Megabucks

        I’ve changed my mind about lottery tickets. The last lottery ticket I bought was in 1977, and since then, if asked, and perhaps more frequently without being asked I have opined/pontificated that the lottery is a tax on the poor and a fool’s game.

        Last week the Megabucks lottery reached $650 Million, and tickets were selling around the country at the rate of 1 million tickets an hour.  On TV, after the news anchors speculated on whether they would quit their jobs if they won,  a parade of mathematicians spoke about the odds, the house’s take and the comparative advantages of either going to Las Vegas or betting on penny stocks.  I had just finished Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and  Slow and could have made the argument myself.  Buying lottery tickets is wholly irrational.

           At our Monday staff meeting it turned out that almost everyone had played Megabucks.  At first I thought they were just nuts, but as the discussion evolved it was something different.  One guy went to the store with his teenage son who is not old enough to buy a ticket, and they spent the trip together discussing what numbers to pick.  Another guy had a family fantasy discussion about what they would do with their winnings. 

         It became clear that winning was really secondary.  The ticket is a $1 admission to fantasy.  No one had a regret about the dollar because the trip with the teenager and the family fantasy time were worth well more than a dollar.  Playing the game was the cheapest fun since a bottle of Ripple.

           I can not say if most people who play Megabucks can afford it or do it in some desperate need to win, and I can say that it is still a tax on poor people and should be abolished immediately, but the next time Megabucks goes over $300 Million – count me in!

In Defense of Thugocracies

Eric X. Li identified only as “a venture capitalist” has written of the impending doom of democracies.  In an op-ed in the Gray Lady http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/opinion/why-chinas-political-model-is-superior.html?emc=eta1 on February 16, 2012 and other writings readily Google-able Li, indeed a Chinese venture capitalist argues that democracies dangle precariously by the twin slim threads of (i) rational human actions and (ii) God-given rights. 

Li makes the points that American government has traditionally been less a democracy than a republican form and that various voting restrictions have concentrated disproportionate power in elites.  As the current political silly season careens from the ridiculous to the absurd he notes that we are morphing from “one man, one vote” to “one dollar, one vote”.  All true.  Sad but true.

Li contrasts the American faith-based set of values from a not-necessarily fact-based faith, with Beijing’s view that political privileges are “to be negotiated based on the needs and conditions of the nation”.    He notes that China is “prepared to allow popular participation in political decisions if an when  it is…favorable to the country’s national interest”.  His view is that popular participation at Tiananmen Square “went too far”, and that the alternative to violent repression “would have been far worse”.

           Ah, but who gets to decide “the country’s national interest”?  Li mentions “the ideological shackles of the destructive Cultural Revolution”, but that, of course, what the Chinese rulers thought was in the “national interest” at the time, and are the Party bosses today smarter than Chairman Mao?

           It turns out there are other Internet English language Chinese apologists who are fond of quoting Winston Churchill, that “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those others that have been tried” or “The best case against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter”.  I expect that irony translates poorly.

           We have visited these concepts before.   Li’s China is a Thugocracy.  http://contrariat.blogspot.com/search?q=thugocracy.  He has faith in the current thugs, wholly befitting a Communist venture capitalist.  However, if the prior thugs happen to return to power the venture capitalists could well end up blindfolded in front of a wall “in the national interest”.  It is by no means neat, but I’ll take my chances here.

Living The Dream

               I have changed my standard “How are you?” response.

           For most people it’s “Fine (or “Good”).  How are you?” which always seemed to me to deflect rather than convey information.  Not that the question really wants an answer, but it is a conventional fill in for pleasantries.  Very formulaic.

           Some years ago I noted that a friend and business associate used to respond “Great!”, and it much suited his optimistic, irrepressible personality.  He is well known as a brilliant salesman financial whiz-now-not-so-much-a-kid, but the “Great!” was infectious, and I adopted it some time in the '80’s.  It’s unusual enough to be rather a trademark, and people who phone me have come to expect it.

           What is truly bizarre is the self-fulfilling part.  Somehow putting on the façade of cheerful optimism does a decent job in creating the real thing.  I don’t know how that works, but if I tell 10 people a day “Great” then I get to believe it.  How does that work?

           Recently I’ve decided to up the ante.  After many years I’m no longer “Great” to phone calls.  Now I’m “Living the Dream”.  In the middle of a typical day at the office it goes like this:

           “Hello, it’s Bob.  How are you?

           “Living the Dream!”

           (silence or guffaw)

           Or, “Well you must know something no one else does”

           I expect most people think the humor is in the contrast between the mundane, or the conflict they call about or the eternal march of paper from the inbox to the outbox,  and “Living the Dream”.  Some people assume it must be sarcastic, but it’s not that simple.  As far as I can tell it is two things – first is positive reinforcement internalized, the odd way in which saying it makes it so, it really lifts me up and makes me feel more optimistic than comes naturally, and second is a thought that harkens back a couple of years http://contrariat.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html  so that perhaps I really am Living the Dream.  Might as well think so.

Veterans Day

           When did Veterans Day get to be a big deal?  When did it get to be any deal?  Because it certainly was this year.

           I am a veteran (Lt. (jg) USNR), but as my service was during the Vietnam era both my service and the reactions of others to it were measured, or perhaps a better word is conflicted.  In the days when returning veterans were probably spat upon in Oakland the service was something I had done and wanted behind me.

