Frugality Books Old and New & Some Other Books Just for Fun

Frugality may not be for everyone. Not too long ago I explained to someone how he could easily save money on an item he was getting ready to buy. He looked at me with an expression that said, “Who cares about saving money?”

                The Unitarian church I was a member of once pointed out I’d not met my pledge. Their fiscal year was July through June. I itemize every other year, so I explained I’d give them two years’ contributions, but one would be after January 1 and the other would be before December 31. I got blank looks. I also got blank looks when I asked for a donation receipt for many boxes of books I gave them for a book sale. It was as if saving money on taxes was against their religion. For those and some other reasons I no longer consider myself Unitarian. But that’s for another post.

                At any rate, saving money is certainly not against my religion. I’m always looking for ideas on how to do it better, and I like to see what the younger generation has to say about saving money.

I read a review of Lauren Greutman’s The Recovering Spender and got the book from the library. There seems to be a formula these days for these books. Ms. Greutman says she grew up middle class (in a six bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom house on seventeen landscaped acres in Saratoga Springs, New York—I’m not sure what class she thinks that would put her in the middle of). Her husband is evidently a saver who was shocked when she put a full-price package of Doritos in her shopping basket right after they got married. (Perhaps the lesson here is: Go shopping with your fiancé BEFORE you get married.) At any rate, Ms. Greutman wound up in charge of the family budget and racked up $42,000 in consumer debts behind her husband’s back. She fessed up and they worked their way out of debt, which led to Ms. Greutman’s starting a blog, which led to this book.

Ms. Greutman has some good information for her readers (like deciding cable TV, for example, is not necessary to life—especially if you’re drowning in debt) and for some time I wondered what it was that I found so disagreeable about this book, and it finally hit me: Ms. Greutman is approaching frugality as a chore, not as something she enjoys. She tells about her first time using coupons. She was embarrassed. She gave up credit cards for some time, and when she decided to see if she could control herself if she got one, she found she couldn’t. She was feeling down and took her card to Walmart and made a bunch of impulse purchases. She found that she had spent an extra $2,000 on the card and didn’t know where the money had gone or what she had spent it on. She wisely gave up the card. I wonder about her long-term commitment to frugality.

Ms. Greutman’s book is a sad commentary on our times. So many personal finance books these days seem to be tales of how people did stupid things, got in way over their heads, found God or a reasonable facsimile thereof, got themselves out of debt and are now getting book contracts to tell their stories. One (and I forgot the title and author) even shared the author’s many failed suicide attempts, which gives the term “too much information” new meaning, and, while I sympathize with the author, that’s not what I was looking for in a book on saving money.

Anna Newell Jones’ The Spender’s Guide to Debt-Free Living is better. Ms. Jones also was in debt—to the tune of $23,605.10—that’s the exact amount. Not bad, she says, but bad enough for her. She is a spender, not a saver, but she decided to stop spending until she paid her debts. She called what she was doing a “spending fast.” Once she was out of debt, she realized what way too few people ever find out—she could live on a lot less money, and that gave her more control over her life. She discusses the negative impacts of debt. In our society it’s so accepted that everyone has debt that few people give it any thought. If you’re one of the people who has that sneaky feeling that debt is not all it’s cracked up to be, you need to read this book. Ms. Jones gives many concrete ways to save money and, while she ends the book by telling her readers once they’ve gotten out of debt, they can go on a spending diet rather than a fast, I have the feeling that many readers will have gone a long way toward realizing their life is fuller and more theirs without debt and will maybe stay on the fast a while longer.

At the other end of the cheap spectrum is Jeff Yaeger, who has a series of “Ultimate Cheapskate” books and Amy Dacyczyn (and there’s a reason this lady remains a legend more than two decades after she retired her newsletter). These people and their followers ENJOY being cheapskates. They are having fun. They go curb shopping. They see nothing to be ashamed of in what they’re doing—in fact, they’d be ashamed if they didn’t get a deal. And they’ve taught others their secrets. If you take a look at Amy Dacyczyn’s books, you see happy cheap people repurposing everything including dryer lint and frozen orange juice lids. I saw Jeff Yaeger do a presentation, and the one thing I remember is he repurposed one of those mesh orange bags into a dish scrubber. He seemed to be having a lot of fun, too. Jeff Yaeger decided long ago he did not want to devote his life to work, so he didn’t. One of his books, How to Retire the Cheapskate Way tells how he managed to live outside the cubicle.

While I was writing this I happened on a copy of Amy Dacyczyn’s The Complete Tightwad Gazette that had been donated to the library. It was $2, and I was happy to get it. I had loaned my (autographed) copies of The Tightwad Gazette, The Tightwad Gazette II, and The Tightwad Gazette III, and, well, you know how that went. Maybe I’ll get them back in the borrower’s will. At any rate, re-reading Amy’s suggestions was refreshing and enjoyable, and it’s nice to have them all in one volume. This book is 959 pages and includes an exhaustive index. It far exceeds anything I’ve read on frugality lately. As Amy has said since day one, she is “promoting thrift as a viable alternative lifestyle.”

Both Jeff Yaeger and Amy Dacyczyn decided before they got in financial difficulties what they wanted and what they could do without. And that they could have fun doing without stuff they didn’t need. And they and their readers have found that, even if their neighbors might think they’re a little eccentric, well, so what? And who cares?

Another writer who truly seems to enjoy his take on frugality is John Hoffman, who wrote The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving. John tells how he’s found treasure (really) in Dumpsters. The treasures include the wedding ring he gave his wife. Dan used to live near The Ohio State University, and he tells me that when the spring quarter ended and students were departing for the summer, the Dumpsters in his neighborhood became full of treasure. Another book on what’s free for the taking is Mongo: Adventures in Trash, by Ted Botha. It is amazing what gets tossed.

I’ve lived in my house for nearly nineteen years, and I know most of my neighbors. I realize I’m a source of amusement for some of them, but so what? A few years ago one of our neighbors was suddenly taken ill at the age of 93. His house was sold to a rehabber who emptied the house into a Dumpster. One of the neighbors mentioned it, and I said, “Oh, yes. There was some good stuff there.” The neighbor said, “We wondered how long it would take you to go Dumpster diving.”

A house on my street is being rehabbed. The previous owners had metal awnings. A couple of years ago one fell off the back of the house, and the owner put it on the curb. I put it over one of my basement windows to divert water. (All right, before you say, “Ewwwww!,” it’s on the back of the house, and it really doesn’t look THAT bad.) The rehabbers removed the rest of the awnings. One of my neighbors said he supposed those awnings were in the Dumpster in front of the house. I told him I’d checked, and they weren’t there. He laughed and said, “Of course you did.”

Well, why not? You never know what’s there unless you look.

On recycle days, I can usually find the past week’s New York Times when I walk my dog. And maybe even some coupons. People get used to my looking through their recycle bins. They don’t care. And I don’t consider it a chore. It’s free, and I get a kick out of it. (And in 1988 the US Supreme Court ruled in California v. Greenwood that garbage on the curb was fair game, so it’s legal, too.)

