Monthly Archives: April 2021

Wealth is for the Wealthy

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Several of mariner’s news sources have begun to focus on issues that fall under the general subject ‘plutocracy’. Latest topics are from Florida, a government that sees itself as a partner with business, having passed legislation to protect obstetricians from lawsuits about botched births and now passing legislation to protect sugar harvesters from lawsuits about polluting the air.

On manipulations of the rich to stay rich, Elizabeth Warren just released her wealth tax legislation – she is back on the hunt and is the archenemy of the banking industry. The legislation targets the wealthy’s privileged investment practices that in fact are protected by Federal investment practices. Further, Banking has become more involved in partnering with nonbanking enterprises as a legitimate partner and not just a source of financing (Did you notice an American bank tried to launch the Super League in European soccer?)

ProPublica just posted an article that says “longstanding inequality in the U.S. has been exacerbated by the Fed’s role in touching off a multitrillion-dollar boom in stock markets — and stock ownership is heavily skewed toward the wealthiest Americans”. It is worthy to note that the average citizen’s IRA and 401(k) accounts don’t share comparatively in this boondoggle. [1]

Further, Social Security is the top source of wealth for most lower-income households with workers nearing retirement, according to Teresa Ghilarducci, an economist at The New School in New York City who specializes in retirement. If the guaranteed income stream of Social Security is treated as an asset, she estimates it amounts to 58% of the net worth for near-retirees in the bottom half of the U.S. wealth distribution. Other retirement savings represent only about 11% of their net worth, and stocks are just 1% – meaning that the wealthy have their own, federally supported economic world while the remaining US citizens still struggle with minimal income and no long term security. Apparently Andrew Yang’s chart about the distribution of income was correct.[2]

The most effective way to attack this plutocracy is to have term limits for all legislators state and federal and to outlaw party-managed redistricting, otherwise known as gerrymandering. In the meantime, the voting citizen will be caught in a battle between those who collect dollars for satisfaction and those who extol populism for satisfaction. It’s up to the electorate in 2022.

Ancient Mariner

[1] It is mariner’s opinion that ProPublica is by far the most honest, accurate AND the most thorough investigative reporting source among many online services. He recommends everyone subscribe to their email service at https://www.propublica.org

[2] See mariner’s post, “A Stipend for a Day Lived” published April 19, 2021.

The Census

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Immediate reactions from the republicans are beer parties while the democrats cringe in dark corners. But it isn’t that simple. The census actually has several stories to tell.

  1. There is a real chance that republicans will overtake democrats in 2022 and even in 2024. Certainly the House of Representatives has a better than even chance to go republican in 2022. The combination of a significant majority of republican state legislatures plus the irrationality of the Electoral College plus the adjustments in gerrymandering to leverage the census figures, do not bode well for democrats in the short term.
  2. Globally, human population is dropping. The top 30 nations, which includes China and the United States, are not producing offspring as rapidly as they need to sustain population levels. Japan has serious issues; its population has been dropping for several years at an average of .3 percent. Japan’s GDP is at risk of failing in the next decade.
  3. It may be confusing to say that the US has declining population given the census count which shows an increase of 1.5m or ½ of 1 percent. One TV pundit put it straight forward. The increase is immigrants, black, brown and Asian. He surmised that Texas will be a purple state by 2028. He further suggested that the republican states – particularly southern ones – will suffer the Georgia syndrome because northern liberals are moving south.
  4. Setting aside population growth supported by migration, the indigenous US population (meaning everyone who lived in the country in 2010, has in fact dropped. Most notably is the Caucasian percentage. The new statistics project that the nation will become “minority white” in 2045. The shift is the result of two trends. First, between 2018 and 2060, gains will continue in the combined racial minority populations, growing by 74 percent. Second, during this time frame, the aging white population will see a modest immediate gain through 2024, and then experience a long-term decline through 2060, a consequence of more deaths than births.
  5. Already poking its nose above the horizon through intense weather is climate change. Rising sea levels and agricultural hardship are expected to have a growing impact on all coasts of the United States; by the end of the century the Earth’s seas will be one foot higher than today. Forced migration will start much sooner, affecting future census data.

