When President Barack Obama took office, the national debt was around $10 trillion. The president then had the U.S. Treasury print a trillion dollars in new money to spur economic growth. And then another trillion dollars or so in deficit financing was arranged to pay for Mr. Obama's first budget. Now the federal debt is said to be about $13 trillion. Or is it?
These numbers greatly understate the national debt. Unfunded liabilities in Medicare and Social Security retirement add something like $30 trillion to the debt. A myriad of federal loan guarantees could cost trillions more should the economy continue to stagnate.
And there is more debt on top of that. The collective states, counties and cities are big borrowers and will face some level of default in the future. Public employee benefit funds in nearly all states are woefully underfunded. Tiny West Virginia alone is looking at $13 billion in unfunded post-employment benefits debt.
Consumers are in debt up to their eyeballs -- mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit card debt and home equity (or second mortgage) loans. Millions of Americans are unemployed or won't work and live on the dole. Millions of Americans have spent their meager savings. Millions of Americans are flat broke.
The American people, in debt as they are, see only a magnificent nation. They see beautiful cars traveling on beautiful superhighways. They see beautiful houses with beautiful appliances and flat screen TVs. They see beautiful college campuses and public schools. They see beautiful government buildings. They see beautiful sail boats, cabin cruisers, speed boats and Jet Skis. They see beautiful vacation homes at the sea shore, the ski slopes or anywhere else there is natural beauty.
They see an army, a navy, and an air force second to none in the history of mankind. They see outer space as a parking lot for space stations, GPS and communication satellites.
Ask any American, and he or she will tell you that Americans have built and paid for all of our beautiful notions with our tax money. For some reason, though, they cannot see the mountain of debt that has financed the modern American lifestyle.
As this charade continues to play out, I am reminded of Wimpy, the obese moocher in the Popeye comic strip who was forever saying, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
Tuesday's math lesson: How do we pay back the $13 trillion we currently have borrowed? And then, how do we pay $40 trillion in future obligations? Just how does our nation generate budget surpluses of $1 trillion to $2 trillion per year, each year, for the next 20 years?
One school of thought -- borrow more, spend more -- follows Keynesian economists who believe that the president's stimulus plan didn't go far enough. The opposing view -- cut taxes, cut spending -- is held by the Tea Party.
As for borrowing more, just what is our national credit score?
As for raising taxes, repealing the "Bush tax cuts" will likely ignite a class war.
As for cutting spending, who gives up an entitlement? Do we cut the Social Security retirement benefit? The mortgage interest deduction? The earned income credit? The arts? Defense? National parks?
Remember now, we are asking a government that can't run a piddling passenger train at a profit to solve this multi-trillion-dollar problem.
The election of Barack Obama and his message of "Change" were all about the hubris of the left. The Tea Party revolt is all about the hubris of the right. Neither side will compromise its position on taxes and spending; their hubris prevents it.
The lefties are fed up with Washington. And so are the righties. But to solve the debt crisis, both sides need to admit: "Mea culpa!" After all, partisan politics is what got us here.
In 1975, New York City faced bankruptcy. Then-President Gerald R. Ford told the city that the federal government would not bail it out. The next day, there was a newspaper cartoon that showed a housewife, with her hair in curlers, wearing a housecoat and ironing clothes while her husband, unshaven, sat at the kitchen table in his underwear reading the morning paper. The newspaper headline blared, "FORD TELLS CITY -- DROP DEAD!" Caption: The husband tells his wife, "Well, at least we still have our pride."
We've borrowed so much with so little to show for it that it's almost comical.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
Many Find They Have The Luxury To Grumble
Does it seem to you that people complain more and more these days? Does it also seem that people complain more and more about situations beyond anyone’s control?
I am sure you would answer both questions with a resounding “Yes.”
There are reasons for these phenomena. And surprisingly, some of this complaining is a good sign because different kinds of complaints mean different things.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow is well-known for his theory on the hierarchy of human needs. He also wrote an interesting journal containing workplace observations which he published in 1965 as “Eupsychian Management.” The book has since been re-titled “Maslow on Management.”
Maslow observed that there are three kinds of grumbles. Low grumbles have to do with the meeting of basic needs such as pay and working conditions. High grumbles kick in after workers have exceeded their basic needs and receive better pay and less rigorous working conditions. And then he introduces us to metagrumbles—those grumbles which are more philosophical in nature and may not have anything to do with one’s pay or working conditions.
