Daily Archives: March 11, 2022

Who tells you what is real?

Posted on by
Reply

Surely the reader knows about Mīrzā Muhammad Tāraghay bin Shāhrukh. Mariner must confess that he had not known about this Sultan of the Timurid Empire; so much for a college education. His short name is Ulugh Beg (oo’loo beg). Mariner discovered him serendipitously while searching for something – anything – to watch on his smart television.

Ulugh Beg singlehandedly brought modern science to a region (now in Uzbekistan) that otherwise was still a primitive culture. Not only did he bring science to his empire, he made astronomic discoveries and uses of mathematics 250 years before the West’s Scientific Revolution (1700s).

200 years before Hans Lippershey invented the first telescope in the early 1600s, Ulugh Beg constructed a large circular building in such a way that the stars and planets could be tracked with great precision. He documented the 26,000-year cycle of the Earth’s axial tilt while Galileo was being tried 200 years later by the Pope for claiming that the Sun was the center of the Solar System.

Ulugh Beg developed trigonometry and was the first to build trig tables showing relationships between sine, cosine, etc.[1]

– – – –

Mariner enjoyed his documentary respite from the present world. Too quickly afterward he became aware of the worldwide press toward totalitarianism. Remembering the Pope’s control over what is real and trashing Galileo’s knowledge is emerging as a dominant political behavior in today’s world.

The contemporary political surge to abandon or constrict empirical truth is alarming. Teachers are being fired for trying to teach authentic history; libraries are mandated to destroy commonplace literature; elections can be overturned by the government; the rights of women to manage their own bodies is subsumed under a nonchalant justice system that ignores sexual abuse and by the religious right squashing the right to abortion; Christian churches ignore doctrine to deny equality to nonwhites and homosexuals; denial of scientific fact in order to believe the falsehoods of powerful leaders – and, in its own version of totalitarianism, deliberately uncontrolled social media.

In some respects, Ulugh Beg was lucky.

Ancient Mariner

[1] A fascinating documentary! See ROKU, The Man Who Unlocked the Universe.

Seriously – prepare for inflation

Posted on by
1

Consumer prices are up 7.9% from a year ago. It will get worse after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends energy prices surging. According to AAA, Gasoline prices have jumped 59 cents a gallon in just the last week. Diesel prices have jumped even more sharply, to nearly $5.06 per gallon.

It isn’t just the energy sector showing signs of breakaway prices. Unfortunately, even sadly, small businesses that were ravaged by Covid now face rapidly increasing costs for inventory. Many local economies have no reserve and further, their customer base has never had a chance to stabilize.

Nationally, the Federal Reserve will be forced to raise interest rates more than it would like. In the moment, these interest increases seem minor but in fact are very expensive for the consumer. Consider the housing market, already screwed up by housing shortages that create their own inflation. NBC had a good example in its morning report:

“Let’s say a consumer wants to buy a $500,000 home; they get a $400,000 mortgage at a 30-year fixed rate. They would pay about $80,000 more over the loan’s term and about $200 more each month with a 4% mortgage rate versus 3%.”

In fact, any family indebtedness can suddenly loom too large to handle. If a reader has variable rate loans, make every effort to convert them to fixed rate loans. Pay attention to credit card debt; credit card finance charges are exorbitant in any case – adjust home budgets to pay down card debt more rapidly.

Savings accounts, on the other hand, stand to receive higher interest rates. Keep an eye on several types of savings products from local banks to bonds to online banks.

Setting aside normal consumer purchasing of clothes, vacations, automobiles, home improvement and other extraneous buying, it is at the dinner table, at child care, at college tuition, at insurance payments and elderly care that inflation’s tires meet the road. Salary never keeps up with inflation but costs do.

So take a good look at future expenses like taxes, insurance, travel cost and other larger cost items that may cause issues that can defeat staying within one’s income. Be prepared.

Ancient Mariner