Last weekend I went to an estate sale. I spent $10 for three great shirts and a pack of unopened underwear. I don’t know if Ms. Greutman would be caught dead at an estate sale, much less buying used clothing. But $10 doesn’t go very far in a retail store.

Last year I went to an estate sale that was being done by the family of the deceased. Everything was high priced and not selling. (That’s one reason estate sales are best left to professionals.) There was a bunch of lotion, and I asked if they’d make a deal if I bought it all. I wound up, after some negotiating, with enough to last a couple of years for $7.50. (I have very well-controlled diabetes, and I learned the hard way to keep my feet moisturized.) There are frequently some good deals on unexpected items at these sales—even on canned food. I went to one looking for books and wound up with a bag full of cheap groceries. (If you decide to buy groceries at an estate sale, be aware of the use by dates; it isn’t a bargain if you have to throw it out after opening it.)

A few weeks ago I picked up Joan Ransom Shortney’s How to Live on Nothing at yet another estate sale. This book was first published in 1961. The copy I found is a Pocket Book edition published in 1968. I had read the book before, but I had forgotten how good it is. A lot of what Ms. Shortney recommends would be somewhat difficult today, and much of it would be more effort than we’d probably want to expend (taking envelopes apart, turning them inside out, regluing and reusing them stands out as something that would be more trouble than it’s worth), but a lot of it remains valid. I’d forgotten how powdered milk can make recipes more appealing. It’s on my shopping list. She discusses material, things to check when buying clothing at thrift stores, how to find good furniture at auctions (although these days, I’d go for estate sales instead—I don’t think the modern-day estate sale had come into its own when this book was written). Somewhat off the point, but, hey, it’s my blog, are Ms. Shortney’s recommendations for taking care of your teeth. Don’t floss unless your dentist instructs you to and use a firm toothbrush, which brings me to one of my many pet peeves. I like firm toothbrushes, but they’re really hard to find these days. I found some (unopened) at an estate sale and used them. My dental hygienist commented on how clean my teeth were. I told her I’d been using a firm toothbrush. She said, “They’re not supposed to be selling those anymore.” When I said I’d found them at an estate sale, she wasn’t thrilled with that, either. To me using a soft toothbrush feels like brushing my teeth with cotton candy, and, darn it, I should be able to buy firm toothbrushes if I want to.

Ms. Shortney makes an excellent point about reuse. “[W]hen you use something ordinarily thrown away you can be extra proud—proud you’ve avoided spending money you cannot spare and proud you’ve done the national economy a service by cutting down on our national vice—waste.”

One thing I find interesting is how the further back you go, the more frugal our ancestors were, which leads me to The American Frugal Housewife, a book written in 1829 by Lydia Maria Child. A copy of the book was discovered at an old book auction by Alice Geffen and reprinted in 1972. A quick read reveals that frugality really was a chore in the 19^th Century, but then there was no TV, so people had a lot more time on their hands. We should be grateful being cheap takes much less effort these days. It often boils down to: Don’t buy stuff you don’t need.

As I’ve mentioned before in “The Chickens Are Coming Home To Roost,” we frugal folk are often considered a little off by those in the media-approved mainstream, but when we look at our lives and realize how much there is to be had just for picking it up off the curb and how little we actually must spend to have enjoyable lives, we also look around and wonder what is wrong with people who spend way beyond their means on things that will only keep them in debt and trapped in their jobs. And we have learned what Madison Avenue has hoped will remain a secret: Things will not make us happy.

Neil Wertheimer recently wrote about lessons from the rich in the AARP Magazine. Noting that the most popular vehicle among the wealthy is a Ford pickup and that the wealthy routinely shop at Amazon, Walmart, and Target, he concluded: “Frugality isn’t a punishment; it’s a positive, commonsense approach to life. So focus on value and quality, not prestige or appearances.”

And now some books just for fun.

One non-frugality book I’ve gone through lately is Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall about the what happens to a man who was thrown clear of a plane that crashes off Long Island and who rescues the other survivor, a four-year-old boy, by swimming several miles to shore. The plot includes a Rush Limbaugh-type blowhard and a co-pilot named Bush from Odessa, Texas whose uncle, a powerful senator, got him in the National Guard for pilot training. (I wonder if he was related to the Bushes of Midland.) The book describes the hell the hero is put through—the blowhard even hints that the hero may have deliberately caused the crash. Behind this excellent story is a capable critique of our 24-hour news cycle.

Another fun book is Edward Sorel’s Mary Astor’s Purple Diary. Mr. Sorel found some old New York newspapers when he was replacing a linoleum floor in 1965. The papers discussed Mary Astor’s child custody trial. Mr. Sorel decided one day he’d write about the trial, and in 2016 at age 87 he did. The book parallels his own story of two marriages and a somewhat difficult childhood. I was attracted to the book because Mary Astor starred in one of my favorite films, Dodsworth. As it turns out, the trial happened during the filming of that movie. During the day, she worked on the film; at night she was on trial. In spite of that she turned in an amazing performance.

Finally, one of my 25¢ estate sale finds was Caravan, by Lady Eleanor Smith, one of England’s interwar “Bright Young Things.” It was a fun read written in 1942, three years before Lady Smith died at age 43. Set in the Victorian era, it is decidedly not Victorian.

Until next time… .

© 2017 Larry Roth

Some Reviews

                I’ve come across one film and read a couple of books recently. I recommend all of them.

                The film is The Big Short. If you’re curious about how the mortgage crisis developed and how ridiculous things got before the crash, this is the film for you. I almost didn’t watch it because it clocks in at over two hours. Since it’s on Netflix, I figured I could watch an hour and then come back to it later for the rest. I didn’t have to. It’s the fastest two-hour film I’ve ever watched. It’s based on fact, and when it takes liberties with the actual events, it tells you. The film is about several people who were sure or were told (one group by a wrong number phone call) the crash was coming. One man was so certain of a crash he had securities designed so that he could short the mortgage market by a firm happy to take his money, since it was axiomatic the housing market would never deflate. The group that answered the wrong number investigated the mortgage market in Florida and discovered a stripper who had five mortgages on houses she thought she could always refinance as well as tenants who were not aware their landlord, who had the mortgage in the name of his dog, had defaulted—I guess it was actually the dog that defaulted (or maybe ate the mortgage). The group investigating Florida mortgages were convinced to short the market. One thing that stands out is how willfully everyone in a position to question the madness, from the ratings agencies to the SEC, ignored their jobs, in no small part because their continued existence depended on repeat business.

With our new administration and congress in the process of dismantling the protections (including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) the previous one put in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening again, I recommend this film as a way for us to protect ourselves, since no one else is going to be looking out for our interests.  

