ve lost. Most people have a life that’s long enough to accomplish what they want, as long as they don’t waste it. How many lives are lost, a minute at a time, staring at a clock, waiting for it to show 5:00? How many lives are lost a mile at a time on long commutes?

I used to be addicted to time travel, but that’s all in the past now.

When I was younger and didn’t have much money, whenever there was a chance to trade my time for money, I did. I put on my own roof after a hailstorm. I built my own deck. I fixed my car myself, changed my own oil. This was a good trade at the time. I was longer on time and shorter on money, and I learned skills that helped me understand the world just a little bit better.

Now time is shorter, and I don’t have an infinite supply of full Moons ahead of me. Here’s a pretty powerful quote from Paul Bowles’ book, Sheltering Sky:

Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full Moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless . . . .

I wonder if there’s any future in time travel?

Don’t waste your time – don’t waste your life. Make yourself better every day – you can always make more money.

It’s A Big World – Big Enough For Success

Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?” – Lord of the Rings

It’s almost as much fun as when I get the USB in on the first try.

Two pennies.

But I’ll come back to that.

One day, Aesop over at the Raconteur Report (LINK) had linked to one of my posts. The result whenever that happens is quite a bit of traffic – the Raconteur Report is pretty popular. I thanked him in the comments section over at his place. His response? Something on the order of, “No problem. It’s a big Internet.”

His reaction was typical of every rich, confident and successful person I’ve met. They want to help other people, and they want to see them succeed. I think part of that is the desire for a legacy. When you’ve already earned more money than you’ll ever spend in a lifetime (or have millions and millions of pageviews), you have to have other goals.

Really rich people have iPhones® and both kidneys.

In my life, I’ve had the good fortune to know quite a few people that were very, very, successful. The really rich people I knew who had built their own businesses had a surprising similarity: they wanted to help others become successful. Each one of them gave some of their time to do so. They had determined that success was something not to be hoarded, but to be shared. They wanted more people in the club, because those cigars made of $100 bills won’t smoke themselves. At one particular career crossroads, I spent some time with one of these friends, charting a path forward (“I’m Batman,” – Batman, in Batman).

This blog is at least partially a result of discussions I had with my wealthy friend. This first three years have gone (more or less) according to plan. Next? Well, after I get my underground volcano lair running and staffed with henchmen, you’ll see. It’s hard to find good henchmen nowadays, and even harder to insure them – the actuarial tables show a high rate of workplace-related injuries when henching.

But think of all of the pension plan savings!

My friend died not long after I started writing, and certainly before I had any lasting success. He was an early encourager. I had a few other business ideas, and I ran the ideas past him. He was encouraging, but his encouragement wasn’t in order to make a buck: his success was me being successful. Like most good teachers, he didn’t tell me what to do, he asked questions, very good questions, like:

How big is your potential audience?
How do you connect with them?
Why did you lick your finger and put it in my ear?

Rich guys have figured out a secret – helping other people to be successful doesn’t make a rich person poorer. Let me explain:

The average home swimming pool is something like 20,000 or 30,000 gallons of water. Let’s use 30,000 gallons since I already did the math with that number. The economy is $21.3 trillion, per year. Let’s imagine that $21.3 trillion economy is represented by the water in the pool. How much water represents $1,000,000?

It’s 1/5 of an ounce. A shot of whiskey would be the equivalent of $15 million. 1/5 of an ounce is really small – let me give you another comparison. What weighs the same as 1/5 of an ounce of water?

Two cents. Or, as I started this post, two pennies.

You can take millions from that pool every year and no one would ever notice – like I said, this is $21.3 trillion annually. I hate to be all cheerleader-y, but it’s true – even now we live in an era of amazing abundance.

And they said Mittens didn’t have the common touch.

Yes, I know, the economy is awful for some people. Certainly, we’re faced with significant structural issues that will be challenging for years to come. But the ocean is still huge. The opportunities out there are amazing. Yes, it’s possible to make $1,000,000 a year. Heck, I went on Facebook® one time, and saw some guys that graduated about when I did. One of them had a successful restaurant. The other? Sold a successful business and was going to retire.

And, no, these weren’t Stephen Hawking-smart guys, heck, they didn’t even have wheelchairs. They didn’t even have amazing, unique business ideas, one has a restaurant, the other a small manufacturing business. They were average guys who worked very hard, and failed and failed and failed and then succeeded.

Why don’t more people make a million, or at least a few hundred thousand? Most often, we limit ourselves. I’ve written before that I don’t think that most people use even one tenth of their capability, and the reason for that is that they:

Are too cautious – they never take any risks. For many folks, this works fine. Being a dentist has a better average payout than winning the lottery. But, you have to live with being a dentist, dude.
Don’t believe in themselves – caution is one thing, but I have seen people limit themselves because they don’t believe in their own talent. And to think that Kamala Harris didn’t believe enough in her best
Stuck in a mindset that success only happens to other people, and that the only success they will ever have will come when other people allow it.
Afraid of failure – failure can be awful, debilitating, and soul crushing. Oh, wait, that’s my ex-wife, not failure. Failure’s bad, too.
Afraid of effort – success starts with, and ends with, work. And having parents that have fifty million dollars.
Have pants filled with raw liver – men who have pants filled with raw liver have had very little influence over world events, historically.
Don’t have a goal – if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there. This was, from time to time, my problem. I’d achieve a goal, and then? Shrug and say, “What next?”

Hey, at least she has experience.

I’ll admit, the first time one of my posts really hit big, it was featured by Remus at the Woodpile Report (LINK). I was happy, but almost apprehensive, like a dog that finally caught a car. What the hell do I do now? I was ringing up more views in a day on a single post than the entire blog did in the first nine months of existence. My apprehension: Was it good enough? Was there enough content on the site to keep readers? What the hell do I do with this car?

I guess I have to add another two reasons people fail is that they are:

Are afraid of success – I’ve seen people self-sabotage because the very idea of succeeding scared them. Their solution? Screw up.
Feel unworthy of success – likewise, people who don’t feel worthy will actively avoid situations where they are successful.

I’ve been lucky throughout most of my life to not be afraid of success, but driven to achieve it, maybe a bit too much. My wife says this is one of my personalities. There is easy-going Juan DeLegator, but this one she just calls The General. The General doesn’t care what time it is. The General doesn’t care if you’re tired. The General wants results. Now. I imagine it’s just as pleasant for everyone around me as it sounds, but, honestly, I enjoy it. Plus? The General gets results.

A personal hero, plus he shows up every Christmas to remind me of the true spirit of Christmas: maneuver warfare. The neighbors will never try to sing carols here again.

My idea is that what I accomplished yesterday was fine, but what I’m going to accomplish tomorrow better beat it. I have worried from time to time that the best post I’ll ever write is in the past. Then, however, I’ll put together a post that I like so much that I find it hard to go to sleep afterwards because I’m so excited about what I just wrote. I’m sure that someone is going to laugh, or learn, or both.

It is a big Internet. It’s also a huge economy. And to go out and make more money is, generally, easy.

But success isn’t necessarily only measured in money. There’s also other things. Like food and cars and cable television: the things that money buys.

Oh, okay, fine. There’s also family. And community. And faith. The same principles apply there, as well.

See what you made me do? The General is not amused. But he’s just pitching in his two cents.

34 Random Thoughts About The Economy, Money, and Jobs

“Well, Saddam owed us money.” – Arrested Development

Maybe I should get more sleep.

