A cunning array of protests going on both ten miles away in Davis, CA, and ten thousand miles away in Cairo, Egypt. People, seemingly, are pissed off at something.
I am one who is perpetually pissed off. But I lack the advantage of youth to drive me to join protests. If I were 20 years younger I might be responding to things differently than I do today. I ruminate on our energy intensive living arrangements, our cultural shallowness, and people who don't signal when changing lanes -- hardly things we'd gang together and decry in a public square.
Yet, for all my yammering and contempt for the American lifestyle, and for all my longing for a more European living arrangement such as walkable human-scaled communities, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain (the PIIGS) are completely fucking broke. I am left wondering if bankruptcy is inevitable everywhere.
A hundred thousand are assembling in Cairo as I write this, facing down the unknowns of a fledgling, dictator-less government. A hundred thousand are assembling in Athens, too, facing down the unknowns of a lifetime of austerity brought about by financial industry malfeasance. A few hundred are assembling tents tonight in Davis, facing down 21% pepper spray more suitable as a bear repellent than human repellent, and facing 100% tuition increases just since 2007.
I happen to have little debt and depression-proof employment. I have little to protest about, and as such I'm able to comfortably blog about trivial matters such as the lack of a bicycle lane on 65th street. I'm not $92,000 in the hole with college loans. I don't owe more than my housal unit is worth. I'm not unemployed. I lack the perspective of many who are protesting, but they are all doing so because they, like I, believe that things ought to be better. But to what extent is all this our own doing? We've:
Complicity allowed corruption and avarice to take root in our political system.
Never once considered our own culpability in creating the hallucinated wealth bubble of 2000-2006.
Allowed government and public institutions to create unsustainable pension guarantees.
Grew our households over the last thirty years not through the accumulation of capital but the accumulation of debt.
Complicity engaged in discretionary wars to cloak our growing dependency on non-renewable energy.
Grew our debt in periods of growth and in periods of recession we grew our debt.
Allowed 135 separate federal programs for the needy to perpetuate dependency on them.
Cheerfully fuckered away our manufacturing base to save $0.35 on a box of Chinese matchsticks.
Allowed 20% of our GDP to be driven by financialization, where every florist became a real estate specialist and every housal unit owner a flipper.
Allowed ourselves to be classified as consumers, not as citizens.
Yet, for all this, Italians too are entering an unprecedented era of austerity while having not engaged in a fifth of the reckless behaviors we have. Perhaps parallels do exist, and likely they too have promised themselves lifestyles they could not maintain.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Escape From New York
I am, most certainly, a doomer. I personally cannot envision any reasonable scenario where the next generation of Americans has a better standard of living than us today...or any scenario where the current generation of Americans maintains their standard or even comes remotely close to the hallucinated standard we had back in 2005.
Oh! To return to those heady days seven years hence! A new Escalade in every other South Sacramentan rental unit! And in those without the Escalade, a new plasma HDTV. $21/hour manufacturing jobs at the Kramer Carton Factory with benefits.
This nation has experienced stagnant wage growth for the last thirty years, save for many in the top 1% who have effectively stolen their 250% increases through political machinations. That we've had thirty years of stagnant wage growth is a good thing -- a good thing, because it will condition us for the next thirty years of continuing stagnant wage growth. We'll be used to it, and experience clearly is desirable in such things...it ought to count for something.
I carry no doubt that the working classes of the future will find themselves in a more precarious position than their parents. A father who spent his life working at a canned soup plant in the 1970s earning $21 in today's dollars will find his son working at a suburban Christian bookstore in a strip mall in the early 20s earning $12. The manufacturing of canned soup will have long since been transferred to Uruguay, where cake frosting is already being manufactured (yes, the tub in my fridge is from central South America). The only jobs available in 2022 (for those unwilling to carry $245,045 in college debt) will be strip mall retail workers, which, based on Elk Grove planning models, will be the growth industry over the next fifteen decades. Asian foot massage therapists and Christian book sellers and pool chlorine salesmen and 12-G network compatible iPhone peddlers and spring water kiosk tenders and mother's day card salesladies and seasonal Roni Deutch tax preparers -- all fantastic non-benefital $12/hour at-will non-union jobs.