I listened to Thomas Frank’s Listen, Liberal, which was written during the 2016 campaign. Post-campaign, Mr. Frank could be considered a modern-day Cassandra. He gives a biting commentary on what’s wrong with the Democratic party—namely that they’ve cozied up to the well-educated and well-heeled elite. The Democrats have abandoned the concerns of their (former) working class base for those affluent (primarily coastal) city dwellers whose concerns are bike paths, meritocracy, and individual opportunity. Perhaps it’s because these people are the ones writing the checks, but, as we’ve seen in the past election, these people are not the ones voting in states needed to win an electoral majority. What’s even worse, is the Democratic elites’ answer for everything is education. If you’re out of work because of NAFTA (which was pushed through congress by Bill Clinton), it’s your fault for not having the education to get another job. Mr. Frank reminds us it was also Bill Clinton who pushed through welfare “reform,” depriving many of a means to a legal income. What is interesting to me is Frank’s quoting Democrats who sound like very conservative Republicans. (Larry Summers, for example, said, “One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.” You didn’t go to Harvard? Well, you deserve what you got.) There simply seems to be no sympathy or even empathy for the single parent making minimum wage who does not have the time, energy, money or work schedule to get an education. But, then, what kind of contributions will the party get from these losers?

Now that Mr. Frank has proven to be correct, will the party take some action? Or will it just slap some makeup on the dead horse its current leadership has left behind?

Finally, What We Do Now, edited by Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians (and if I were either of these people, I would be really pissed to have my name in such microscopic print on the cover—it’s a lot of work to edit a book) was thrown together in two months. The book has contributions by twenty-seven writers on “standing up for your values in Trump’s America.” Some of the contributions are painfully predictable (How many ways can Bill McKibben say the same thing?), but there are a couple of surprises. Allan Lichtman, a history professor and developer of a prediction system, “the Keys to the White House,” echoes some of Thomas Frank’s points except Lichtman is more in favor of free trade. Cognitive linguist George Lakoff tells us Trump uses the brains of those listening to him to his advantage. I’m not sure I agree—I’ve listened to Trump, and all I get out of doing so is wondering how the man got as far as he did. Nevertheless, he did win the electoral vote, so maybe there’s something to what Mr. Lakoff says. Dave Eggers gives us several vignettes he witnessed just before and just after the election. He notes that in Michigan, where Trump won by 13,107 votes, 110,000 people voted down ballot but did not vote for president. Writer George Saunders offers a scathing view of the media in his contribution titled, “The Braindead Megaphone.” He savages reporters—especially on the local level. While reading it, I couldn’t help but think of a local station that features a married couple as dual anchors. They’re so sweet it makes me want to barf, and when they show photos of their children and dog (“This is Sweetie Pie in the snow; oh, look here’s another one of him; oh, and here he’s petting Fido, etc.”),  I want to scream, “This is not why I watch the news.” I mean, I like dogs as well as anyone (children not so much), but I have one of my own. Anyway, evidently this kind of thing goes on everywhere these days. Mr. Saunders gives the example of even when local media are reporting they’re frequently dwelling on the obvious—malls are busy during Christmas because people buy presents, so mall parking is more difficult to find that time of year. I’d add to that people buying shovels and salt and what the highway departments will be doing to the roads when a snowstorm is predicted. When I see something like that, I say, to no one in particular, “My, wasn’t THAT informative?” I am glad I’m not the only one who finds such reporting dumb and annoying, but I’d be happier of someone would elevate reporting to maybe at least a third- grade level. 

By the way, and I guess this is a recommendation for a third book, I highly recommend Dave Eggers’ The Circle, which is a novel about a Google world taken to the extreme.

Incidentally, I know people are reading this blog. I’d really like to get some discussions going, so please feel free to comment.

© 2017 Larry Roth

The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost

                Recently the PBS NewsHour had a segment on the experiences of many middle-age Americans in today’s economy. The segment focused on two people: Elizabeth White, the author of Fifty-five, Unemployed, and Faking Normal, and Neal Gabler, who had written “The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans,” which was published in The Atlantic last May.

                Before I go further, let me admit I have not read Ms. White’s book. It was self-published, which is pretty much what writers, including this one, must resort to these days to get their works in print. The downside to self-publishing is it takes a while for libraries to get our books on the shelves. I promise I will read the book when it gets to my library. That said, as I write this, the book has thirteen reviews on Amazon--all of them five stars, and not many books can match that—especially just two months after publication! From the reviews, it appears the book is a resource for those who find themselves laid off after an age-shortened career and features more than 100 online resources.

                I read Mr. Gabler’s article in The Atlantic, and all I could do was shake my head and think, “What a screw-up.” Think of something financially stupid, and Mr. Gabler’s done it. Buy a condo in Brooklyn. Check. Send the kids to a private school. Check. Rent then buy a house in the Hamptons. Check. Sell the Brooklyn condo at a loss. Check. Become a one-income family. Check. (Mr. Gabler is the author of several books, but even though his income is variable, that’s the one income the family chose to rely on.) Keep your spouse in the dark about the looming financial Armageddon. Check. Have your parents use your inheritance to pay for your kids’ expensive college. Check. Become delinquent on your taxes. Check. Drain the 401(k) to pay for a daughter’s wedding. (Paying, presumably, the early withdrawal penalty along with the income taxes. AAUGH!) Check. I couldn’t believe a kid would allow her parents to put their retirement at risk for something so transitory as a wedding, but… . Well, you get the point. Mr. Gabler says, “Perhaps none of this would have happened if my income had grown the way incomes used to grow in America. It didn’t, and they don’t.” Mr. Gabler doesn’t ask for sympathy, fortunately; he merely points out he is in the same boat as at least 47% of Americans his age—unable to come up with $400 if a sudden need to do so arose.        

                How did we get into this situation?

                Let’s take a trip back to the heady days of the 1990s.

                Thanks to an article in The New York Times in 1992 that mentioned my book, Living Cheap, and Living Cheap News, the newsletter I had just begun, I found myself part of what the media called the “New Frugality” movement. I got to see, first hand, how the media regarded frugality.

                A couple of the newspaper writers, usually the guys, were intrigued by the idea of living below their means. The women not so much. Magazines were pretty much the opposition.

                I got invited to appear on Dr. Dean Edell’s show, Dr. Dean. It was a disaster. I’d been told the show was about frugality. It was. Frugality as a mental illness! I was “diagnosed” on the air by the late Carla Perez as “unhappy,” and the reasons for my unhappiness could be I was unhappily married. Or maybe I was single. Or maybe I was unhappy in my career. Well, I was single, but certainly not unhappy—except for being ambushed on TV. I was not happy about that! While Carla was droning on about my unhappiness, the producers kept waving signs that said, “Jump in.” I decided Carla was quite adequately making a fool of herself. And, besides, being the polite Midwestern boy that I was, I would not want to be rude and interrupt such an insightful, if inaccurate, spur-of-the-moment diagnosis.

                When the audience was allowed to speak, their questions were about how to save money. One questioner asked what I did with the money I saved. I said I bought bonds. Dr. Dean quipped, “He just can’t help himself.”

                Actually, if I’d been allowed to speak at length, I would have explained I wanted to build an independent income so I would have the option of doing what I wanted with my life and not be tied to an employer or dependent on a salary. I’d had to make two forced relocations in the previous ten years (one in 1982 and the other in 1987), and I didn’t like not being in control. Not even of where I lived.

