Government stats about workers

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In 2020, the number of people who did not have access to adequate food increased as much in one year as it had in the past five years combined.

֎ The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that median weekly earnings of the nation’s 113.6 million full-time wage and salary workers were $990 in the second quarter of 2021. This was 1.2 percent lower than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 4.8 percent in the Consumer Price Index for all consumers over the same period. Inflation rose by 5 percent.

[Mariner notes that wages did not keep up either with the Consumer Price Index (how much food and purchases cost) or the rate of inflation (a lack of unions and more generally, the effects of Reaganomics)]

֎ Over the past three months, the economy has added an average of 832,000 jobs per month – the fastest job growth since August 2020. That’s a sign that economic confidence is returning, even as concerns about the pandemic continue.

֎ The unemployment rate dropped 0.5 percentage points in July. Sometimes a drop occurs because people give up looking for jobs but the Federal government reports that the labor force participation rate and employment-to-population ratio are both up. That suggests people are looking for work and finding jobs.

֎ Statistics suggest employment has recovered 75% of jobs lost in 2020.

֎ Despite the fact that the number of unemployed people fell by 782,000 to 8.7 million in July, long-term unemployment is still far too high. More than 3 million people have been out of work for at least 27 weeks, with 2.5 million of those out of work for 52 weeks or more. Black workers are over represented in this population.

Ancient Mariner

 

Cryptic Cash

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Mariner always has preferred paying cash. There were times though, when having credit was a life saver; credit cards and mortgage loans made life doable. Fortunately, mariner still uses credit cards only when cash is not acceptable. What mariner likes about cash is that it is relatively untraceable; no one knows mariner bought some trendy toy or paid for a trip to a vacation spot. The nosiness of social media and big data don’t know except through post-purchase commercial services that don’t have his profile data. Mariner’s vehicle tracking is disconnected so he can drive where he likes without big data knowing.

But now mariner must learn about a whole new banking system: crypto cash, the bitcoin world. We must all adjust. Even today banks and retail are planning conversion. The U.S. government already is deep into having taxes paid with bitcoin – or as the news media calls it, govcoin.

Understand that bitcoins are not physical and only exist in the digital world! One cannot trade a silver quarter for a bitcoin. That’s why bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are often called digital currencies. The reader won’t need a wallet, only a computer. The reader won’t need a credit card, only a computer. In fact, the reader won’t even need a bank – only a computer. It should be noted that significantly large areas of the U.S. don’t have access to the Internet.

The simplest way to convert cash/credit to bit coin is through a crypto-exchange. One example for demonstration purposes is COINBASE. Bitcoin was invented to remove one type of middleman — the banks. Banks are famous for taking fees for transactions. Banks played a big role in the financial crisis of 2008; bitcoin started in 2009, just after that crisis.

This is a deep statement: In a decentralized network, the data is everywhere, it can’t be shutdown. More important, however, is bitcoin behaves more like the stock market than a bank account. There is a limit to how many bitcoins are available (Bitcoin has a limit of 21 million coins; once there are 21 million bitcoins, no more coins can be created). This means that bitcoin values can rise and fall just like any real estate or stock market investment.

As a new investment source, bitcoins and other self-defined coins are a heady investment but the downside is the coins are not regulated like the reader’s local bank. It truly is like gambling on the stock market hoping a rise in value will pay your tax bill.

Mariner likes his twenty dollar bills.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Pandemic is comparable to Round Up

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With the exception of those terrible times when changing weather patterns, earthquakes, plagues or ice age expansion killed many people and forced an immediate shift in cultural behavior, culture typically changes in an orderly way. It takes about sixty years to move clearly from one set of mores to a different set. Even with behavior-changing inventions like the internal combustion engine or gunpowder, it still takes a while for society to adapt to new ramifications.

But not this time. The timing of the Covid pandemic could not have been worse. The world economy is weak and the poor nations truly are entering bankruptcy; The rich nations have economic problems, too, as global resources are shrinking and forcing governments and economists into new ways of thinking about everything from limitations on wealth to child care.

The introduction of the Internet, social media, and supply chain abuse (e.g. Amazon, Disney, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Google, Facebook and private equity monopolies) have been introduced at lightning speed compared to the slower standards of cultural change. This contemporary fullness of time is fragile and has shallow roots in a newly emerging moral foundation.

Then came Covid. With the crushing power of Round Up plant killer, the cultural transition, halting at best, was stopped dead. Big money was free to manipulate social function; plutocrats took charge of Congress; the wounds from Donald’s presidency could not heal. The working classes, long persecuted under Reaganomics and now caught in a culture at dead stop because of the pandemic, lost faith in institutions, have doubts about sustaining a satisfactory life, and even the birthrate has continued to drop in the U.S. primarily because of economic fears (and helped along by an aging population).