It’s nearly Thanksgiving, and the next few weeks will be busy. Now that The Boy is off at college and no longer engaged in half a dozen activities, we’re down to just having to chase Pugsley around. Not so busy that there won’t be a full slate of posts – those are planned for the next few weeks, barring a change based on current events or me being distracted by shiny objects.

Today, though, I thought I’d change it up a bit, so here are a few random thoughts on business, economics, and wealth.

The last economic crash was about a housing bubble. The next economic crash will be about our “everything” bubble where money flows faster to chase smaller and smaller returns.
The biggest thing to crash after the next bubble pops will be money. It’s never fun when the value of money drops to zero, since having a little inflation is like being a little pregnant – not much happens at the beginning, but by the end everyone is yelling and screaming and covered in blood.
The next economic crash will be the biggest in our lives.
Or not. I’ve been wrong before.
But I still think 2025 will be interesting.
Most jobs don’t require thinking nowadays – they are a set of procedures and rules based on the lowest common denominator employee. The best jobs like this are at the DMV, which at least allow you to be mean and unpleasant, plus government benefits.
Jobs that don’t require thinking can be paid at the lowest possible wage. If you’re lucky enough to be hired at Old MacDonald’s farm, I hope you can rise to the C-I-E-I-O position, but you’ll have to be out standing in your field.
Businesses that do things immorally don’t automatically fail because they do things immorally – many immoral and even evil businesses flourish. It’s only in the movies that the good guys always win.
When I gave career advice to The Boy, I advised him to build expertise and skills in things that couldn’t be done over the Internet or by an outsourced employee working in a country where the native language consists only of vowels, grunts, and humming noises but yet has 355 terms for “waddle”.
Always be worth more to your company than your company is paying you.
“What have you done for me lately?” is a good and fair question from any boss.
The second mouse gets the cheese in the trap. No, I’m not going first.
If it’s choosing between money and honor, choose honor. The bills might be more difficult to pay, but at least you can look yourself in the mirror. Until the power company cuts the electricity.
Seriously though, choose honor.
It’s the risk that you don’t take that you’ll regret. But you only hear successful people say that.
Never build a business on what you love, since no one cares about medieval Norse poetry. Build a business on what you do that other people love and will pay for. You’ll learn to love it.
Capitalism works great to allocate spoils in an expanding market. Capitalism fails in a contracting one. There’s nothing easy about the transition.
Being short of money and optimistic about the future is better than having lots of cash and being pessimistic.
Money can’t make you happy, but you can avoid most of life’s miseries by having a few hundred thousand dollars. Not every one of life’s miseries, but most of them.
Whenever anyone says it’s not about the money, it’s really about the money.
Whenever anyone says cost is no object, you can expect that statement to be proven false once the estimates arrive. Make them pay in advance.
The reward for work well done is more work. This is actually a pretty good deal – we tend to buy video games built around this same premise.
The rewards aren’t linear – the closer to the top, the greater the rewards. But you have to fight the big boss at the end before you retire.
Great bosses are rarer than you might imagine. Most bosses are okay. Some are awful.
The worst kind of boss is a weak boss. They will praise you when you don’t deserve it and sell you out when you don’t.
Teamwork makes it easy to blame someone else.
In America, when two men meet, they ask “What do you do?” Too often we equate ourselves with “what we do,” while forgetting we get to choose who we are. Unless you’re Johnny Depp, in which case you are stuck being Johnny Depp.
If you find yourself dreading the alarm clock and not wanting to go to work you go anyway. It’s your job. If it’s too much? Find another job or retire.
True story: a friend of mine had a sister that decided to retire one day when she was about 30. She was shocked when the checks stopped coming, she seemed to think that when you retired, the company had to keep paying you. I think she’s a Bernie® voter now.
Me? I’m trying to start thinking about retirement before my boss starts thinking about my retirement.
When I was first hired into a job, I heard a statistic that 70% of a typical workday for a typical employee was unproductive. I was shocked that the figure was so high.
Now, after working for years, I’m shocked that the figure is so low. I tried to come up with jokes about lazy people, but they just won’t work.
Meetings often happen just because they’re on the schedule. Look like you’re paying attention and don’t sleep, no matter how quickly it makes the meeting go.
I had a friend who worked at the Unemployment Department who got fired. He still had to show up the next day.

Dare To Live Your Life And Scarring My Children For Life

“Now it was serious: a double-dog-dare. What else was there but a triple dare you? And then, the coup de grace of all dares, the sinister triple-dog-dare.” – A Christmas Story

Which is more daring, a pebble or a stick? The pebble: it’s a little boulder.

Almost 2,500 years ago, Thucydides said, “luck favors the daring.” Thucydides is dead, so, really, what did he know anyway? But part of being young is being daring – it’s on the label. There are so many things that you know, especially things that aren’t so. Life hasn’t yet given you curve balls and unexpected experiences

The lessons that you can learn from unexpected experiences can be helpful ones. The first lesson I was ever taught in high school chemistry lab was: “cold glass looks exactly like hot glass.” The second lesson was “never trust a naked man selling slightly used sulfuric acid, you can never tell where the acid has been.”

But the biggest loss is when we let one bad experience create fear in our lives. Let me explain: One time when we were getting firewood back when we lived in Alaska, Five Year Old The Boy was tromping in the forest. While jumping up and down on a little hill (five year old kids do that), The Boy managed to stir up a group of wasps that had burrowed into the ground there. All of them, and I mean all of them, came out of the nest and swarmed The Boy like Japanese jets on Godzilla©, all while The Boy flapped his arms like Greta Thunberg™ on tweaking on meth.

I would pay money to watch Greta in Marine boot camp – I’m sure the D.I. would nicely tell her, “As soon as you’re done getting your beauty sleep, princess, GET OFF OF MY OBSTACLE COURSE!”

After The Boy yelled “How dare you!” at the wasps, they left, because that technique always works. The Mrs. and I calmed him down, and treated the bites. The experience, however, was enough that The Boy was pretty scared of wasps – and there were a lot of them in Fairbanks that year.

So, one day after we had moved to Texas, we were in the backyard and just like in a cartoon, a beautiful butterfly had flown right up to The Boy.

“What is it?” There were butterflies in Alaska, but none that was as amazing as this one.

“It’s a butterfly,” I responded. His eyes lit up as he smiled at the colorful, delicate wings. “They bite,” I added. I had, of course, forgotten about The Boy being surrounded by wasps like ice weasels on a cheese wheel. The Boy had not.

The Boy ran into the house, screaming. The Mrs., who had observed every second, was not pleased.

Yes. This really happened. I made my son run screaming from a butterfly, so you know I had “Father of the Year” pretty much in the bag after that back in 2007.

SJW means Social Justice Wasp? Hmm. Wasps have about the same temperament as Antifa©, but at least the wasps have jobs.

But there are many things in life where the first experience wasn’t great, but like The Boy’s fear of butterflies, you’ve learned the wrong lesson if you avoid butterflies because of wasps. Mark Twain said it well:

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well, but also she will never sit on a cold one anymore.

Twain had to work out – he was constantly on the run later on in his life after assassinating Abraham Lincoln. He also never wore shirts – he didn’t believe in concealed weapons.

Receivers in the game of football have to have a short memory – after coming across the middle, being hit by a linebacker at a combined velocity of 40 miles per hour, you’d never run another route again if you kept that in mind. They even have a phrase that describes receivers who are jittery – they say they are “hearing footsteps” – they’re more concerned about being hit than playing the game.

And me – I had to have a short memory as well. I’ve heard that Samuel Johnson said that a second marriage “is the triumph of hope over experience,” and that’s right. It is. And if I had spent too much time overthinking it? I’d never have married The Mrs.