                But Carla’s point was frugality is unnatural, and if I were happy, I’d be out spending everything I made—and then some—just like every other red-blooded American male—just like Neal Gabler!

                About a year later a writer for Worth contacted me. We talked at length. He seemed surprised at how good being frugal had been for me. Sometime later I asked him how he’d been able to use the information I’d given him. He said he’d discovered some bad feelings among some of the people in the New Frugality movement, and his editors had told him to pursue that story. The article (“The Three Scrooges”) was negative not only about the movement, but about the people discussed. Fortunately, I was not one of them.

                Shortly after that, I was screened for yet another daytime talk show. I came across as too normal—that’s actually what the producer said. They were going for some “more real people.” I saw the show. I was happy not to have been chosen.

                After Amy Dacyczyn retired, she was conned into opening her life to a reporter for Money. She didn’t really want to do the interview. After all, she had absolutely nothing to gain. After the reporter hinted Amy may have “something to hide,” Amy agreed. The article was savage. This same writer, who was childless at the time, would go on to write articles advising working mothers not to leave the work force. She may still be out there lurking and looking to write other articles that better demonstrate her lack of qualifications and objectivity.

                In 1997 Amy agreed to write a chapter for a book I’d proposed. The book was published by Berkley in 1998 as The Simple Life, although my title had been The New Frugality Anthology. (“Simple” was so much more “upscale” than “frugality.”) When we were talking, she said frugality was a hard sell given the economy was so good. I remember saying, “But when the economy is good, that’s when it’s easy to save for times when the economy is not so good.” But she was right. Frugality was a hard sell in the 1990s.

                Then came the dot.com bust, and the Great Recession. It was like the seven years of Biblical famine following the seven years of feast. Only it’s gone on longer than seven years for many people.

                Neal Gabler is or will be 67 this year. As he admits, he may have dug a hole he and his wife will never get out of. It’s almost certainly too late for him to recover. But at least he can sell the occasional magazine article. Not everyone has that option.

                For Neal Gabler and others in my generation who listened to the media about how silly and at times unpatriotic (remember the message after 9/11 was to go out and… shop!) frugality is, it’s too late. The chickens have come home to roost.

                But what about those who are young enough to take control of their finances? The lessons of Neal Gabler and the 47% of middle-age Americans who would have to scrounge to come up with $400 for an emergency should be clear.

                Get frugal already! Start saving. One thing I will guarantee is when you get to Neal Gabler’s age you will be astounded at how quickly the past 20 or 30 years have flown by. So make some painless adjustments to your spending today to avoid a painful old age.

                Think for yourself. If the media—or anyone else--starts telling you how silly it is to save money, ignore them. I’ll admit I had a much different upbringing than many in my age group in that I was foisted off on my grandmother a lot when I was young. She immigrated to the US in 1912, homesteaded in what would become part of the Dust Bowl, and survived the Great Depression as well as the home front deprivations of World War II. While I didn’t have first-hand knowledge of those times, I certainly heard a lot about them. As a result, I was always careful with money, although if my grandmother were here, I’m sure she’d be appalled at some of the things I spend money on.

                And don’t count on resorting to dog food in your old age. As one who buys food for our canine companion, I can tell you even Alpo is getting pricey.

                Take control. Think for yourself. Learn to decide what you want and what you actually need. Run your life like a business. Eliminate superfluous expenses the way businesses eliminate employees. Save and invest. And earn yourself a nice life.

© 2017 Larry Roth

The Mortgage Deduction

I’ve written before about the mortgage deduction, but now that the new Congress may actually do something about eliminating it, Realtors, their lackeys and lobbyists are having a hissy fit. One such hissy fit can be found here in a January 8, 2017 editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled “Policy Purity is Bad Politics.” The link below will take you to the editorial if you are a WSJ digital subscriber:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/policy-purity-is-bad-politics-1483914192

If you’re not a subscriber, Google around. I found the editorial available at:

http://www.throughtheeyesofgeek.com/politics/2017/01/policy-purity-is-bad-politics-wall-street-journal/

It’s probably available elsewhere as well.

The following is my response. We’ll see if it makes it into the WSJ:

In response to Hugh Hewitt’s defense of the mortgage deduction in “Policy Purity Is Bad Politics,” and especially his assertion that there is a great attraction to this deduction in “Trump country,” I have to ask who, exactly, in “Trump country” is attached to this deduction? Working class people by and large rent or own homes that, if mortgaged at all, most likely don’t throw off large enough mortgage interest deductions to justify itemizing—especially at today’s low rates. No, Mr. Hewitt, those folks not only don’t benefit from this subsidy, it’s probably one of the reasons they voted for Mr. Trump in the first place.

                The middle and upper classes in this country simply must get over the idea they are owed rewards from taxpayers for buying themselves a place to live. At one time mortgage subsidies may have made sense, but that time is gone. Younger people are choosing to rent. Homes on the coasts are far too expensive for entry-level buyers. The mortgage deduction has become just one more way the working class and the poor are subsidizing the wealthy. It’s trickle up income redistribution.

                Beyond that, how much sense does the deduction make economically? The 2016 standard deduction for a couple filing jointly is $12,600. The tax rate for most filers—especially those in “Trump country”--won’t exceed 33%. For those whose mortgage puts them above the standard deduction, they get a whopping $33 back (paid for by taxpayers) for every $100 they send to their mortgagees. It’s not a great deal for most of those in “Trump country.” It’s certainly not a great deal for renters or for those who cannot afford to buy a home or for taxpayers.

                While the Tax Reform Act of 1986, for which Ronald Reagan is still praised, established a precedent for eliminating interest deductions with no period of adjustment, I agree with Mr. Hewitt that it would not be fair to pull the plug on this deduction immediately. But it would be fair to draw a line in the sand and say, for example, mortgages closed before January 1, 2018 will be deductible but those closed or refinanced after that date will not be. In 30 years we’d be rid of this deduction. Those who have the deduction will not lose it, and those who want a house enough to buy one without taxpayers subsidizing them will do so.  

                Eliminating this deduction, which benefits the few, in exchange for a higher standard deduction, which will benefit everyone, is almost certain to please those in “Trump country.”

© 2017 Larry Roth

Stuff

                One thing I really missed when I had a (more than) full-time job was having time to read for pleasure. Nowadays I have the time, and it’s amazing where my reading takes me.

                I picked up Eric Larrabee’s The Self-Conscious Society: The State of American Culture at Mid-Century at an estate sale. The book is a collection of essays published in 1960 when Mr. Larrabee was managing editor of American Heritage magazine. The last essay, “After Abundance, What?” mentions “The Midas Plague,” a 1954 short story by Frederik Pohl. Thanks to the library’s Interlibrary Loan program I was able to find the short story in a collection of Pohl’s work titled Midas World.

