Dear (Eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (#3)

Dear (E) G & GG (#3),

As promised, Here is Poppa's take on the recent, unexpected triumph of the Donald.

The Donald won because he's an expert in what I call gut first/brain later. Scott Adams, semi-famous cartoonist, one of my virtual gurus and (like me a perpetual) student of human nature, would say that the Donald grasps that H. Sapiens are meat puppets that react emotionally/instinctively/intuitively to most everything, and then rationalize their behavior afterward.

As Martha Stewart used to say (still says?), it's a good thing, or at least it was. Because...

H. sapiens have spent a lot more time fighting their way to the top of the food chain than they have enjoying the benefits of having won the real hunger games. Visceral reactions are dramatically faster than rational ones. Effective visceral reactions became innate biases because sitting around a cozy fire with the gang and eating -- rather than being eaten -- rocks.


"The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."
-Salena Zito

The traditional approach for a dude/dudette seeking to be elected/reelected to a position in The Gubmint, or even just the gubmint, has been to tell enough people what they want to hear and then if elected/reelected doing/saying whatever will get 'em reelected to the same or an even better position. There's an entire industry devoted to helping politicians/would be politicians do this.

 BIG BUT.

The Donald, like the other Wizard of Oz, and who may be the best salesman the world has ever seen, understands that the quickest, most effective way to make the sale is by emotional/psychological manipulation. Capture the heart and the customer will invent a justification.

The word manipulation, to me at least, generally has a shady connotation. I use it here in a neutral sort of way. As my late wife, that sadly only one of you will remember, used to say, it's not what you do so much as why you do it. Example: Advertising that guilts you into donating to a worthy, legitimate charity v. advertising that manipulates you into buying a worthless piece of crap.

The customer, in this case, is the American people. The polls tell us that most of us think the country is on the wrong track, and they have for years. In my semi-humble opinion, this is true, because this is the attitude I encounter on a daily basis. What we're fighting over is what path to take and who should be the tour guide.

So, how does a politically (mostly) non-ideological, been there, done that gazillionaire with only one more prize left to win, one more achievement to add to his resume to obtain a sort of virtual/historical immortality become the CEO of the USA?

He turns himself into the political version of a TV wrestling superstar. Most TV wrestling fans over the age of 10 or so, understand it's not real, it's entertainment. They still enjoy it.

Most declared Trumpets understand, to one degree or another, that the Donald deliberately farts in church just to rattle the chains of the fat, smug, complacent church elders who run things primarily for their own benefit. They still enjoy it.

In TV wrestling, or soap operas for that matter, "good" guys persons become "bad" guys persons and back again at the flip of a switch. "Bad" guys persons are often quite popular characters.

America didn't just elect Donald J. Trump president, they elected a character he created, that I call (one of his wives thought it up) the Donald.

The Donald is what you get when the hyper-partisans of the left and right have managed to divide the nation into two roughly equal teams of bitter rivals.

The Donald is what you get when one out of every 15 jobs is a government job and the folks who have given up on finding a job aren't counted as part of the official unemployment rate. The Donald is what you get when millions of people who want full-time work can't get it.

The Donald is what you get when his opponent is a woman whose platform was "I'm a woman, and it's my turn, and I'm gonna' give you all sorts of free shtuff."

The Donald -- with his ever-shifting positions, the occasional lies, the hyperbole, the venom, the midnight tweeting -- is what you get when things are so screwed up America is prepared to take a chance on choosing a president based on the good show he put on.

For now, all we can do is wait and hope, because no one is sure exactly what he's going to do. In the meantime, we get to enjoy watching him torment the people that still take the bad guy/crazy person persona literally. I was one, I admit, for a minute or two.

I decided, no hoped, that it was a game prior to the election. But for the record, I didn't vote for him (or her), so if it turns out he is the Hitler of the new millennium, don't blame me.

Have an OK day.

Permanent Record Cards

[Gentlereaders, for those of you keeping track, this week was supposed to be the third letter to my (eventual) grandstickies and great-grandstickies. So far, I've been relaying my impressions of the recent presidential reality show and its subsequent aftershocks. I'd planned on discussing why I think the Donald, the Wizard of Oz of the new millennium, won in spite of the fact that most of the members of the infotainment industry who specialize in this sort of thing predicted otherwise.

