Scadenfreude – You can feel great I forgot to put a post title on this post for 18 hours.

“So don’t go anywhere, folks. The Schadenfreude is about to begin.” – Dodgeball

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Wikipedia chose Return to the Convent, by Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, 1868 to symbolize schadenfreude.  Good choice.  There’s no better source of humor than monks.  Oh, I meant clowns.  Wait, both of those things are scary.  And have odd hair.

The German language is delightful, if you think delightful is a sound that people make when they are angry and choking.  But the Germans have some amazing words – kummerspeck – literally “grief bacon” which means the weight you gain because you eat too much when you’re sad.  Another good one is treppenwitz – literally “staircase joke” which the feeling you get when you’ve figured out the perfect thing to say in the argument.  The argument that already ended.

But the Germans also have a much more common word – schadenfreude.  Schadenfreude is feeling happy when something bad happens to someone you don’t like.  How awful, right?  Well, one day I had the biggest single case of schadenfreude that I’ve ever had, and it didn’t involve something embarrassing happening to Tom Brady, like him breaking his leg after he slipped in his hair gel in the shower and having accidently lost all of his money so now he’s an Über driver that’s taken up smoking.  Yeah, that would make me happy inside.

But my case was totally Brady-free.

Some background:  I had worked with a person that was uniquely difficult to work with.  I won’t bore you with the details, but this person wreaked havoc across multiple departments – including mine.  Sadly, in the blind thrashing around, that passed for “work” that this person did, well, more than one person was set up to take the fall for the odd behavior.  I’m keeping the details vague, because it really doesn’t matter – and if you’ve spent more than five or so years working, it’s nearly certain you worked with an idiot someone like this.

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Heh heh – Scott Adams should be knighted.  But first, we need a King . . . maybe King

One happy morning, I heard that they had been escorted from the building.  I felt schadenfreude in abundance.  While working out on the treadmill that day, I just listened to Mack the Knife on a loop.  Why Mack the Knife?  Dunno.  It felt right.

It’s a good song, even though the first time I heard it was in 2007.  Thanks, YouTube!

Part of my schadenfreude that day was a sense of justice – this person had personally made life difficult for several of my friends.  And for me.  Even though getting fired was hard for that person to go through, the entire company was better off now that they were gone.

But, even though I’d like to engage in more schadenfreude (it’s fun to enjoy the pain of others and sniff the sweet, sweet smell of their tears), I try to avoid it.  Why?

Karma.  Treat a person badly, and it comes back to you, with interest.  Maybe not from the same person, but I do think there is a balance in the universe.  Unless that person has wronged you – so watching Charlie Sheen implode wasn’t any fun – he’d never wronged me.

Long-term readers will know Johnny Depp has been the source of several good-natured jokes on this blog – but Johnny’s never done me wrong.  So, here’s an open letter to Johnny Depp:

Dear Mr. Depp:

I really enjoyed your work in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Dead Man.  I also recently read the relatively unflattering recent story in Rolling Stone (Link).  If you want to invite me to drink outrageously expensive wine and hang out with you, I assure you that I will post on this blog a true and fair accounting of the kick-butt time I’m sure we’d have.  Do you have any tobacco?

Sincerely,

John Wilder – Noted Internet Humorist

So, see, I’m trying to make amends.

It’s bad enough that I now have fernweh.  That’s German for “distance-pain” – sort of the opposite of homesickness.  I can only imagine the awesome wine that Depp has – so I get fernweh waiting for his private jet to come pick me up.  I imagine this would be more fun than that weekend I spent with Mickey Rourke, who mainly spent it eating cabbage, not showering, and watching old VHS recordings of The Price Is Right.

CPAP – Three Week Review, Plus Chainsaw Hands. Because Everyone Wants Chainsaw Hands.

“I heard Sutler’s going to make a public statement tonight . . . It’s nearly time.  The masks were ingenious.  It was strange to suddenly see your face everywhere.” – V for Vendetta

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Oh, my, this is sexy!  It’s either a Halloween costume or . . . a CPAP mask.  I wish my CPAP mask was this cool.  Then I could take over Britain.  But I guess I’d have to get in line . . .   Photo credit – somewhere on the internet.

Okay, I promise I won’t keep going on and on about the Continuous Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) breathing device – this is just a three week (and likely final) review of the device unless something significant comes up.  My first post on this is here (Sleep Apnea, CPAP, and how the Medical Mafia is Killing You).

First comment:

The name.  CPAP.  I just sounds . . . icky.   I think it might be the “pap” part.  “Pap” is defined as a soft food for infants, a “Pap” smear is a woman’s parts test that I don’t want to even know about, “pap” is also defined as “nonsense,” and “pap” is also South African slang for “spineless and without character.”

No, a really bad name.  I, John Wilder, suggest that in its place we call it “life-giving energy machine.”  Heck, even something more specific like “Sleep Suffocation Harm Reduction And Care” is better, and has a much cooler acronym – SSHARC.  Shark.  That sounds cool, like something you could tattoo on your bicep (ladies, you could just put the SSHARC . . . nowhere – iffin’ you’re a lady, you don’t get a tat).    And it’s true:  untreated sleep apnea can cause a host of problems like arrhythmia (which leads to stroke), heart failure, diabetes, and that little rash under your wristwatch band if you wear it all the time.

Next:  The machine is quiet.  I half expected it to sound like Darth Vader was on my bedside table, but it was not at all loud – I think the dwarves (Tolkien dwarves from the underworld, not little people) we keep in the closet make a lot more noise, especially when they nip into the mead.  I can’t even hear it at all unless I open my mouth.  To sleep with a CPAP, you have to have your mouth closed.  Totally closed.  The air pressure is jammed into your nose, so that when you inhale, your throat can’t close up (which makes the snoring sound).  When I open my mouth with the CPAP on, I get the (really weird) feeling of exhaling through my mouth without moving my lungs.  Weird.  It also makes a “whooshing” sound, like the end of Quentin Tarantino’s career.

I slept through the night the first time I used my CPAP.  No issues.  I’ve checked the readings, and the number of sleep apneas I’m having is now . . . zero.  And the number of times I breathe shallowly during the night (hypopnea) is one or two.  This is considered super-human.  So that means I’m a man-machine now?  Maybe.  I can crush cans with my machine hands.  Oh, wait, they’re regular hands – and the cans are aluminum, so they’re easy to crush.  Maybe my doctor will prescribe chainsaw hands?  Yeah.

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If we all had chainsaw hands, then almost 18,000 chainsaw injuries to the hands could have been stopped in 1994!  Call your congressman NOW to demand that all hands be replaced with chainsaws today.  And that we develop time machines so people in 1994 can be saved from chainsaw related head trauma. 

For those that SSHARC (or, CPAP, if you must) has helped, it becomes a near-obsession.  Most fanatics won’t go a single night without CPAP – or even a single nap.  I have noticed that my daytime drowsiness level continues to drop.  That’s very nice for me and anyone else on the highway as I drive.  As the old saying goes, “I want to die in my sleep, like grandpa; not screaming like the passengers in his car.”

There are listed side effects:  allergies and sinus impacts that seem to bother some people.  So far, not me.  My eyes are much puffier, which the folks put down to an insufficiently tight mask blowing air into my eyes at night, but I also think that there might be something to do with a radically different blood chemistry (less CO2) and less stress hormones from not choking yourself (so to speak) every night.  This has been the most significant side effect I’ve seen personally, but it’s fairly common according to Google®.  More severe side effects appear to be edema (fluid retention) in folks that aren’t having any sort of problems that would normally cause fluid retention.  That’s more difficult to deal with, since  (according to the message boards) doctors seem to think that edema would be some sort of witchcraft that can only be fought with sacrifice of a virgin – and California doctors seem to be all out.

Per the studies I could find, the minimum amount of therapy required for significant death reduction is 5 of 7 nights, 4 hours nightly, which seems low to me.  But, hey, I didn’t take the data.  However, the message board people (again) wouldn’t fly in an airplane and sleep without using their CPAP.

About 54% of users stick with CPAP after being prescribed.  15% give up after an average of 10 months of trying, and 31% . . . never started.  These percentages are nice, because they add up to 100%, so you know they must be accurate.  I just wonder how many of the 31% never start because of the stupid name.  CPAP.  Ugh.

I’ve found the following personal benefits – I’ve got more energy during workouts – a lot more.  I can exercise harder and for longer duration, about 40% more.  I’ve also got a “more full feeling” (less desire to eat), which I hear is a benefit of not getting choked every night.  I tried to replicate these findings, but The Mrs. seemed to object with me randomly choking her for two minutes 10 or so times an hour.  She’s so closed minded!  This is ¡Science!  How dare The Mrs. oppose ¡Science! by not letting me choke her ten times an hour?

