Thursday, November 29, 2018

When Dems are Dumb

New Yorkers are astonishingly quick to complain. People moan all the time, and are very quick to turn against someone or something. It takes guts to perform on a New York stage or a New York sports field, because boos will start raining down pretty quickly. Philadelphia has the same issue. It can be fun but it is also cruel, and often counter-productive, as sports stars can lose confidence or decide to play in a friendlier town.

So I suppose I should not have been surprised a couple of weeks ago by the aftermath of the announcement that Amazon had chosen Queens for part of its new headquarters, thereby creating tens of thousands of well paid jobs. I for one was delighted by the news – the career prospects of our college sophomore had just improved significantly.

But locals, including many Democrat politicians, rushed in to complain. Locals all thought the rents would go up and the subways would become more crowded. People in public housing nearby thought prices would go up and that they would be squeezed out. Everyone seemed to think that the mayor and governor had negotiated poorly with Amazon and given too many incentives. And Democrats riled against a system that seems to place giant corporations ahead of ordinary citizens.

Get a life, guys! Would you rather have lots of jobs or no prospects? Sure, the rents will go up but more people will have income to pay for them. Sure, the subways will become more crowded, but de Blasio has already shown initiative at infrastructure improvements and Amazon will support it too, maybe with a new LIRR stop in LIC. If you are in public housing, surely jobs on your doorstep is just what you want, so shape up and earn one. Who knows whether the negotiation was over-generous, all we know is that they won. And it is quite true that the system values corporations over citizens, and established successful areas over struggling ones, so how about coming up with some policies to fix that?

Sometimes you wonder what sort of world some Democrats would rather live in. Maybe they would like one where all jobs are equally paid and part of the public sector? Oh wait, the Russians tried that one and it didn’t seem to work too well. Steven Pinker reminded me earlier this year that market capitalism, for all its faults, has been the driver of tremendous human progress around the world. The smart move is not to rail against it but to use smart policy to moderate its detrimental side effects.

This matters politically. Virtually the only refrain that the Republicans have that has any resonance beyond single issues like abortion is jobs. As a refrain it is almost meaningless unless the Democrats give it meaning. Jobs are a flimsy defence behind deregulation that puts citizens at risk and places ever more power with capital. But it becomes meaningful if the other side appears to be somehow against jobs. And the reaction to the Amazon announcement seems to prove that some of them actually are.

This is one example of Democrats being dumb. While the congressional leadership has actually been pretty smart lately, thanks to Pelosi and others, there are other examples as well. It is a hard position to finesse, but sometimes Democrats can appear as though they care about groups on the fringe at the expense of more everyday concerns.

It is hard to finesse because right is usually on their side. Trans people shouldn’t face discrimination. LGBT, female and racial minority rights are a multi-generational struggle that must be continually fought, so that progress can be sustained in the face of bigotry disguised as evangelicalism. But while true, it can’t dominate the platform or the daily rhetoric, because for most folk outside big cities the concerns are rather marginal. Letting these issues dominate the discussion fuels the belief in the heartland that elite city-types really don’t care about people struggling to stay afloat in hollowed out towns.

The other own goal is immigration. All we here from Democrats is horror at the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers by the Trump administration. Again, that is justified and fair, but it simply feeds into the fears stoked by Trump and his cohorts. It was telling that immigration, via the caravan, was the dominant tactic used by Republicans leading up to the midterm elections. This has been shown to work around the world, and it worked here too.

But the Democrats have created many of their own problems. They simply have to come out against illegal immigration. Actually, the Obama administration did more to curb illegal immigration than predecessors. It is striking how many of the reports about deportations concern people who came in illegally and then committed further offences. Well, it may seem harsh, and we certainly should not be hunting these people down too hard, but in the end this is just following the law, and Democrats should say so. Then they can articulate a balanced policy, and the issue would be neutralised to a degree.

The Democrats are not short of issues where they can create a platform that will resonate with enough voters that they will need in 2020 to unseat Trump and flip the senate. Pelosi spotted healthcare as fertile territory, and that will not change. Another is the broad topic of sleaze and corruption, where the opposition commit daily own goals which will only become even easier to expose once the new House can exercise due oversight. This work should remain measured but persistent and the fruits will be abundant. Gerrymandering and voter suppression can be lumped into this topic. Let it crescendo into 2020 and reap the benefits then, rather than looking for impeachment beforehand.