                The story is about a world that has resolved all its energy issues and produces so much stuff that people are required to consume. In this society less is truly more. The wealthy are allowed to live in small homes and do not have to consume as much as the lower classes. A young man who is caught committing the improbable crime of stealing a painting is described as a “Pretty poor kid. Forty-two-room house.” It took the police three hours to find the painting, which was hanging on a wall. The kid’s punishment was to be lowered two grades, meaning he’d have to live in a bigger house and consume more. In this society, consumption is nearly everyone’s occupation. Actual productive work is a privilege. The main character works one day a week; when he moves up a grade, he is allowed to work two days a week. The hero of the story does come up with a solution to the under-consumption problem, but I won’t spoil the story for you.

                Of course, this is science fiction written in the heady days when, in post-War America, anything seemed possible—even cars with massive tailfins.

                Recently stuff—getting it and getting rid of it—has been on my mind. As I mentioned, Dan and I consolidated 4,000 square feet worth of stuff into 1,600 square feet. Actually, we’re still in the process. As I began writing this, Dan presented me with four more boxes of stuff to take to a thrift store. It’s amazing how all the stuff we once thought we needed can quickly become a nuisance.

                About now would be a good time to take a break from this article and Google “Bargain Hunting” by Truckstop Honeymoon. Listen to it. I need to listen to it every once in a while, too.

                I still go to estate sales. These days, though, I’m pretty much limited to looking at books, which don’t take up too much room. Once I’m done with them I either sell them through Amazon.com or Half Price Books. Some of the hoarder estate sales I’ve been to have been amazing. And really, really depressing. At one sale in a very nice part of town, the large house was so crowded that there was only a path through the house. The basement was packed, and there were several storage sheds in the back yard. Another large house in an older part of town was packed so tightly that parts of the house were off limits because there was too much load on the floors. The ad for the sale mentioned there were books, and there were, indeed, thousands of them, but the owner suddenly decided he couldn’t sell any of the books. I overheard him telling someone, “I started bringing stuff into this house in 1968.” I wondered if he’d ever taken any stuff out of the house. At another house, which has since been converted to a Bed and Breakfast, the owners had taken out second mortgages to travel abroad and buy stuff, including tons of tailored clothes. The mortgages exceeded the value of the house, and the heirs were letting the house be foreclosed. Dan bought one of the tailored shirts for 50¢. It had probably cost $200 originally, not including the trip to London for measurements.

                What is it with stuff? Why are we so willing to part with the money we spend our lives earning for stuff? And by “we,” believe me, I include myself. I don’t fall into the stuff trap very often, but it happens. I found two mid-century pilsner glasses at a sale last spring. I paid $1 for the pair, and, yes, they’re “worth” a lot more, but are they really? And how do you go about finding someone to pay what they’re “worth?” I guess it’s best to admit that I, too, can fall prey to what Your Money or Your Life author Joe Dominguez called the “gazingus pin” that I suddenly realize I simply must have. I will admit that I enjoy looking at books at estate sales, and I like it when I pick up some that look interesting and find I’ve wound up with one that I can sell on Amazon.com that will pay for the day’s shopping.

                Dan has been training with one of Kansas City’s better estate sale people, and he tells me people are in line when the sale opens, and it’s a mad rush when the doors open—people grab stuff right and left, afraid they’ll miss out on a bargain.

                But consider estate sales, and I do love them enough to go to them myself. The people having the sales are usually heirs who already have a lifetime supply of their own stuff. Often they don’t want any more or they live elsewhere and moving stuff is too much of a hassle, so (if they’re wise) they hire an estate sale professional who will charge them to get rid of the stuff they don’t want. Charges will vary from a fixed percentage of the net proceeds to a fixed price plus a percentage of the proceeds. By the way, if you’re going to be in the market for an estate sale professional, find out first how they charge and if you can, find out how well they price the items. I’ve attended a lot of estate sales, and some of them price items so high they just don’t move. So I don’t go to their sales. I’ve been to a couple of sales families held after some of the higher priced professionals failed to move their stuff, and I can tell you they were not thrilled to be doing the sale they paid someone else to do. If you don’t know the estate sale professionals in the area, ask people who go to sales for their recommendations. Believe me, we’ll tell you the ones we like!

                As far as do-it-yourself estate sales go, it can work. But the odds are you’ll have a family member (or two) who is so emotional that haggling is seen as an affront to their late whatevers. Or, even worse, you’ll have a family member (or more) who is familiar with antiques and thinks shoppers will pay at least as much at an estate sale as they would in an antique shop (or shoppe). (They won’t.) In either case, the end result is the stuff doesn’t sell, and people get upset. If you’re going to go this route, I’d highly recommend a family meeting to emphasize the purpose of the sale is to get rid of stuff—not to honor grandma or to make a fortune on her stuff. Marni Jameson, in her book Downsizing the Family Home: What to Save, What to Let Go advises the average estate sale grosses less than $6,000. She also gives several options for getting rid of an estate.

                Anyway, back to my point about stuff. It costs us to buy stuff and it costs our heirs to get rid of our stuff. If they don’t pay an estate sale professional, they do it themselves, they give up their time and probably get into fights and think nobody’s doing as much as they are, and life is so unfair, and they should get more than everyone else, and someone is going to cheat them out of their inheritance, etc. Yep. I’ve been there.

                When my father died in 2005, two years after my mother died, we cleaned out their house. We thought we would soon be selling it, but as it turned out we let my brother live there another eight years, but that’s a story for another day. There were four of us. Dan, who has four siblings, says three is the limit for maintaining good relations. And that turned out to be true in our case.

                For decades my parents had told me who was to get what when they died. Their biggest concern was that my younger sister get the dining room set she liked. My parents treated me like their sole executor. After my father died it turned out that the older of my two sisters, Fang, had been named co-executor. What our parents intended, of course, was for her to be an alternate executor. Our parents had used an attorney who was a friend to draft their will. He screwed up, and I was stuck with the screw-up. Fang had no idea what our parents had told me. She had no idea she was to be co-executor. She told me our father had told her he was leaving more to her because she had children and the rest of us did not. He didn’t. Looking back, I think she believed because she had given our parents grandchildren she was entitled to a greater share. But she was stuck with an equal share, and I was stuck with her as co-executor.     

No sooner had our father died than Fang, who lived 700 miles from our parents’ house, located someone she knew who had ordered a horse trailer in Oklahoma. She offered to deliver the trailer if she could use it to haul some stuff. And haul some stuff she did. She and her husband made that trip with the trailer and at least another trip with a pickup. At the time I thought if it makes her feel good to have that much of her parents’ stuff that’s great. I didn’t need it. I wound up with my parents' 1989 Oldsmobile (which was no bargain) and, after insisting, some coins and a very few other items, most of which I wound up hauling back to Oklahoma and giving Little Sister (LS).

                My father had asked that after he died my brother, Little Darling (LD), be allowed to live in the house six months. Fang insisted she be paid her share of the value of the house immediately, which she was.

Fang somehow decided our parents had made us co-executors because they feared I would cheat the others. This, mind you, after she had a horse trailer and a couple of pickup loads of their stuff safely spirited away. I decided that Fang should contact me only by email in the future. To further compound what turned out to be a comedy of errors, our parents’ attorney friend decided he liked golf better than practicing law, and he did a walkabout. I don’t exactly know what all went on behind the scenes, but Fang eventually decided our younger sister would be executor. This turned out to be such a wise choice that, eight years later, we wound up in a mad rush to correct probate so we could close on the house. Of course, Fang was out of the picture, so she missed out on sharing the legal fees.