From a different perspective, today’s cultural and economic progress has difficulty adjusting as the US moves through its national history. Progress is difficult because the US Constitution is the same one created in the 18th century: a democratic Federal Republic designed to govern a scarcely populated citizenry across an unknown continent. Automobiles, electricity, computers and an unanticipated population density call for consideration of a Constitutional convention. But who dares?!

Ancient Mariner

Books

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It is a rare advantage to live with a working librarian. Mariner’s home is a sub-branch of his town library. Mariner’s wife maintains a steady stream of contemporary works moving on and off their library shelves. One book that has just come and gone is Lisa Genova’s popular book, ‘Remember – The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting’.[1] It is an easy-to-read book with a conversational style of writing. One tip she provides:

“Let’s start with what you eat and drink. Several studies have now clearly demonstrated that people who eat foods from the Mediterranean diet and MIND diet (helps hypertension) cut their risk of Alzheimer’s disease by anywhere from a third to a half.”

Another book in mariner’s personal library is the late U.S. Representative John Dingle’s book, ‘The Dean, The Best Seat in the House’[2]. John holds the record for longest continuous service as a Representative, sixty years! His book recounts his memories and the many historical moments between 1955 and 2015. John was a centrist liberal, very much driven by the human rights of American citizens. He was the first among many who have decried the imbalance of the Senate in terms of its representation of the U.S. population. He died in 2019 at age 92. Mariner recommends the book for its easy to read documentation of the United States through several notable periods of historic change.

Someone who took up John’s lamentation about the Senate and proposed a solution is Eric W. Orts. In the January 2019 edition of the Atlantic, he proposed a redistribution of Senate seats. Mariner reproduces the distribution below as information to ponder, “What would happen if . . .”.

Each state has one Senator by default.

26 states have only that one Senator.

12 states have 2 Senators, as they do now.

8 states gain 1, perhaps 2 Senators.

California has 12 Senators; Texas has 9; Florida and New York have 6.

One example: Wyoming would have one Senator representing 580,000 citizens while California would have twelve Senators representing 39 ½ million people.

It is mariner’s firm belief that the future success of the United States is based entirely on the redistribution of the Senate.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

[1] Remember, Lisa Genova, © 2021, Harmony Books, ISBN 978-0-593-13795-6

[2] The Dean, John Dingle, © 2018, Harper Collins, ISBN 978-0-06-257199-1

Moving South

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As regular readers know, one of mariner’s political dreams is to merge North and South America into a planet-leading powerhouse for economics, culture and science. This is fantasy of course; the United States considers brown people second class citizens – whether Mexican, Guatemalan, Puerto Rican, Columbian or the far reaches of Asia. If there were more Eskimos, they’d be thrown in as well.

But wait! As if it is the first creature to move out of a primordial sea, there is a glimmer, a faint, fragile thought that has emerged in Congress. Senator Tom Carper (D-Delaware) is traveling to Guatemala to meet with that nation’s president to discuss ways to eliminate the migration of its citizens to the United States. The subject of the visit is economic in nature, that is, how can the US help Guatemala’s economy.

Further hope comes from Tom’s close relationship with Joe Biden, himself an ex-Senator from Delaware. If white supremacists were rational, they would push the republicans to back these ventures to keep nonwhites below the border. (Yes, racist, but mariner is desperate; otherwise republicans will fight this idea for sure. Consider mariner’s effort similar to throwing a stick to entertain a dog)

It took a long, long time for aye-ayes to become humans. Mariner suspects the same will be true for unified Americas. Mariner asks that the reader be careful where they walk lest they squash this primordial thought.

