Le Raison d'Etre

That's French for "the reason for being."  Not yours or mine, but the Economic Curmudgeon's.  In other words, why do I write this blog?

I actually started it nearly ten years ago, just as the housing crisis was hitting full bloom.  Back then, I was still in the brokerage business, and still writing daily economic commentary for my firm.  So I was watching the numbers every day, and breaking them down.  (Yeah, I'm one of those people who thinks that's fun.  Wanna party with me?)

But it was also an election year, and there was a new kid on the political block.  One whose inexperience concerned me.  Feel free to disagree; it's okay, and it has no bearing on the reason for the Curmudgeon.  (By the way, the name comes from the fact that, at the time, I'd been pretty bearish on the economy for quite some time, so it only seemed fitting.)

I gave it up for quite a while after I left that world, but I picked it back up not too long ago.  Why?

Simple.  I have political views, as do most people.  But I get sick and tired of reading political crap on Facebook.  Show me your puppy pictures, your grandkids, your flowers, what you ate for lunch.  Tell me what's going on in your life.  Just spare me the Occupy Democrats memes, or the lengthy comments on the latest Trump conspiracy, or the relentless name-calling.

But I wanted to voice my opinions as well, especially to refute so much of the nonsensical misinformation out there.  However, I wanted to spare my Facebook friends who lean left having to read my political views, because I assume they'd no more want to do that than I'd want to read theirs (even though some of them still do post their views on Facebook, and that's okay with me - they're my friends, and my mouse wheel scrolls pretty fast).

So I decided to voice it here instead.  This is my space, and you're invited in - heck, argue with me in the comments, even.  I try to use reason (laced with sarcasm, as is my wont), and to actually read the source documents in question, like a proposed bill, rather than reading some biased news source's interpretation of it, and accepting that as gospel.  Hopefully some find value in that.

Now, I do post links on Facebook to most of my blog posts.  I do this because not everyone who wants to read the Curmudgeon's ramblings knows how to follow the blog, and because a good friend specifically requested that I post the links on Facebook.  And I've actually had a few hundred people read some of these posts, and several of my friends share them with their friends.

If you don't want to read my views, I figure it's easy enough to just not click the links and read the blog posts.  (Hint: if you lean left, you probably don't want to read this blog.)  Just scroll on by, like I sometimes do.  That way, my friends who see the world differently can still see my puppy pics (and trust me, the grandson pics will be coming soon), but they don't have to read my political views.

So why am I explaining this?

After my last post (the one about the Huffington Post article), I received the following comment on the Facebook link:

"I am disappointed that someone of your intellect, integrity, and education could hold these views. I am going to have to say goodbye to you as a FB friend. Wish you the best."

(Note: I only added the italics because another FB friend suggested that it's easier to see something I've called out in quotes if I also put it in italics, when perusing FB on a phone screen.  I mean no disrespect to the commenter by using italics.)

I deleted the comment out of respect for that person, because frankly, I thought it made them look bad.  It basically reinforced everything I said in the blog post about intolerance of views different from one's own, and I didn't want to invite any further comments making that point.

A second reason I deleted it is that I find it rather undignified, if not downright sophomoric, to turn the process of unfriending a person on Facebook into a public event, inviting all the world to spectate.  Hey, you want to unfriend me on Facebook?  By all means, feel free.  Just go ahead and do it, though; no need to announce it to the world.  If you must, send me a private message first, explaining to me why you're doing it.

I promise I won't be offended, nor will I lose a nanosecond's sleep over it.  After all, it's Facebook, it's not life.  And besides, if our relationship was that tenuous, we never really had one to begin with.

Finally, and on a related note, the parting comment, "Wish you the best," seemed ... well, disingenuous, given what preceded it.

So there you have it.  I hope I can spare anyone else feeling the need to sever our Facebook relationship - publicly or otherwise - over the fact that I may see the world differently.  So again, if you've read this blog, and don't like what you see, and we're connected on Facebook - just scroll past the blog links I post, and focus on the puppy pics.  In fact, if you're in that camp and you've read this post, let me close with one:

(Charlie loves everybody, no matter what their political views are.  Maybe there's a lesson in that for all of us.)