You won’t find many low grumbles in the modern workplace. With minimum wage laws, government benefits such as food stamps, OSHA workplace safety requirements and unemployment insurance, even the lowest paid workers are relatively secure compared to fifty years ago.
Americans may think that the lowest-paid workers live at the doorstep of desolate poverty, but thousands of people purposely earn $10,000 to $15,000 per year, max out their government entitlements, and still own their own humble residence. More people than you would imagine shop for near-new clothes at thrift stores. More people than you would imagine download discount coupons. More people than you would imagine live well on the cheap.
High grumbles are a different matter. If you give an employee an office with one window, he’ll want two. If his company car is a sedan, he’ll want an SUV. Give him a black stapler and he’ll want the snazzy red one.
The classic high grumble that I hear most often comes from the professional whose year-end bonus makes up a large portion of his annual pay. The bonus is almost always less than was expected. And this grumble comes from people who make a comfortable six figures (eight counting the decimal.)
High grumbles are often related to perks. After one has bettered his lifestyle beyond basic needs, a portion of that extra income will go toward building status or partaking of leisure activities. Tell John Doe that he can no longer use company-paid frequent flyer miles for personal or vacation travel, and you will hear a high grumble.
Low grumbles are a product of the authoritarian workplace, a workplace of despair and fear. Low grumbles, according to Maslow, are a sign that workers are not meeting their basic needs.
High grumbles, on the other hand, can be a positive sign in the workplace. If interpreted properly, high grumbles point to ways in which to motivate workers. Yes, the high grumble worker may benefit personally from having his complaint satisfied, but there will almost always be a spillover that benefits the organization. An office with a second window might actually increase a worker’s sense of worth in the hierarchy and be more effective and less costly than the offer of a pay raise.
Metagrumbles are rhetorical, nebulous thoughts. The worker wants to see more “honesty,” or more “justice,” in the way the company treats its employees. These words, of course, never get defined. Who are the metagrumblers according to Maslow? “[P]eople who have the luxury of complaining at this level are strictly living a very high-level life.”
Darryl Hannah was the very model of a modern metagrumbler when she flew cross country to West Virginia and sat on her duff to protest coal mining. Glenn Beck has become a metagrumbler extraordinaire since he gave up drinking (prior to which he was presumably a low grumbler.)
A metagrumbler need not be a celebrity, though. The “high-level life” that Maslow refers to means that most high needs have been satisfied, and the person is free to contemplate such unanswerable questions as “Is global warming caused by man?”
Maslow concludes that it is impossible for people not to complain: “There is no Garden of Eden, there is no paradise…” But he also advises that grumbles lead to solutions, which in turn lead to the betterment of all mankind. And he envisions this process of grumbling as being eternal.
I am sure you would answer both questions with a resounding “Yes.”
There are reasons for these phenomena. And surprisingly, some of this complaining is a good sign because different kinds of complaints mean different things.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow is well-known for his theory on the hierarchy of human needs. He also wrote an interesting journal containing workplace observations which he published in 1965 as “Eupsychian Management.” The book has since been re-titled “Maslow on Management.”
Maslow observed that there are three kinds of grumbles. Low grumbles have to do with the meeting of basic needs such as pay and working conditions. High grumbles kick in after workers have exceeded their basic needs and receive better pay and less rigorous working conditions. And then he introduces us to metagrumbles—those grumbles which are more philosophical in nature and may not have anything to do with one’s pay or working conditions.
You won’t find many low grumbles in the modern workplace. With minimum wage laws, government benefits such as food stamps, OSHA workplace safety requirements and unemployment insurance, even the lowest paid workers are relatively secure compared to fifty years ago.
Americans may think that the lowest-paid workers live at the doorstep of desolate poverty, but thousands of people purposely earn $10,000 to $15,000 per year, max out their government entitlements, and still own their own humble residence. More people than you would imagine shop for near-new clothes at thrift stores. More people than you would imagine download discount coupons. More people than you would imagine live well on the cheap.
High grumbles are a different matter. If you give an employee an office with one window, he’ll want two. If his company car is a sedan, he’ll want an SUV. Give him a black stapler and he’ll want the snazzy red one.