Hmm. Dr. Lechter Says. New feature?

I think the key is optimism and a sense of confidence that the future will be okay. I think that’s why older folks sometimes stop taking risks – they’ve had such a large number of experiences that they can see sixteen ways something that can go wrong. A teenager learning to drive, however, sees no way to lose. It’s only after experience that caution comes into play.

When was the last time you gave up an opportunity because you felt that it was too risky? When was the last time you decided not to take a vacation because the last one was bad? The minute you stop living in your life, taking risks, and knowing that the future will take care of itself, you’re dead even if you’re still breathing.

I think that most of the mistakes people make is in not being bold enough. There is an advantage to trying, especially trying things you don’t know how to do. Mark Twain said it well:

There are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world. No, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before. He doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him. He does the thing he ought not to do and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.

So, in your life, you have one shot. Do you want to regret not doing something in twenty years? Come on – join me. Convince all the grade school kids that butterflies bite. Bonus points if you convince them that butterflies produce deadly poisons*.

This may be the most Australian picture ever, but I’ll defer to Adam (LINK) and Tom (LINK).

*Not applicable in Australia, where literally everything wants to kill you, and even ladybugs can leap seven feet and have venom-tipped spikes for legs.

Bonus unrelated content – JP on Epstein:

Why Character Just Might Be A Better Indicator Of Marriage Stability Than What Her Butt Looks Like

“Just because you are a character doesn’t mean that you have character.” – Pulp Fiction

When the bugman began to hate . . .

There was a time after She Who Will Not Be Named was forever banished from Stately Wilder Manor, but before I met The Mrs. Yes, your host, the John Wilder was single. Can you believe I didn’t beat the ladies off with a stick? I mean, the restraining order and all . . . well . . . the less said about that the better.

There was one particular woman who had caught my attention. One evening, I introduced her to my friend who I’ll call Jim, mainly because his name is Jim. Oops – I think I’ve said too much. Now everyone will know who he is. If only Jim weren’t such a rare name!

“What did you think?” I asked Jim.

Ever the good friend, Jim said, and this is an exact quote: “What do you two have in common besides your eyes and her butt?”

They say that for a statement to really hurt, it has to be true. Jim had delivered the Atomic Wedgie of Truth®. He was, of course, correct. And you should be so lucky to have friends that will tell you the truth as bluntly and completely as Jim. The relationship between the woman’s butt and my eyes ended soon thereafter.

A friend of mine went to the hospital because of a wedgie – sadly, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 dorkiness.

Not only is character important in dating, it was pretty important to a company I worked for once upon a time: I was one of the employees lucky enough to be trained in behavior-based interviewing. The basic idea of behavior-based interviewing is that people, like the official results of Jeffery Epstein’s autopsy, don’t change very much. Therefore, the best way to get an actual prediction of the candidate’s future behavior is to understand the candidate’s past behavior. Then we were taught how to interview so they would share relevant situations so we could understand the candidate really well.

If the interview technique is done right, it doesn’t feel like an interview, it feels like casual conversation.

I was horrible in my first few interviews, as in scaring the candidate because he thought the company hired robotic androids that only appeared to be human. Thankfully, there was a feedback system from the candidates, and my boss gave me some tips based on it. He told me that it was okay to blink and breathe while conducting an interview, and that wouldn’t be perceived by the candidate as weakness. I took a risk that he was right, and the candidates stopped shaking so much during the interviews. I guess staring unblinkingly directly into their eyes nonstop during the interview is a bit creepy, so I allowed myself no fewer than three blinks per minute.

I really messed up this interview. They asked me if I was a people person. I answered, “Yes! I am a people! Or is they go great with mustard a better answer?”

But if you do anything several hundred times, you can get pretty good at it unless you’re Nicholas Cage acting in a movie. It (really) did bug the candidates that I could take notes without looking down at my notepad. It’s not a great superpower, but I decided to keep that quirk going, since it was a sign of dominance that I could use to weed out the weak. And I eventually ended up interviewing hundreds of new graduate applicants – heck, I even used the behavior-based interviewing techniques on The Mrs. the night we met to see if she had any of the character, um, difficulties that led to the untimely departure of She Who Will Not Be Named.

The Mrs. didn’t have those flaws.

So, on one blind date the girl said she was a huge country fan. Me: “Well, I like Russia, too.”

The thing that surprised me the most was that interviewees would tell me the most incredible things – like how they’d lied to people. How they’d stolen from their employer. How much they felt the world was out to get them. By the way, if you lived in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 1998 and never figured out who shaved your pig, dyed it blue, and dressed it like Dolly Parton, I think I might know the guy that did it. Don’t worry – he told me it was mostly consensual. Except for the perfume.

The interviewing system was based almost entirely around character. The company I was working for considered good character the most important factor in what constituted a good employee. More than once I heard, “You can teach a good person to do their job, but you can’t teach a bad person to be good,” from my boss. Then he’d shake his head and look at me with a sad, defeated expression on his face. Of course I didn’t blink. I had to show him the respect due the alpha of the pack.

But there were employees who actually possessed good character there, too. As an example, one employee I know was attempting to find some financial information that was relevant to his job. Somehow in working through the company computer network he stumbled upon the check writing software.

Thankfully the money is headed her way from that Nigerian prince.

Yes. My friend found the software that would have allowed him to write himself a check for $50,000,000. No human would have seen the check – it would have been printed on company check stock, signed with a dot-matrix signature, popped in the mail, and delivered directly to my friend’s house. The company had billions (really) in the bank. It wouldn’t have been immediately caught.

My friend called me over and showed it to me. It was a moment I was in awe. This company had huge piles of money in various bank accounts. I realized that just a few keystrokes could end up making my friend an overnight millionaire, at least until the audit found a few missing millions. In a situation that would tempt some people, my friend calmly picked up the phone, called accounting, and let them know they had a really big problem. And he didn’t do it from a beach in Brazil while sipping some drink that comes with an umbrella. But not flaming. That’s for tourists.

That’s good character.

Climate science has taught us that science demands seriousness.

The company actually had a list of traits they were looking for. What did they consider good character? Humility was on the list, as was honesty and a few other things people generally think are representative of virtue, as I wrote about Kardashians, Hairy Bikinis, Elvis, Wealth, and Virtue. There are a lot of things that change about people, but absent a significant psychological event (and sometimes not even then), their character doesn’t change.

That brings me to this statement: the most important part of parenting is helping to build character. I think I’ve established that character is important, so when is it important?

I think that the primary focus of parenthood is guiding children through one critical age range: middle school, from the ages of around 11 to, say, 14. Did you go to grade school with someone who was pretty cool, only to watch them become a complete dirtbag in high school? I know I did, and the time that they went downhill was in middle school.

The ages of 11 to 14 are where kids are first practicing at being adults, and are in the process of crystallizing the character that will define them for the rest of their lives. They’re understanding being really hurt and rejected for the first time, how to deal with defeat. What love is. What their values are. How to deal with victory. They’re understanding what true friendship and loyalty really is. They’re finally (thankfully) understanding what deodorant is, though generally just a few weeks too late.

Knowing how to relate to Pugsley is everything.

And they’re deciding if they want to reject virtue and turn to the Dark Side© evil. Sorry, but Disney® has trademarked that phrase, along with all jokes related to mice, intellectual property abuse, and and ducks. And, yes, I understand that some percentage, say 70%, of character is flat-out genetic in nature. There are families of dirtbags that have been dirtbags for 100 years. If you think about it, you’ll know who I’m talking about.