I worked hard as a landscaper in 1991 following my escape from West Point. I landed a good, hard job and I was willing to work. I lasted five months, at which point I landed an engineering assistant position. Twenty one years ago we hadn't yet had the influx of Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants who today dominate that industry -- no, us white boys did that work. Today, if a white boy is found mowing a lawn in Elk Grove, some part of his upbringing must have broken down. Maybe his parents aren't sufficiently "successful" to afford to hire out that work to "the help." White Americans have become accustomed to "no more dirty work." Fuck filleting Alabama catfish for $11 an hour -- it's hard, it's icky, and that one can receive nearly perpetual entitlements for not working really means that the real wage is only about half of that advertised. The redeeming of Alabama food stamps means that one can buy nearly all the catfish one wants...without spending 10 hours a day/5 days a week in a cold, damp kill room.
I remember well several of the other white guys who worked in that landscaping outfit. One quit after three weeks to find success as a traveling Arkansas carnie. Another would work well only under constant supervision. A third was quite the loafer but quite the stand-up comedian, too -- he cracked Richard Gere/gerbil jokes all the way up until Friday afternoon when he'd suddenly jettison the comedy routine and bitch and complain about his shitty paycheck.
I did my job, got stronger, took the job seriously, and moved on quite soon to be sure. Glad I did, too. That job would have sucked the life out of me. I can't imagine today, can't even imagine, working a single 8-hour shift cutting asparagus or eggplants, let alone two consecutive shifts, let alone a week, or let alone a year. As a white, privileged, middle class male I'd refuse to take that job. Fuck that -- unemployment benefits would have to run out first, which would last me 99 weeks, or well into 2013. Then I'd tap all the social services my cousin in South Sacramento and his neighbors take advantage of, such as a one time month's free PG&E or SMUD bill pay each calendar year, or emergency room visits for common issues like staph infections or testicular swelling. And once all that runs out, sometime in 2016, I'll have learned how to correctly grow hydroponic marijuana and sell two pounds each month to buyers in the Bible Belt whose state's legislatures are holier than thou. Then, by 2020, I'll bank on my diabetes! You think for one fucking minute I couldn't apply for and be awarded lifetime social security disability benefits for my "chronic and acute suffering from this debilitating disease?" What, you don't think I couldn't use my last thirty years with this disease to all but guarantee perpetual payments for my 40 consecutive quarters of work? I'd be considered "totally" disabled by my hand-picked doctor, who will be forced to provide services for my "neuropathy," my "partial blindness," and my "inability to sleep."
There's no way you'll ever find this white guy filleting fish for $11 an hour.
No way.
Oh! To return to those heady days seven years hence! A new Escalade in every other South Sacramentan rental unit! And in those without the Escalade, a new plasma HDTV. $21/hour manufacturing jobs at the Kramer Carton Factory with benefits.
This nation has experienced stagnant wage growth for the last thirty years, save for many in the top 1% who have effectively stolen their 250% increases through political machinations. That we've had thirty years of stagnant wage growth is a good thing -- a good thing, because it will condition us for the next thirty years of continuing stagnant wage growth. We'll be used to it, and experience clearly is desirable in such things...it ought to count for something.
I carry no doubt that the working classes of the future will find themselves in a more precarious position than their parents. A father who spent his life working at a canned soup plant in the 1970s earning $21 in today's dollars will find his son working at a suburban Christian bookstore in a strip mall in the early 20s earning $12. The manufacturing of canned soup will have long since been transferred to Uruguay, where cake frosting is already being manufactured (yes, the tub in my fridge is from central South America). The only jobs available in 2022 (for those unwilling to carry $245,045 in college debt) will be strip mall retail workers, which, based on Elk Grove planning models, will be the growth industry over the next fifteen decades. Asian foot massage therapists and Christian book sellers and pool chlorine salesmen and 12-G network compatible iPhone peddlers and spring water kiosk tenders and mother's day card salesladies and seasonal Roni Deutch tax preparers -- all fantastic non-benefital $12/hour at-will non-union jobs.