 

 

 

 

 

Ancient Mariner

About the Police

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It’s a shame that the police slowly have changed from keepers of peace to keepers of discipline. Like many cultural shifts, the role of police slowly has changed due to similar subtle changes around them in economy, housing, family culture and attitudes about racism and elitism.

When mariner was a cub scout, a boy of eight to ten years of age, he remembers considering the local policeman a person of authority but not a person to fear. For one thing the officer walked the streets on a beat; he often talked with local citizens, businesses and did things that quietly protected his beat. He checked that business doors were locked at night; he stopped occasionally to watch a few pitches at the baseball diamond in the local park. Once, mariner’s father had a talk with the policeman about some trouble in a home at the end of the block. The policeman was a citizen of the community just like everyone else. It is likely he knew where trouble may lie. Certainly he had a feel for daily life on his beat.

What changed?

To make a long story short, class discrimination and accordingly race discrimination. Over decades of living, the suburbs evolved, wages were geographically dispersed as corporations emerged, government tax structures were modified, and neighborhoods became less heterogeneous. When mariner was young, every neighborhood was a town with its own GDP, schools, its own main street and had both working and professional families.

Slowly, mobility became easier for families – especially those whose jobs were outside the neighborhood. Families moved to neighborhoods based on income (class); in the old neighborhood multigenerational families began to disappear leaving no intergenerational history. Consequently, fewer and fewer residents were familiar and housing markets eventually dropped in value where the old GDP had disappeared.

The cop on the beat no longer knew everyone. Eventually it became cheaper to cruise a neighborhood in a squad car. Nobody knew anybody. The glue that made a community exist was gone.

When no one is sure what is happening, when no one knows anyone, when the mean income is dropping, paranoia becomes the dominant attitude. When no one knows ‘that’ person, the person is of less value and deserves less grace. Conversations become polar and accusatory. There was comfort in knowing that the police could ‘handle things’ in this social vacuum. Economically, some neighborhoods collapsed entirely, which led to vacant housing, slum conditions and criminal economies. Fortunately, the police could ‘handle things’.

While the US economy was growing rapidly, classism didn’t matter; everyone’s eyes looked to the future. The past was forgotten. Even so, many still lived in that past and did not share in the future. So society left the past to the police to manage.

In recent decades the future has not been so rosy. Society has begun to notice the disarray of classism. Recent news has begun to take notice of unrest in neighborhoods of the past. It is long overdue that society regroups and establishes more homogeneous rules. The police are part of this movement and need to know their customers personally and, figuratively, to walk the beat again.

Now if we could teach Congress this lesson.

Ancient Mariner

A Stipend for a Day Lived

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Mariner has read Andrew Yang’s book, The ‘War on Normal People’. The reader may recall he was the democratic candidate who espoused a monthly $1,000 stipend be paid to citizens of working age which had no relationship to what would be called wages earned from a job. His first chapter is about how the nation arrived where it is today. He cited some startling statistics. Just one of many as a sample:

Cumulative growth in average after tax income by income group

To clearly demonstrate the percentages in dollars, assume mariner gives the reader, a member of the top one percent, one dollar. Below is the number of dollars reader’s dollar will grow every two years:

 

80 82 84 86 88 90
95¢ 1.10 1.40 87.40 165.40 225.40
92 94 96 98 00 02
286.40 330.40 378.40 542.40 736.40 930.40
04 06 08
1,092.40 1,348.40 1,626.40

On the other hand, if mariner gives one dollar to a reader in the bottom twenty percent, the reader ends with less than they started, losing as much as $50.05 spending value in 1992 before finishing in 2008 still with less than they started: -$1.05.