How can the U.S. citizenry restart a process that will grow a new ethos, a new moral character that will control the new age of economics, powerful advances in electronics, social media and provide fair, equitable guarantees for every citizen’s future?

To shift metaphor just a bit, fixing the aforementioned issues is a lot like taking a car to the repair garage: society is made up of parts just like an automobile. The citizenry must educate themselves on which parts need to be replaced. For example:

Don’t vote for baby boomers. The world they understand doesn’t exist anymore.

Don’t vote for ideologues – either conservative or liberal. One can tell an ideologue because one or two issues are what is wrong with everything in the world. For example, the move to restrict voting in state governments is motivated by a desire by conservatives to gain the upper hand in national politics even as a minority. Voting, while a bit outdated given modern communication technology, isn’t the primary cause of the nation’s problems.

Don’t vote for identity candidates. It is true that there are many issues that need to be repaired involving race, environment, police, taxes, etc. but a larger issue is that the nation has no unity. Electing candidates with one large social issue will not help with unity.

Do vote for younger candidates – even in their twenties if they seem capable.

Do vote for candidates with an even demeanor who seem pragmatic and capable of negotiation. These are the mechanics that can get the government running again.

Despite the bad name education has received lately, don’t discount it entirely. Ask the candidate a question about an idea rather than a quick fix. How is the idea handled?

Unfortunately, the vote in 2022, 2024 and even 2026 will not settle things very much. Too many issues are rolling along unconstrained. The best bet, though, is to vote in a new set of representatives in all U.S. governments.

Ancient Mariner

 

What Price Laxity?

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Mariner mentioned in an earlier post that he had entered a ‘homesteader’ phase. What that means is that he is interested in self-sufficiency, simplicity and a liaison with the biosphere. While his muscles ache a bit from the added labors of keeping busy physically, he has begun learning more about the Amish, whose whole philosophy of life is based on family and community working together and finding salvation through labor.

The Amish philosophy of valuing community and family above convenience or, dare mariner say, ‘aspiration’, is close to pure communism save its commitment to a literal interpretation of the words of Jesus. The economic model is communistic in that the political superstructure never extends beyond a certain geographic range where ethical authority remains totally internal to a tribe-sized collection of families. Further, the economic needs of any individual in that community are shared by the full community.

In his search for information about the Amish, he came across a documentary called “The Amish: A People of Preservation”. It was produced originally by PBS but mariner is not familiar enough with the ROKU world to tell readers where to search. The writer of the documentary is gifted; every closed caption is a quotable comment. For example,

“The old order Amish man is not yet ready for self-propelled equipment. This, he fears, will set off a chain reaction whereby everybody would follow the principles of efficiency and convenience to the neglect of humility and communal discipline.”

If there’s anything our American culture lacks, it is humility and communal discipline.

While the strength of Amish communism is sustainability, its moral structure is weak with respect to humanist reality. Justice is an informal opinion of a gathering of elders strictly bound by the grace of Jesus’s forgiveness. Punitive gestures destroy the Amish ethos. There was a case several years ago where a boy continually raped his sister. In each complaint brought before the elders, he confessed and repented. The elders forgave him as Jesus would. The boy returned to rape his sister yet again only to repeat the process to be forgiven.

Still, there is merit in not pursuing aspiration – particularly in the most capitalistic economy in the world. Resources are not endless; as the wealthy accrue more wealth, resources for everyone else diminish. Mariner has no idea how the future of this century will play out. It certainly will be different.

Ancient Mariner

 

Fire up some briquettes

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As regular readers know mariner is home alone for a couple of weeks. As a result of cooking only for one, he dug out his old hibachi to grill food instead of using the regular gas grill. His experience was positive enough to wonder why he hasn’t used the hibachi all along. True, it takes a bit of patience to start the briquettes but the efficiency – if only measuring that the hibachi is just outside the kitchen door – was significant. A five-gallon bucket of briquettes easily will last as long as a 7 liter LPG tank. A bucket of charcoal is about 30 pounds at an average cost of $25. A tank of LPG gas costs about the same.

The hibachi is convenient as a substitute for a campfire to cook hotdogs and make s’mores. Does anyone still have an old metal 6-cup percolator coffeepot? Make morning coffee and toast! The hibachi can substitute as a crockpot, too.

When mariner was in Taiwan, many restaurants had nothing more than a couple of ceramic style hibachis shaped like large flower pots. In Tainan mariner visited a restaurant which claimed to have the longest continuously burning hibachi fire in Taiwan. The primary menu items in these restaurants is what a crockpot or wok is used for in the U.S. Interestingly, a standard wok always seem to fit those flower pots perfectly. Genuine Chinese herbs and spices made the best stir-fries mariner has ever tasted.