I worked hard as a landscaper in 1991 following my escape from West Point. I landed a good, hard job and I was willing to work. I lasted five months, at which point I landed an engineering assistant position. Twenty one years ago we hadn't yet had the influx of Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants who today dominate that industry -- no, us white boys did that work. Today, if a white boy is found mowing a lawn in Elk Grove, some part of his upbringing must have broken down. Maybe his parents aren't sufficiently "successful" to afford to hire out that work to "the help." White Americans have become accustomed to "no more dirty work." Fuck filleting Alabama catfish for $11 an hour -- it's hard, it's icky, and that one can receive nearly perpetual entitlements for not working really means that the real wage is only about half of that advertised. The redeeming of Alabama food stamps means that one can buy nearly all the catfish one wants...without spending 10 hours a day/5 days a week in a cold, damp kill room.
I remember well several of the other white guys who worked in that landscaping outfit. One quit after three weeks to find success as a traveling Arkansas carnie. Another would work well only under constant supervision. A third was quite the loafer but quite the stand-up comedian, too -- he cracked Richard Gere/gerbil jokes all the way up until Friday afternoon when he'd suddenly jettison the comedy routine and bitch and complain about his shitty paycheck.
I did my job, got stronger, took the job seriously, and moved on quite soon to be sure. Glad I did, too. That job would have sucked the life out of me. I can't imagine today, can't even imagine, working a single 8-hour shift cutting asparagus or eggplants, let alone two consecutive shifts, let alone a week, or let alone a year. As a white, privileged, middle class male I'd refuse to take that job. Fuck that -- unemployment benefits would have to run out first, which would last me 99 weeks, or well into 2013. Then I'd tap all the social services my cousin in South Sacramento and his neighbors take advantage of, such as a one time month's free PG&E or SMUD bill pay each calendar year, or emergency room visits for common issues like staph infections or testicular swelling. And once all that runs out, sometime in 2016, I'll have learned how to correctly grow hydroponic marijuana and sell two pounds each month to buyers in the Bible Belt whose state's legislatures are holier than thou. Then, by 2020, I'll bank on my diabetes! You think for one fucking minute I couldn't apply for and be awarded lifetime social security disability benefits for my "chronic and acute suffering from this debilitating disease?" What, you don't think I couldn't use my last thirty years with this disease to all but guarantee perpetual payments for my 40 consecutive quarters of work? I'd be considered "totally" disabled by my hand-picked doctor, who will be forced to provide services for my "neuropathy," my "partial blindness," and my "inability to sleep."
There's no way you'll ever find this white guy filleting fish for $11 an hour.
No way.
Too Little Exponentiality
When the national debt first reached one million million ($1,000,000,000,000), there were no bloggers. The web was still a few decades away. Today it reached fifteen million million. And oh! To hear the conservative punditry! It's all Obama, who raised it four million million just over his term. And! We'ven't even yet hit the coming health care bill in full stride.
I argue here that the national debt is meaningless. $3 trillion meant nothing nothing! to my generation; we easily survived those "unpayable debts foisted upon our children" by our parents in the 1970s. My parents easily survived those "unpayable debts foisted upon our children" by their parents in the 1950s.
And so it will be with our children. $16 trillion is a meaningless number. I'd bet that less than 3% of our youth under 18 can even quantify the debt within +/- $5 trillion. A student in 1987, there was no way I knew what the national debt was; it was as meaningless then as it is today.
We constantly hear we need to grow, too. That if interest on our debt was, say, 3%, we'd better grow our economy by at least 3% just to keep up with the Kardashians. Growth is necessary we're told. But really -- why do we think we need to grow more? Aren't there already sufficient housal units for everyone? Water? Food? Why does my Elk Grove feel that we have to grow more? To the Cosumnes River and beyond? Following three decades of heedless suburban sprawl, can't we survive on what we've already built? My real question is -- at what point will we decide that we've grown enough?
Even 0.2% growth is exponential...yet apparently in our "advanced" Western economy even 2% isn't even close to breaking even with our perpetualized debt based economy. Look at the forecasts for 2012: here's one at 1.4%. Here's another at 3.3%. But really, think about four hundred years from now -- do you really think the next 25 generations can and should expect 3-4% growth? What would this fucking planet look like? Apparently, 0.2% perpetual growth ad infinitium is considered too little exponentiality.
But, grow we will try. We must try, for a reversion would fuck up the entire gambit we're currently playing. Lowe's has to build more tilt-up concrete warehouses filled with Chinese shit for American consumers -- to not do so would squander everything already created. Their shareholders require a rate of return above and beyond inflation. To not grow impacts everything already grown.