And, obviously, since I’m getting better sleep, I’m not as sleepy during the day.  Since nobody is choking me.  Except The Mrs. in some weird retaliation.  I mean, she’s not even writing down the results, so her choking me isn’t science, right?

The weirdest side effect?  My dreams have been much more vivid.  And not always good.  I rarely have nightmares, but I’ve had several since starting CPAP.  And these aren’t your normal nightmares – these are nightmares that make Silence of the Lambs look like a Pixar® movie.  I mean, there were both Kardashians and Madonna® in that dream.  Ugh.  I still feel like I need to take a shower.

My only theory is that previously my sleep would have been disrupted and I would have woken up.  I’ve always had the ability to alter my dreams when they got too weird, and I still can, but in order for me to alter the dream, I have to realize I’m dreaming – and these dreams are so very vivid that on several occasions in that “drowsy-waking up” time, I’ve been convinced these dreams were real.  So, I’m either sleeping better or I’ve got a “back order” of vivid, crappy dreams I have to have to catch up with everybody else on planet Earth.  You poor, poor, people.

Regardless, I’m going to experiment a bit – maybe try a night without the CPAP SSHARC to see how that goes . . . I’ve been 100% compliant for the past three weeks, and maybe, just maybe, I’m feeling a bit naughty.

Call me a rebel.  A SSHARC rebel.  Yeah.  But no SSHARC tattoos for me.  They’ll just get droopy and look like bad cartoons when I go into the old folks home.

Note:  I AM NOT A DOCTOR!  This blog is just my strange, odd, and personal experience:  don’t do any of this nonsense without talking to your doctor.  Really.  I’m not a good role model.  I’m what the warning label said NOT to do.  Except ladies, don’t get a tat.  Really.  Ugh.

Houses: Fun, Profit, My Experiences and Bad Tax Advice

“You won’t Iose the house. Everybody has three mortgages nowadays.” – Ghostbusters

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My second house.  My worst moment there?  Discovering that I had termites and the only way to treat them involved an exterminator doing a painful extraction of $2000 from my wallet.

I’ve been a homeowner since I was in graduate school, with the exception of about an eight week period from when we moved from Alaska to Houston where we stayed in corporate housing until we could close on a house – oh, and it took 8 weeks for our household stuff to make it through the Panama Canal, so closing on a house too quickly would have been useless unless we slept in the pool, and then we would have been wrinkly raisin people – and everyone hates them.

That being said, I’d prefer not to live in an apartment in a big city – it felt too much like being a tiny rat in a cage next to ten thousand other rats in tiny rat cages.  Houses in the ‘burbs are much closer to the wide open country where I was raised – 15 miles from the nearest town of 1000 people.  To get to a town with 5000 people?  That was a 45 minute drive.  So the ‘burbs in Houston were like a crawling over three miles of sandpaper to get a beer on a 110˚F day.  I mean, I’m gonna do it, but I’m not gonna like it.

I’ve continually made the choice to buy homes.  Houston was the first place that we considered trying to rent – but the rent was too high, compared to what we would get.  Even though we always considered Houston a place that we would only be staying for a two years or so, we ended up buying.  As it is we ended up staying in Houston for thirty one months and twenty-nine days and got out as soon as we possibly could and did okay, but only because I was kinda sneaky.

So, should you rent or buy?

The positives of home ownership are:

  • Appreciation – Historically, housing prices have gone up over time. Even if it’s just keeping up with inflation, this is known as appreciation.  I know you normally feel appreciation that someone as wonderful as me lives and shares his wisdom with you, but when used with a house, it’s not an emotion, it’s a word that means the house is worth more than it was when you bought it.  Again, most of the time house prices increase over time.  But home prices aren’t uniform – in San Francisco you can’t buy a cardboard box next to a fish gutting factory for less than $23,000,000.  Where I live?  You can buy a house that a human could live in for $15,000 (not kidding).  Not a great house, but one you could live in.
  • Forced Savings – Unless you’re on some sort of “interest only” loan that they sell to LSD-using hippies who mistake bran muffins for money, every month that you send a check to the bank (or use that sorcery, electronic bill payment) part of your payment is interest, and part of it repays the borrowed amount, until the loan is eventually paid for. This is a savings plan that you have no real choice on, so you can’t drop all that money on PEZ®, pantyhose, and elephant rides.
  • Tax Deduction – If you pay interest, at least right now you can deduct it off of your taxes. I am NOT a tax adviser, so don’t go waving a copy of this blog post in the IRS agent’s face if you get audited.  But be sure to poke him in the chest with your index finger while loudly saying, “My taxes pay your salary.”  They love that.
  • Emotional – You want a house. I understand.  I also want a volcanic island lair and supervillain-type cars.  But no one understands me.  Maybe someone will understand your narcissistic desire for a . . . house.
  • Opportunity to be the Evil Neighbor Nobody Likes – That’s us. Not that we’re unfriendly, but we’re loud.  We yell.  Pugsley mows the lawn . . . interestingly some times – I’ve never seen a lawn that looks like a topographic map, but he figured out how to do it.  And the house could use a paint job.  And we have little dogs that will yap at you if you drive up to our house.  Yeah, we are “those” neighbors.
  • Asset to Borrow Against – Yeah. You can always borrow against the place if it’s worth more than you owe.  I did that once.  It worked out okay – divorces are expensive, and home appreciation paid for one.  I’d avoid this unless you want to pay off an ex-wife, it’s risky as can be.
  • Perception of Being Tied to a Place – People generally treat homeowners better, especially in places where respectable people own homes. So, there’s that.
  • Can Customize at Will – If you want to knock out a wall? Do it.  New deck?  Add it on.  Cow-launching trebuchet?  If the backyard is big enough, sure.  Unless you live in New York or California, in which case you can’t mow your lawn unless it’s above 2.4” and it must be kept below 2.55”.    I just read (seriously) about a guy who cut down several trees that were damaged by Hurricane Sandy.  Damaged trees that were on his own property (in New York).  And the city fined him $20,000.  For cutting down broken, damaged tress.  On his own property.     Count me out.
  • No Renting Rules – Smoke all you want, have pets, draw on the walls. Cut a pentagram into your wood floor if you want.  It’s yours.

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Yes, I owned a three bedroom log cabin in Alaska.  I miss it every day.  Simple days.  And no termites.

But where there are positives, there are negatives, too:

  • Debt – Very few people can walk into a place and buy it with cash. So, people (generally) borrow money to buy a house.  Essentially, when you borrow money you’ve sold part of your soul to that person – you have to go to work to earn the money to pay the money you borrowed, PLUS interest.  Debt sucks.  So very much.  I have no debt I can’t write a check for, so, any debt I have is because it’s a choice.
  • High Payment – Debt can lead to a pretty high payment. One phrase that has fallen out of fashion (somewhat) is “house poor.”  That essentially means that you owe so much money on your house that you can’t afford to eat a Chick-Fil-A® because it’s too expensive.    House payments can eat up all of your income.  The guidelines for a loan used to be that the house payment could be no more than 28% of your income and all of your debt should be less than 40% of your income.  I think you should be striving for TOTAL debt to be less than 20% of your income for any sort of comfort.  Some folks prefer the zero debt level.  I can understand and agree – work for that if you can.  Here’s a post where I work out my past experiences on that (Homes: Affordability versus Income).
  • Tied to a Location and Place – So, if I hadn’t convinced my employer to take a $100,000 hit for me, it would have been hard to move from Houston. I would have been stuck in a place precisely when the economy was poor there.  One study from back around the turn of the century actually showed a correlation between home ownership and poverty in some locations – people couldn’t afford to move because they owed money on their house.  If this were for a grade or if I was being paid I’d look it up to give you the source.  You can if you want.  You have DuckDuckGoogle®, too.
  • Risk on Sale – This is sort of like the above – how long will the sale take, and how much money will you get? Who knows?  In aggregate, people talk about days on the market, average selling price.  But if nobody wants to by your house because it’s just icky and you carved a pentagram in the hardwood floor in the living room, well, you’re out of luck.
  • Commission on Sale – Unless you’re a realtor or want to pretend to be one, you’re going to pay someone 6% of the sales price when you sell your house. And if you sell it yourself?  People will want to negotiate that 6% out of you, since they know you don’t have to pay a realtor.  People are awful, right?  Oh, heck, I forgot, I’m a people, too.
  • Upkeep Costs – Replacing a roof, fixing gutters, mowing lawns, trimming hedges, painting, cutting down the dead tree on my property that overhangs the neighbor’s deck. What is this, a list of things my neighbors would like me to do?  Well, yes.  But also, a list of things that also you have to pay for over time.  And the costs add up – general upkeep on a house costs thousands of dollars a year.
  • Utility Costs – If you rent, some of these are (generally) covered. If you own a home, you have to pay them all.
  • Insurance Costs – If you owe money (which is the default condition) on the house, your mortgage company will generally insist that you pay for insurance so that their asset (your house) maintains value and they don’t lose money. The bright side?  You get to pay for it.  I meant the bright side for the mortgage company, not you.
  • Upkeep Time – Somebody’s gotta mow. And it’ll probably be you, until you get a teenager.  Then they’ll want money . . .
  • Large Percentage of Money Invested – You might have $4,000 and some dryer lint in your 401K, but you’ve invested $20,000 on the down payment of a house. That’s a big investment.  Will it pan out?
  • Liability – Somebody slip and fall on the sidewalk in front of your house? Yeah, they’re gonna sue you.  I hope you have insurance . . .
  • Homeowners’ Associations – HOAs are run by bitter, retired old cranks with nothing better to do than complain about how people keep their yard, and send nasty, threatening letters with real legal consequences behind them. Don’t forget, Homeowners’ Associations have downsides, too.