Many small neighborhood restaurants were totally portable. Each morning the kitchen and seating were set up in what we would call a garage with no utilities. Customers ate outside on the sidewalk. In the evening these restaurants lit up the entire block with colorful lanterns. When the restaurant closed, everything was packed and removed leaving an empty garage. This setup method was common among many small retailers.

Being a foreigner, these kinds of social experiences were enjoyable. But alas, across from mariner’s hotel was a McDonalds. At least the food was still Asian. Mariner worked in the ‘down country’ of Taiwan. Visit the City of Taiwan on the north end and one would think they’re in New York City except everything is written in mandarin.

There are many other ways of living besides living amid Interstates and gazing at smartphones. Perhaps next our travelogue will visit Kazakhstan.

Ancient Mariner

 

Significant Moves

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֎ If the reader has ever vacationed on South Padre Island and visited the town of Brownsville, Texas they know the laid back, mostly Mexican culture and the abundance of retired old people. It’s just a single purpose town with a pleasant atmosphere and a notable marsh sanctuary. Until now. Elon Musk is moving from California to build his launching pad to Mars. It consumes a lot of beach and open area in Brownsville. Brownsville never will be the same.

֎ Now fly back across the continent to Windsor, Connecticut where construction has been halted at a new Amazon warehouse; Amazon has temporarily shut down its construction site in Connecticut after a seventh noose was found hanging over a beam. The suspected cause, although mixed with doubt, is racism in very New England Windsor. Both construction and future employees will have a significant number of non-whites and, given the enormity of an Amazon warehouse, the quiet style of Connecticut – just as in Brownsville – never will be the same.

֎ Disney has decided to move many of its operations to Orlando, Florida. Is this another gold brick falling from the golden world of California?

֎ Last month, Oracle, the tech giant, announced it is moving its corporate headquarters from Redwood City, California, to Austin, Texas. Hewlett Packard Enterprise also announced last month it was moving its headquarters from San Jose, California, to a Houston suburb.

Several journalists suggest that decades of fighting with California’s effort to restrain blatant capitalism but not doing it very well has become wearying for super big business. So they are moving to two of the most conservative states in the U.S.

Mariner’s first reaction is dismay. Is it a right of big money corporations to move wherever they want with no regard for cultural impact? It would be like an invasion into mariner’s garden by a rabbit that will consume the garden display but the rabbit is the size of an elephant. Brownsville and Austin were nice places back when . . . It takes some imagination but think about Congress before PACs and billionaire businessmen; has big money crushed the democratic culture of Congress in the same way? Corporate profit grows more and more expensive and not just in terms of dollars.

On a less personal tangent, Mariner suggests this may be an interesting transition. Texas, in particular, has a citizenry growing with liberal blue as northern businesses and the new phenomenon of ‘work from home’ move into the state. The last election showed a purple shadow in its profile.

As to Florida, the transition may not be caused by big business but rather by global warming where the bottom third of Florida is seriously threatened by destructive flooding and may actually disappear. In other words, it’s the privatized wealth that will move out of Florida. Think of Tiger Woods’ $44.5 million Florida home on Jupiter Island.

Change can be disabling. Suppose that regular basketball had to be played in knee-deep water. . . A few summers ago Mariner and his wife returned from a California vacation deliberately avoiding the Interstates. We came back on Route 66. Yes, it’s still there like an old jigsaw puzzle with most pieces missing. It was colorful, culturally entertaining and every bit as clean and with good food as any Hampton Inn. A similar experience can be had by dropping off Interstate 80 between Omaha and Pittsburg, where small, clean towns haven’t aged since the Korean Conflict.

Trade Brownsville for Mars? Jesus, have mercy.