As I mentioned before, I even used the techniques I learned from interviewing in the blind date that eventually netted The Mrs. When I finally took The Mrs. over to meet Jim and his family, Jim approved. “You guys seem great for each other.”

Perhaps Seneca, writing back in 60 AD or so (back when your Momma was just 50 years old), said it best:

Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance. You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it.”

When you are evaluating people to be your friend, your mate, or your employee, character is primary. Great butts are secondary, in the end.

Get it? Butts? In the end?

I kill me.

Success, Fight Club, Strippers and Socialists

“We have just lost cabin pressure.” – Fight Club

The second rule of Wilder Club is if this is your first visit, you have to comment.

I had a conversation with a friend today. Oh, sure, I hear you say, what would an iconoclastic iron-jawed individualist with a body odor redolent of medium rare ribeye (with just a hint of pepper) like John Wilder need with a friend? I guess we all have our little weaknesses. And dogs follow me. Because I smell like steak.

In this particular case as with most of my friends, I’ve known this friend for years. I’ve known most of my close friends longer than The Boy has been alive, and he’s in college now. It’s nice. If a day, a week, a month or a year goes by, so what? We can still restart the conversation where we left off. It’s as comfortable as watching a movie you’ve seen a dozen times.

I’ll make the observation that the only place where the character of people change is in a movie – almost all of my close friends have the same sense of humor and the same sense of values that they had when our friendships were forming. Absent a significant emotional event, people are a constant.

And I like that.

There is a corresponding trust that comes with being a close friend – honesty. That’s why when talking with my friend, I really enjoyed the chance to be honest. Honesty is difficult because it requires that trust, because really honest criticism is hard to take, even when it comes from a friend. Or a co-worker. Or a relative. Or someone you just met. Or your UPS® delivery guy. Oh, wait. Most people don’t like honest. But my friends do.

This particular friend is really in a good position in life, which seems to be a common pattern with my friends. He has a spouse that makes more money than he does, and, in general, the household probably brings in enough cash each month so that Nigerian princes send emails to them asking for money. They’re wealthy enough that they donate to the homeless. This appears to be a more socially acceptable donation strategy than my “donation to the topless,” scheme.

Yes, this is the only joke that I’ve ever seen that involves both the Greco-Roman philosophy of stoicism and stripping. I’m sure that Seneca would be proud.

But lest ye want to class my friend as the evil, selfish, wealthy type, he’s not. The family has a huge number of kids, and it’s a close family. My friend is constantly taking time off to go to athletic events, and when we catch up, I can sense that the relationship he has with his kids isn’t a surface relationship – it’s genuine and deep. I can tell, because I know people who understand genuine relationships, who listen to both sides of a family argument – my neighbors.

And yet . . . despite the wealth, despite the great family, my friend feels that there’s something missing. He is as high as he wants to go in the company he works at – any higher and the travel demands would pull him away from family. He’s long since mastered his job – there is little that can be thrown at him that he hasn’t seen in the last fifteen or so years. So, his condition is one of high pay, mastery of work, and, improbably, discontent.

John Wilder: “You realize you have an advantage that 99% of people would die for. You’re financially secure. You can quit your job anytime. Literally, you could walk in to your boss this afternoon and quit. Your lifestyle wouldn’t change a bit.”

Not Elon Musk: “Yes.”

Unlikely Voice of Wisdom John Wilder: “So, what is it you want to do?”

Really, I Promise It Isn’t Elon Musk: “I need to think about it.”

Channeling Tyler Durden From Fight Club® John Wilder: “No. If you think about it, you’ll end up doing nothing but thinking about it. You have to do something. Physically start it. This weekend. I’ll check back on Monday to see how you did.”

There is a scene in the movie Fight Club™ where Tyler Durden holds a gun to the head of a liquor store clerk. If you haven’t seen the movie, I strongly suggest it. I probably watch it once a month while I write – I think there are few movies that communicate the human condition in modern life so well.

Pugsley doesn’t miss many school days.

JACK, in voiceover: On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

CLERK: Please… don’t…

TYLER DURDEN: Give me your wallet.

Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.

TYLER: Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A. A small, cramped basement apartment.

RAYMOND: How’d you know?

TYLER: They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers. Raymond, you’re going to die. Is this a picture of Mom and Dad?

RAYMOND: Yes.

TYLER: Your mom and dad will have to call kindly doctor so-and-so to dig up your dental records, because there won’t be much left of your face.

RAYMOND: Please, God, no!

JACK: Tyler…

TYLER: An expired community college student ID card. What did you used to study, Raymond K. Hessel?

RAYMOND: S-S-Stuff.

TYLER: “Stuff.” Were the mid-terms hard? I asked you what you studied.

JACK: Tell him!

RAYMOND: Biology, mostly.

TYLER: Why?

RAYMOND: I… I don’t know…

TYLER: What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel?

Tyler cocks the .357 magnum Colt© Python™ pointed at Raymond’s head.

TYLER: The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be?”

JACK: Answer him!

RAYMOND: A veterinarian!

TYLER: Animals.

RAYMOND: Yeah … animals and s-s-s —

TYLER: Stuff. That means you have to get more schooling.

RAYMOND: Too much school.

TYLER: Would you rather be dead?

RAYMOND: No, please, no, God, no!

Tyler uncocks the gun, lowers it.

TYLER: I’m keeping your license. I know where you live. I’m going to check on you. If you aren’t back in school and on your way to being a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead. Get the hell out of here.

JACK: I feel sick.

TYLER: Imagine how he feels.

Tyler brings the gun to his own head, pulls the trigger — click. It’s empty.

JACK: I don’t care, that was horrible.

TYLER: Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten.

How dare you . . . make Greta uncomfortable.

And it’s true. I tend to think that everyone’s life would be a little better if they had Tyler Durden to be a life coach, to ever so gently coax them to be the best they can be while holding a .357 magnum Colt® Python™ to their head. That seems to be a bit frowned upon, so that leaves my friends with me. See how lucky you are?

In my role as Dr. Durden, I’ve noticed that there’s a problem some people have. It’s being too clever. It’s thinking. How do I know? It’s my problem that I try to compensate for by writing and doing. If I think about doing something, it will never get done. I keep thinking about fixing the bannister that broke when we moved in to the house a decade ago. It’s never been high on my list, since people falling down stairs is funny, with extra points if they are really old. But thinking about doing something never accomplishes anything.

If I plan to do it, it will get done. Half of my time driving to and from work on a day I’m going to write a post, I’m writing it in my head, selecting jokes, thinking of themes. It’s also spent thinking of how I’m going to connect the idea I want to share with students who might be forced to read this post when Mrs. Grundy tells them to compare and contrast my work with that poseur, Mark Twain, in high school in the year 2248 (that’s when Kirk will be a sophomore).

Okay, generally on my drive to work I have about five or ten minutes between cars, so it would take several hours to get a group of cars behind me like that. But a man has to have goals!

It may look like I’m driving to work, but I’m really plotting out what I’m going to write about. To be honest, it sometimes takes both lanes to do that. I wish the State Patrol® would be a little more understanding to artists like me.

Thankfully, The Mrs. is.

The Mrs. and I had a conversation the other night. It may or may not have involved wine – I’m not telling unless I’ve been subpoenaed and am under oath to a House subcommittee. Actually, it wasn’t so much a conversation as The Mrs. describing to me how she felt about this little project I publish three times a week.

