This Is Not the Religious Christmas Season

Christmas is December 25^th. The Christmas season is the twelve days after Christmas ending with Epiphany. That is the Christmas season, and many needed Jon Stewart, a Jewish man, to be reminded of that.

What we are celebrating with the Black Friday (also stolen from Christianity and given new meaning) and now Black Thursday (thus stealing the holiday of Thanksgiving, is a secular and materialistic event where folk buy presents, some because they want to share, some because of guilt, some because of obligation, some for no particular reason as all and some because they want to get goodies in return. And some just use the occasion as another reason to get snockered. (Does anybody really like egg nog?)

Now, before I am labeled a total scrouge, I admit I like the season, which we Christians should properly call Advent. Advent is a time of preparation for the celebration or anniversary of the coming of the messiah. I like buying presents for those I care for. I especially like making presents for those I care for or finding that special something to celebrate our relationships. Fortunately, being retired, I have time to do this than most. I have attempted, with very limited results, to make this a time of year for family philanthropy as most of us have more “things” than we know what to do with.

I will also admit that the secular Christmas season makes a lot of money for retailers and that is good for retail workers and the economy. Perhaps we should celebrate a secular Christmas twice a year as December 25^th is an arbitrary day any way; nobody really knows the date Jesus was born. December was likely selected by the early church to combat pagan winter solstice celebrations. So pagan it away people of all faiths and grow the economy. Even charities benefit from the largess of this time of year.

I like the idea of making Hanukkah  חֲנֻכָּה  more popular. This Festival of Lights is an 8 day holiday and you can get presents every day.

An early Merry Christmas (though I should wait) and happy whatever you are celebrating. May your faith grow stronger than your secular interests and your life more fulfilling.

Country Fair, and Other Shills

I remember with fondness going to the country fair as a lad in 4H. We would spend the week there, sleeping in the barns; though one year we slept in the local armory which they thought would keep us out of mischief; we almost drove off with a tank, but that’s another story. It was a time of great freedom from parents. We could pick up a little money working for a grandstand show; I have personally road a lama, a ostrich (harnessing the same for dignitaries in carts), donkeys, raced greyhounds and other strange animals for a couple of bucks.

And then there were all those games of chance and skill along with scary rides on the midway up from the barns and exhibition halls. The promised of winning a stuffed animal or the like if you could toss a ring well, shoot a bb gun accurately or throw baseballs knocking off various things from shells. There was always some guy who could do all those things with ease which encouraged the rest of us to give it a go, with the result they had our money and we had no prizes. The pros that mislead us were shills also known and plants or stooges. A good shill gives you the idea he’s just a guy like yourself but is really working for the game folk. We were the suckers. A good shill, also found in many a pool hall, is an expert in group psychology; remember the Hustler movies with Newman and Cruise?

In truth there are shills all over the place, in the audience of a magician’s show, pyramid schemers, laugh generators at a comedian’s performance or laugh machines on TV comedy shows (mechanical shills in this case.) There are critic shills who heap praise on shoddy restaurants or the like, to help a friend build up business. A shill is a fraud who seeks to do damage while pretending to help those who he or she is conning.

I think it is safe to say lobbyists are shills for their special interest groups. There are very helpful to congress folk giving them research on issues (skewed of course to their benefactors’ interests). They generously write the majority of legislation which again is in the benefactors’ interests.

Currently the Republican Party is viewed by many as the shill party for the rich folk. They apparently did not hear or ignored the voice of the people in the last election with over 60% wanting tax increases for the wealthy. They keep up the call (the shill) that the rich are the job creators which is just a con. They want us to be like lemmings jumping over the fiscal cliff. [This is another myth among others about lemmings. In the 1500’s folk believed the fell out of the sky and they died with the grass grew in the spring. They are said to commit mass suicide and jump into the water and drown; they don’t they can swim. But they do fluctuate widely in their populations. Just so you know.]

So here we are having the same old discussion about the fiscal cliff. I say let’s just jump. I don’t like swimming, I’m afraid I might rust, but I probably can if I have too. The next legislature in all likelihood would then make the changes needed.

Perhaps the Republicans will see the light. We need them to as we need the two party system that works for the public not just special interests. 

Arsenic and Old Lace: A Fracking Story

I image many of you have seen the play or the move Arsenic and Old Lace where to lovely old ladies kill of some of their boarders who they deem would be much better off dead and then give them wonderful funerals. It’s a comedy extraordinaire.

Now we have some lovely folk who tell us we have unlimited fossil fuel that will take care of our need for a huge carbon footprint, fossil fuel needs, for years to come. All we have to do is stuff some fracking sand down some long drilled holes with some secret chemicals they will not reveal and all our problems will be solved (aside from the effect of the carbon footprint that is.)

I wonder what is in that secret formula. Perhaps a little bit of arsenic and old lace? Well, I’m sure they will give us a lovely funeral.

“Can’t Buy Me Love”

So goes the old Beatles song, and, according to an article in Psychology Today by Susan Heitler, PhD in October, it is true. Researchers at Brigham Young University and William Paterson University released a study on materialism and marriage. They don’t go together like a horse and carriage, more likely the horse will gallop away and toss the inhabitants in the ruined marriage ditch.