Anyway, back to stuff. If I had it to do over, we would have hired a professional and had an estate sale. Fang was afraid we’d be cheated. Notice a trend here? Fang’s always afraid she’s going to be cheated. And somehow she is never the one who winds up on the short end of the stick!

Had we had an estate sale, we could have cleared the house and split the proceeds. There would have been no need for a horse trailer. We could have put our parents’ car up for bid, and if I wanted to buy it, I could have. And there would have been far fewer hard feelings. I think.

When we sold our parents’ house in 2013, LS had told me there was some Tupperware and asked if I wanted some. I said yes--especially if there was one of the salad bowls because mine had a broken lid. When I got there, I saw two boxes. One was huge. The other was not. I asked if those were my boxes. LS said, “No, just that one.” (The smaller one.) I’d wound up with one salad bowl. Period. Fang and her husband had so much stuff (again) they had trouble getting it in their SUV. But this time Fang must have had some guilt pangs. She sent me another salad bowl.

Continuing a family tradition, which I’ll discuss in another post, Fang always gets her trips paid for (this one from the proceeds of the house sale she didn’t have to pay the legal fees for to get the mess she insisted on causing undone.) Fang never comes out on the short end of the stick.

But in the long run, Fang did me a favor by taking all that stuff. Even if a lot of it wound up being sold in her booth at an antiques mall. (Oh, I forgot to mention she had that, didn’t I?) As I said, most of the stuff I wound up with I gave back to LS, and, when Dan moved in last year the stuff I didn’t wind up with was not a problem.

A few years ago the guy who does my lawn started to spray some fertilizer. I asked him what he was doing. He said, “Fertilizing your lawn.” I said, “So you’re charging me to fertilize my lawn so it can grow faster and you can charge me to cut it more often?” He put the fertilizer away.

I see stuff the same way.

As I’ve mentioned before, we have a new Smart TV. Buying the new TV was just the start. In order to pull in stations, we bought a new antenna. In order to boost the WiFi, we got a WiFi enhancer. Because Samsung’s computer wouldn’t pull in some of the things we wanted, we got a Roku. I don’t miss my CRT TV, but you can see my point. Often when we buy one thing, it leads to a seemingly never-ending cycle of spending. Sometimes it’s best to really think about where a purchase will lead before taking that first step. Denis Diderot wrote about this in 1769 short story titled “Regrets for My Old Dressing Gown, or a Warning to Those Who Have More Taste Than Fortune.”

It’s still true!

And now, maybe you’re ready for another listen to Truckstop Honeymoon’s “Bargain Hunting.”

Up next a look at the mortgage deduction.

© 2017 Larry Roth

The Universal Basic Income

                I picked up Andy Stern’s Raising the Floor after reading a review of it. Mr. Stern, who is now age 66, spent five years exploring the new American economy. And what he found is not encouraging for workers.

                He started in Boston, where he witnessed how MIT’s Media Lab is taking on projects, funded by various corporations, to automate as much as possible. He concludes that, “As they go about inventing the future, the scientists and researchers at Media Lab aren’t thinking about the consequences of their work on the millions of Americans who are laboring in factories, building our homes, guarding our streets, investing our money, computing our taxes, teaching our children and teenagers, staffing our hospitals, driving our buses, and taking care of our elders and disabled veterans.”

                And that’s just the introduction.

                Mr. Stern, who left his position as president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to pursue this project, observes today’s global corporations have no permanent home, recognize no national borders, salute no flag but their own corporate logo, and take their money anywhere they can make the most—and pay the least. (Think our new Secretary of State nominee, Exxon’s Rex Tillerson.) He points out only 62.6% of the working age population is either working or looking for work, that college is not considered as good an investment, that eight million working Americans live below the poverty line, and there’s not much on the horizon that indicates these trends will reverse.

                Further, such things as medical diagnoses, journalism, bartending, and even sex are being done by or with robots. No one—not even those in the oldest profession--seems safe from having their job taken over by a robot.

                Even for those whose jobs are not being taken over by robots, the odds of getting a traditional job with benefits are diminishing. Many jobs are now being done by freelancers, and the globalization of jobs is having quite an impact here as well. Mr. Stern gives the example of his needing some interview notes transcribed. He goes to a website called Upwork, tells what he needs done, and gets bids as low as $3 per hour. (The North American bids range from $12.50 to $25 per hour.) Based on ratings, he chooses one in Kenya who charges $7.50 per hour and pays $4.67 for the job. (He does give the transcriber a tip for a job well done.) You can see, possibly, how difficult it will be for Donald Trump to bring jobs back to America if just about anyone can get bids from around the world for just about any kind of work.

                As I said, Mr. Stern spent five years researching the state of work in America today. There are many more examples of trouble ahead as well as those already here including corporate America’s tendency to eliminate people over the age of fifty. Dan, by the way, received a total of $6,400 in unemployment benefits after he was given the boot (and that is taxable at the federal level).

                And then we get to Mr. Stern’s solution. He proposes that every American between the ages of  eighteen and sixty-four gets a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 per month. (Seniors who do not get Social Security benefits of $1,000 a month would receive the difference as a UBI.) Two people living together would get $2,000 per month. The checks would be mailed (or, more likely the funds would be electronically disbursed). If someone chooses to waste their allowance, well, tough. There’s no oversight on how the money is spent, and best of all, there’s no bureaucracy to “administer” the program. People will have to face the fact that they will be responsible for their own decisions. People will get this money whether or not they work, so if they find a job, they won’t lose their benefit. He points out this will give people the option not to take crappy, low paying jobs, which would probably bump up the minimum wage without passing a law to do so. He points out that a young person barely getting by in New York would be able to move to Detroit, where the city is selling homes in run-down areas for $500. And the UBI would stimulate the economy because the money would be spent.

                While Swiss voters recently voted against a UBI by a margin of 77% to 23%, experiments are being readied in Finland, France, Canada, and the Netherlands as well as in Oakland, California. India is studying the UBI.

                At first glance, this sounds like a liberal, artsy-fartsy money-for-nothing scheme, but it’s appealing to conservatives, liberals, progressives, and libertarians. I suspect these people realize that cable TV and Netflix cannot keep people home watching “The Walking Dead” forever, and the risks of not giving people enough income to live on could lead to a revolution that involves a lot more than electing a populist blowhard as president. In Kansas City we have seen some rather brazen home invasions of late, and nationally an uptick of 13.1% in the murder rate is projected this year. Not all of this increase in crime can be attributed to the economy, of course, but I would suspect at least some of it can be.