I don’t make any money on this blog, though I’ve made clear since day one that can change at any time. I have plans for several (eventual) ways to do that including adding subliminal messages causing you to want to pay for my health insurance. It looks like it’s already worked for Bernie Sanders.

In a socialist paradise all bloggers make $450,000 a year, right? But I worry that for this Christmas we won’t have an Elf on a Shelf, we’ll have a Bernie on a Gurney.

No, at this point, writing is a hobby. But it’s a hobby that takes over 20 hours a week, sometimes closer to 30 hours. I still have a job, and I won’t stop interacting my family, so most nights I won’t even start writing before 9pm. A lot of that time comes from time I’d normally be selfishly engaged in what you mortals call “sleep”, but a chunk of that time comes directly from time I’d be spending with The Mrs.

When I’m writing, I’m simply not available. I’m writing.

The Mrs.: “You know, I would certainly have an issue with the time that you spend writing, if it weren’t important.” There was more to this, where she detailed the number of hours I spend. But I keyed in on the word “Important.”

I was a little surprised by that. “Important?”

The Mrs.: “Yes. I can see that what you’re writing about is important. People need to hear it. So keep doing it.”

Okay, that proves she never reads this stuff.

But as I talked more with my friend, the concept of “meaning” came up.

My Friend Who is Really Most Certainly Not Elon Musk: “So, it’s about meaning?”

Suddenly as Wise as the Roman Philosopher Seneca John Wilder: “That’s silly. You don’t go off chasing ‘meaning’ in your life. Pick out something you like to do, and do it. But figure out how to make it important to other people. You like to woodwork, right? You say you never have time to do it. Do it this weekend. Film it. Put it up on YouTube®. I’ll be checking up with you on Monday.”

I asked myself, why is my friend working at all? I think because he feels he’s supposed to work. That having a job is a rule, it’s what he’s always done. The problem that many of us have is that we tend to create rules where there aren’t any rules. I’m not sure why. Perhaps we need to justify what we do. Perhaps it’s like my two important rules for life:

Don’t tell everything you know.

Success? My friend is already successful in most ways a person can be successful. Their life is really good. I told them, directly, “You’ve been given so many gifts. If you don’t make something special of your life, you’re wasting it.”

Interestingly, this applies to you, too.

And me.

How will your breakfast taste tomorrow?

Life Insurance? Nah, They Can Suffer.

Dot: I’m sure you have the life insurance squared away?
Ed: Have we done that honey? We gotta do that honey!
Dot: You’ve got to do that H.I.! Ed’s got her hands full with this little angel.
H.I.: Yes, ma’am.
Dot: What would Ed and little angel do if a truck came along and splattered your brains all over the interstate?

-Raising Arizona

Is it just me, or was it Transformers® who started the trans debate with whole “robots identifying as trucks” thing?

A long time ago, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert®, came up with a handy, short guide to finances. His quip was, “I’d write a book of financial advice, but it would only be one page long.” I wrote about it before, but that was two years ago and this will be funnier. The nice thing is that his list of financial advice is simple, and applicable to most people in normal times (from, say 1950 to 2020):

Make a will.
Pay off your credit cards.
Get term life insurance if you have a family to support.
Fund your 401k to the maximum.
Fund your IRA to the maximum.
Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it.
Put six months’ worth of expenses in a money-market account.
Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement.
If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, or tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.

I don’t carry life insurance – I want to die just as I was born – as a burden to my family.

I think, for various structural reasons, normal times won’t continue, but I’ve blogged about that more than once. We’re seeing inflation accelerate (10 Years (or less) To A $10 Big Mac – How To Explain Inflation To Your Friends) and we are, perhaps, getting ready to party like its 1859 again. So, yeah. It all might be going to hell, but it could also be much better than my worst projections, and some of the above might matter. Yeah, I know, this is like having a mortician say, “But on the bright side….”

My insurance company is dependable – every month since I’ve had my policy they’ve sent me a bill.

So far, I’ve accomplished most of the things on the list above by Mr. Adams. When I’ve varied from the suggestions, I’ve actually suffered financially – Scott is a pretty shrewd fellow, and he’s certainly more successful financially than most people. For instance, if I had kept more money in the market, I would be that much more heartbroken when Netflix™ costs $12. Not $12 a month, but $12 for the whole company.

Being wrong in my case is okay – I’m in pretty good shape financially – I was able recently to add meat to the Hamburger Helper® (I’m not saying it was hamburger, and what neighborhood will miss a cat or two?), so not being 70% in the stock market has been okay. I’m able to sleep better at night and not worry.

Sadly, Hamburger Helper™ only works if the hamburger wants help.

But one thing on Mr. Adams’ list above that isn’t on mine anymore: life insurance. Sure, I take the company life insurance policy because it’s cheap super cheap, and if I were to pass away, The Mrs. would get the princess-ly sum of $500,000, which in the year 2029 will buy you a pack of illegal vaping juice. I hope (on any given day) that I’m worth more alive than dead to her.

Besides, if anything suspicious happened to me, she’s an author and her Internet browser history looks a list of creepy websites the Zodiac Killer was too scared to go to. The Mrs. could be 100% innocent, but it would still be difficult to explain why she’d spent several weeks researching “undetectable poisons to kill your bald husband with.” Wait. That’s just a bit too specific.

Mental note: eat only what The Mrs. eats. Also: wear a helmet.

The purpose of life insurance is simple – it’s not a lottery – it’s a mechanism so that if the breadwinner was to die early, the family could be financially secure without the income they provided. But what financial security does my family need to provide for? The Boy is off at college, and with his scholarships I think he pays tuition, room and board in pocket lint and beef jerky wrappers because it doesn’t cost very much to go to Bob’s State University and Discount Amateur Asbestos Mine if you do really well on the ACT®.

Pugsley will in a few short years be off at college, too, and that’s it. Our last financial challenge. We’re in good shape for that today. Also, if I were to die, the major source of weird family expense goes away. The Mrs. is unlikely to spend nearly as much as I do on hobbies like ham radio. I know that no one was more shocked than I was to find out that you couldn’t use a store bought ham. I think you have to get a fancy farm raised ham.

If a pig eats ham, that must make a really good radio?

So if I passed on, then what? The Mrs. would have to get by on our nest egg, which should work great as long as she doesn’t’ have any fancy needs, like electricity. My need for life insurance now is nearly zero.

But it wasn’t always so.

When I was younger, I actually bought the greatest amount of life insurance the company offered. The nice thing about life insurance is that it’s one product that’s priced appropriately – when you’re youngest, it’s cheapest. And when you’re older, it costs more. When I was young, I wanted to make sure that the family had its needs taken care of. I don’t recall it ever costing much more than $30 a month, and that was for $2 million or more.

That was good. When The Boy was first born, we didn’t have much as far as savings and we had almost two decades to plan for. And we had no idea if he would get scholarship after being dropped on his head all of those times. Now? We can afford to go bowling whenever we want. And we can get some of that fancy box wine when company comes over. And our risks as a family have dropped significantly.

Think of box wine as juice boxes for adults.

Frankly, I never needed life insurance at all. It was a product I was paying for that did me absolutely no good. I would never see a dime of return. Silly people I live with, wanting to be protected.

But in 2019, what would I add to Scott Adams’ list?