I suspect a third issue will emerge over the coming year; the economy. Trump has played his cards too early on this one. Within a year it will become obvious that the injection of steroids represented by the tax bill and budget expansions will not have made ordinary people any better off, while stock market will have retreated and it will be clear that bullying GM is no substitute for an industrial policy. Even if a trade deal with China is announced with great fanfare, the tariffs will have hurt people too.

Healthcare, the economy and corruption will be plenty to fight and win with in 2020, represented by a young (not too minority) candidate of hope and optimism. People overrate Trump’s strategic skills – in practice he will dig his own electoral grave with hubris, and, by then, frustration and weariness. By all means emphasise other things too in the cities and on the coast. There are a million other worthy issues, from climate to civil rights, criminal justice, dreamers, education, and many more, wow, how many more. But focus the noise on those that will win the states that flipped in 2016.

And please, please, don’t be the party against jobs.

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

All Our Saints

Homilies are in many ways the centrepiece of most church services. A typical mass has the ritual celebration of the Eucharist as its climax, but that part of the service is indeed ritual, in that it does not change from service to service. The first part of the service consists of readings from scripture and then the homily, where the presider tries to interpret the readings of, if they prefer, offer some other message.

The homily is the part of the service that can surprise and inspire. Nowadays I find myself in several churches across two Christian denominations, and one advantage is the chance to listen to many different celebrants. As children, most of us remember homilies (or sermons) as insufferably long and boring, and indeed many still are. It is hard to be inspired by an admonishing lecture, nor by a discourse on obscure theology, nor by some boilerplate provided by a Vatican website or elsewhere.

But fortunately the dull is no more common than the inspiring. A good homily requires certain basic attributes: seven minutes is a good length; it needs a beginning a middle and an end; and it must be delivered clearly at a steady pace. I often compare a homily to a blog, for they have many similarities.

However, in my experience the key ingredient in a good homily is some courage. It should make some connection between scripture and issues facing us in the present day, and not just with generic messages like helping the poor. Sadly, in my experience most Roman Catholic homilists, especially in the US, are frightened, whether by the Vatican or some more proximate part of the hierarchy, and that courage is missing or suppressed. A glorious exception was our pastor in The Hague, Sjaak de Boer: he had a position where he exercised a certain freedom from the stifling bureaucracy, and he used it to full effect. His homilies are so good that three books of them have been published.

I find many of the Episcopalian homilists here rather more inspiring. Their leadership must be more tolerant – though I don’t recall much tolerance in the Anglican Church of the UK, to which they are affiliated. I haven’t heard any evangelical homilies yet, and I’m not sure I’d like to either, for the hypocrisy implied by many of their positions seems indefensible, at least to me. Probably, I should seek out some such churches, in a spirit of being ready to understand and learn and to challenge my own assumptions.

I like the new young priest at the old people’s home where I volunteer. Homilies at his midweek masses are very short – it must be an encouragement to brevity when most of the congregation is nodding off. I was there on All Saints Day, and his homily included a simple statement that set me thinking. He referred to the saints as simply a few examples, suggesting that there is less of a boundary between canonised saints and the rest of us, in both directions: many canonised saints will have had flaws, and all of us have some saintly qualities. Then he stated that most of us have had people in our own lives that we are able to look to as our own saints.

Well, I thought, that is a nice concept, but I can’t think of many off hand. Perhaps his assumption was that most of us had a parent or early mentor we thought of in saintly terms. Not me. I smiled recently when my sister said that the longer the time since our mum died, the more able she was to appreciate some of her qualities. I feel the same, and sadly she may have to be dead a hundred years before either of us will allow her to enter the pantheon of sainthood, God bless her soul.

Then I thought of all the rest of my family, then my schoolteachers, my college friends, and even my bosses. This was quite a long list, but I could not identify a single candidate. Everyone had some deep flaw, and I could identify nobody who I had witnessed show consistent kindness to others when such kindness carried no personal benefit. That kindness became my benchmark for beatification: built on respect, offered without selfishness or need for gratitude, exhibited often. Building on the message of the priest, we don’t need to be conspicuous heroes to be saints, just kind souls.