The classic high grumble that I hear most often comes from the professional whose year-end bonus makes up a large portion of his annual pay. The bonus is almost always less than was expected. And this grumble comes from people who make a comfortable six figures (eight counting the decimal.)
High grumbles are often related to perks. After one has bettered his lifestyle beyond basic needs, a portion of that extra income will go toward building status or partaking of leisure activities. Tell John Doe that he can no longer use company-paid frequent flyer miles for personal or vacation travel, and you will hear a high grumble.
Low grumbles are a product of the authoritarian workplace, a workplace of despair and fear. Low grumbles, according to Maslow, are a sign that workers are not meeting their basic needs.
High grumbles, on the other hand, can be a positive sign in the workplace. If interpreted properly, high grumbles point to ways in which to motivate workers. Yes, the high grumble worker may benefit personally from having his complaint satisfied, but there will almost always be a spillover that benefits the organization. An office with a second window might actually increase a worker’s sense of worth in the hierarchy and be more effective and less costly than the offer of a pay raise.
Metagrumbles are rhetorical, nebulous thoughts. The worker wants to see more “honesty,” or more “justice,” in the way the company treats its employees. These words, of course, never get defined. Who are the metagrumblers according to Maslow? “[P]eople who have the luxury of complaining at this level are strictly living a very high-level life.”
Darryl Hannah was the very model of a modern metagrumbler when she flew cross country to West Virginia and sat on her duff to protest coal mining. Glenn Beck has become a metagrumbler extraordinaire since he gave up drinking (prior to which he was presumably a low grumbler.)
A metagrumbler need not be a celebrity, though. The “high-level life” that Maslow refers to means that most high needs have been satisfied, and the person is free to contemplate such unanswerable questions as “Is global warming caused by man?”
Maslow concludes that it is impossible for people not to complain: “There is no Garden of Eden, there is no paradise…” But he also advises that grumbles lead to solutions, which in turn lead to the betterment of all mankind. And he envisions this process of grumbling as being eternal.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Clarksburg, Bridgeport Merger? Maybe in 400 years.
Clarksburg is not moving. The franchise that is Clarksburg is moving, however.
For nearly a century, the law firm of Steptoe and Johnson (S&J) anchored the downtown as the prime tenant in the Union National Bank (now known as Chase) building. The firm’s 171 employees have moved to Bridgeport and are comfortably housed in a new building bearing the firm’s name. As big as S&J is, it remained nearly invisible for all of its years in Clarksburg because most people don’t think of ten-story bank buildings as being job centers.
In October, what’s left of the Clarksburg franchise will move to Bridgeport. United Hospital Center (UHC) has built a new hospital there. UHC began as the combination of Union Protestant Hospital and St. Mary’s Hospital. Like S&J, the hospital is ending a century-long presence in Clarksburg. With the hospital’s move, doctors and medically-related businesses will move to Bridgeport, too.
But this new Bridgeport is not really Bridgeport. Bridgeport was a sleepy little town; its franchise was the stockyard which closed a long time ago. Bridgeport’s other franchise was Michael Benedum, the famous oil wildcatter. Unfortunately for Bridgeport, Mr. Benedum banked his considerable fortune in Pittsburgh where it remains.
When I-79 breached the gap between old Clarksburg and old Bridgeport, a new city began to emerge. Zoning battles have given part of the new city to old Clarksburg and part to old Bridgeport. This new city—call it the I-79 strip—could have been the impetus to merge Clarksburg and Bridgeport into a single city of some importance. But that did not happen.
The intransigence of Clarksburgers and Bridgeporters reminds me of the rivalry between the kingdoms of Lilliput and Blefuscu that Gulliver encountered on the first leg of his voyage.
For as long as anyone in Lilliput could remember, the proper way to eat one’s egg was to first crack open the large end. Then one day, the emperor’s son cut his finger on his egg shell. The emperor then decreed that Lilliputians shall forever after crack open their eggs from the small end.
This decree was not universally accepted, and from time to time, a minority of Lilliputians would rebel. These rebels became known as the Big-endians, and to avoid persecution, many of them fled to the land of Blefuscu, Lilliput’s rival across the sea. The Blefuscudians tolerated the mores of the Big-endians because their high priests had declared “that all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.”
You are probably thinking that I am using a story from “Gulliver’s Travels” in an article about merging cities to segue to that famous cliché, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Well, you’re wrong.