I tried. But I'm up to here with the nonstop daily speculations, and the speculations about speculations, of the 24-hour news cycle. If George Washington found a way to be transported forward in time to our era I think he would want to know at what point we had decided to switch to an elected monarch, and why. Well, at least we get to pick our king or queen and can fire them in four years. 

The reason, of course, for the nonstop daily speculations, and the speculations about speculations, is because The Gubmint is so large, so powerful, and in hock up to Uncle Sam's nose. Not exactly what George and his homies had in mind. 

I'll return to the subject of how the Donald pulled it off next week. In the meantime, below is something I wrote a while back about The Gubmint, a business that lives off of The Gubmint, and my adventures in Catholic grade school. 

Spoiler: 2,700,000,000.

Begged question: If Mr. Peabody could perfect a WAYBAC machine, did he ever try his paw at going way forward?]



For reasons not worth bothering you with, I googled the phrase, "total number of civilian employees of the US federal government" which, I thought, was the sort of query that was so obvious and straightforward that the answer would not only be the very first hit, Google might even display the number within the first hit, obviating the need to even click on it.

Nope.

The very first hit was a page published by opm.gov. Clicking on it brought up a chart that displayed civilian and military employment numbers from 1962 to 2014. OPM? hmm, I wonder, what that might be? I went to the opm.gov home page and encountered a large and impressive blue and gold banner (that included a shield) for the NATIONAL BACKGROUND INVESTIGATIONS BUREAU.

What!?! Uh-oh, they've finally got me. Sister Mary McGillicuddy wasn't telling a little white lie in an effort to control/motivate the little heathens in her charge. I actually do have a Permanent Record Card, and the NBIC has caught up with me. Well, it was a good run, it took them almost six four decades to get around to me. They must really have a huge backlog.

I started thinking about all of the sins/transgressions/bad grades/etc. I had accumulated in my 39 years here on Earth. Wait a sec', that's just an ex-Catholic thing. Oh, sorry, those gentlereaders (and my G & G-Gs) that didn't go to an American Catholic grade school prior to when it became possible to be an American Catholic and still believe pretty much whatever you want, this must be confusing.

All through Catholic grade school (my parents couldn't afford the tuition so I don't know if this applied to Catholic high school at the time) we were warned that we had a Permanent Record Card and that it would follow us for the rest of our lives. Our PRC not only contained a detailed listing of all of our grades and such, any given nun or lay-teacher, any given year, had the power to write anything they wanted on our card.

I have an image in my head of a huge, shabby, nondescript warehouse located in a seedy, decayed neighborhood somewhere in inner city Pittsburgh. One of its many large, cavernous rooms contains thousands of dusty file cabinets filled with Permanent Record Cards.

The average potential employer doesn't even know that it exists, or that there are warehouses just like it scattered all over America. But The Gubmint, the gubmints, private detectives (legitimate and otherwise), and the world's espionage agencies know.

After my heart rate and breathing returned to normal and my more or less rational side reasserted itself, I thought, wait a minute, my computer hasn't locked up, powered down, or exploded. No one is crashing through the door screaming, "Get down, everybody down!" like they do on TV. Not so much as even a bogus warning message that terrible things were about to happen if I didn't do as instructed.

Phew! That was embarrassing. Dana, my imaginary gentlereader, and Marie-Louise, my beautiful muse, started giggling and high-fiving each other.

I ignored them and then set out to determine, what exactly is The National Background Investigations Bureau? So, I clicked on the about button of opm.gov and discovered the following.

Vision Statement: "The OPM will become America's model employer for the 21st century." Go big or go home! (or, be vague and relax, there's a lot of years left in the 21st century).

Mission: "Recruit, retain and honor a world-class workforce for the American people"

Ahh! It's The Gubmint's HR department. I'll bet OPM stands for Office of Personnel Management. Okey dokey. Wait a minute... this adventure began when I clicked on opm.gov and the big, scary National Backgrounds Investigation Bureau banner appeared on my screen.