I Don't Know How to Explain to You That You Should Think

The drivel below was penned by Huffington Post contributor Kayla Chadwick.  Now, I never would have seen it, because I don't read dreck like HuffPo, but it's been making the rounds on Facebook.  So here it is, followed by my observations.

"I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People

Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society. Like many Americans, I’m having politics fatigue. Or, to be more specific, arguing-about-politics fatigue.

I haven’t run out of salient points or evidence for my political perspective, but there is a particular stumbling block I keep running into when trying to reach across the proverbial aisle and have those “difficult conversations” so smugly suggested by think piece after think piece: I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.

Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am. I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye.

If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP. Poverty should not be a death sentence in the richest country in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged.
I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I cannot have one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically they’ll never see (do you make anywhere close to the median American salary? Less? Congrats, this tax break is not for you).

I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.

There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every American can access health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable).

But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you.

I can’t debate someone into caring about what happens to their fellow human beings. The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalized in a certain party’s political discourse is at once infuriating and terrifying.

The “I’ve got mine, so screw you,” attitude has been oozing from the American right wing for decades, but this gleeful exuberance in pushing legislation that will immediately hurt the most vulnerable among us is chilling.

Perhaps it was always like this. I’m (relatively) young, so maybe I’m just waking up to this unimaginable callousness. Maybe the emergence of social media has just made this heinous tendency more visible; seeing hundreds of accounts spring to the defense of policies that will almost certainly make their lives more difficult is incredible to behold.

I don’t know what’s changed ― or indeed, if anything has ― and I don’t have any easy answers. But I do know I’m done trying to convince these hordes of selfish, cruel people to look beyond themselves."

Okay, my thoughts.

This is nothing more than an uninformed, hypocritical, intolerant partisan rant wrapped up in a sanctimonious, holier-than-thou false sense of superiority.

Why uninformed?  In the first place, while Ms. Chadwick has read a study that claims that "fairly compensated workers typically do better work," she has apparently ignored the myriad studies that have shown that artificially raising wages above what supply and demand would dictate is a job-killer.  It leads to automation (order-taking kiosks in fast food restaurants) that replaces workers, employers cutting hours to cut costs, and small businesses hiring fewer people.

Moreover, a job flipping burgers at McDonald's was never supposed to provide for a family.  I worked in a fast food job my freshman year in college.  I also bagged groceries, made window screens for mobile homes, mowed lawns and worked a soda fountain at a drugstore during my youth.  I never expected any of those jobs to provide a living for me so that I could start and raise a family.  That's why I went to college.

(And lest anyone decry my "privilege" at being able to do so, note that my family at the time met the definition of lower middle class, and I had to pay my own way through school.  I worked my butt off, got two degrees, and realized the American dream: taking advantage of the opportunities afforded me by living in a free, capitalist democratic republic.)

She's also apparently ignorant of Medicaid, of the miserable failure that is the "Affordable" Care Act, or of the fact that health care is not a right, at least according to the Bill of Rights that the rest of us have actually read.

And she's ignorant of the fact that, if you're a homeowner, you do indeed pay taxes to support schools, whether you have kids or not.

Finally, she has totally misrepresented the conservative platform - and ethos.  It is well-documented fact that conservatives give more to charity, for example, than liberals.

I would in no way imply that all conservatives are caring, compassionate, selfless and tolerant.  Nor would I imply that all liberals are uncaring, lack compassion, are selfish and intolerant.  However, I can say with authority that the most caring, compassionate, selfless and tolerant people I know lean conservative.  And the most selfish, intolerant, uncaring people I know lean liberal.  Again, not all conservatives and liberals I know fit those descriptions, but that is the central tendency.

Maybe I hang out with the wrong liberals.  Maybe Ms. Chadwick hangs out with the wrong conservatives.  It would help, of course, if she'd actually have a conversation with them to learn how they feel, what they think and believe.  That would be ... well, tolerant.