           My sense is that the excesses of those days have engendered a reaction some 40 years later.  People of all stripes seem to be more appreciative of the service of the young men and women who go off to war, and expressions of thanks are now common.

           In our world – each November 11 for many years I have worn my summer work uniform with its gold striped epaulettes to the office where cake is served in the afternoon.  A young associate was a captain in the Marine Corps, so I salute the senior officer and he cuts the cake with his sword.  It is what we do.

           This year I wore my uniform jacket across the street to the pub for lunch, and a waitress said, “Thank you”.  Egads.  At the synagogue on the next day the veterans were asked to rise for recognition and afterwards I got a few “I didn’t know…”s.  My goodness.

           All this from other people has made me have a thought I never had before.  Maybe it really was a big deal.  When other people did whatever they did after college I went away for two years, living on a ship, sent to standby for trouble to the coasts of Haiti and Trinidad.  I was not sent to Vietnam and was never in serious danger, but I went, did what they asked me to do for $348 a month and came home.   Veterans Day has a meaning.

The World Would Be A Better Place

The world would be a better place if I had more money.  

 Or at least such seems to me to be the media message of the moment.  I first noticed it some years ago in the letters to the editor where the executive director of some well-intentioned organization would explain how great is the need for his services and why the government should fund it.  The conflation of public and private interest.  We witness the apotheosis of the drive to privatize the public treasury in the “Occupy” movement.  The “99%” have no demands, but many grievances.  A spokesperson has told the TV camera that they don’t want to have specific requests because someone might disagree with it and cause a split – they want to be all inclusive.  So, there are some who want student loans forgiven, some who want mortgage debt forgiven, some want more health benefits, some who want other people to pay more taxes and not a few who take more traditional views in favor of killing Jews.

           Ask not what you can do for your country.   Ask what your country can do for you.

           Since they stand for everything everyone must find something to like.  I understand the simple concept that the government has been expending vast sums to make rich people richer.  The investment bankers who held the nation hostage in 2008 to be bailed out in the billions used to pay their bonuses have set the standard.  Yesterday the heads of FMNA and FHLMC testified before Congress justifying their $5M and $9M bonuses paid for their agencies to lose billions.  They should be testifying at their parole boards.  The President’s cronies obtained $500 million giveaway loans to Solyndra and congressmen are trading as insiders.  Ask not.  Tell not.

           The “Occupy” folks have taken a big idea and made it small.  I’m sure the government would be happy to buy them off, but the government is broke.

Downgraded

We been downgraded.  Totally dissed.

Standard & Poors has downgraded US government debt,  and the Dow fell over 1000 points, about 9% in the past three days.  Early reports say that most of the stock sellers were in a flight to safety – to recently downgraded US government debt now with rates falling due to increased demand.   Which I suppose makes some kind of perverse sense, much like the debate which preceded it.

           The S&P action follows our national humiliation as the President and Congress tried to raise the debt ceiling,  a crisis manufactured by Republicans to assure that any economic train wreck occurred while President Obama is in office. http://contrariat.blogspot.com/2010/11/train-wreck-ahead.html.  The failure of Congress to address the nation’s debt and revenue issues was stunning and craven, and I happened to have observed the worst of it through the eyes of the world while visiting #2 Son in England.  They think we are nuts, and they are right.

           No one I know thinks much other than that there is a serious problem, and that the necessary steps to deal with it include some debatable mix of spending cuts and  revenue increases, something like what President Obama almost worked out with Speaker Boehner.  Contraria believes, however that this fight was twice lost by the Democrats.  First, in December 2010 with majorities in both houses and the 2001 tax cuts about to expire the Democrat majorities caved to the Republicans in extending the tax cuts.  The President after running and railing against the tax cuts sugar-coated his defeat by announcing that the extensions were a good way to stimulate the economy.  Bullshit, but it proved that the President could be bullied by the Republicans and that the Democrats were as usual wholly unprincipled.

           Worse was the scene after the President and the Speaker reached most of an agreement when Senator Reid announced a Democratic plan with no new revenues.  When the President stood alone against both parties in Congress Boehner could not support new revenue when Reid did not, so the negotiations collapsed.

           The Congress manufactured a crisis and failed to deal with it.

           We deserve to be downgraded, but no good will come from this.

Numero Uno Hijo está casado

        Number One Son is married, or somewhat so.  His wedding is in October, in Cancun, Mexico but we have had a civil ceremony at our home.  So he is married or married with wedding to follow.

           My freshly minted daughter-in-law with her freshly minted MBA is both delightful and accomplished, from Mexico, and we have been adjusting for quite a while.  Her parents Rosa and José Luis who were in town for the graduation understand a little English and speak even less, so in anticipation of meeting them Trophy Wife and I have been studying Spanish since the winter at the local high school.

           It all went rather well, I thought.  José Luis and Rosa made the best of it, strangers in a strange land, and graciously accommodated my effusive, if bumbling efforts to communicate.  When I spoke English my daughter-in-law translated into Spanish, and when I spoke Spanish she again translated into Spanish.  Mostly I said with more enthusiasm than accuracy “Yo hablo Espaňol muy bien!”.  What I noticed was that if I managed to get out something intelligible it seemed to engender a response, in Spanish which I could not in any way understand. “No entiendo nada!”.

           It was in any event a beautiful day in our back yard.  José Luis marveled at the tall trees which they do not have in the high desert of Monterrey, a brother whose visa did not come through attended by Skype, Grandma was quite pleased, and Number One Son did what he was supposed to do.   More passages, more good stuff.