What they found was a link between Narcissism and materialism, “it’s all about me.” Duh! They also found that couples who score high on materialism score low of marriage skills, particularly communication.

If both of the couple of materialistic they are big trouble, if only one is they are still in trouble but a bit less so and if they aren’t materialistic they are in good shape martially.

So, does money matter? The study says no. They found no correlation between wealth and a degree of materialism. Poverty hurts marriages but if you have enough to get along then you are okay.

Now, what would happen to couples who were materialistic but learned how to communicate well? Perhaps that’s an oxymoron. Lucy should put her 5¢ counseling booth outside Best Buy.

Don’t Trust Anyone Under Forty

In the ‘60s the youth loved the saying, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” But all of us of the 60’s are long past the 30’s now, so who do we trust now?

When I was a lad I asked my father something like just when, at what age, do you have to get to in order to make sense of life, or when is it you can trust your brain? A question something like that. I was also serious in that I realized I was a long ways from that point and wondered if it would ever happen. I remember being younger, 2^nd grade I believed and thought, here I am six or seven years old and I’ve been this little kid all my life, and all my life the adults I know have always been adults. I thought life was a plot, that kids would always remain kids and adults would always be adults – we were doomed to those roles forever. It was an upsetting thought. Adults romanticize about childhood, but kids like me just want to get it over with.

But back to my question to my father. He took my question seriously, thought a bit, and then said, “Forty.” My father was a very wise man.

His answer gave me solace and I have thought about it over the years and each time I’ve concluded he was right. At forty your frontal lobe has developed (if it ever will), the part  of your brain that contains your moral character, your ethical governor, the part that let’s you have a clue as to what is right and what is wrong. Also, by the time you are forty and have studied a reasonable amount, you have developed a significant enough knowledge base to make pretty descent decisions. It is also that time in life in life when you generally have the most responsibility; responsibility for family, community, citizen, job; things like that.

However, now they say the new 30 is 20, the new 50 is 30 and things like that, so is everything sliding back a bit? In Old Testament times you became an adult and had adult responsibilities in our teens. Now that time of accountability is much much later even though our bodies develop earlier. God has an odd sense of humor it seems to me.

Today one can wonder if some folk, even the majority, ever grow up. They’ve got data coming out of their ears, but don’t seem to have a clue as to what to do with it. Christmas remains a childish thing where we concentrate more on what we get as presents rather than a time to show our love and care for each other in giving presents as token and expressions of those feelings. Thanksgiving is blown out of the water with Black Friday and frenzied greed and buy buy buy.

Hmmm, can you trust anyone under 60? Is 60 the new 40? As a septuagenarian I think about these things. Now where did I leave my shoes? And, did I write this article before?

Retailers and Workers and Small Towns (or big ones)

When I was a wee lad growing up on a farm outside of New Sharon, Iowa the population of New Sharon was 1006 people, if I remember correctly. 10 miles away was Oskaloosa a booming metropolis of 10,000 good souls. We were also about 60 miles from the state capital Des Moines, Iowa; a big city we visited on rare occasions.

In my hometown were two drug stores, one of which, Holybrands, whose owner would give we kids an ice cream cone if we showed him our report cards at the end of the year. As near as I can recall there were about 7 churches and an equal number of taverns. There was a grocery store that did a good business. There was also a thriving hardware store, a Minneapolis Moline Implement dealer, a blacksmith, several gas stations, an insurance company, a bank, a newspaper, a butcher shop/locker, a hair salon, two barbers, the was a Ford car dealership, there was a electronics store that sold fans, radios and eventually TVs (the first was a round 9” model with a magnifying glass over it the grocer bought),  3 or 4 restaurants, a movie house, an overall factory, a  local phone company (complete with an operator you talked to in order to place a call), a dairy queen (later on), oh yes, there was a gas station plus a grocery store that stayed open on Sundays much to the chagrin of the good church goers (who would stop there anyway if they needed something for Sunday dinner), and likely a bunch of other businesses I’ve forgotten about. There they were all those stores in that tiny town.

Now these were small businesses by definition. Some run by individuals, some by couples, some hired some help and paid them decently. As I recall they were all pretty honest trustworthy business folk; they had to be because it was a small town and if they pulled a fast one on their customers word would get around and pretty soon they wouldn’t have any customers.  All in all we lived pretty decently in that wee town.

Today my hometown has grown to 1,500. The churches while not as many outnumber the bars which one could say is progress (only 1 bar now I think). But the number of businesses, that is another story. There are still a couple of filling stations, none that do service that I know of. There is a wee grocery store and a Casey’s. My cousin has a big store that sells all types of stuff people need in a farm community; his motto is, “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.” (Well, he retired but it’s in the family.) They generally manage to keep one restaurant going at a time. I think they have a barber that was a neighbor boy of mine. There is an artistic friend that invented some weird name and sells stuff, antique like and interesting and helps restore some of the buildings that have deteriorated over the years. Generously, maybe there is a third of the businesses that once were but that might be optimistic.