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The Boy and Pugsley in our Houston house.  I think this was taken at the coldest day in December, since it was never below 145˚F when we were there.

Economics:

I’ve bought five houses and sold four, so how’s that working out for me?

The net gain (based just on sales price) is up about $100,000.  Not bad, right?  Well, like anything, there’s more to that story . . .

In Houston, I almost certainly would have lost about $60,000 plus had to pay my mortgage, insurance and utilities for 18 months while the house sat on the market had I not negotiated one little clause with my employer before accepting a job with them – if they moved me from Houston, they would pay me what I had in the house.  I didn’t want any gain, I just wanted out.  They agreed.  Why not?  This was before the housing bubble collapsed.  Home prices always go up, right?  So, of my $100,000 of profit, I’d actually probably be around a net of zero dollars had I not negotiated for that . . . “one last small item.”

Oh, and my current house?  If I sold it today, it would probably go for $40,000 less than I originally paid for it.  Yeah.

But those aren’t the whole economic picture.  I’ve actually had to pay interest on borrowed money for these houses.  I did some sloppy math, and I’ve paid about $140,000 in interest.  Sure, it’s deductible, so I’ll only take a $90,000 hit for interest payments.

But there’s also been upkeep and improvements.  I’d estimate (and I think this is low) that I’ve probably spent $125,000 on maintenance and improvements.

So, net (and I’ll keep my sly job negotiation gain and NOT account for a loss on a property I haven’t sold) I was up $100,000 – $90,000 interest – $125,000 upkeep/improvements.  This says that I’ve paid roughly $135,000 to live in my houses.  Keep in mind that number could be closer to $235,000 except for that one shrewd move I made.

What’s the alternative?  I picked a ballpark rent, and multiplied, and the total was $460,000 for the time period in question.  So, for me, owning homes has saved me $325,000 versus the alternative of renting.

But your mileage may vary based on the following criteria:

  • Debt Load – As mentioned, if you’re paying too much money in debt – you fry your family future. Avoid debt as much as possible.
  • Area – Is the area poised for growth? Good schools?  Industry/commerce moving in?  Or is it a dead zone with a declining population like Flint, Michigan?
  • Commute Time – Every minute commuting is a minute you’ll have to spend EVERY DAY that you go to work. Those minutes?  They’re your life.
  • Duration – How long are you going to be there? Six months?    Five years?  Buying becomes an option . . . .
  • Single Vs. Dual Income – Let’s pretend you now have only one income – your spouse isn’t working. If you can’t afford the house with one income, you can’t afford the house.
  • Cost of Rent vs. Cost of Ownership – In the town where I live in Midwestia, I mentioned you could buy a livable house for $15,000. Why would you rent?  Dunno, but people do.
  • Consequence of Default – Varies by state. I’m NOT a lawyer, and I’ve never defaulted.  So, what’s the consequence if you can’t pay?  Do you have to declare bankruptcy, or can you just mail the keys in to the mortgage company.  You might want to know this where you live.

Buying a home is a complicated decision.  It’s worked out well for me (so far) but it could have been different.  Think about it, especially before you buy that unique fixer-upper in central Manhattan.  Is it really worth $41,000,000 to own a single room apartment that was once rejected as a site for a Sex and the City™ episode?

Lost In Space, or, How There Are No Liberals in Foxholes

“Do you mean he never told you the tale?  To amuse your captain? No?  Never told how the Enterprise picked up the Botany Bay, lost in space?” – Star Trek, Wrath of Khan

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Violence can’t cure violence, but it sure can destroy an alien robot.

I mentioned last week about a scene in the Netflix® remake of the 1960’s series Lost in Space™ where the father, John Robinson, (a Marine, I believe) was attempting to use a 3D printer to print out a gun.  The reason he wanted to print out a gun?  They were on an unknown planet with unknown hostile critters around them.

In the next episode, there were space eels (complete with space teeth) that were drinking the spaceship’s space fuel.  Without the space fuel, the space ship becomes better known as a “house.”  And in this case, a house that was in danger of being crushed, perhaps killing the entire family.

A good time for a gun, right?

No.

He had to fight the space eels with a knife, and, though they did survive, he still doesn’t have a space gun.  Because . . . there are no reasons to have guns in space, according to his wife, Maureen Robinson, who has the keys to the 3D printer.

I actually laughed out loud.

Stranded, on an alien world, with dangers, unfathomable dangers surrounding you isn’t a good reason to have a gun?  I’m pretty sure that the number of mothers that would share that sentiment is very near zero, even someone very liberal.  Why?

Reactions to conditions change opinions, and the elements of danger change how we act as a society and as individuals, and the values that we hold dear.  An example:  very few (nearly zero) people knowing that a dangerous person is inside their house, outside the door of their child, would not want to have a gun.  The old saw is that the police are only minutes away when seconds count, and it’s an accurate phrase.

What other values besides personal defense change in response to societal stress or imminent danger?  Quite a few:

Family – in times of danger and stress, society as a whole will tend to push more toward monogamy, restricted sexual mores, and more stable families.  Why?  When resources are constricted, there is a real danger that family dissolution would lead to great disadvantages to the family.  Hence, families bond together more tightly.  Divorces dropped significantly during the roughest parts of the Great Depression – dropping 25% during the first few years.  Divorce rates have headed back up, and it’s nearly certain that the great economy plus the social safety net of the various welfare programs have had on the family.

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Oh, next one dad is going to read is about environmental regulations associated with nesting migrant waterfowl.  YAY!

Capitalism – Ironically, the great degree of material prosperity brought about by capitalism actually agitates people to want to take the stuff that other people earned.  For whatever reason, this isn’t known as greed.  I had a conversation with a friend, and noted that since socialist countries tend to freeze intellectual progress, wouldn’t it be better if we went farther into the future before we became fully socialist so we could have the innovation that capitalism provides.  He thought that was a good idea.

Communism has been the result of social upheaval, not communism in the past – and you’d think that would be an indicator that communism was inevitable with a large enough crisis.  And it appears it might be, but only in nations built upon totalitarianism in the first place – when Russia fell it was from one absolute government to another.  When China fell, it was from one a military ruler to another military ruler.  But the United States was different – sure, communists made a run at the country, but there wasn’t any real chance they’d win.  Why?  Americans had been free – and the fabric of the nation was built upon the idea that if you let a man have a chance, he can make it.  That’s the American Dream, right?  No part of the American Dream has ever been “give me everything and I’ll give you my soul.”

During tough times, will Americans still turn towards capitalism?  Yes.  At least now.  More on that for a future post.

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Yeah, I’m making the memes now.  My kids hate this.  All bad “dad” jokes.

Good and Bad – In a crisis, good and bad exist.  Liberals hate the concept of good and bad – it’s judgmental.  It’s a violation of a basic premise – that all cultures are equal.  And, maybe on some sort of academic realm, they are.  But cultures are vastly different at the most basic level on the outcomes of wealth and individual freedoms they produce, and some are horribly inferior on this basis.  They’re bad.

There.  I said it.