80 82 84 86 88 90
95¢ -9.05 -21.05 -31.05 -41.05 -46.05
92 94 96 98 00 02
-50.05 -45.05 -45.05 -35.05 -30.05 -24.05
04 06 08
-24.05 -19.05 -1.05

 

These numbers seem really out of whack but mariner has charted these values in several different ways in past posts and Yang’s numbers are in the same ballpark. The big discriminator is that labor wages have remained stagnant as inflation has risen an average of 3.27 percent each year since 1980 for a total increase from 1980 of 91 percent overall – meaning that in real purchasing power labor wages are half what they were in 1980.

Is it any wonder that the working classes are up in arms and mad with the US government? This separation of economic circumstances may suggest why the stock market continues to set new records even while a different economy exists for the average citizen. [An issue for another post is the relationship between economic stress and the rise of racial prejudice in the working classes.]

One more chart from Andrew’s book:

Level of Education Attainment Median Income – assume 40-hr week
Less than ninth grade 16,267     –        315.25
Ninth to twelfth grade no diploma 17,116     –        331.70
High school graduate 25,785     –        499.70
Some college no degree 30,932     –        599.45
Associate degree 35,072     –        679.68
Bachelor’s degree or more 55,071     –     1,067.26
Bachelor’s degree 49,804     –         965.19
Master’s degree 61,655     –     1,194.86
Professional degree 91,538     –     1,773.99
Doctorate degree 79,231     –     1,535.48

Another statistic that mariner culled from the news is that the average person does not have the cash to pay an unexpected bill for $500. Further, the average disparity between white total assets ($34,755) and black total assets ($2,725) is astonishingly unbalanced – making race an economic issue that is bound to cause disruption.

As to Andrew’s arguments for guaranteed income, we have forgotten that in the more affectionate times of the Kennedy era, the US government prepared to pass the Family Assistance Plan – a plan endorsed by President Nixon – which would have provided a base income of up to $10,000 for every citizen beneath the poverty line. In a study performed to determine whether workers would stop working with such a benefit, it was found that men continued to work and women dropped out of their jobs by an average of five hours per week, typically to be with children.

Mariner is pleased to note that Andrew also espouses dropping Adam Smith capitalism. To quote Andrew:

“Human capitalism would have a few more tenets –

  1. Humanity is more important than money.
  2. The unit of an economy is each person, not each dollar.
  3. Markets exist to serve our common goals and values.”

Mariner’s post grows long but it should be noted that job displacement, especially to the working classes, is a serious issue that may well damage the American economy – especially as artificial intelligence and global warming take their toll on available jobs for the working class.

Ancient Mariner

Don’t talk to my hand, talk to my soul.

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A couple of weeks ago, Mariner watched an episode of CBS Sunday Morning. It was a discussion about whether we should dismiss good art because the creator was an asshole. This was a follow up discussion to the recent PBS/Ken Burns special about Ernest Hemingway. It turns out Ernest qualifies as an asshole but has written some undeniably classic literature.

Mariner, though his opinion may be irrelevant, thought the CBS show was simplistic at best. The two primary guests were art critics. The first one took a clear stance that if the person is a misfit in social terms, their art should not be recognized. The second critic took a compromised position stating that we can acknowledge art in spite of the artist but the artwork is viewed by a jaundiced eye because of the artist’s behavior or, or, or because of the content of the artwork.

Of course Pablo Picasso’s fetish with breasts was brought up although his genius had nothing to do with breasts but with the bold use of composition, forcing the viewer to mentally battle between strong lines and distracting colors. The second artwork of note was ‘Thérèse Dreaming’ by Balthus, a magnificent example of art talking directly to the soul. The Metropolitan Museum of Art said this about the painting:

“Many early twentieth‑century avant‑garde artists, from Paul Gauguin to Edvard Munch to Pablo Picasso, also viewed adolescent sexuality as a potent site of psychological vulnerability as well as lack of inhibition, and they projected these subjective interpretations into their work. While it may be unsettling to our eyes today, Thérèse Dreaming draws on this history.”