Here’s the point of the satire.
The Lilliputians, as well as their rivals, the Blefuscudians, were little people, literally and figuratively. Gulliver tells us that they were just six inches tall. The egg shell “schism” tells us how insignificant their differences were.
At one time, I believed that the cities in Harrison County could consolidate. In the early 1960s, the Catholics and the Protestants put aside their differences and pooled their resources to build the United Hospital Center. Thus, I thought, if the Catholics and Protestants could bury five centuries of differences, then surely Clarksburg and Bridgeport could be forward thinking.
I still think my prediction of a city merger is correct—perhaps just 400 years too early.
Old Clarksburg has lost almost half of its population since 1960, and twenty per cent of the current population of 16,700 is over age 65. Clarksburg needs to face this reality. And come October, Clarksburg also needs to face the reality that the last of the Big-endians has left town.
Old Bridgeport is a city of 7,300 and its population won’t grow dramatically over the next decade. There are new housing developments in the new city limits. But many more houses are being built in the rural areas to the north and east. Bridgeport will soon find itself as a lucrative tax collector with not enough citizens to (prudently) spend the tax money on.
If the two cities merged today—call it Clarksport or Bridgeburg—it would be a little city of 24,000 people. But the two mayors still should hold a ceremonial egg-breaking, serve quiche pies and bacon to their citizens, and then merge the towns and be done with it.
For nearly a century, the law firm of Steptoe and Johnson (S&J) anchored the downtown as the prime tenant in the Union National Bank (now known as Chase) building. The firm’s 171 employees have moved to Bridgeport and are comfortably housed in a new building bearing the firm’s name. As big as S&J is, it remained nearly invisible for all of its years in Clarksburg because most people don’t think of ten-story bank buildings as being job centers.
In October, what’s left of the Clarksburg franchise will move to Bridgeport. United Hospital Center (UHC) has built a new hospital there. UHC began as the combination of Union Protestant Hospital and St. Mary’s Hospital. Like S&J, the hospital is ending a century-long presence in Clarksburg. With the hospital’s move, doctors and medically-related businesses will move to Bridgeport, too.
But this new Bridgeport is not really Bridgeport. Bridgeport was a sleepy little town; its franchise was the stockyard which closed a long time ago. Bridgeport’s other franchise was Michael Benedum, the famous oil wildcatter. Unfortunately for Bridgeport, Mr. Benedum banked his considerable fortune in Pittsburgh where it remains.
When I-79 breached the gap between old Clarksburg and old Bridgeport, a new city began to emerge. Zoning battles have given part of the new city to old Clarksburg and part to old Bridgeport. This new city—call it the I-79 strip—could have been the impetus to merge Clarksburg and Bridgeport into a single city of some importance. But that did not happen.
The intransigence of Clarksburgers and Bridgeporters reminds me of the rivalry between the kingdoms of Lilliput and Blefuscu that Gulliver encountered on the first leg of his voyage.
For as long as anyone in Lilliput could remember, the proper way to eat one’s egg was to first crack open the large end. Then one day, the emperor’s son cut his finger on his egg shell. The emperor then decreed that Lilliputians shall forever after crack open their eggs from the small end.
This decree was not universally accepted, and from time to time, a minority of Lilliputians would rebel. These rebels became known as the Big-endians, and to avoid persecution, many of them fled to the land of Blefuscu, Lilliput’s rival across the sea. The Blefuscudians tolerated the mores of the Big-endians because their high priests had declared “that all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.”
You are probably thinking that I am using a story from “Gulliver’s Travels” in an article about merging cities to segue to that famous cliché, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Well, you’re wrong.
Here’s the point of the satire.
The Lilliputians, as well as their rivals, the Blefuscudians, were little people, literally and figuratively. Gulliver tells us that they were just six inches tall. The egg shell “schism” tells us how insignificant their differences were.
At one time, I believed that the cities in Harrison County could consolidate. In the early 1960s, the Catholics and the Protestants put aside their differences and pooled their resources to build the United Hospital Center. Thus, I thought, if the Catholics and Protestants could bury five centuries of differences, then surely Clarksburg and Bridgeport could be forward thinking.
I still think my prediction of a city merger is correct—perhaps just 400 years too early.