Live in a safe place. Think about population density when you determine safety. Be there and be part of the community. If the place is too big to recognize people in the stores regularly? It’s probably too big. Be there sooner rather than later.
Have food. Start with a month’s worth – nobody thinks you are crazy for having a month’s worth of food. More is better. Farming areas are nice – people are generally friendly, and they make the food.
Be able to get water. Clean water is good, but there are ways to make water clean.
Know what you can’t live without. If it’s PEZ® or insulin or fabric softener, know and either save it up, or learn how to do without. I regularly shame The Mrs. pancreas to try to get it to produce insulin. No luck so far.
It teaches you what you need and don’t need faster than anything.
What would you add?
Did I mention PEZ™?

10 Years (or less) To A $10 Big Mac – How To Explain Inflation To Your Friends

â€œYou want the solution toÂ inflation? Â Hi, friends. Â Marshall Lucky here for New Deal Used Cars, where we’re loweringÂ inflationÂ not only by fighting high prices, not only by murdering high prices, but by blowing the living s**t out of high prices.â€ â€“ Used Cars

Tom Brady isnâ€™t alone â€“ Lance Armstrong will do anything to his ball to win, too.

I drove to Burger KingÂ® for lunch for the first time in a long time.Â I donâ€™t eat lunch most days to stay in shape, and I keep reminding The Mrs. that spherical is a shape.Â On the days that I do eat lunch, itâ€™s hard to beat Chick-fil-aâ„¢ – theyâ€™re fast, theyâ€™re polite, the restaurants are clean, and they put massive amounts of heroin in the chicken â€“ there is no other way to explain how addictive those stupid chicken sandwiches are.Â I generally prefer beef to chicken, but the people at Chick-fil-aÂ© are wizards.

Iâ€™m still waiting for them to offer a Steak-fil-aÂ® sandwich.Â Mmmm, now thatâ€™s probably worth a stoning!

Anyway, I ordered a burger, fries, and a drink. Â The price for the meal?Â Nearly $10.Â American dollars â€“ not that wrapping paper they use in Justin Trudeauâ€™s country.Â I remember back when a sit down lunch at a restaurant was available for a shiny nickel could be had for less than $5.Â $10 for a burger, fries and an iced tea?

This was inflation in action.Â Clearly you can see that the government rate of inflation â€“ official truth â€“ shows that inflation is low, at between 0.7% and 3% over the last decade.Â But how true is that number?

The government does something interesting contortions when it measures inflation â€“ it fudges the number.Â When the government comes up with the inflation number, the government looks at things people buy â€“ say, a computer.Â Since computers have gotten roughly a zillion times faster over the last forty years, the government assumes that weâ€™re getting a zillion times more computer for our money.Â In one sense thatâ€™s true â€“ my computer today has more memory and is far faster than any computer Iâ€™ve ever owned and is demanding a living wage, free healthcare, and a right to vote.

But in another sense, my computer isnâ€™t a zillion times better.Â Iâ€™m using it for a word processor.Â Sure, the program is better today than in 1995, but itâ€™s maybe 10% better, which is a metric smuckfestÂ© away from a zillion percent better.

Likewise, if I were to play a game that would have been impossible to play back in 1995, itâ€™s not 500% better.Â There were great games in 1995 â€“ DoomÂ® would like a word with anyone who disagrees.Â Sure, the richness of the games in 2019 is better, but Alia S. Wilder gave The Mrs. a copy of a video game that came out in 2002 for Christmas 2019.Â The Mrs. was thrilled â€“ the storytelling, she said, held up really well.

Itâ€™s not only computers, but other products like cars â€“ add an air bag that I didnâ€™t ask for?Â That increases the â€œvalueâ€ to the government guy doing the calculations even though I never asked for one and itâ€™s never helped me even a little bit.Â All in all, computers have been deflating in price according to the government.Â This helps to offset some of the hugely inflationary items like healthcare and education.Â But Iâ€™m not sick, and Iâ€™m done with school.Â Whatâ€™s a more realistic gauge of inflation?

Hamburgers.Â One of the best gauges is the Big MacÂ® index:

If this graph is right, a Big Macâ„¢ will cost $10 in 10 years.Â Or it will be made from spare Swedish people â€“ and if you are what you eat, weâ€™ll all be the victims of this policy.Â

Graph source, Seeking AlphaÂ® (LINK).

Big MacÂ© hamburgers are made across the country and the same twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun has been made for decades with little variation from Portland, ME, to Portland, OR.Â Indeed, theyâ€™re made across the world and are one gauge of the value of local currency used by The Economistâ„¢ to judge the relative purchasing power of local currency.

The cost increase weâ€™ve seen in a Big Macâ„¢ is substantially higher than inflation.Â And itâ€™s not because itâ€™s a premier burger on the market â€“ in almost any city you can find a better burger than a Big MacÂ© so itâ€™s not like McDonaldsÂ® can increase the profit on a Big MacÂ© because people will not take a substitute.Â Nobody goes to McDonaldsÂ® for excellent food â€“ they go there because of self-loathing because the food is generally consistent.Â Heck, your humble author even went there today for research for this article.Â You can get a McChickenâ„¢ for a McDollarÂ©, but McDonaldsÂ® doesnâ€™t include any McHeroinâ„¢.

So, youâ€™re telling me that when Congress is out of money it can just write itself a check and deposit it?

Even before McDonaldsÂ®, the United States was no stranger to inflation, just like my waistline.Â During the Revolutionary War the Continental Congress authorized $241,552,780 of money to be issued â€“ I still wonder what the $780 was for â€“ Washingtonâ€™s NetflixÂ® subscription?

There were 2.8 million Americans during that time period and letâ€™s assume that two out of five Americans was working (women stayed home, and kids werenâ€™t required to report to the fish gutting plant until age five) for cash that would be nearly full yearâ€™s wages FOR EVERYONE WORKING based on the sources I could find.

The Continental collapsed in value â€“ thatâ€™s where the phrase, â€œnot worth a Continentalâ€ (which is strangely absent from Urban DictionaryÂ®, the must be behind the times) came from.Â After the United States was finally formed, the Continentals were allowed to be redeemed â€“ for 1/40^th of their face value in United States bonds.Â Iâ€™m sure this made everyone who had Continental currency thrilled that they had gotten rid of the King.Â At least in Great Britain they had Universal Healthcare and free ocelots in every pot.

The currency collapse of the Continental at least had an echo in the Constitution.Â It led directly to the addition of the following clause: Â â€œNo State shall . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.â€ Â That sounds pretty simple.

Yet.

The Constitution lists the things the government is allowed to do.Â Despite reading it again and again, there is absolutely no power listed for the Federal Government to issue money.Â None.Â Paper money issued before 1863 was primarily issued by private banks, and the value of a paper dollar actually varied, typically dropping if the state was kinda bad at regulating banks or if the state was far away.Â The value of a gold coin didnâ€™t vary because gold is gold ().

I think the Michigan $3 bill would have been more popular if they had put Scarlett Johansen on it, so I put her over the picture of the cow.

When writing this post I ended up writing a LOT about how the government took over the power to create money during the War of Northern Aggression Civil War and the evolution of a single national currency â€“ United States Notes, and then decided it read more like a snarky term paper for Macroeconomics 201, which I already passed back when a Big MacÂ® was as cheap as my ex-wife.Â So I cut it out.

TL;DR:Â The story is one of increasing Federal control and centralization of both money creation and supply.Â The biggest change was when Franklin Roosevelt confiscated the gold of the American people and made it illegal to own more than five ounces of bullion or coins.Â The reason?Â Roosevelt wanted to print more money for his alien masters so they would restore the power of walking to his withered limbs, though they betrayed him and turned him into a flightless waterfowl.Â Or was that the Twilight ZoneÂ®?Â Anyway, the real reason was that by law the Federal Reserve had to have 40% reserves in gold on the money it printed.Â Back in 1933 apparently they pretended that laws actually applied to people in power.