Note the words sexuality, psychological vulnerability, inhibition and subjective. These are words about subconscious motive. Good artwork passes directly by the conscious mind to speak to the subconscious – the home of the soul. Only when the emotional bonding bounces back to the conscious mind is it a confrontation between private sentiment and the social decorum of the conscious mind. To many people,  emotional feelings may seem embarrassing if made deliberately conscious. The defensive measure is to call the artwork questionable.

Good art always draws its significance from the subconscious. It can be a painting, a song (Mariner equates Whitney Houston singing ‘I will always love you’ as excellent artwork in vocal music[1]), a speech, even good architecture can raise a response from the soul.

Ancient Mariner

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[1] The Bodyguard, 1992. It took many months of arranging and rearranging this song by three giants in the movie business. It was the collective awareness of their sensitivity to their subconscious feelings that finally identified the song’s transcendent quality.

Count your blessings even if there’s only one tiny one

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The Global Trends Report, which is compiled every four years, is an example of strategic foresight. Some clips:

“Driving the news: Many, if not most, of those trends identified in the new report from the U.S. government are trending negative.

“Shared global challenges — including climate change, disease, financial crises, and technology disruptions — are likely to manifest more frequently and intensely in almost every region and country,” the report’s authors write.

“They predict that those intensifying challenges will collide with a geopolitical structure that will become increasingly fragmented and fragile, as the U.S. competes with China for global leadership while citizens of both democracies and autocracies grow more dissatisfied with their leaders.

“Another fairly certain trend line is intensifying climate change which will lead to a less secure, more crisis-prone world that will strain global institutions.”

Axios put the full 156 page report online at

https://www.axios.com/global-trends-report-future-2040-f2d496d3-b393-4269-8756-5477379cdacb.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

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The more mariner learns about Florida the more is his desire NOT to live in Florida. Minimalist government, ignorant governor and cabinet administrators on the take. Plus all the nuances of being located in Dixie. The following story takes the cake – but at least obstetricians are saving money on their insurance premiums.

Ruth Jacques, distraught over the fatal injuries her son suffered during childbirth, couldn’t sue her doctor because of an obscure Florida state law. When she protested at his office, she was told to cease and desist. [The reader should move on to:

https://www.propublica.org/article/she-cant-sue-her-doctor-over-her-babys-death?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter&utm_content=feature ]

Florida has its day of reckoning, though. Climate change is coming.

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Here’s a tidbit from the news: China owns $1 trillion of the US debt, that is, China owns $1 trillion in US Treasury bonds. The open question is whether this affects the power relationship between the two nations.

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Almost half of homes in the United States now sell within one week of being listed. In Austin, the median listing price has risen 40% in one year to $520,000. Across the nation housing costs are soaring beyond the reach of most Americans. America has a record-low number of homes available for sale — just 1.03 million, according to the latest NAR data. That compares to a peak of more than 4 million at the height of the last housing bubble, in July 2007. Where is Congress – or perhaps the sympathy of the Republican Party?

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The blessing we can all count is the increasing participation of private citizens who feel they must help out in these trying times. From wildlife rescue to autism to homelessness to health to house construction to food and shelter, private individuals are stepping up, contributing cash, home space, labor and legal support. Three cheers for the empathetic American!

Ancient Mariner

Movement

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Wow, just four days ago Justice Clarence wrote that there should be tighter regulations on social media – This from Axios:

New rules from tech companies are making it harder for users who commit crimes in the real world to become famous online, Sara Fischer and Stephen Totilo write:

“Twitch, the Amazon-owned livestream platform used primarily by gamers, yesterday unveiled a new policy to take action against users in cases of “severe misconduct” off its platform.

That can include deadly violence, terrorist activities or recruiting, credible threats of mass violence, sexual exploitation of children, sexual assault or membership in a hate group.

Why it matters: This more holistic approach may help tech companies protect themselves against criticism for hosting potentially harmful people or groups.