                I’ve seen some objections to the UBI. For example, Robert H. Frank, in a New York Times editorial says that the UBI would enable large groups of people to pool their resources and—gasp!—live comfortably at taxpayer expense. For example, he points out that ten families could form a commune and have $250,000 a year to live on. First, I would point out that executives at this country’s defense contractors live rather comfortably at taxpayer expense. (Lockheed-Martin’s CEO, for example, took home more than $25 million in 2013.) Second, it would be $240,000 for ten families, and third, if Mr. Frank thinks living with nine other families would be comfortable, well he and I have different versions of the good life. Mr. Frank suggests there be a work requirement (possibly as supervised unskilled workers in President-elect Trump’s infrastructure programs) associated with the UBI, which would negate a lot of the benefits of Mr. Stern’s proposal, including the ability to say no to a crap job. 

                Mr. Stern estimates the cost of his proposal at between $1.75 and $2.5 trillion per year. He has some suggestions on how to help pay for the program. To his suggestions I would add: Consider ending the wasteful war on drugs.

                Up next: Stuff

© 2016 Larry Roth

What Happened: The Election of 2016

                First, full disclosure. I was not thrilled with any of the candidates this year. I planned to vote for Gary Johnson, but I switched my vote to Clinton when James Comey announced, eleven days before the election, that Clinton’s emails were being reinvestigated. That very morning I had been to a talk on the election. The speaker said Comey had said the Clinton email question had been resolved, and, the speaker said, “Comey is a Republican; you know if there were any possible way the emails would hurt Clinton, he would have announced it.” And that afternoon he did.

                I live in a part of Missouri that is heavily Democratic. If you look at an electoral map of Missouri, you’ll see three blue spots in a sea of red. One is Kansas City; the other two are Columbia, where the University of Missouri is, and St. Louis. Add to that my circle of friends, none of whom supported Trump (at least openly), and you can see Trump supporters were simply outside my universe. I knew none, so none were available to tell me why they were voting the way they did. The evening of the election I expected it to be an early night. Confirm a Clinton victory, see how many electoral votes she got, and go to bed. What a surprise.

                What happened?

                I’ve been asked this a lot since the election, and the honest answer (from me as well as from just about anyone else who claims to have the answers, I suspect) is: I don’t know.

                But I’ll throw out a few possibilities.

                First, I think people are still really angry about the Great Recession. The recession supposedly ended in June 2009, but for many people the recession has not ended. Even for those doing better, I’d say most will never recover the earnings lost during the recession.

                New York Times business writer Gretchen Morgenson wrote shortly after the election that Main Street did not forget that everyone who precipitated the recession—from those who made “liar loans” to those who sliced and diced the loan packages for sale as mortgage securities to those who rated those toxic securities triple-A to those who engaged in “robo-signing” when it came time to foreclose—everyone—got away with it. With the exception of Bernie Madoff (who was truly exceptional), not one person went to jail. Not one person had to pay penalties out of their own pocket. Everyone got away with it. Even Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo. Ms. Morgenson points out more than 800 people served time after the Savings and Loan disaster in the 1980s. 

                Add to the lack of accountability the government’s quick action to bail out the banks that made the mess. Taxpayers were on the hook for $700 billion. Taxpayers bailed out the banks, but what did taxpayers get in return? Seven million homes were foreclosed during the recession; 8.7 million jobs were lost. High rollers gambled and lost. Taxpayers came to their rescue. But who came to the rescue of the people really hurt by the recession?

                No one.

                Oh, the Obama administration came up with the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which provided financial incentives to modify loans, but it was completely voluntary. Not only did 90% of people whose homes were in danger of being foreclosed not get any help, banks seemed to consider it their job to make sure as few people got help as was possible. It seems they considered helping those in need a moral hazard that might set some sort of precedent. Never mind that the banks themselves had been rescued by taxpayers.

                I have a real estate license. In order to keep it active, I must take twelve hours of continuing education every two years. During the depths of the recession I heard tales of how difficult lenders were making closing short sales. Before the Recession I had New Century stock. New Century was a subprime lender that cratered. I had to recognize my losses and get on with my life. But most mortgage holders didn’t take that approach. They refused to recognize homes had fallen in value—often below the amount of the mortgage—and they refused to take their losses. As a result, people who might have been able to save their homes lost them, and those who might have been able to sell their homes for less than they owed on them were not able to, and many of them simply walked away from their homes and mailed the keys to their lenders, who were then stuck with maintenance costs, property taxes, and all the other expenses involved in owning a home. Some lenders, in Kansas City most notably Deutsche Bank, simply let properties deteriorate and did not pay property taxes, which resulted in local governments’ ultimately foreclosing for nonpayment of taxes and frequently tearing the houses down. Banks’ refusals to write down bad assets, in other words, wound up being expensive for taxpayers. And still no one’s been held accountable.    

                As the election was going on the tales of Wells Fargo’s opening fake accounts was ongoing. It turned out that 5,300 employees (including whistleblowers) had been fired. Many of those wound up with negative information on their employment records that prevented them from getting another job in the banking industry. Wells Fargo’s chief executive and its head of retail banking had to relinquish $60 million in stock but managed to walk away with more than $350 million between them. Wells Fargo has paid $185 million to settle claims—so far.

                Volkswagen was caught gaming emissions tests. 30,000 people worldwide will lose their jobs as a result of VW’s needing to cut costs. No one has gone to jail.

                In order to stimulate the economy interest rates have been near zero for eight years. Those of us who are savers and who rely on interest for a good portion of our income have had to sacrifice because of the recession as we see bonds we bought for the long term called, leaving us to reinvest at the Federal Reserve’s “accommodative” rates.

                These low interest rates have affected pensions—probably more than we know. Last year, for example, the Central States Pension Fund told its 270,000 retirees their pensions would have to be cut—some up to 50%. These are people who are retired and who can’t just go out and get a job to make up the difference. Watch for more shoes to drop.

                Social Security cost-of-living raises have been between zero and next to nothing since the recession began—supposedly because inflation has been low. And yet my water bill has quadrupled and my property taxes and health insurance go up every year.

                You can see why some people might have been moved by Trump’s assertion that the system is rigged. The rich get bailed out by the government, and the poor lose their homes and their jobs. Others have to swallow cuts in their income. Is there any real doubt the system IS rigged?

                And would Hillary Clinton’s cozy relationship with Goldman Sachs, for whom she made three speeches and was paid $675,000, possibly have made some who are still suffering from the effects of the Great Recession a little uneasy? Maybe her on-again, off-again position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership made people wonder if she had a consistent position on anything.

                Perhaps Bernie Sander’s primary campaign, which highlighted how primary voters’ wishes were easily outweighed by “super delegates,” convinced Bernie’s supporters the nominating system is rigged.

                And, Geez! Mrs. Clinton’s calling half of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables?” Now, that ranks right up there with Mitt Romney’s calling 47% of Americans “takers.” Except Romney didn’t know he was being taped.   

                Next, some people have become offended by the actions of those of us who are LGBT. We are rapidly moving into the mainstream. Remember in 2004 when all eleven bans on gay marriage passed by wide margins? (Ours in Missouri—a constitutional amendment, no less, passed 71%-29%.) Last year, when the Supreme Court made gay marriage legal, a Gallup poll showed 60% support for that decision. We made a lot of progress in just eleven years. But we pushed our luck.