To rub salt into the collective wound of the 16% of you who hold no job, I'm up for a 2.3% wage increase in 2012 (after factoring in health care/unemployment insurance/dental/eye/life insurance rate increases)...which according to everything I understand, isn't anywhere close to nearly enough to cover the incremental cost of electricity, water, gasoline, sewer, federal and state taxation, cable, college tuition, garbage and property tax increases. In effect, I'm losing ground with a paltry fucking 2.3% raise. That the majority of the rest of this grand nation isn't even coming close to a 2.3% increase means absolutely nothing to me -- I don't pay their bills. I could care less about them. But me? I'm going to be suffering soon! I'll have to substitute my weekly 2# of sopressata salami with a generic genovese variety? Oh, the humanity!
I argue here that the national debt is meaningless. $3 trillion meant nothing nothing! to my generation; we easily survived those "unpayable debts foisted upon our children" by our parents in the 1970s. My parents easily survived those "unpayable debts foisted upon our children" by their parents in the 1950s.
And so it will be with our children. $16 trillion is a meaningless number. I'd bet that less than 3% of our youth under 18 can even quantify the debt within +/- $5 trillion. A student in 1987, there was no way I knew what the national debt was; it was as meaningless then as it is today.
We constantly hear we need to grow, too. That if interest on our debt was, say, 3%, we'd better grow our economy by at least 3% just to keep up with the Kardashians. Growth is necessary we're told. But really -- why do we think we need to grow more? Aren't there already sufficient housal units for everyone? Water? Food? Why does my Elk Grove feel that we have to grow more? To the Cosumnes River and beyond? Following three decades of heedless suburban sprawl, can't we survive on what we've already built? My real question is -- at what point will we decide that we've grown enough?
Even 0.2% growth is exponential...yet apparently in our "advanced" Western economy even 2% isn't even close to breaking even with our perpetualized debt based economy. Look at the forecasts for 2012: here's one at 1.4%. Here's another at 3.3%. But really, think about four hundred years from now -- do you really think the next 25 generations can and should expect 3-4% growth? What would this fucking planet look like? Apparently, 0.2% perpetual growth ad infinitium is considered too little exponentiality.
But, grow we will try. We must try, for a reversion would fuck up the entire gambit we're currently playing. Lowe's has to build more tilt-up concrete warehouses filled with Chinese shit for American consumers -- to not do so would squander everything already created. Their shareholders require a rate of return above and beyond inflation. To not grow impacts everything already grown.
To rub salt into the collective wound of the 16% of you who hold no job, I'm up for a 2.3% wage increase in 2012 (after factoring in health care/unemployment insurance/dental/eye/life insurance rate increases)...which according to everything I understand, isn't anywhere close to nearly enough to cover the incremental cost of electricity, water, gasoline, sewer, federal and state taxation, cable, college tuition, garbage and property tax increases. In effect, I'm losing ground with a paltry fucking 2.3% raise. That the majority of the rest of this grand nation isn't even coming close to a 2.3% increase means absolutely nothing to me -- I don't pay their bills. I could care less about them. But me? I'm going to be suffering soon! I'll have to substitute my weekly 2# of sopressata salami with a generic genovese variety? Oh, the humanity!
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Make Hole
I'll offer all sorts of excuses for my lack of activity here, from housal unit maintenance to garden tending to lack of "air-time" due to house guests, but the bottom line is I've really had a block of sorts...writing about the things that used to piss me off. Nothing has changed, really. I'm just finding it more difficult to develop an opinion. Many things continue to piss me off.
My own retirement, or at least a part of it, is tied into a long-held fantasy belief system that says that my contributions and my employers contributions should have 8% returns every year, ad infinitum. If CALPERS, prolly the largest retirement pension system in the world, can't get an 8% return on its own then the State of California covers the gap. Without knowing, I presume that when CALPERS was investing in hot-shit mortgage backed securities in 2006 and earning 15%, they didn't have to reimburse the state for earlier years' less-than-8-% returns. No, 8% guaranteed, and if it did better, well, good for them.
I question the wisdom of people who set up this fucking thing while GDP growth in the US has never, not even once, approached 8%. That CALPERS could invest in things that forever gained 8% while the broader economy at large plodded along at 3-4% (in good years) and that they thought it could be continued forever is unbelievable to me.