Old Clarksburg has lost almost half of its population since 1960, and twenty per cent of the current population of 16,700 is over age 65. Clarksburg needs to face this reality. And come October, Clarksburg also needs to face the reality that the last of the Big-endians has left town.
Old Bridgeport is a city of 7,300 and its population won’t grow dramatically over the next decade. There are new housing developments in the new city limits. But many more houses are being built in the rural areas to the north and east. Bridgeport will soon find itself as a lucrative tax collector with not enough citizens to (prudently) spend the tax money on.
If the two cities merged today—call it Clarksport or Bridgeburg—it would be a little city of 24,000 people. But the two mayors still should hold a ceremonial egg-breaking, serve quiche pies and bacon to their citizens, and then merge the towns and be done with it.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Citizens of Leisure: Pass the Smokes and Jerky
Recently, a television news commentator, whose initials are A(lbert) B(ray) C(ary), called for sharply higher cigarette taxes to keep young people from smoking. If only engineering social behavior with the tax code was as simple as ABC, then we could rid ourselves of our sins for pennies here and dollars there.
To understand why tobacco smoking became popular, one needs to start with Sir Walter Raleigh and the Virginia Colony in the late 1500s. Raleigh learned of tobacco from the native Indians, who smoked the leaves in their religious ceremonies. This distinction, the religious rite, makes tobacco desirable — not its nicotine.
In his classic study of human behavior, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” Thorstein Veblen demonstrates that in the earliest, primitive human tribes, leisure was accorded to a few distinct class members of the tribe. Leisure — not money, not furs, not gold, not emeralds — was the very first emblem of wealth. What we would call the religious hierarchy of the tribe — the shamans — were afforded leisure because the tribe believed their duties should exempt them from the menial labor of gathering food or building shelter.
What was true one million years ago is still true today.
Veblen coined the term “conspicuous leisure” to mean the epitome of leisure for leisure’s sake. Because tobacco was afforded religious status, it also received leisure status. Tobacco smoking, then, is an act of conspicuous leisure. Had all the Virginia Indians chewed tobacco and spit tobacco juice on the ground, Sir Walter Raleigh never would have introduced tobacco to Queen Elizabeth’s court. Once tobacco arrived in England, it did not take long for tobacco to circle the world.
And it is important to note that certain ritual behaviors accompanied the act of smoking. In Holland, for example, the bars and public houses featured long-stemmed, ceramic pipes. The stem, a foot long or more, would be snapped off after a patron finished smoking, thus leaving a clean mouthpiece for the next smoker. (Pass the peace pipe, please.)
In gentlemen’s clubs, a manservant offered expensive cigars to the members and then trimmed the stogie and lit it. Sherlock Holmes, a man of leisure, puffed on a pipe that he had ritualistically filled with exotic tobacco. A gentleman in the 1950s would take two cigarettes from his sterling silver pocket case, light them both, and gracefully hand one to his lady.
If smokers valued tobacco only for its nicotine, then I would submit that none of this ritual would have ever come about. Leisure time is the only way that people can show off what Veblen coined “conspicuous consumption.” The English fox hunt is a prime example of how the landed gentry blended conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption. The fox hunt, both conspicuous and pointless, was described by Oscar Wilde as “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.”
To be sure, West Virginia’s middle-class workers cannot enjoy their leisure time by foxhunting on horseback with hounds. But they can crisscross the countryside on four-wheelers, blow their bugles at imaginary hobgoblins and finish their hunt by consuming rounds of beer, Vienna sausages served on toothpicks and rashers of deer jerky.
Once again: the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.
Sharply raising the price of cigarettes by government levy presents a problem that abolitionists don’t comprehend. When you add $1 per pack in taxes, you may very well elevate cigarettes from the status of conspicuous leisure to that of conspicuous consumption. High-priced cigarettes, then, become a badge of leisure. And the likelihood of expanding the black market for cigarettes also adds to their mystique, desirability and status in this regard.
Tobacco use has dropped considerably during the past 50 years. But the decline has nothing to do with government policy, education or higher prices. Narcotics and mood-changing drugs have become easily available. It is not that tobacco use has dropped but that tobacco use has been supplanted by newer forms of conspicuous consumption. It is now reported that more than 70 million Americans are “being treated for pain.” I will leave you to translate that euphemism in the privacy of a smoke-free environment.
For the record, I smoke. I am a man of leisure. I write opinion columns.