                In Political Frugality, I told about Jeannie, the former friend who could never be satisfied or happy. She’d want me to do something. Just when I thought I’d met her need and could get on with my life, there was always something else. I eventually had to recognize the friendship was toxic and end it. Well, I think the same is true with LGBT issues. We got gay marriage. That’s a biggie. It gives us access to the financial and legal benefits of marriage. Assuming, though, that we have 60% support for gay marriage, that means 40% still oppose it. In my opinion, in another generation, they’ll change their minds or be dying off. Eventually gay marriage will be the nonissue interracial marriage is today. We need to give people a breather and choose our battles wisely.

                If you’re discriminated against for employment or housing, feel free to cry bloody murder. But a wedding cake? Caterers? Florists? Photographers? C’mon. Grow up already.

                The wedding-industrial complex is large, highly profitable, and highly competitive. Good grief. If someone doesn’t want to bake you a cake, find someone who does. Would you want someone who opposes your lifestyle anywhere near your food? And do you really want your gay money supporting those who don’t like you for who you are?

                We need to recognize many people belong to churches that have taught them homosexuality is wrong and those who practice it are doomed to hell. We don’t share those beliefs, of course, but they’re as real to those folks as our beliefs are to us. Let them get to know us. Let them get to see we’re not the monsters they’ve been led to believe we are. And let them see our money going to their competitors. Money, after all, is this country’s true religion.

                Forcing our beliefs on trivial issues such as cakes, florists, caterers, photographers, etc. probably angered social conservatives enough that they overlooked Trump’s rather tenuous relationship with religion. (Three wives?) The courts that took these issues seriously (including awarding $135,000 to a couple denied a cake in Oregon) may well have made some Catholic and fundamentalist Christians believe the system is rigged against them, too.

                And then there’s the bathroom issue. I sympathize with transgendered people, and I believe the best solution would be a separate bathroom for them; however, that costs money, and sometimes the money is just not there. So, is it better for one person to be uncomfortable when using the bathroom or is it better for one person to make many people uncomfortable? As long as there is a door on the stall, is it really a big deal to go into a bathroom, close the door, and do your thing? By the way, if you’re uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with people of the opposite sex, don’t go to France, where, if the line for the women’s bathroom is long, they simply use the men’s facilities. You get used to it.

                Anyway, perhaps people have had a difficult time hearing so much about bathrooms lately.

                And then we have the issue of political correctness, especially on college campuses. I entered college in 1966. At freshman orientation we were told our beliefs would be challenged, and we may well graduate not only with different political views, but we may question our religions as well.

                Fast forward to the present day. No one wants to hear views they don’t already agree with. College is designated as a “safe space,” where no one is ever confronted with challenging views. Last year a couple of professors at Yale questioned whether the university should police Halloween costumes and advised, “If you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.” This started a series of protests that included students’ shouting obscenities at the professors (so much for sensitivity) who stepped down from some of their duties at Yale. Too many speakers at colleges have been “disinvited,” or worse, shouted down for having views that challenge students’ preconceptions, which in some cases is called “invading their safe space.”

                To add to the coddling some colleges provide “trigger warnings” regarding literature assignments. For example, a student reading Huckleberry Finn, written in 1884, would be warned about the use of the n-word. Someone reading Peyton Place or even Gone with the Wind would be warned the books involve sexual assaults. It’s as if college students believe the world always adhered to twenty-first century ideals of morality and sensitivity. (Trigger warning: It didn’t.)

                This belief is leading to the defacing and removal of historical monuments—most notably those pertaining to the Civil War. (Trigger warning: The Civil War was fought between 1861 and 1865; it happened, and many southerners, some of whom who owned slaves, fought in the war, were considered heroes, and monuments were built to them.) The Harvard Law School shield was changed to omit any reference to the Royall family, who owned slaves in the Eighteenth Century. (Trigger warning: Slavery was legal in the Eighteenth Century, not only in the colonies but in the mother country, which outlawed it in 1833.) Princeton students want the name of Woodrow Wilson removed from a building named after him because the former president of the college was a racist. (Trigger warning: Wilson was indeed a racist and generally a nasty piece of work, but he did become President of the United States; I’d say keep the name and put up a plaque detailing how he suspended civil liberties during World War I and hope our President-elect doesn’t do the same.) A similar controversy at Yale involved the John C. Calhoun building. (Trigger warning: Google him yourself.)

                My point in bringing up all these instances of overreach and campus trivia is to focus on what some of us have been considering Important Issues. But take another look at them—wedding cakes for gays, which bathrooms transgendered people should be able to use, campus speakers, Halloween costumes, historic monuments, building names, etc. If you consider what these issues mean to most of America, you’ll find, frankly, my dear, most people just don’t give a damn. Most people are concerned with living day to day, making enough in a difficult economy to feed their families, nursing their old car along because they can’t afford a new one, dealing with aging parents and possibly boomerang kids. When they hear those privileged enough to attend college raging about these issues, they no doubt think, “WTF?”

                Shortly after the election a letter from Edward Warren of Cambridge, Massachusetts to the New York Times summed up what he thought happened succinctly. He’s building a cabin in northern New Hampshire. He’s gotten to know his neighbors in New Hampshire, and he writes, “While my Harvard Kennedy School classmates tend to talk about microaggressions and systemic bias, my rural neighbors deal with opioid addiction, unfulfilling jobs and PTSD from a war they fought for a country that seems to be moving on without them.” 

                In another era, these people would be coming after authority figures with pitchforks. We can thank cable TV and Netflix for keeping them home and occupied watching The Walking Dead. But we can’t really blame them for voting for change.

I am hoping for the best, but it’s difficult to be hopeful with nominees like Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, an organization he’s sued early and often (possibly on behalf of Devon Industry, whose 50-story building dominates the downtown Oklahoma City skyline), former Texas Governor Rick Perry for Secretary of Energy, an agency he campaigned to eliminate (Pruitt’s  and Perry’s nominations remind me of Ronald Reagan’s nominating James Watt for Secretary of Interior), and Exxon president Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State (who brings to mind Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson, former president of General Motors, who when asked about potential conflicts of interest, simply said what’s good for General Motors is good for America—prompting “L’il Abner” cartoonist Al Capp to invent General Bullmoose who believed “What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA”).  Betsy Prince DeVos, who is married to the Amway cult—er, MLM heir and whose brother, Eric, founded the military contractor Blackwater, will be Secretary of Education.

                It’s going to be an interesting four years.

                One last thing. This was the fifth election in which the winner of the popular vote did not win the electoral vote. With the exception of the election of 1824 (before there was a Republican party), every one of these elections has gone to Republicans. It’s high time something was done about the Electoral College. (I’m amazed it survived the election of 2000.)

                We may not be able to get the Electoral College eliminated, but we can change the system state-by-state. Nebraska and Maine split their electoral votes. Let’s start lobbying our state representatives to do the same in the other forty-eight states.

                Up next: The Universal Basic Income.

© 2016 Larry Roth