And if we’re fighting them?  They’ll be the bad guy.  And you’ll agree, liberal or conservative (if we’re in a crisis).

grumpy cat culture

He only laughs at pratfalls in movies if he knows that the person broke a bone during filming.

I won’t go through them on this post (but each topic could be its own post), but the following topics are also ones where people will change their opinions based upon the level of crisis in society:

  • Immigration
  • Nationalism
  • Small government
  • Political correctness

As many of my college textbooks said . . . the proof is elementary and left to the reader.  But I might post about them in the future.

We are in for changes in our future, and the very mindset of society will change in response to our condition.  Be ready.  Or, failing being ready, have a knife to kill the space fuel eating space eels.

Purpose, Retirement, and Life. Spoiler: You need a purpose.

“We’re the middle children of history, man.  No purpose or place.  We have no Great War.  No Great Depression.  Our Great War’s a spiritual war.” – Fight Club

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I love Demotivators.  You should buy a calendar a year from them.  Or more, if you have more than one year each year.   

Men must have a purpose.  If they don’t have one, they’ll either find one, or die.

During the vast majority of my career I’ve been a supervisor of between one (which is the minimum you can be a supervisor of, unless you have multiple personalities) and 200 people (they worked for the eight or so people working for me, so I was like a great-grand boss).

I’ve seen all sorts of weird things – an employee on day one had his company laptop stolen out of his hotel room in New Jersey and then got punched in the face at his apartment building the next day and showed up to work with two horrible black eyes (this story is true).  I worried he would be an awful employee – bad luck often seems to follow some people around, but he turned out just to be unlucky that week – the rest of his career has been pretty good.

I’ve seen employees quit for no real good reason, I’ve seen them quit for very good reasons.  I’ve (unfortunately) been in the position of forcing an employee out (i.e., letting them know that the hammer is coming down so they’d better find something soon) and I’ve had to fire people.  Firing is the roughest, but it also helps the employee find a place that they can be that will help them – most of the times, they’re just not a fit for the job.  One employee developed diabetes and ulcers while working for me.  The job wasn’t high pressure, but the employee just wasn’t cut out for it.  Or, maybe I’m an amazing jerk.  Nah, it must be he wasn’t cut out for it.

Sometimes the happiest occasion is when an employee retires.

fozzie bear

Not that I want them to retire, especially if they’re good at what they do and fun to be around.  But after 45 or 50 years, it’s nice for them to be able to spend the next few months before they die doing whatever they want to.  I kid!  But how many people retire and then die within a few months?  Far too many, and I think I know why.

I was fortunate enough to be a supervisor to two employees that retired on the same day, Kermit and Fozzie.  Kermit and Fozzie had worked together for decades.  They had vacationed together.  They lunched together.  I think they even shared shoes and toenail clippers.  It was only fitting that they retire on the same day.

Fozzie was ready to retire.  Really ready to retire.  He had plans.  He had a big RV, plans for fishing and grandkids.  He had bought a house about 100 miles away and sold the one near to town.  He’d calculated his retirement down to the penny – and figured out how to maximize every benefit he could think of.  And he was done.

About six minutes after we cut the retirement cake, he was gone.  The last time I heard from him was as he walked out the door at his retirement party, essentially telling us if we ran into any problems and needed his help, he’d be available approximately never.  His last act was to place a huge poster on his office door specifically mocking in a humorous way about a dozen employees that he found fault with.  (Thankfully I wasn’t on the poster.)

Fozzie was done.

In truth, he was probably done two or three years earlier, but he had waited for Kermit.

kermitretire

Kermit had a house that he had bought that was closer to 200 miles away.  But Kermit didn’t have plans.  He rarely saw his grandkids, and his hobby, his passion was really work.

Both Kermit and Fozzie had a great amount of technical knowledge – and I promised either of them that they could get an hourly consulting contract to assist teaching the 24 year old kids that were replacing them.  Fozzie told me in rather distinct medical terminology exactly where I could put that contract.  Again, nothing personal.  Fozzie was done.

Kermit?  Three months later Kermit was in the office at least 20 hours a week.  I rarely tasked him with anything specific – I mainly had him help and teach the younger employees (which I think he loved).  I’m not in that position anymore with that company, but Kermit is still coming in every week.

Why does Kermit keep coming in?

It’s his purpose.  If he wasn’t at work, he wouldn’t have a purpose.  That’s not an indictment of Kermit – he’s a heck of a guy.  He simply understands (or maybe feels) that he has the ability to keep going and to keep adding value in the workplace.  And he’s got nothing in his life outside of work that makes him that happy.

Kermit would do it for free if he wasn’t being paid.  I actually think there are some months he didn’t bill the company – and I recall having to nag him about turning a bill in at all.

I’m certain that if Kermit wasn’t coming in?  He’d die.  It’s who he is.

Men must have a purpose.  If they don’t have one, they’ll either find one, or die.

What’s your purpose?

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What should you do in an economic downturn? Depends . . .

“Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.  One step closer to economic equilibrium.” – Fight Club

Since 1940, the United States has had 12 recessions, as recorded by the Fed.  The graph is below.

fed unemployment

Want to start a small business?  Just buy a big one before a recession, and wait!  Saves a lot of hassle!  The gray bars are recessions.

Why do we have recessions?

There have been several economists who have tried to explain this.  One of the earlier explanations was from Ludwig Von Mises.  Von Mises, being Austrian, was the founder of what is known as the “Austrian” school of economics.  Austrian economists are the mortal enemy of Keynesian economists (named after John Maynard Von Keynes, it being a new rule that every economist must now have “Von” in their middle name).  Often the Austrians and Keynesians will have gang fights over who has better economic theory, but they’re economists, so the gang fights look like slap fights between anemic three-year-old girls.

Von Mises felt that recessions were caused by a debt cycle.  At a time (like today) you can borrow massive amounts of money at very low interest rates.  My current house is mortgaged at 4% or so, but my first house was financed at a rate just over 9%, and that was a bargain at the time.  And my current savings account pays interest in dust and, on a good year, in little balls of dryer lint.

voneconomics

Little known fact:  Ludwig Von Mises (Miller) was Superbowl® 50 MVP!

This condition (like we’re in today) encourages investment, and discourages savings.  An example:

The little town I’m in has one hotel that was built since Bill Clinton was president.  There are a collection of at least two other (nice) hotels around town.  And, there are about three hotels that were constructed when the building code required use of lead pipes, lead paint, and asbestos carpet.  So, there are hotels for moderate budgets (like $90 a night) all the way down to hotels that take payment in squirrel pelts (tanned only – no raw pelts).  No five star hotels, but, really, this town isn’t one you’d come to visit as a tourist.

But somebody decided we needed another hotel.  And they built one – a brand new, brand name hotel in a town that already had enough rooms.  Why?

Interest rates are low, so the hotel company is just looking for places to spend money.  If they can borrow it at 5%, they don’t have to make too much money for the investment to pay off.

In an environment with low interest rates and large amounts of money available, companies will borrow money to do almost anything – projects that are crappy at 10% interest look great at a 5% cost of capital.  So they borrow first to do the “great” projects and, once those are done, companies then borrow to do the so-so projects.

What happens when the interest rate goes up?  Or the business ideas that are presented are so silly (strawberry picker making $15,000 a year buys $720,000 California house – LINK) that when they make the papers they become legendary.  Another way to tell is when a Wells Fargo® bank has a Starbucks© inside it’s lobby – and the Starbucks has a Wells Fargo™ bankette inside.  With a tiny Starbucks©.  You can tell that maybe, just maybe, the economy is nearing peak stupid.  (This happened in Houston – there was a Starbucks™ in the mall in front of the Target©.  The Target® had a Starbucks™ just inside the door.  So did the Wells Fargo© bank. Next to the Target™.)

As we watched the housing market collapse, as well as the financial shenanigans machine industry that supported it, my lawyer friend said to me . . . “Well, when you’re at the beach and the tide goes, out, you see who wasn’t wearing any clothing.”  The length of time of artificially low interest rates and the greater the amount of “silly” investment is like a drunk’s binge – the longer it lasts the bigger the hangover.

Examples of irrational thought:

  • The price of a house never goes down – it’ll go up forever. And this one is in a great location, right next to the high paying jobs at the chemical plant.
  • The price of a stock never goes down – stocks will go up forever. And that new car will never replace horses!  Silly!
  • Comics are totally the best investment anyone could ever make. This issue of Teen Manga 2000 will be worth millions!
  • “It’s different this time.”
  • “Stocks have reached a new permanent high plateau.”
  • “This company, Montgomery Ward Toys ‘r’ Us Sears Tesla will last forever . . . .