Why hypocritical?  While Ms. Chadwick claims to care so much about the less fortunate, she callously assumes that someone living at the margin can afford to pay an extra 4.3% for their Big Mac.  Wage growth under President Obama averaged less than one-fourth that amount.

So if we assume that a family at the margin would see their food budget - a necessary, not discretionary, expenditure - increase by 4.3% when their wages under a liberal administration are increasing at about 1%, they're going to run into difficulty pretty soon.  Apparently Ms. Chadwick can afford such an increase in her spending; good for her.  However, a lot of folks can't, including the burger-flipper at McDonald's who's trying to feed his family - you know, the guy she cares so much about, but you and I don't.

Of course, you could buy your own hamburger at the grocery store and make your own burgers for a lot less than the cost of a Big Mac.  But then you'd put the poor burger-flipper out of work altogether.  Then again, what about the people who work at the grocery store?  Apparently Ms. Chadwick doesn't care whether they have jobs or not, since she seems to be too lazy to cook for herself.

Likewise with taxes to support public schools, for those without children.  I'm assuming she's proposing additional taxes on top of the taxes that already go toward public education; either that or she's just plain ignorant.  (I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume the former.)  Some people might not be able to afford a tax increase for that, in addition to a 4.3% increase in their food budget.

Or for government-subsidized health care.  How many marginal families' finances have been damaged by having to pay the increased premiums that resulted from ACA, or having to pay a tax because, while they don't feel they need health insurance at this point in their lives, they have to pay for it or else pay a surtax.  That surtax itself was cruel: it was imposed so that President Obama could say, "See?  Everyone is insured!"  That's like holding a gun to someone's head and threatening to kill them if they don't buy a house, then crowing about the record homeownership rate.

And why intolerant?  Because, like so many on the "tolerant" left these days, she refuses to have a conversation with anyone who doesn't participate in her groupthink.

Probably because she knows her assertions would be handily refuted.  So she resorts to this sanctimonious hogwash, and people who should know better buy it.  Sad.

I simply don't believe I should have to pay more for goods and services than what they're worth from a true economic (i.e. supply and demand) perspective, hence I don't want to pay an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac so the person frying it up can feed a family on starter-job wages.  (For that matter, I don't even eat at McDonald's.  From her post, presumably Ms. Chadwick does.  Maybe if she laid off the Big Macs, the rest of us wouldn't have to subsidize her health care.)

I do believe my property taxes should help pay for public schools, even though my daughter is grown.  In fact, they do.  The issue isn't paying for public schools, it's the dismal state of education in most of this country.  Let's fix that, even if it means a choice between public education in poorly-run districts and vouchers for private schools as an alternative.  I created a foundation to support private school education for kids in the poorest country in the world, because the government schools in that country are horrible.  Is that uncaring?  If not, why can't we do the same thing here at home?

And again, I don't believe health care is a right, though I support Medicaid to provide it to the indigent (and Medicare, because it's my money).  ACA is an abysmal failure.  The proposals to fix it thus far aren't much better.  So let's just go back to the days before Obamacare, or else let's truly fix the system, starting with FDA and tort reforms.

No, Ms. Chadwick, you and I are nothing alike.  But not because I don't care about people.  My attitude is far from, "I've got mine, so screw you."  You want to make that assertion?  Let's compare our charitable giving.  The taxes we pay.  Our record of volunteer work to help those less fortunate than themselves.  Honey, I'll bet you've never even seen real poverty.  I have.  So save your inexperienced sanctimoniousness for someone who's naive enough to accept it.  Others apparently are, but I'm not.

See, it's one thing to demonstrate your compassion with your words.  It's quite another to demonstrate it with your works.  So put your money - and your sweat - where your mouth is.  Or keep it closed.

In fact, Ms. Chadwick, I really can't think of anything that I need you to explain to me.  Do a little research, be willing to let some facts interfere with your biases, and gain a little life experience.  Then maybe we can come up with something you can explain to me that I don't already understand.  I won't hold my breath.