I returned to opm.gov and discovered an < and a > at opposite ends of the big, scary banner. My bad. I started clicking on >s and discovered other banners. This agency must be huge. Well, considering the size of The Gubmint, I guess that makes sense. I went exploring. Oh yeah -- the web pages go on seemingly forever. Not exactly shocking -- been there, done that.

[Update. If you go to opm.gov you will most likely encounter a different first banner than the one I did, they change and rotate them.]

If you've never experienced the joy of wandering around any of the websites published by The Gubmint, pick any -- The Gubmint -- entity you can think of and go a-googling. Tabs will multiply faster than the interest and penalties on an IRS judgment.

Also, you might discover one or more private businesses that depend on The Gubmint teat. For example, on this particular journey, I discovered something called FCW (Federal Computer Week --  I'm not sure exactly how I landed there) which is a weekly magazine that "... provides federal technology executives with the information, ideas, and strategies necessary to successfully navigate the complex world of federal business."

Huh? Well, FCW is owned by the 1105 Government Information Group, and according to themselves, "... is the leading provider of integrated information and media to the government market." They do this via five different publications that specialize in keeping track of what up, in five different sectors of The Gubmint.

[Dana, my imaginary gentlereader speaks. What's yer point? Is there a point to any of this bonkercockie?  Oui, ze point please, chimes in Marie-Louise, my muse]

In case you're wondering if I have a point, of course I do, don't I always? -- eventually.

I set out to discover how many civilians work for The Gubmint and discovered that The Gubmint is so huge that a privately owned, for-profit firm exists that makes money by supplying information to employees of The Gubmint -- about The Gubmint.

Where does the money come from? They sell advertising to firms that sell goods and services to -- The Gubmint.

Insert background sounds of a busy bar (murmur, murmur -- clink, clink, etc.) here

"So, where do you work?"

"I write for a publication you've never heard of called Federal Computer Week, its..."

"You must be kidding! Everyone at work is passing around an article from FCW titled, "Government Needs Digital Transformation to Reverse Sliding Satisfaction."  

"You're kidding me! a friend of mine did that one. Where do you work?"

And they lived happily ever after.

Have an OK day.


©2016 Mark Mehlmauer

The History of the World (Part Seven)

Free Trade: Part Two.

In our last episode, I discussed losing my job because of (ominous musical fanfare): The Great Recession. I pointed out that this was/is, generally speaking, a fact. However, I went on and on (you know how I get...) to demonstrate that specifically speaking, the particular reason was/is hard to pin down.

This is true because if I look at what happened via a big picture view, and strive for objectivity, I can observe any number of seemingly concrete facts. But which particular combination of concrete facts resulted in my losing the last real job I had is nothing more than a best guess. And what about facts that I may be completely unaware of? Sheesh, it would seem that economics, like everything else in life, is mostly just a best guess, based on (hopefully) known facts, and subject to our built-in biases.

Macroeconomists, like all social scientists, are much better at explaining things afterward than in making predictions. Why? variables. Just like the weatherman, they have to deal with myriad known unknowns, and, unknown unknowns. Which is a very fancy way of saying they try and make predictions about systems that are so complex in nature that an educated guess is as good as it gets.

This is why a minimally regulated market works better than a highly regulated market. This is why when you go to the supermarket most of the thousands of competitively priced products they carry are always in stock -- literally millions of specialists pursuing their own self-interest and freely trading with each other. This is why communism and strict versions of socialism don't work, it's physically impossible for politicians and bureaucrats to efficiently do what the market does effortlessly.  

If we’re truly free, we’re free to trade. Common sense suggests that both sides in a given transaction are getting something they want out of it or it wouldn’t happen. Life on Earth being what it is, in spite of what we would like it to be, there’s no guarantee the result of a given transaction is going to be completely fair and equitable for both sides. Let the buyer beware, but let the buyer buy, if they want to. Prosecute the weasels, enforce the contracts, read Consumer Reports and ask dad, mom or your dutch uncle what they think. Secure your _______ and jump.