Ancient Mariner

Television versus Real Life

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Science Magazine – The scenes were apocalyptic. On 20 July, a flash flood in Zhengzhou, a city of 10 million on the Yellow River in China, caused a low-lying, kilometer-long section of the city’s Metro Line 5 tunnel to fill with water, trapping more than 500 riders in a subway train. In real time, passengers posted terrifying videos and photos on social media sites, showing people standing in chest-deep water that was still rising. Rescuers, hampered by extensive street-level flooding, arrived 4 hours later, but 14 people did not make it out alive.
So many things are happening in the last year or two: century floods and droughts, fires and dying coral, disappearing Pacific islands, melting glaciers and seafront catastrophes. Is something happening we don’t know about?
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Mariner is experiencing a personal renaissance, small r for sure but it ends a killing ennui, depression and isolation that started with the campaign of Donald and continues with the help of commercialized news broadcasts. What launched the renaissance was living without family for two weeks while cutting the cord on DISH and suffering empty space and time throughout the day.
Mariner has new found energy and interest in things to be accomplished. He calls it his ‘homesteader’ phase, last experienced on his farm where there was much to do in many areas of equipment maintenance and building construction, a lot to pursue agriculturally, home maintenance and still holding down a fulltime job.
The culprit: television. Having given up on the news, stopped watching lame late shows and meaningless comedy from sitcoms to SNL, the TV was forcing dissatisfaction on mariner. Not even movies were of interest. The short of it is that one’s life is all around them – not on television or smartphone or even on the Internet. Have we forgotten so quickly what we did with our hands, our family, our hobbies and sustaining our local social network and environment? Does the reader lament not being able to shop in a real store?
So when were you going to fix that screen door? When were you going to remodel that spare room? When were you going to make some cash with your hobby? When will you upgrade your rec room with ping pong, cornhole or billiards?
Remember – sociologists have identified ‘aspiration’ as the key word for the middle class. To what do you aspire by suppertime? (retired, especially)

ASPIRE [uh-spahyuhr ] to long, aim, or seek ambitiously; be eagerly desirous, especially for something great or of high value (usually followed by to, after, or an infinitive): to aspire after literary immortality; to aspire to be a doctor.

Archaic: to rise up; soar; mount; tower.


Ancient Mariner

Money and Mind

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Here’s a note from Protocol, a tech newsletter:

“Three hundred and thirty-one billion dollars. That’s how much revenue the five biggest companies in tech — Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook — brought in over the last three months. Here’s some Very Sophisticated Analysis: That’s a lot of money.”

The total GDP for the United States in 2020 was $19,278,194.2 million or simplified 19 trillion and change. Doing the math, the big tech companies made 6.8 percent of all the money made in the US economy in a year. We’re familiar with the impact of a pandemic. This is a techdemic.

In a capitalist system, profit must make more profit even if it has to consume other profit sources to sustain growth; the street term is ‘grow or die’. The tech companies have had enough influence to avoid their greatest enemy – antitrust. Each tech company, and we can include huge entertainment corporations like Disney, must continue to buy up control of larger and larger and more diverse businesses not only to avoid competition but to sustain larger profits.

Mariner doesn’t know anyone who can fix this. Just thought you should know.

– – – –

On the mind front, Netflix has a series called ‘The Mind Explained’. It is an informal approach to how memory, dreams and other mind phenomena work. If one follows the episode about memory, one comes away realizing that the mind is designed to help make our best decisions under the circumstances and does not retain unbiased or even truthful histories of our lives. The mind simply decides ‘this is who I am and given this existential situation, this is what I’ll do.’ Our mind certainly is no computer but certainly more complex.

Ancient Mariner

 

Wasteland

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As some readers may know, mariner is playing bachelor for a couple of weeks. The sudden absence of a life partner is surprisingly distracting for a few days. It took three days for mariner to set up routines, refocus thoughts and chores and establish a bit of energy about it all.

After a few days, desperation sets in with no one to interact with and a horrible, horrible void called television. Internet news was rehashing Covid yet again and provided little that was genuinely new.

Last evening, sitting silent in a silent living room and waiting for bedtime, mariner discovered a show on Smithsonian channel about six Obama speeches.

The atmosphere, the intelligence, the legitimacy of actions was so vividly different than it is today that it was akin to rapture. Not to give Obama what is not due but the reality of his Presidency, the reason, the humanness, the national unity was breathtaking. Mariner felt as if he had taken a soothing drug.

Check out the show: The Obama Years; the Power of words. It’s just like taking an aspirin for a headache or an antacid for the stomach. The rest of the evening was more pleasant – there is joy in the world, just not right now. But it did exist!

Drawn back to reality, these are dangerous times for democracy. Do not be slack in your support of democracy, you may lose it.

Ancient Mariner

Friendship

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AXIOS published an article this morning that talked about the fact that each of us has fewer friends today than we had in 1990. If one is a baby boomer it would seem so as friends and relatives slowly pass away; apparently there is more to it.

Friendship is a strong influence in our happiness. The term BFF is not a flamboyant term but speaks to residual accountability for support and growth. Among the AXIOS comments is one that says, “Context: This trend is nothing new, of course. Robert Putnam’s bestselling “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” was published in 2000 — 21 years ago.”

See: https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-american-friendship-change-challenges-and-loss/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

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All of a sudden mariner is again flooded with phony political polls that actually are fund raisers. Mariner doesn’t respond to these ‘national’ fund raising organizations because he believes they shouldn’t exist in the first place. Fund raising should be limited to the district covered by the election. A lot of graft and plutocracy would disappear. Sorry, shouldn’t lament over and over. Damned electorate.

Ancient Mariner