But really, it's okay that Ms. Chadwick and her devotees don't want to have a conversation with me.  I don't want to have a conversation with them, either.

That's not intolerance on my part.  It's simply a reflection of the fact that, while I could explain some things to them, I can't understand those things for them.

Catching Up - Play Ball?

Long time, no blog.  Between my work schedule of late and bonding with our new pup, Charlie, I've fallen woefully behind.  So I'm going to be playing catch-up, possibly in a torrent of posts.

Schedule notwithstanding, I couldn't bring myself to post anything in the immediate aftermath of the tragic shooting at the Republican team's practice for the Congressional baseball game.  Not because I'm a Republican (I'm not), and not because I have any stronger feelings about Republican Congressmen being shot at than Democrats.  All partisan violence is abhorrent to me.  In fact, increasingly, all extreme, over-the-top partisan rancor and rhetoric is abhorrent to me.

Time to tone it down.

One of the unfortunate by-products of the 24/7 cable news environment is the propensity to want to assign blame for things.  Within 24 hours of any incident, the finger-pointing begins.  Whose fault was it?  In my view, that tends to demean the tragedy itself, and turns it into an exercise unworthy of dignified consideration.

I've seen, heard and read blame being ascribed to the Left, to the Right, to Donald Trump, to guns, to the media, mental illness, and to just about everything but global warming.  To be sure, various factors play an indirect role.  But all that direct blame is misplaced.

First and foremost, blame lies at the feet of one James Hodgkinson.  He alone targeted his victims, for his own reasons.  He alone loaded his weapons and pulled the trigger, repeatedly.  The gun didn't fire itself.  No one on the left deliberately goaded him into taking this damnable action.  He is to blame.  Period.  And he paid the price for his deplorable actions.

Now, let's talk about influence.  Should he have had access to the weapons he had access to?  The rifle he used was not a particularly powerful one.  You wouldn't use it to shoot big game.  It fell well within his Second Amendment rights to own.

I posted on Facebook over a year ago about the gun issue, trying to bring sanity to the topic by defining what an assault rifle is and what an AR-15 is, because most people with strong opinions on the gun issue have no earthly clue what they're talking about.  Sadly but predictably, it didn't sway anyone from their pre-conceived notions.  The truth will only set you free if you recognize it, and truth has been devalued more than crude oil over the past several years.

The question of gun ownership among the mentally ill has been raised.  But I haven't read any credible account of the shooter to suggest that he was mentally ill.  Sure, he'd been the subject of other complaints: shooting his guns on his own property, domestic violence (which, sadly, is not indicative of mental illness; too many sane people abuse their loved ones).

Hodgkinson was, by all accounts, a successful business owner, a property inspector.  He was also radical in his political views.  And this is an important point:  there are a lot of people who are radical in their political views - on the left and on the right - who are perfectly sane.  Extreme, perhaps, but sane.  And the line between that extremism and violence can be thin.

The man was a Bernie supporter.  Bernie is anti-gun.  So it's hard to make the quantum leap that Bernie's politics encouraged this act, which Bernie himself described as despicable.  The perpetrator was anti-Trump; so are a lot of people who would never commit an act of violence on the basis of their political views.

Still, the rhetoric is pretty over the top.  Madonna said she'd thought about blowing up the White House after Trump was elected.  Kathy Griffin posed for her now-infamous picture with a fake beheaded Trump.  Snoop Dogg (why does this talentless guy still garner media attention?) featured shooting Trump in a video.  And on, and on.

Sure, there was equally disgusting anti-Obama rhetoric, just not nearly as much - Ted Nugent, the bombing of Emmanuel Cleaver's campaign headquarters, etc.  The "you do it too" defense just doesn't cut it here, but it points to the fact that the anti-"other side" rhetoric has gone entirely too far.