And then, something happens.  Oh, sure, it looks like . . . 9/11.  If the economy were healthy and operating on all cylinders, 9/11 wouldn’t have led to a recession.  The reason for the recession isn’t what’s in the papers – the economy was sick from too much bourbon.  It was going to throw up anyway.

Make no mistake – the United States is an economic engine.  2% growth is middling, but a 2% contraction is catastrophe.  Why?

All of the jobs are created at the margin, at that 1% or 2% of growth.  A small contraction ripples through the economy – now people are losing jobs.  A 2% contraction is really a 3% or 4% contraction.  That can set off a chain reaction (like during the Great Depression) – those people aren’t consuming, so the next group of people lose their jobs/businesses.  And so on.

Also, in the past, inflation was a thing that happened.  Now we pretend it doesn’t, even as food goes from a $5 lunch to a $10 lunch, minimum.

Eventually, however, the Central Bank (in the case of the United States) can hold back the interest rates no longer – it has to raise them or risk the currency (dollar) becoming worthless.  Interest rates rise.

Formerly profitable projects and businesses are no longer profitable at the new rate.  They get cancelled, or in some cases abandoned during construction.  Or the entire business fails.  The average business lasts . . . 10 years, regardless of age.  Big ones, small ones, they get eaten or fail.  It’s part of that regrowth that’s actually nice about capitalism.  Wouldn’t it be nice if the DMV had to compete to get you to come in and get license plates or a new driver’s license?

So how should you behave in an economic contraction?

First, the pitfalls:  being right early is EXACTLY the same as being totally wrong.  In 1994 I saw that Marvel® had a great group of characters, and if they could only exploit them, they’d have a franchise that was worth millions.  So, I placed a big bet – $2000 – on Marvel™ Entertainment stock.  Which promptly went bankrupt, making my investment worth a handful of magic beans.  Sigh.  Again, being right early is exactly the same as being wrong.

Second:  Getting out early (which I’ve done a time or two or almost always) has proven to be a killer.  Getting out while the market is still going up has cost me a lot of gains.  Not that I’m complaining – the world has been awesome for me, but I really wish I could afford a private island with a heliport inside and extinct volcano.  I’ll have to buy an island without a volcano.  Again.  Sigh.  Is an extinct volcano too much to ask?

So, what do you do when faced with an economic downturn?  I’ve developed a helpful graphic:

Size of Downturn Best Investment Amount of Panic Beware of: Move to:
1-3% Stay the course – keep investing every month. Bernie Sanders waves his hands and screams for more aid. Falling stocks. A nice property you bought at a bargain.
Less than 5% Whiskey.  AAA Bonds of solid countries, like Switzerland.  Gold. Bernie Sanders takes his hand out of his pockets and puts them in yours. Communist revolution.  Oh, wait, they already got California. Montana or Idaho.
More than 10% Ammunition.  Even more whiskey. Bernie Sanders forms a cannibal paramilitary organization. Better Call Saul being cancelled. Your island with a helipad in an extinct volcano.

The real answer is that response to a downturn depends on:

How much money you have.  If you have plenty, you’ll be fine.

How long the downturn lasts.  If a year or two, you’ll figure it out.  If a decade or more?  Yikes!   (Unless you have lots of money.)

How severe the downturn is.  See above.  The “More than 10%” is not really all that much of a joke.

How much your job is impacted.  This you can figure out now.  If your company could do fine without you, you don’t figure into any strategic initiatives, and you make a lot of money?  I hope you saved some, because you and dozens of people that look just like you will be looking for a job soon enough.

Ma Wilder’s family, the McWilders, took in a batch of neighbor kids during the Great Depression and helped to raise them.  Great Grandpap McWilder was wistfully employed on the railroad and operating a boarding house.  Plus he ran a gambling house (I think) that sold illicit whiskey.  He did what he had to do to get by during the Depression.

Great Grandfather Wilder ran a bank that did fine during the Depression.  Never had to hustle, worked banker’s hours.  Depression?  Not for him.

So, be like Von Mises and Great Grandfather Wilder!  Blitz that recession!

The Coming Civil War Part II, and a (Possible) American Caesar

“Who the hell is Julius Caesar?  You know I don’t follow the N.B.A.” – Anchorman 2

Pompey

This is Pompey, the opponent of Julius Caesar.  Yeah, there’s no second place in history for “nearly became emperor.”  Thankfully, there was first place for “widest head in history” which he won, hands down.  I mean, seriously, how could this guy buy glasses?

Last week’s post was the first prediction about the coming future of the United States.  You can read it here (The Coming Civil War (United States), Cool Maps, and Uncomfortable Truths) and another good post about the life of empires is here (End of Empires, PEZ, and Decadence).  Breakup was the first, and in my mind, still the most likely scenario.  But it isn’t the only one – there is at least one other possibility worth considering.

As I referenced in the post, there was a moment where Julius Caesar stood upon the banks of the river Rubicon and thought about his future.  As he looked at the shallow river he considered the orders from Rome:  at the banks of the Rubicon he was to turn over command of all of his legions.  Julius had four legions under his command in his conquest of Gaul.  But as he stood on the banks of the Rubicon, only the 13th Legion (Legio XIII, Gemina, or “Twins”) was at his back.

Rubiconbanks

Caesar at the banks of the Rubicon.  Some say he thought weighty thoughts about how he could best govern Rome.  I wonder if he was thinking about what was on TV, or if Brutus accepted his Facebook friend request?

To cross without them would, he feared, most certainly end with him being tried for political crimes (mainly the crime of being more popular than the sole remaining counsel, Pompey).  To cross without the army, then, might mean that his long career for the Roman Republic would end in dishonor.  In Gaul alone, his legions had faced over three million men, killed a million of them, and enslaved a million more – not a record that generally leads to disgrace, but a record that still irritates the French 2000 years later.

Legend recounts that as Caesar decided to cross the river and conquer Rome, as his horse’s hooves went into the shallow Rubicon he said, alea iacta esto, or, in a less-metric language, “Let the die be cast.”  And it was a gamble – he was outnumbered.

Caesar’s refusal to be a political pawn set him up to do what no other man on Earth could do – he conquered the most powerful nation on Earth.  He transformed the Roman Republic after a civil war, and created the Roman Empire with him as the leader.  The Roman Republic would never again exist.

At the time of Caesar’s ascension to becoming “dictator for life,” Rome had become a Republic ruled by a small number of families, including the Bushes and Clintons those of Pompey and Cicero.  Historian Adrian Goldsworthy writes in his book Caesar, Life of a Colossus (p. 378), that, “The Republic had become dominated by a faction who ignored the normal rule of law and particularly refused to acknowledge the traditional powers and rights of the tribunate.”

The empire that Caesar helped create removed the instability of the late Republic, and replaced it with a more stable structure that lasted another five hundred years.

vercingetorix

Here is a painting of Vercingetorix, a chieftain who united the Gauls, throwing down his arms at Caesar’s feet.  This was painted in the 1890’s in France, and there are numerous historical inaccuracies in the painting.  Among them:  it’s unlikely that Vercingetorix would have had such a stupid mustache, and Caesar always had his iPhone® at surrenders listening to “We Are the Champions” by Queen on a loop in his earbuds.

The transition from Republic to Empire was completed within 20 years’ time.  Caesar put all of the rules in motion for his last name to become a title – the Roman emperors became Caesars.  The title followed to the German king – Kaiser and the Russian Emperor – Czar.  Think about that – your last name becoming synonymous with being an emperor for 2,000 years . . . “Wilder John the First” has an awesome ring to it, right?

But this is the other possibility for the United States:  whereas breakup into multiple states is likely the longer we go, there is still the possibility of an American Caesar, especially if the crisis is within the next 10 years or so while some shred of commonality can be forced upon us.  Sure, we won’t call him (or, much much much much much much less likely, her) “Caesar.”  We’ll probably call them “President” and pretend that the “for duration of the (endless) emergency” part doesn’t exist.

klingonemperor

If we have a female American Caesar, she will probably look like the picture above.  Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite.  Oh, wait, she does bite.  And that’s not autographed to me – I found this one on the Internet.

And notice that I said forced.  The way we get to an American Caesar is through crisis – real or invented.  A currency one would do just fine, and I’ve pointed out that a currency crisis is inevitable here (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse) and here (More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck), it would certainly bring the “need” for a strong, popular leader to take the role of power to save us all.  We almost ended up with one in 1932, but thankfully FDR gave out as World War II was nearing completion – if it had been a younger, more physically fit man?  Yeah, it scared the heck out of America.  That’s why we had a two term limit in place for Presidents before Roosevelt’s corpse was cool.