You’ll win some, you’ll lose some, and some will have mixed results. Take comfort in the fact that when you win one the other side may hate and resent you, or at least be thoroughly depressed, often without even having ever actually met you. The entrepreneur that went bankrupt because you didn’t think their world-changing product was worth your money comes to mind. There are no unemployment checks for failed entrepreneurs. Of course, if you fail on a large enough scale The Gubmint may step in and save your bum. And that’s not fair -- unless, of course, your job or business is on the line. But that’s not how it’s supposed to work, and you can’t count on it.

Adam Smith said, “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.”

In other words, the cut-throat competition of the marketplace usually ensures that the customer wins. The huge honking downside is that any given particular producer --  which includes owners, management, and labor -- is subject to being destroyed by its competition.

“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups,” Henry Hazlitt (my emphasis.)  Notice the use of the word art, not science.

“Oh yeah,?  Well that’s all well and good but NAFTA screwed everything up and now they want to do that new one and….”  Whoa cowperson, obviously anyone who lost a job because of NAFTA may understandably be reconsidering not only the wisdom of free trade agreements but capitalism in general. This will no doubt be on their minds while they’re driving to Wally World to take advantage of the low prices and all that stuff in one place in an American made car that’s chock full of parts manufactured all over the globe (as virtually everything is).

Yes, people lose jobs when a trade agreement is implemented and/or a tariff is eliminated. Other jobs are created or expanded, but unfortunately, this is virtually impossible to document with anything resembling precision, which is why both sides can plausibly argue their position. However, economists don’t agree on much but they overwhelmingly agree that free trade will, overall, generate at least as many jobs in a given country as it erases. Also, the consumer (that is, everyone) always wins. The producers (and by extension, their employees) may win or lose. We all want good, secure jobs. But we also all want lots of food, toys, and fun -- for which we wish to pay as little as possible.

Finally, the Reality Checks, Caveats & Premises department has it on good authority the global economy is a fact, not a possibility. Adapt or get run over like a cute little bunny that’s incapable of grasping the potential impact of an 18 wheeler passing through the neighborhood.

After WW 2 ended America was the beneficiary of a boom that lasted for roughly 35 years during which you could drop out of school and still get a job that would provide a good living, and maybe a pension. The rest of the world, having been more or less trashed by WW 2, watched and learned.

More than a few thought they might also enjoy eating regularly and being able to seal the couch in plastic to keep it nice. Liberty might be nice too but that proved to be a lot harder and much more complicated. Life on Earth being what it is, instead of what we would like it to be (a phrase that bears repeating), there’s always gonna’ be bullies that embrace their inner chimpanzee - bullies need victims.

Nowadays, the US buys a lot of shtuff from the rest of the world, because we're rich. The US also sells a lot of shtuff to the rest of the world, the World Bank says the US exported $2,263,253,700,000 trillion dollars worth of stuff in 2014. The 35-year-old bubble of prosperity didn’t pop, the rest of world starting blowing their own bubbles. We export more than we ever have in terms of dollar value, even allowing for inflation. The bad news is that because of productivity gains we're able to do this with a lot fewer people than we used to. A little noted/reported fact is that better than half of the shtuff we import are pieces/parts of shtuff we build here, much of which is then sold there.

And if that ain’t bad enough, now we have to deal with a communication/high tech revolution. It’s like the industrial revolution on steroids (and there still isn’t much work for saddle makers) in that the rules of the game keep changing and nobody on the rules committee has a clue what the final draft is going to be.

And if that ain’t bad enough it turns out there is no rules committee, there are just H. sapiens hoping it all works out somehow, and that the civilization ending sized meteors keep missing the mother ship. It may be the best of times, but it might be the worst of times. As noted in part six, not even the experts of Federal Reserve can be relied upon to accurately tell us what's next.  Also, they’re acutely aware that throwing the wrong lever at the wrong time, considering how complex and interconnected the global economy is, can easily set off a cascade of unexpected and unwelcome consequences.

But I've gotten ahead of myself, and I've exceeded my words quota, and I've sorta jumped from 1776 to the present, and I've gotta go. Stay tuned for part eight, the season finale.

Have an OK day.

P.S. If you're a Facebooker, and you enjoy my shtuff, could I trouble you to click on "Like" at the top of the page? This will (hopefully) help me to find some new readers, and retain existing ones, via your friendly neighborhood cranks Facebook page.