But it’ll be harder to draw the line on activity that’s harder to define as explicitly illegal, including bullying.”

From Protocol:

Pinterest has some new guidelines, called the “Creator Code,” meant to set the tone for how people operate on the platform. It’s also giving creators more tools to remove content and promote good stuff.

Facebook is all-in on context. It’s testing a system that adds labels like “satire page” or “public official” to posts in the News Feed, in an effort to give people more information about what they’re seeing and why.

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Also from Axios: America’s financial titans are coming to a consensus: We are on the early edge of the biggest economic boom since World War II, with the promise of years of growth after the privation of the pandemic.

Why it matters: They might be wrong. But all point to the same data: This expansion will be kick started by trillions in spending from presidents Trump and Biden, the Fed’s easy money, and piles of cash that consumers and companies accumulated during COVID shutdown.

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Amazon warehouse workers turn down union.

The majority of Amazon’s workers in Bessemer, Ala., voted against joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. 5,800 people work at Amazon’s Bessemer facility and 3,215 cast ballots in the election. The union is filing papers with the National Labor Relations Board because of unfair practices by Amazon in the campaign.

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China commissioned 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of coal-power plants in 2020. That compares to the rest of the world shutting down 37.8GW of coal plants – the first coal energy increase since 2015.

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It has been proven that muons have magnetic characteristics. This changes everything in particle physics.

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Does the reader feel like an earthquake is starting? Futurists claim this will be a turbulent century and it’s only 2021. Mariner believes this century will be as significant in change as the fifteenth century was for Europe.

Ancient Mariner

Tactics

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Tarun Chhabra, now a senior director on Biden’s National Security Council, wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2020 an article titled “The Left Should Play the China Card: Foreign Rivalry Inspires Progress at Home,” Chhabra argued that framing “large-scale public investment” as a way to counter China was the surest way to get conservatives on board.

Asia always has been perceived as a direct competitor. The increased, mindless abuse on US Asian citizens today by the socially inadequate Trumpists and racists reflects how misdirected the US electorate becomes when dealing with sophisticated, foreign diplomacy issues.

Mariner is concerned about Chhabra’s militant attitude. It is very true and proven throughout history that a foreign enemy unifies the home front. It is also proven, even back to the Mesopotamian wars in 2900 BC, that if the home front wins the skirmish, the losers are deliberately killed or made into slaves. (Did the reader see the news clip where a man shoved an older Asian woman to the ground and stomped on her face?) Today it’s a game of teamsmanship not survivorship.

During World War II, Asian citizenry was collected and imprisoned in internment camps until after the war – something like seizing a whole hay pile for fear there may be a needle. Innocent lives were ruined. The same was true for Germans and Italians although their appearance protected them to a great degree. The point is that militancy quickly will unify a nation but at great cost to civilized behavior and especially to a democracy. With the Trumpists running at large and with the nuclear warhead potency of social media, this is a dangerous strategy.

Mariner believes the real war will be fought with international economic liaisons, something like drafting the best players to make a championship team, otherwise known as supply chain economics.

It boils down to this: Who is our most dangerous enemy? Congress.

– – – –

But wait! There is another enemy: plutocracy. As if corporate graft weren’t already a major influence in legislation, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon urges companies to play a bigger role in fixing the world’s problems. He thinks government isn’t up to the job. Already Big Data has used the pandemic to install tracking devices in hospitals, police departments and corporate marketing activities with virtually no regulations. Does the American citizen want to place control over ethics, morality and citizen rights in the hands of corporations? God forbid they may be successful instead of our woeful government. (Note that JPMorgan is a prime target of the democrats who want to restructure the role of banks.)

We may appreciate the social awareness of today’s boycotting corporations; we shouldn’t let them be in control of social issues.

As a footnote, remember the TPP? It failed because it was written by corporate interests instead of government diplomats. They wrote it in a way that ignored human and national rights.

Ancient Mariner