History shows that people give up freedom to someone who makes promises.  Napoleon, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, and well, here’s the map from Freedom House.  Most of the world’s population lives under what would be considered a dictator.  Very little freedom.

2017freedom

But never in the United States.  Why not?

  • Historically, the United States has been driven by a core desire for individual freedoms and liberty. Those freedoms and liberties were specifically written into the Constitution, despite several politicians of the day noting that no government would EVER try to take these freedoms away.  The Bill of Rights has been a firewall against government power.
  • Separation of powers is another key. The President can’t make laws, only Congress.  The President can just refuse to sign them.  And the Supreme Court has the ability to call into question the Constitutionality of all of those laws (Jefferson argued the President had those powers as well).  These divided powers were intended to prevent the Federal government from acting unjustly.
  • As a further (and much stronger) barricade against tyranny, the states had significant power: they appointed Senators.  Without the Senate, no new law could be made.  The states further had delegated to them all powers not specifically granted to the Federal government.

But those are weakening.

  • The Supreme Court has made decisions that create new categories of rights of people to have stuff (the old Bill of Rights prevented government from doing things, not granting people rights to stuff). And recent rulings generally allow the government to do pretty much what it wants in most cases.  We’ve gone from a limited Federal government to a Federal government that can choose the size of your toilet tank and define what features you MUST buy if you buy a new car.
  • Separation of powers is eroded. Congress writes the laws, but bureaucrats from government agencies run by the President write the regulations that implement those laws.  Page after page of regulation.  81,000 in 2015.  Stack one atop the other?  A three story building’s worth of paper.  With that many regulations, everyone is guilty.  Everyone has done something wrong.  To go back to a Roman, Tacitus:  “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
  • States in the United States are little more than counties since Senators become popularly elected. Senators are just Representatives (Congressmen) with longer terms, and they don’t represent the states at all.

So, the stage is set – a collapse of the walls that kept a dictator from gaining power.  Now all that’s needed is a set stage.  As I mentioned above, a significant crisis will set that stage.  Maybe it’s actual civil war, as noted in the previous post, which is driven almost entirely by economic difficulties.  People don’t fight in civil wars if they the major problem they have is whether to go to the mountains or on a cruise for vacation.  Civil wars happen when people have nothing left to lose.

And when people have nothing left to lose, Caesar will (possibly) emerge.  You won’t look at him like he’s the bad guy.  Political lines will disappear.  I was watching the Netflix® remake of Lost in Space.  Not bad, but there was one scene that was so unintentionally silly I laughed out loud.

Space eels were drinking the space fuel that the space ship needed to move away from being crushed.  Plus, the space eels looked like they could kill people, too.  The husband went down to the ship’s 3D printer to print out a gun to save the family from the space eels.

Mom had the codes to the printer, and it wouldn’t print out a restricted item (gun) unless she said it was okay.  Then she harangued her retired Marine husband that guns weren’t necessary to fight the space eels.

Okay, you can have staunch anti-gun principles, but the second a space eel is going to eat your kids?  You print a dozen guns.

Your priorities change immensely after three days without food.  You’d be just happy to have a strong leader who will protect you.  A leader who will feed you.  And you won’t worry so much if you can’t criticize him, especially if you have food.

trumplandpng

There was some comment that the maps from the previous post didn’t show the great amount of land that Trump won during the last election.  Here’s a different version, represented by area.  Future battle map for a new Caesar?  Asking for a friend.

You’ll look at him like he’s saving you, which he just might be doing.  He’ll have songs written about him.  And if he does a good enough job?  He’ll be remembered for 1,000 years.  If he does a bad enough job, he’ll be remembered that long, too.

When (if) he rises to power?  You’ll applaud.

Possibility, Your Choices, McDonalds, and Your Responsibility . . . (and too many “Your Mom” Jokes)

“And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s.  And you know what they call a Quarter-Pounder with Cheese in Paris?” – Pulp Fiction

DSC02743

This is a picture of the McDonald®’s shoe car, circa George W. Bush’s presidency.  Notice the French fries dangling from the rear view mirror.  Must be some sort of talisman that makes him attract your mom.

There is a brief moment at your birth, when every single possibility of who you will be, and what you can achieve is open to you.  If your genetics support it, you can do it.  You will never have more possibilities open to you than at that moment.  And, over time – slowly at first – those possibilities narrow.  Your life is a funnel, and the wide open end is the possibilities that you have on day one.  Eventually, that funnel narrows.  You make decisions that cut off possibilities – you decide to dedicate yourself to a single sport rather than trying to letter in three.  Possibilities disappear.  You decide to go to college rather than open a business.  Possibilities disappear.

Possibilities never reappear.  They were always there.  You can’t conjure them out of nothing, but you can fulfill them.

Your life consists of two things:  the choices you make (which determine the possibilities that you have) and time.  And your choices even determine how much time you have.  Choose wrong?  You lose a few options.  Want to shoot up heroin?  Chances are poor that you’ll live very long, unless you’re Keith Richards – honestly, I imagine that if you could isolate how to kill him you could make cockroaches AND mosquitos extinct with a single drop of that stuff.

But your life consists of your choices.

kaepernick

Some good choices, some bad choices . . .

Ray Kroc was the guy who got involved with a little restaurant in 1952.  He helped franchise it.  Kroc built it into a brand we all know today – his vision drove the entire process.  Ray Kroc is the single person most responsible for McDonalds™.  He created, single-handedly, the concept of a clean hamburger place where you could get a decent meal inexpensively and wouldn’t be afraid that bikers or rowdy teenagers would cause a scene in front of your family.  Sure, a dollar burger isn’t five star French cooking, but it’s a dollar burger in a clean restaurant with a clean parking lot.

What Ray was doing at the time he got involved with McDonalds® was selling milkshake mixers to the McDonald brothers (who owned the restaurant).  He looked at the hamburger shop and saw it had great possibilities.  He went to work with the McDonald brothers (named Ronald, Bono, and Sting), and eventually bought the brothers out.  Oh, and in 1954 when Kroc started with them?  Yeah.  He was 52.

He was a FIFTY TWO year old milkshake machine salesman, and let’s be real – nobody puts that as their career ambition under their senior picture in the annual.  And Kroc was trying to sell a dying brand of milkshake machines.  Like your mother, his machines weren’t very popular, and unlike your mother, they were expensive.

He didn’t create a single new possibility when he made the jump from being a travelling salesman – that possibility was always within him.

Ray made the choice.  He was going to do more, and be more than a washed-up 52 year old milkshake salesman waiting to collect social security.  Why didn’t he do it before?  Don’t know.  Maybe in 1954 he just got up feeling like he had nothing left to lose – at 52 you know you’ve got more weeks behind you than in front of you, and maybe he sensed he had to make something go.

I know that many people like to put the cause of their situation in life and give up.  And it’s easy to blame everyone around you.  It’s easy to blame society, or your mother (let’s face it, we all blame your mother) or genetics.

Sure, it’s pretty unlikely that Ray could have been competition for Elvis in 1952 – Ray was too old.  Likewise, his shot at pitching for the Yankees® was finished.  He was past his prime – he would have had to start much earlier, rather than, you know, fight in World War I.

Those possibilities were closed down for him – but the reservoir of possibility was still open for him to lead a restaurant franchise system that’s served billions of meals and created an entire industry – without McDonalds® there wouldn’t be a Burger King™ or a Wendy’s©.  And if he hadn’t created that industry, there’d be no place for your mom to work.

Kroc eventually bought the San Diego Padres®, so there’s an argument that not all of his ideas were great, although he bought that team (when he was 70) for $12 million dollars, roughly as much as a current Major League® ballboy makes per inning.  As of today, that team is probably worth about a billion dollars.

So, I guess even that was a good deal.  True story:  when he told his wife he bought the San Diego Padres™ she asked, “What, is that a monastery?”

Friday is the day for health posts, so why am I posting about choices and Ray Kroc?

You are where you are today, almost entirely due to the choices you’ve made in your life.  If you feel that your situation is beyond your control, and blame everything else besides you, you’re done.  And those are a horrible people to hang around with – always whining and complaining about how the world is out to get them and the deck is stacked so they cannot win.

People who believe that the world outside controls them and their ability for success have what’s called by nerdy psychologists an “external locus of control” – and that’s not a good thing.  People who feel that way are stressed out all the time, and it shows in the results:  people who an internal locus of control believe the ball is in their hands.  The have better jobs that pay more.