I found it ironic that, the day of the shooting, George Stephanopolous, ABC talking head, former Bill Clinton staffer, and Clinton Foundation contributor, wondered aloud whether the extreme partisan rhetoric in this country might have played a role in the shooting.  Hey George, you're part of the reason for that.  You foment that rhetoric at every opportunity.  So yeah, the media is complicit.  And I'm not just talking about George, or Rachel Maddow, or Chris Matthews, or Keith Olbermann.  Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Levin have also played a role in ratcheting up the partisan rhetoric.

The entertainment world also has to acknowledge a share of the burden.  Not just fringe no-talents like Griffin and Snoop Dogg, or talented (you have to admit, the guy is a brilliant guitarist) but fringe names like Nugent, but accoladed stalwarts like Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep, have contributed to the current divide.

Then, let's talk about the gun debate.  Now, those guns didn't just up and load themselves, and fire at the Republican Congressmen on that baseball field.  But to listen to the anti-gun brigade, you'd think they had.  To her credit, even Gabby Giffords, herself the victim of gun violence, didn't go there in her comments after the shooting.  Again, re-hashing the gun debate here isn't going to sway anyone from their pre-conceived notions.

But some did take that extreme position.  One Facebook poster said that he didn't want anyone grieving beside him if they were pro-gun rights.  That's okay, dude.  I don't want to be grieving beside you, either.  Because my grief is genuine, while yours is disingenuous.  You're merely exploiting a tragic situation to forward your own political agenda, while I am truly grieving for the potential loss of life, and the very real loss of security.

Moreover, your intolerance of any view that differs from yours is a major part of the problem.  "I won't stand next to someone whose views disagree with my own."  Wouldn't it be more tolerant to say, "I want you to grieve alongside me, then I want to engage in a discussion with you, so I can try to understand where you're coming from, and have an opportunity to try to persuade you to my views"?  To be unwilling to even consider the opinions of others is a statement of extreme intolerance, and that's the first step toward a violent reaction to those whose views differ from your own.

Look, I'd like to be able to say that the rhetoric is equally bad from both sides of the political spectrum.  Maybe it's a function of who I'm friends with, or what news outlets I follow (for the record, I have friends from all walks of the political spectrum, and I watch CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNBC - an affiliate of NBC and MSNBC - Bloomberg, One America News, and BBC, and I read news outlets ranging from Al-Jazeerah to Der Spiegel; I also don't read blogs like Drudge or Occupy Democrats, because they're ... well, factless garbage).

I'd like to be able to say that, but in the current environment ... I'm afraid I can't.  I see more vitriol from the left than from the right these days.  Probably because the left lost an election they thought they couldn't lose, to a candidate they thought they couldn't lose to, and they're still bitter about that.  Fine.  So focus your energy on how you're going to keep that from happening in 2018 and 2020.  Don't re-litigate 2016 at every turn, and vow to do your damnedest to eradicate the outcome of 2016.  That only fosters notions of desperate action as the only alternative.  We survived eight years of Barack Obama; we'll survive four years of Donald Trump.

Consider Nancy Pelosi, the crowned queen of the Democrat party.  Less than 24 hours after the tragic shooting, she was blaming Republicans for the outbreak of violence, which totally negated any positive remarks she made on the House floor in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

Simply put, Nancy Pelosi is a despicable human being.  Always has been, always will be.  Probably best to just ignore her, and look forward to the happy day that she steps down from office.

So we're left with an abhorrent act committed by an abhorrent individual, crazy or otherwise.  What we do with that will determine whether this politically caustic environment continues to spawn acts of violence, or whether we return to a world where we all accept the realities of a democratic republic, in which sometimes our "side" wins and sometimes it loses.

We tend to forget that what divides us is smaller than what we share in common.  We are all human beings.  We are all Americans.  We all want the best for all citizens of this republic.  We differ greatly on what that looks like, how it's realized.  But at the end of the day, we want the same thing.  We shouldn't be killing each other over how we get there, or wanting to kill each other over how we get there.  Family members shouldn't be unfriending their relatives on Facebook over their political differences.

When we reach that level of intolerance, we are only promoting the kind of intolerance that inevitably leads to tragedy.