Wow, I thought, perhaps this helps me to understand myself. I’m pretty sure that nobody on the same list would classify me as any sort of saint either. Indeed, I recall a lot of gratuitous feedback, especially at work, where people appreciated my intelligence and candour but blanched at my unkindness. Well, we love to blame our parents for everything, and we need to take responsibility for our own behaviour, but it appears that I lacked many positive role models.

I became more encouraged when I expanded my search into more recent times. Both of the families that I have married into have some wonderfully kind characters. Since I’ve started attending church, I’ve come across a few great examples, not usually the clergy but other kind souls. More recently, at the nursing home, a few of the residents and many of the nuns fill me with awe at their kindness.

But my real ah ha moment came when I thought about some of the younger people I’ve been exposed to over the last fifteen years or so. A few of my peers and many of my subordinates in my last period in Shell came to mind. So did a number of the young musicians I have sung with recently. These young people show respect and kindness naturally and seem to live in an environment that supports such behaviour. A little of it may even have rubbed off on me.

With this trail of thought I was able to draw a few general conclusions. First, I wondered what got in the way of all those who fail to meet the criteria. Common factors appear to be confidence and competence, a key part of which seems to be mental health. If you are anxious or out of your depth or drowning in some way, it is harder to consistently consider others. These factors condemned most of my bosses and many relatives. One way to grow confidence and mental health may be to drastically simplify life, in the way the nuns choose to.

Next, it is clear that sainthood begets sainthood. I have even witnessed that in a small way myself. If we are surrounded by positive influences, we can slowly learn to follow. If our lives are full of suspicion and fear and unkindness, it becomes very hard to overcome those burdens. This is just one more way in which inequality becomes embedded in society. This insight helped me to appreciate those many role models, usually maternal figures, who are able to act in a saintly way within tough African American communities.

And my last lesson is the familiar one about progress. If my own experience is in any representative and not a function of my own delusion or wishful thinking, then humanity seems to be becoming more saintly. Otherwise, how come so many of my personal saints are millennials? Sainthood begets sainthood, and this can work for individuals or for whole societies.

It may be ironic that the first generation to largely reject organised religion might be the first to be able to live closer to the values promoted by those religions. Even so, the thought is a profoundly uplifting one. And, for me, that is a great example of why many homilies are well worth listening to.       

Monday, November 5, 2018

My Top Ten Frugality Tips

As a numerate cynic brought up in a family that treated frugality as its religion, I believe I understand the topic of managing money quite well. Recently inspired by the Money Mustaches, I have compiled ten tips for leading a successfully frugal life.

Many of the tips are hard to implement, but tip one is the hardest. It is to invest in familiarity of basic finance theory. As many as half of the population are baffled and repelled by all mathematics, and spend their lives avoiding the topic wherever possible. Sadly, in managing personal finances, it is not possible. I believe a basic school maths curriculum should focus on the key relevant competences of arithmetic, budgeting, probability and estimating, but, until it does, we all have to try to compensate.

There are two halves. The easier half is budgeting, because all that involves is adding and subtracting, and even poor schools teach that. At its simplest, a budget starts with a balance in a repository such as bank account, and predicts cash in and out over a defined period to lead to an estimated balance at the end. Then actual expenses are compared with the budget, leading to a new opening balance and, hopefully, a better attempt to predict the following period, because of the knowledge gained. Especially with excel available, this skill should not be beyond the wit of most.

The tougher half links cash to wealth. The knowledge is not essential, but darned helpful in many ways. A profit and loss statement adjusts the cash flow for a period by including some virtual incomes and charges, reflecting items that do not lead to cash flows in this period but which average cash flows across periods. The only difference between cash flow and profit is this sort of item. The third statement is the balance sheet, that tracks accumulated wealth, which is the sum of all the previous profit and loss statements. The balance sheet tries to estimate assets and liabilities, by guessing what every item would be worth were it sold (or cashed in) today.

My second lesson is that wealth begets wealth and debt begets debt. The Money Mustaches show that if you can accumulate some wealth, then you can retire early and still live well for years, because of the income that the wealth generates. Socialists like me bemoan the way money tends to flow to the rich, but in simple terms that is only natural and fair, because the rich did something in the first place to earn the wealth that generates more wealth. So we are wrong, but also right, in that good public policy tries to dampen the effect by taxing assets and high incomes.