Perhaps, oh, just perhaps, people who think that their output matter – work harder, and get better results.

So, short version?  Get your big boy pants on (or big girl panties on) and understand that your life is what you make of it.  The crappy time that you’re having at work isn’t because people are out to get you.  Unless your last name is Kennedy.  Then?  Yeah, maybe.

mommcdonald

 

Repeat After Me: Never Buy a New Car (and other lessons for young adults)

“Everything I have is yours. My four lawnmowers. My sister. My 35 ferrets. My massive student loan and real estate debt. It’s all yours.” – Anchorman 2

DSC00411

I took this picture on June 2 from my hotel room.  Well, over a decade ago – in Anchorage.  Dinner that night was salmon, red wine, Caesar salad, and a beer for dessert.  I was still paying on my student loans, but I didn’t have a car payment . . .

It was about 10:30 on a warm summer evening.  I was sitting at a stop light in my home town.  I had my (then) best friend with me, a case of beer in the back, and we were going to go and watch HBO® over at my apartment.  I was a senior in high school.  Yes, I had my own apartment while I was in high school – it was amazing, thank you very much.  It’s a longer story – maybe I’ll share it sometime – danger it involves striking workers, cans of soup, and volleyball.

Anyway, back to the stoplight.

I looked behind me as I heard a squealing sound.  In the rear view mirror I saw a car (headlights off, even though it was night) heading right for the rear end of my brand new car.  Brand new!  I did the mental calculation.  It wasn’t going to stop in time.  It didn’t.

The squealing sound ended in a crunching sound.

My brand new car (I got it because I’d gotten a full-ride scholarship) now had a wrinkled back end, just like Cher®.  Crap.

skyhawk

So, off to the local auto-body place it went.  The car, literally owned by me for less than two months needed a lot of repair.  I went in to find out when my car would be done.  The manager (the father of a girl that had graduated a year before me) invited me into his office.  He had a fairly long speech that he shared, indicating that he had found some cheaper parts than he had originally quoted the insurance company, and, well, my $200 deductible could go down to $40 if I only paid him in cash, right then.

I’m not sure how he knew that I had exactly (and only) $40 on me at the time, but his cash radar was perfect.  I pulled out my wallet (brown nylon with a Velcro® strip that kept it closed) and pulled out my $40.

I felt vaguely dirty afterward, like I’d done something wrong.  Honestly, I still fill icky about it writing this down.

The reality is that he probably just needed money his wife couldn’t track for booze or lunch and saw an 18 year old coming . . . and decided to separate me from all the cash that I had . . .

Fast forward to today:

I was walking in a local department store and ran into a kid that I’d coached for a while.  She’d just bought a new car, and was excited about it.  But she’d had a “new” car two years ago – a 2008 vintage car.  What was up with that?

“Well, John, I’d had to replace the alternator and the starter.  And maybe it was leaking oil.  So, I was worried that would cost a lot of money to fix, so I bought a brand new car.  I know you only buy used cars, but this one is brand new!  Sometimes things are just meant to be!  And I got a loan – it’s only 21% interest!”

I wish I was making up these details, but they are true.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with my take on cars, it is my considered opinion (noted in this post: I’m gonna tell you about an accident, and I don’t wanna hear “act of God.” – Jack Burton, Big Trouble in Little China) that my rules are even more correct if you’re a kid.

John Wilder’s Hard Earned Car Iron Lesson One:  If you can’t afford to buy a car with cash, don’t.  Don’t.  Don’t. Don’t. 

My young friend violated this rule.  Now she has interest payments.  Two weeks ago, there were none.  Now, each and every month, like Cher™ at the fridge after midnight, they’ll always be there.

Why?

You can use someone else’s spare money RIGHT NOW to buy what you want.  RIGHT NOW!   Sounds awesome!  There must be a catch?  Yes, they want a fee.  That fee is interest.  You pay it every month until you’ve paid back the money you owe.

And to top it off, loans are “amortized,” which is Latin for “will cause you to die of stress because you have to figure out how to pay off all that money.”   At the start of the loan, say, of $16,000 at 21% for five years, your payment will be $432.85.  Yeouch!  That will buy a lot of Netflix®.

That $432.85 is made of two parts:  the first is the interest you pay back to the guy who loaned you the cash.  The second is the money you borrowed from the guy.  So, in month one you’d expect that you pay half of $432 as interest and half of $432 as principle, right?

No, not even close.  Your first payment would be $280 in interest and $152 in principle.

Why?  At the beginning of month one, you are paying 21% interest on the full $16,000.  At the end of month one, you’ve paid off that $152, so the next month, your payment would have less interest, since now you’re paying interest only on $16,000-$152 (which is $15,848 or something like that).

You pay lots of interest early in the loan, but not much of the money you borrowed.  If I were to graph it, (and I did) it would look like this:

interestonloan

This graph explains why, when you buy a car, you can very quickly owe much more than the car is worth, since the car is worth at least 10% less the second you drive it off the lot.  Your car is immediately worth $1,600 (if you paid $16,000 for it) less than you owe on it.

You’re trapped.

Never borrow for a car.

John Wilder’s Hard Earned Car Iron Lesson Two:  You can’t possibly afford a new car.

I have ridden in a billionaire’s wife’s car exactly once.  It was several years old.  The CD player was broken.  The case around the CD player was gone.  It was a nice car, but it was old.  As a billionaire’s wife, she had zero need to feel superior to anyone within a three state radius – she could get on a private jet at 8AM and have lunch in Rio and ski in Switzerland the next day.  Hell, she could send her dogs off to summer camp in the jet.  Who is she trying to impress?

Who are you trying to impress?  So why do you need a new car?

My friend had noted that I only bought used cars.  I had shared that with them hoping it would wear off.

Well, maybe next time?

John Wilder’s Hard Earned Car Iron Lesson Three:  If the car is worth more than 15% of your gross income, don’t buy it.

This is the kicker for my friend, and the bitter lesson they’ll learn over the next sixty months.  This car is (probably) valued at 75% of their gross income.  75%.  That’s like Elon Musk® buying a car that that was worth $7.5 billion dollars that year his net worth went up $10 billion dollars.  I guess that’s a really cool Tesla®.

I digress.  Nobody needs a car worth 75% of their gross income.  Nobody.  The last car I bought was 5% of my gross income.  It was for The Mrs.  She likes it.  The one I drive is six years older, and the oil in it is only four!  I like it.

My friend would have been better off buying a car that was closer to $3,000, and having a bike ready if it ever broke down.  She has a job, but she rarely travels farther than 10 miles on any given day.

Let’s look at the details – at 21%, a $16,000 car will cost nearly $26,000 in payments.  You’re paying an additional $10,000.  How many fixes on a used car would that pay for?  Lots.

It’s actually worse.  If you don’t own the car outright, you MUST pay insurance so whoever loaned you the money isn’t out if you wreck the car into a deer at 7:15AM.  Not that anything like that ever happened to me . . . .

So, in addition to the $10,000 in interest, my friend will be paying another $150 a month in insurance.

My friend makes (I’ll guess) about $15,000 a year.  After taxes, that’s probably about $875 a month.

This car plus insurance is costing them $580.  That’s 66% of every dime they take home.  OUCH!  And you thought the government was bad.  Cars cost even more.

John Wilder’s Hard Earned Car Iron Lesson Four:  It is no longer 1940.

Used cars last longer today.  In 1940, a car might last five or six years.  We’ve had 80 years of engineering excellence driving cars to be amazingly reliable (shh, don’t tell my car I said that).  Cars are more expensive, sure, but a good car from between 1998 and 2015 or so will last for a very long time.

New cars (like my friend bought) might have issues:  in order to meet government mileage restrictions, car companies are having to make the automatic transmissions (who drives stick anymore except Wilders learning to drive?) so complicated an expensive that a car may become a disposable item when the transmission goes out.  There’s a mom joke here, but I’m going to skip it.

Do your research and get a good car with a decent transmission.

People Keep Taking Advantage of Kids

Yes, at 18 you’re technically an adult, although an adult that can’t drink but that can certainly sign their figurative life away to debt.  Or their actual life in the military.  I could have done that at the age that greasy body shop guy swindled me out of $40.

But the $40 was cheap.  I never trusted ANYONE who tried to tell me that what I should do was good for me if was going to put money in their pocket – it’s a lesson that probably saved my job a time or two.