How can CALPERS gain on bonds when interest rates have fallen as far as they're gonna fall and can't fall any further? They can't...so my retirement gets sloshed into the stock market, the last and only hope for an 8% return in a 0.2% economy...which of course fuels all those fantastic two hundred million dollar Wall Street salaries.
I'm the 1%. At least, by working as a lowly electrical engineer for a quasi-public utility in California I'm actively taking your taxpaying dollar and funneling it directly to Morgan Stanleys' executors of multi-billion dollar CALPERS investments, earning a slice for each and every transaction along the way. Wait...does MS even still exist these days? I can't be for sure.
Morgan Stanley for decades, decades!, provided a reasonable service alongside the rest of our financial sector -- they used to provide capital allocation, or something that serviced the production of goods, to marry producers with consumers. But geez, the last thirty years has seen this service morph into a leech, skimming a larger and larger share off the economy at large -- through securitization, through high frequency trading, and credit default swaps entirely on margin.
I hear these dumbass right-wing commentators wondering aloud why the occupy movement isn't outside Mark Zuckerburg's office/housal unit, protesting his 1%. Perhaps because he, alongside the 1% from thirty years ago, is/were involved in the production of shit that people want, not involved in vacuuming up the "endless supply of loose nickels" to be had from everyone with a bank account for no net societal gain. Right wing commentators are most decidely in that 1%, and of course want every piece of the pie they themselves have acquired to which they are so entitled.
And I. I get to leech off you, too, Miss Taxpayer, by forcing you to "make hole" the CALPERS portfolio's earnings to 8% in an economy barely able to return 0.2%. Not make whole, make hole, because that's where your taxes are going, down the hole, right into my future condo with the fabulous yacht moored outside.
My own retirement, or at least a part of it, is tied into a long-held fantasy belief system that says that my contributions and my employers contributions should have 8% returns every year, ad infinitum. If CALPERS, prolly the largest retirement pension system in the world, can't get an 8% return on its own then the State of California covers the gap. Without knowing, I presume that when CALPERS was investing in hot-shit mortgage backed securities in 2006 and earning 15%, they didn't have to reimburse the state for earlier years' less-than-8-% returns. No, 8% guaranteed, and if it did better, well, good for them.
I question the wisdom of people who set up this fucking thing while GDP growth in the US has never, not even once, approached 8%. That CALPERS could invest in things that forever gained 8% while the broader economy at large plodded along at 3-4% (in good years) and that they thought it could be continued forever is unbelievable to me.
How can CALPERS gain on bonds when interest rates have fallen as far as they're gonna fall and can't fall any further? They can't...so my retirement gets sloshed into the stock market, the last and only hope for an 8% return in a 0.2% economy...which of course fuels all those fantastic two hundred million dollar Wall Street salaries.
I'm the 1%. At least, by working as a lowly electrical engineer for a quasi-public utility in California I'm actively taking your taxpaying dollar and funneling it directly to Morgan Stanleys' executors of multi-billion dollar CALPERS investments, earning a slice for each and every transaction along the way. Wait...does MS even still exist these days? I can't be for sure.
Morgan Stanley for decades, decades!, provided a reasonable service alongside the rest of our financial sector -- they used to provide capital allocation, or something that serviced the production of goods, to marry producers with consumers. But geez, the last thirty years has seen this service morph into a leech, skimming a larger and larger share off the economy at large -- through securitization, through high frequency trading, and credit default swaps entirely on margin.
I hear these dumbass right-wing commentators wondering aloud why the occupy movement isn't outside Mark Zuckerburg's office/housal unit, protesting his 1%. Perhaps because he, alongside the 1% from thirty years ago, is/were involved in the production of shit that people want, not involved in vacuuming up the "endless supply of loose nickels" to be had from everyone with a bank account for no net societal gain. Right wing commentators are most decidely in that 1%, and of course want every piece of the pie they themselves have acquired to which they are so entitled.
And I. I get to leech off you, too, Miss Taxpayer, by forcing you to "make hole" the CALPERS portfolio's earnings to 8% in an economy barely able to return 0.2%. Not make whole, make hole, because that's where your taxes are going, down the hole, right into my future condo with the fabulous yacht moored outside.
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