The main takeaway from this lesson for most people is to be very careful about getting into debt, because it can swallow you up. It is OK taking a mortgage or buying big items like cars on credit, but only if you can confidently predict future income to pay off the resulting liabilities. Just building up debt and trying to roll it up into more debt usually does not work forever. People in their 40’s should be paying down mortgages not refinancing them. Maybe I take this advice too far in my own life; I was taught to fear debt and addiction terribly. Nothing makes me shudder more than watching people gamble uncontrollably, since it combines those two fears.

Like many of the lessons, this one applies to businesses and even countries as well as to individuals. The US can get away with ramping up the deficit for many years, because it has a reserve currency and good credit. But over time the cost of servicing the debt creates a debt spiral, and then the creditors start calling at the door.

Lesson three is to budget, and to follow up with tracking and decisions. It is like dieting. We can all set a calorie target and set off on a good road. But we tend to break our own rules and then to drift before being jolted into setting another target. What is missing is the follow up, tracking what actually happened, and then making tough choices based on this reality rather than some naïve dreams of our capabilities. Budgeting is the same. Setting the first monthly budget is the easy bit. But it will only work if we then track the differences between our guesses and what then transpires, and then actively use this knowledge to improve both the next budget and our future frugal behaviour.

Lesson four is related, and it is about special and unforeseen expenses. Special includes vacations, big treats, gifts and times like Christmas. Unforeseen include family calls, medical bills, car maintenance and so on. For both types, if you budget and track over lots of months, you’ll start to see how much to allow, even though for any particular month you won’t know exactly what costs will emerge. But don’t just hope, or naively assume that just because costs feel like one-offs, they won’t recur. It is a sobering thought that most American families are just one or two unforeseen expenses away from real hardship.

Lesson five is about how to manage finances in a relationship. In truth, I have no idea how to do this. Every couple that makes this work well seems to have a different approach. You can either merge everything and have joint accounts, or try to keep everything separate with each contributing agreed shares to common expenses. Both of these have horrible flaws and can lead to terrible arguments. But I think the key lesson is to communicate and to be transparent. So force the discussion early on, agree to something and then talk about how it is going. There is no faster or more common way for relationships to turn sour, except perhaps sleeping with someone else.

Lesson six is a reminder that frugality and generosity are not exclusive; indeed we should aim for both. You don’t have to be cheap to be frugal, but you do have to budget for what you are likely to spend, whether on a passion or on compassion. For charity, I like the idea of having a budget set aside. Then you can choose whether to give to every homeless person on the subway or hard-up family members or every cause in the mail or to chosen charities or even all of these. But it all comes from the charity pot, so you know where you stand and can make choices.

Lesson seven suggests a financial clean up every couple of years. Businesses find they need a cost-cutting effort every so often, because there are always good projects to spend on. It is the same for all of us. It makes sense to perform a big review sometimes, usually looking for chances to save, or to sell some assets. Our homes are usually full of clutter, and our finances are often much the same.

The last three lessons are more tactical. Number eight is to know frugality enemies. 90% of the financial industry comes in this category. I used to think financial firms and advisors were trying to help me, but now I know better. They want me to get into debt so they can make money servicing that debt, or they want me to spend on services that benefit them. Do not trust them; avoid them wherever possible, except where you can use their tricks to your benefit, such as churning credit cards. Most advertisers are also your enemy – the only thing they want you to do is spend, and if you really needed what they had, they would not need to advertise. The harder they push it, the less you want it.

Number nine is a tactic to build on number eight, and it concerns special offers. My lesson is to ignore all special offers until you have decided to buy something. Never think of what you have saved; only what you have spent. But as soon as you have decided to buy something, then it is time to shop around for offers.

My last advice is a bit old-fashioned, and it is to use cash. There is something about forking out bits of paper that give a feeling of spending and control. It is too easy to flash a card and to somehow treat the expenditure as unreal or deferred. It would be hard to achieve nowadays, but the ultimate in budgeting would be to use cash for everything. I can’t do that, but I do note the frequency that I visit ATM’s and I find myself pulling back when it becomes too common. The last thing the finance industry wants to you use is cash, and they are your enemy, so it is probably a good idea to use it.