Thankfully we now allow 18 year olds to get themselves in thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in college loan debt that they’ll never repay because they have a degree in the anthropology of ancient Greek testosterone supplement commercials.

Because, you know, it’s good for them.

The Coming Civil War (United States), Cool Maps, and Uncomfortable Truths

“Well, l could be wrong, but l believe diversity is an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era.  l would be surprised if the affiliates were concerned about the lack of an old wooden ship, but nice try.” – Anchorman

politicalspectrum

So, I guess that my “Secretly Wants To Live in a Post-Apocalyptic Society” secret is out of the bag?  I guess I need more dehydrated food.  And scotch.

(Part II of this series is posted at: The Coming Civil War Part II, and a (Possible) American Caesar)

There are some posts where I know exactly what I want to say, and how I want to say it.  Often, those are fairly well scripted, either with a handwritten first draft or a set of researched bullet points.  I’ll expand those into the full post.  Those are nice.  The structure has been created.  The post flows out.

Some topics are topics that are well planned out (I actually plan the blog topics about three months out) and fit.  Some topics just hit me with a blast of inspiration and nearly write themselves.

And some are difficult.  Very difficult – they occupy headspace I know that I’m going to write about them, but the issue is so difficult that I want to make sure it comes out how I want it to come out, that it doesn’t inadvertently come out in some sort of ham-handed way.  This is one of those.  I’m sort of pleased with the results – it came out the way I wanted it to come out, just like the ending to Breaking Bad, or Jean-Claude Van Damme’s last optometry appointment – he still doesn’t need glasses, yay!

Don’t know a great way to put this, but we’re (in the United States, and in Europe, though my read there is much murkier) heading towards civil war.  In Europe, civil war means dissolution of the EU and (likely) expulsion of large numbers of immigrants.  But I’m not European, so I won’t go too far speculating about them.

I’m not sure if it will be a decade off or longer, but I put the arrival of this war as soon as 2024, and as late as 2032.  Not really any longer than that.  What would stop it is a prolonged, total war that would challenge the very existence of the United States.  External threats and an external enemy are the best way to create unity (and second term for a president named “Bush”).  And that’s not good, because a prolonged war always leads to extremes, and we have extreme weapons – in that way, a civil war might be the best-case scenario.  But I digress – back to civil war.

Why?  Again, this won’t be exactly the same civil war as THE Civil War – there are some facets that will rhyme, but others that won’t.  The major theme is division.  And what better way to show that than with . . . maps.

Here’s a map from Colin Woodward and Tufts University, and Brian Stauffer, depicting the 11 cultures that they contend make up the United States:

11nations

So, there’s this.  Accurate?  I would personally draw a line between those who like Star Wars® instead of Star Trek™.  Those people are awful.

And it’s not just culture, the Woodward/Tufts map is pretty accurate at predicting where we are today politically.  Here is a map of the Clinton/Trump 2016 vote count:

vote-by-nation-2016

The redder you are, the more Trump.  The overlay of the Woodard/Tufts map is clear.  These cultures are significant, and real, and explain NASCAR®, country music, and the inexplicable popularity of PEZ®.

And I think I’ve graphically made my case for there being a division.  But how significant is it?  Well, research shows that it’s pretty one-sided.  Liberals (at least young ones) are significantly more close-minded than conservatives:

civilwarstats

Yes, you read that right.  45% of liberals would be uncomfortable with a roommate with opposing political views.  12% of conservatives would be uncomfortable.  I guess this means that liberals don’t like diversity?

In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar was ordered back to Rome.  Quite specifically, he was ordered to leave his army, the 13th Legion (Legio XIII, Gemina, or “Twins”) beyond the border of the Rubicon river, which was considered the northern border of Rome.  He didn’t, and then spawned a civil war that (ultimately) led to the end of the Roman Republic and Caesar being proclaimed Emperor.  To this day we celebrate this event by ordering salads in Caesar’s name.

geminaxiii

The last time the 13th Legion was active, I think they got in line in front of me at Arby’s® in Boulder, Colorado after a Van Halen© concert.  Man, when 4,000 people are in front of you in line, you’d expect they’d run out of roast beef.   They did.  Thankfully they had lots of panda and koala bear left.  They also ran out of Horsey Sauce L.  They claimed they ran out of horses.

So we have divisions that are significant, enduring (these divisions aren’t new), and deep.  Yet for decades we haven’t had a problem.  Why are we at the Rubicon?

Well, we were ethnically much more uniform than today.  The United States in 1965 (at the time of a major change to immigration policy) was 85% white.  Now?  62%.  That’s a pretty significant change, and one that impacts politics.  Again, cultural divisions lead to war.  And the easiest division is what you look like.  I know that people like to fight and will pick any old reason to fight.  Religion in Northern Ireland (Protestants and Catholics), football in California (Raiders™ vs. 49er’s©), and really important stuff (Star Wars© vs. Star Trek™).  People will fight each other to the death because we don’t like each other’s hats.  Historically, multi-cultural societies . . . fail.  Spectacularly.  (Again, this is not an indictment of any individual group, just a reading of history.)

But civil war in the United States is . . . very singular.  The Civil War was built upon philosophical differences (with very human consequences).  Issues involved in the Civil War include slavery, states’ rights, and Northern industrialism versus Southern agrarianism.  But one of the underlying causes might just be that map of the 11 cultures shown above.  The Northern states were built on the Puritan ethic.  They make up the Boston/New York corridor and the swath heading west from that.  The Southern states were built upon scoundrels – the Irish malcontents and Scottish reivers that immigrated later.  They’re the ones that make up Greater Appalachia.

So what will cause a civil war in the United States?

The first thing is the philosophic divisions listed above.  The desire for the freedom of individual determination is still strong in the Deep South and in Greater Appalachia and the Far West.  That hasn’t changed.  The Puritans in Yankeedom and the Left Coast still very much want to make their values the only values that matter.  Note the graph above that shows relative discomfort with diverse exhibited by liberals.  Ouch!

These groups have hated each other since the 1600’s.  And it will never go away, especially as long as the New England Patriots® keep winning Super Bowls™.  The two sides have never spoken the same language.  The time that both North and South united?  After the Civil War, the North (magnanimously) allowed the South to keep their heroes (Lee, Stuart, Jackson, Davis) and they were transformed into American heroes rather than insurrectionist traitors.  Not a bad trade.

There were places that held out – the first celebration of July 4th after the Civil War in Vicksburg was on July 4th, 1945.  Admittedly, Vicksburg surrendered on July 4th after a horrific siege and devastating defeat for the Confederacy.  It took 80 years and winning not one, but two world wars for Vicksburg to celebrate national unity on a regular basis on July 4.  These divisions remain to this day.

But what else will cause this war?

The Fourth Turning – it’s time.  Here’s a previous post (The Economy, The Fourth Turning, Kondratieff, and You.) that explains this timing in more detail.  The last generation to have experience the horror associated with total war, with the mobilization of the entire economy of the United States to defeat a foe is . . . dead.  The youngest boys that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day are 95 today.  They control nothing.

Our leadership, our population has no connection to those that saw the horrors of a continent ripped apart by war.  They led our nation (and all of the nations of the West) and their actions were held in check by the horrors that they had seen.  Now their experiences no longer temper the actions of the leaders (and desires of the people) to avoid apocalyptic levels of violence.

Let’s continue with economics – I’ve discussed before that the current economic practices have a time limit (More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck).  One cause of civil war (not necessary, but certainly an exacerbating cause) is economic collapse.  When people have more to lose than to gain, they won’t fight.  As Janis Joplin said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”  And when people are ruined?  They fight.  See the French Revolution (Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be).

Economics will be a trigger, but not the underlying cause of division listed above.

So, we have a civil war.  What’s the end look like?

Breakup.

I don’t think that the things that have held us together as a nation will continue to hold us together.  What values do we have in common anymore?  It seems like . . . none.  Let me elaborate.  I could do a post on each of these (and likely won’t – other people cover this on a regular basis, so unless I have a Wilder take, I won’t):

We don’t speak the same language at all, anymore.  Even though I have friends that don’t (at all) agree with me politically, I fear that they aren’t the norm.  The end state isn’t 11 countries.  It’s probably (at least) four.  I can see a Heartland State, an East Coast, a West Coast, and a Northern Mexico.  Los Angeles will be Mexico.  Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle will be East Coast.  The Boston/Manhattan/DC corridor will be East Coast.  Northern Mexico will be as shown as El Norte.

But on the bright side?  Jean-Claude Van Damme doesn’t need glasses!!! How awesome is that?