But Roosevelt stole the gold.

Presto!Â More gold for the Fed!Â There were several high-profile cases where people were prosecuted for owning gold to keep the masses in line.Â Immediately after taking the gold, Roosevelt raised its price by 40%.Â He had, effectively, devalued the dollar with a stroke of a pen.Â This immediately made everyone in the United States who had money poorer, which, I hear, is exactly the cure for an economic depression.

And thatâ€™s inflation:Â making money worth less.Â What people didnâ€™t realize was that by taking the gold, Roosevelt took away the only constraint on printing money.Â 145 years after the Constitution was written, that pesky â€œgold and silverâ€ clause was gone.Â Thereâ€™s no way that this turns out bad, right?

Too bad they already had enough air guitarists.

Nixon took the next logical step â€“ he removed any constraints on printing by revoking the gold standard â€“ the dollar was now backed by nothing.Â Ford, dimly realizing it didnâ€™t matter, made gold legal to own again since after forty years it ceased to be considered money by people.Â Gold was a curiosity.Â Silver had been dropped from Americaâ€™s coins in the 1960â€™s as a â€œcost saving measureâ€ â€“ so Americaâ€™s money was based on a promise.Â A promise made by Nixon.

We now live in an era where itâ€™s considered virtuous to have a slight inflation of 2% or so a year.Â Benjamin Franklin spotted this con over two hundred years ago when he noted that the inflation of the Continental dollar had been a tax to pay for the Revolution.Â Inflation is just that, itâ€™s a tax.Â Itâ€™s a silent one.Â You still have the same $100 bill you had last year.Â Nobody stole $2 from you.Â Except that they did, and they bought themselves something nice, like salaries for everyone at the EPA when you werenâ€™t looking.

The government takes money through taxation.Â It also takes money through inflation â€“ and itâ€™s been slowly stealing the savings of every American for nearly 90 years.

The Fed ruins all the best bikininomics graphs.

Source (LINK)

It feels funny, because many of you have read this before, some of you have read this message 100 times.Â Maybe, just maybe the Big MacÂ® can be worth something as inflation picks up speed.Â Perhaps when a Big MacÂ® costs $10 someone might notice?

Nah.Â Itâ€™ll be fine.

Clintoncide, John Bolton’s Waifu, and October Market Crashes: Knock on Wood

“Well, if you want to knock on wood, there’s plenty of that about.” – Space: 1999

And astrology teaches us that 9 planets and thousands of stars have spent billions of years lining themselves up just to let me know that “my energy will flourish in quieter surroundings” today.

I remember sitting in the classroom – the window faced to the south, and it was a cold winter morning. It was sixth grade and I was covered with more insulation than a flamingo in Canada, since the eighty-year-old steam heating system in the school was as reliable as Bernie Sander’s heart. For whatever reason, the teacher was talking about the phrase, “knock on wood.” I think she was doing what she referred to it as “teaching” but I guess we all have our quirks. Regardless, I remember it well. She said that the origin of the phrase “knock on wood” came from the Greeks.

Apparently, the teacher said, the gods really liked to mess with people’s hopes and dreams. If they heard that something was going well for you they would go out of their way to stop you, much like the Clintons if you know about Jeffery Epstein . . . maybe I should just stop there. The idea of saying “knock on wood” was to confuse that practical joker Zeus or make one of him think you were crazy, so that Zeus would just ignore the gibberish that you were saying.

I liked that explanation, at least enough that it stuck with me this far.

I hope she’s not offended. Knock on wood.

When I looked on the Internet, I wasn’t able to find a confirmation of that story. Wikipedia® says that the most likely explanation was ancient German folklore about touching wood to appease the druid tree-spirits. When I looked a little deeper into the Wikipedia© debate page where the nerds discussed what should be on the page, there was more than a bit of confusion among the editors, including one who just kept talking about his imaginary Japanese anime pillow-wife and whether or not you were still a virgin if you had kissed someone who was not a virgin.

You leave Isemi Kukikemi alone! If we had listened to her and John Bolton-san, we would be attacking Iran right now instead of trying to bring our troops home.

The concept and phrase of “knock on wood” or “touch wood” is widespread enough that it appears in cultures from Iran to Brazil, but is mainly centered in European nations. I’ll admit – I use the phrase to this day, probably weekly. In a pinch I’ll use a plastic countertop to replace actual wood. It’s covering particle board, right?

I think that “knock on wood” is just part of a wider body of superstition that’s deeply rooted inside our collective consciousness, and if we didn’t have superstitions, we’d invent them, like I invented that clever superstition to never to shave off all of my body hair and drive backwards naked with a cat while drinking plastic-bottle scotch – unless it’s on vinyl bench seats, then it seems to work out okay.

I made fun of trees once, I guess that was a knock on wood.

I think the reason for this is that life is complex, and so much of the future is uncertain. When I watch the financial talking heads, they exhibit the same behavior. “The market is down 2% on news that Elon Musk had creamed corn as a side dish for lunch.” The market is sometimes down because . . . the market is down. It doesn’t need an actual reason since the pressure on the stock market is made up on many days of an essentially random mix of buying and selling. Sometimes a bit up, sometimes a bit down.

But no one would watch the financial news if they said, “The market is down 2% because the market is down 2%.” In many cases, until the market gets built up so high that it can’t sustain itself anymore (The Funniest Post You Will Ever Read About Angles of Repose, Virgin Physicists, Economics, and Population), the market just fluctuates.

This just in, the market is down because of (shakes Magic 8-Ball®) trade problems with Greenland.

When I was in college I was chatting with a friend about economics lecture he had just seen. A student getting his doctorate in economics was presenting his dissertation to the class. The student was excited when he explained that he had taken the Dow Jones Industrial Average® since 1929. He had removed all of the variation from the market.

“When you remove the all variation from the market data, it turns out it’s . . . constant!” According to my friend the economist seemed very pleased with himself.

My friend raised his hand and asked, “Umm, isn’t everything a constant if you remove all variation?”

Oops. My friend was right – my weight has been absolutely constant if you remove all of the weight I’ve lost and all of the weight I’ve gained. Heck, using that statistical analysis, I’m still at my birth weight. My friend reported that the expression on the grad student’s face looked like he had just swallowed a whole frog after it had been rolled in Johnny Depp’s dryer lint after Johnny dried the cotton diaper he wore when he oil wrestled Nicolas Cage.

I was at dinner last night with Nic Cage. We had steak. The waitress came by – asked him if he wanted garlic bread. He said no. I was shocked – I heard he never turned down a roll.

So, we’re in the middle of October, the ultimate time of superstition. Oddly enough, some of the greatest stock market crashes have happened in October, from the Panic of 1907, the Crash of 1929, Black Monday in 1987, and the Crash of 2002. October was pretty bleak in 2008 as well, as you might remember. Overall, the stock market has gone up about 0.2% (on average) in October since 1950.

As I’ve noted before, markets are systems, and periodic crashes are actually helpful – they lead to removal of inefficient and failed companies that are producing products that can’t compete. The longer and higher the market goes, in general, the greater the correction when it comes. It’s been over a decade since there has been a significant market pullback. It’s up 325% since then.

But like housing prices, markets never go down, right?

Knock on wood.

I’ll leave you with this: It’s the Mighty, Mighty Bosstones, and it’s relevant. Also relevant? It’s not “I never had to knock on wood,” it’s “I never had to; knock on wood.” This song was playing on the radio the night I picked up The Mrs. for our first date, and was playing when I dropped her off after the date. A good omen. Knock on wood.