People still love my hometown and are loyal and proud of it. They now have a country club with gold course, swimming pool and club house. You can golf there cheaper than most places by a long ways. The elm trees died when all the elm trees died around the country so I miss them.

Oskaloosa has fewer stores as well but some of the biggies have come in. They have a Wal-Mart.

This was back in the 50’s as I graduated from high school there in 1960. Back then if you lived in a big city and worked at a motor company, say GM, you could earn about $50 an hour including your pension and health benefits. They were the largest employer in the country. Today, if you live in New Sharon or elsewhere, and you work at the largest employer in the country, Wal-Mart you’d get about $8.81 an hour and since most of their employees work less than 28 hours a week you won’t qualify for benefits.

Now I checked out other big stores – Target, J C Pennys, Costco, Menards, Cabellas and Gander Mountain, and you’d get about the same; a little better by about a buck at the sporting goods places.

Now if you are in management you can do better, $50,000 to $100,000 but to 1950 dollars I’m not sure that is a real big deal. What we do know is that most people work a lot longer and a lot harder today, (despite what we old fogies might tell you), but it will likely take two in your family working to make about what one made in my youth.

Some of us also have funny ideas about what constitutes a small business, just those millionaires unlike the billionaires that own their stock.

Oh yeah, Sam Walton who with his family who own Wal-Mart have more wealth than the bottom 40% of families in this country. They made a paltry $16 billion last year; I think that is better than my cousin in New Sharon.

Now folk in New Sharon for the most part don’t think much of unions but it seems to me that if they worked in union jobs there would be a lot more restaurants and stores in New Sharon and you’d have the money to go to them. But there are so few union workers left in the country they don’t have much clout. But they likely make more than they $18,000 to $21,000 that the average full-time retail worker earns a year.

Now some of you may be thinking, those Walton’s are just smart and making a buck (many bucks in this case), and they do employ most folk, so that good. And those Wal-Mart workers that demonstrated and tried to strike on Black Friday, are just a pain and stupid. We need money for big business (or small businesses that seem like big ones in New Sharon).

A word to the wise; something the Ford company knew when they began. They figured that if they paid their workers well they could buy those cars they were making. And that worked and the whole country benefited. Consider this, if retail workers and others got paid more, they would spend more and the country would prosper, meaning the whole country, especially the middle class. Robert Reich who keeps track of these things cited a study that showed raising the salaries of full-time retail workers to $25,000 a year would lift 700,000 out of poverty. Oh there’s a cost to that; we’ve have to pay 1% more for our stuff. It seems worthwhile to me.

Oh, just a note to folk who complain about the high wages, said to be $70/hr, of today’s auto workers. Here’s some facts about that I found out: Let's start with the fact that it's not $70 per hour in wages. According to Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automative Research--who was my primary source for the figures you are about to read--average wages for workers at Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors were just $28 per hour as of 2007. That works out to a little less than $60,000 a year in gross income--hardly outrageous, particularly when you consider the physical demands of automobile assembly work and the skills most workers must acquire over the course of their careers.

More important, and contrary to what you may have heard, the wages aren't that much bigger than what Honda, Toyota, and other foreign manufacturers pay employees in their U.S. factories. While we can't be sure precisely how much those workers make, because the companies don't make the information public, the best estimates suggests the corresponding 2007 figure for these "transplants"--as the foreign-owned factories are known--was somewhere between $20 and $26 per hour, and most likely around $24 or $25. That would put average worker's annual salary at $52,000 a year.

But then what's the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn't come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits--namely, health insurance and pensions--and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages--again, $28 per hour--and you get the $70 figure. Voila.

Even so, that only $20 bucks more per hour than they got over 50 years ago.

I thought I'd add this graph to go with the article. Click to enlarge.

Deficit Messyfit: It Is the Jobs Stupid

Robert Reich is dead on as usual in keeping the focus in the right place. Grandpas and Grandmas will always lament about the future burden we will place on future generations; they said the same the same thing when I was a kid. But it is not the point in a sagging economy. Governments should be spending during a time of recession and recoup those losses during the good times (admittedly we don’t do a very good job of the later.) This is basic macroeconomics, not the economics of the home (however, sometimes it is, i.e. student loans). If we concentrate on getting jobs, good jobs not just minimum wage ones that will generate taxes so we can reasonably pay down the deficit. Decreasing debt in a weak economy is akin to shooting yourself in the foot.

As Reich points out in the 1990’s Clinton balanced the budget and had a surplus because they had faster job growth than expected. This is where some countries in Europe are screwing up; they are reducing debt during recessions causing fiscal crises.

Another red herring is taxing the rich slows the economy. Just listen to Bill Gates, and the other billionaires who are telling us to tax them. 

I do not understand why more is not made of the inequity of wealth in this country. That happened because of government deregulation and to the detriment of middle and lower classes.

Another area we constantly ignore is the cost of healthcare which really stops fiscal growth. Entrepreneurs should be clamoring for national health care not opposing it; it is against their own interests.

Leave misdirection to the football field, the economy is more than a game.