Bad Bosses, Part 2: Action Heroes, Guns, and Explosions

“Your boss is a woman? Now this is a strange bank.” – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

In order to dress for success they tell you to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. So I found out where my boss shopped for clothes. I’d see what they wore, and then wear the exact same outfit the next day. My boss at the time, Marji, thought that was just a little weird since horizontal stripes weren’t at all flattering on me.

It’s both a blessing and a curse to get to the end of writing your post and finding . . . it’s too long. It’s a blessing because if I can break it into two posts, hey, I’ve already got my next post written, which might get me to bed by 2AM instead of the usual. The curse part is that the post has to have a natural break between part one and part two – thankfully this one did. The other curse part is that I actually look forward to writing a post – and the one I had planned for Friday will have to wait a week. But it’s gonna be funny. Part 1 is here: Bad Bosses, Part I, Including Garfield as Written by H.P. Lovecraft, and part 2 is below.

It’s been my experience that all good bosses look the same, since they are all clones of me, or at least the “me” in that first performance review (JW note: it was described in the last post, and it was a really good performance review). And I’ve had plenty of bosses in my career – in one two-year period I went through five bosses, and I am averaging a new boss every sixteen months over the years of my career.

Based on my experiences, the traits of good bosses that I’ve had are listed below. Good bosses are:

Concerned about doing their duty for their company. They display loyalty – they do their job.
Good at setting clear expectations on behavior and expected work outcome. You know what you’re supposed to be doing.
Never smelling of grilled onions.
Able to create an environment where honest questions are encouraged.
Good at providing the tools, time, and space the employee needs to get work done.
Available to do children’s magic shows for birthday parties.
Honest with employees, and give clear feedback meant to help them improve.
Quick to recognize that mayonnaise is not a French musical instrument.
Courageous – the truth is the truth, and they’ll share that up and down the line and damn the consequences.
Reluctant hold a knife to the secretary’s administrative assistant’s neck.
Genuinely concerned about the employee.
Treat people (generally) fairly.

It’s always a shame when you have a great boss and he breaks a leg and has to be put down.

There are times I’ve managed to screw up most of the rules I’ve listed above when I was a boss – that’s why I was able to list them off the top of my head – you remember your mistakes. But you learn from them, too: One of the biggest compliments I got was when I was leaving a job for a new company. The Chief Operating Officer came in to say goodbye and told me, “I hope you’re going to be supervising people at your new job.” Maybe he wanted the new company I was leaving to join to fail, but I took it that he appreciated my efforts to learn and be better as a boss and wanted to pass that legacy on to other companies through people like me. You’re right. He wanted me to mess up that other company.

I imagine this every time I walk into work and use the remote to lock the doors to my car without looking.

Notice I didn’t mention charisma as a requirement to be a good boss. You don’t need to be an Elon Musk to be a great boss – and I’ve heard he’s not a particularly good boss unless you’re his weed dealer. Notice that I didn’t mention intelligence – in some instances really high intelligence works against you as a supervisor since it can make it more difficult for you to communicate well. Would I rather have a smart boss or an honest one? Would I rather have a smart boss or a courageous one? Would I rather have a smart boss or one that didn’t constantly smell of grilled onions?

Most of the time, the cause of a really bad boss is due to their fear, namely fear of getting fired or fear of missing a promotion or fear of missing a rung on the corporate ladder. If that were to happen? He couldn’t afford to pay for the “hot stone massages” his wife was getting from Günter, her “masseuse.” However, sometimes you get bosses that are so strange they remind you of Cousin Eddie®:

One boss I had actually lived in his office, as in slept there every night five or six nights a week. He claimed to be a member of a biker gang, and told stories of holding a person upside down from a bridge as the gang gently convinced him to be out of state so he couldn’t testify at an upcoming trial. He told about buying a girlfriend a “little car” to convince her to have an abortion. And the time he broke a bottle to use as a weapon because “The Indian” was trying to knife him.

This might not be a completely faithful adaptation from the original story.

And as a boss, whenever I needed help, or a risky event was about to occur, you could count on him to be three states away. As bad bosses go, he wasn’t horrible, since after I convinced him that if I looked bad, he looked bad, he had my back when we talked to corporate. Working for him was a really weird nine months. Normally I throw in a joke or an exaggeration in my descriptions – but in describing this boss? Nope. That all happened.

To be clear, with the exceptions listed above, almost all of the rest of my bosses have been great people who were of good character and really interested in helping me develop as a person and as an employee. But where all good bosses are similar, bad bosses are often unique:

The Seagull – The Seagull is a boss that gets a new job every year or two. Why? Because he flies in, makes a mess, and stays until he’s kicked out. Miller was a Seagull. Keep good notes for the aftermath.
The Shadow – Whenever anything important happens, they’re gone. Whenever you have a question? They deflect. Literally, it’s like not having a boss at all, or at least a boss that will make a decision. You will have a boss if one of your choices goes wrong, however, because the Shadow will quickly (and correctly) point out that he never told you to do such a thing!
The Burnout – The Burnout peaked twenty years ago, and is mad and bitter. His back hurts. You make too much money. He wants to retire, but has to wait another year for Medicare™ to kick in. Until then? He wants to inflict as much pain as possible on the office because he wants everyone to hurt as much as his back does.
Captain Ahab – Captain Ahab is great because he has a vision. Companies love Captain Ahab leaders because they become obsessed with obtaining a vision. The upside? Your mission is clear, Ahab makes sure you have everything you need. And you will work 80 hours a week to accomplish it. These aren’t 80 hour weeks of playing Minesweeper®, no, every minute is fully used because (Spoiler Alert) that Moby Dick isn’t gonna spear itself. Ahab doesn’t care about your family, at least during work hours.

He then tried to hypnotize the people in the meeting using a pocket watch. The work was rough – 90 hour weeks for months on end, but we got free coffee and he’d buy us catered dinner if we had to work past 9pm. On a Saturday.

The Sphinx – You’re always guessing. The Shadow won’t give you any sort of answer, but The Sphinx won’t tell you what he wants, but you can be sure that The Sphinx will tell you if it’s wrong. Generally loudly and when other people are around.
The Politician – The Politician cares about only one thing – does it look good? If it looks good and is immoral or illegal? Who cares? The Politician is most commonly heard saying “perception is reality.” The Politician always dresses carefully – almost as good as his boss. The Politician seeks constant movement. They can avoid being blamed for messes they make, but will loudly point out the mess they inherited in their new job. Your value to a Politician begins and ends with you being useful to them. Otherwise? You don’t exist.

Your defense if you have a bad boss in almost every case if you want to keep your job is the same: do your best at work. Work hard, and don’t break the rules or the law. Be nice. And if it sucks too much? Get a new one.

While traditionally thought of as a good boss, Washington had a few buttons you didn’t want to press, although he did light up Ye Olde Twitter® to piss of Adams: “King George . . . Washington. Verily that soundeth goode.”

One other note: if every boss working at a company is a Bad Boss, one of two things is going on:

The Bad Boss is what they really want. Unless you can make it work, you have to leave. Sooner or later, the messes a Bad Boss makes will stick to you.
It may be you. I know that there have been times in my career when my attitude wasn’t optimal. It’s probably the boss. But always leave room and examine that the real problem isn’t you.

Okay, I’m now officially sick of Mack the Knife. But I still don’t feel bad. And if you’d like to share a bad boss below, feel free.