To understand why tobacco smoking became popular, one needs to start with Sir Walter Raleigh and the Virginia Colony in the late 1500s. Raleigh learned of tobacco from the native Indians, who smoked the leaves in their religious ceremonies. This distinction, the religious rite, makes tobacco desirable — not its nicotine.
In his classic study of human behavior, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” Thorstein Veblen demonstrates that in the earliest, primitive human tribes, leisure was accorded to a few distinct class members of the tribe. Leisure — not money, not furs, not gold, not emeralds — was the very first emblem of wealth. What we would call the religious hierarchy of the tribe — the shamans — were afforded leisure because the tribe believed their duties should exempt them from the menial labor of gathering food or building shelter.
What was true one million years ago is still true today.
Veblen coined the term “conspicuous leisure” to mean the epitome of leisure for leisure’s sake. Because tobacco was afforded religious status, it also received leisure status. Tobacco smoking, then, is an act of conspicuous leisure. Had all the Virginia Indians chewed tobacco and spit tobacco juice on the ground, Sir Walter Raleigh never would have introduced tobacco to Queen Elizabeth’s court. Once tobacco arrived in England, it did not take long for tobacco to circle the world.
And it is important to note that certain ritual behaviors accompanied the act of smoking. In Holland, for example, the bars and public houses featured long-stemmed, ceramic pipes. The stem, a foot long or more, would be snapped off after a patron finished smoking, thus leaving a clean mouthpiece for the next smoker. (Pass the peace pipe, please.)
In gentlemen’s clubs, a manservant offered expensive cigars to the members and then trimmed the stogie and lit it. Sherlock Holmes, a man of leisure, puffed on a pipe that he had ritualistically filled with exotic tobacco. A gentleman in the 1950s would take two cigarettes from his sterling silver pocket case, light them both, and gracefully hand one to his lady.
If smokers valued tobacco only for its nicotine, then I would submit that none of this ritual would have ever come about. Leisure time is the only way that people can show off what Veblen coined “conspicuous consumption.” The English fox hunt is a prime example of how the landed gentry blended conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption. The fox hunt, both conspicuous and pointless, was described by Oscar Wilde as “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.”
To be sure, West Virginia’s middle-class workers cannot enjoy their leisure time by foxhunting on horseback with hounds. But they can crisscross the countryside on four-wheelers, blow their bugles at imaginary hobgoblins and finish their hunt by consuming rounds of beer, Vienna sausages served on toothpicks and rashers of deer jerky.
Once again: the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.
Sharply raising the price of cigarettes by government levy presents a problem that abolitionists don’t comprehend. When you add $1 per pack in taxes, you may very well elevate cigarettes from the status of conspicuous leisure to that of conspicuous consumption. High-priced cigarettes, then, become a badge of leisure. And the likelihood of expanding the black market for cigarettes also adds to their mystique, desirability and status in this regard.
Tobacco use has dropped considerably during the past 50 years. But the decline has nothing to do with government policy, education or higher prices. Narcotics and mood-changing drugs have become easily available. It is not that tobacco use has dropped but that tobacco use has been supplanted by newer forms of conspicuous consumption. It is now reported that more than 70 million Americans are “being treated for pain.” I will leave you to translate that euphemism in the privacy of a smoke-free environment.
For the record, I smoke. I am a man of leisure. I write opinion columns.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Beleagured Postal Service Rides a Snail Into the Sunset
The U. S. Postal Service (USPS) expects to lose $7 billon this year. Postmaster General John Potter has recommended termination of Saturday mail delivery to save $3 billion. In addition to reduced service, we can expect rate increases.
Netflix ships DVDs to over twelve million subscribers and is the USPS’ biggest corporate customer. Saturday delivery is crucial for renting movies by mail. And higher postage rates won’t help the company’s bottom line either. Rather than wait for the USPS put it out of business, Netflix is now offering unlimited movie downloads. Netflix users can now watch movies all day for their regular subscription price.
In trying to save money by eliminating Saturday mail service, General Potter is shooting his mail carriers out of the saddle. Netflix is moving its deliveries to cyberspace, never to return to snail mail.
As a general rule, businesses bend over backward to accommodate their biggest customers. In this case, one Netflix equals one million or more small businesses when it comes to earning revenue. Do the math Gen. Potter.
UPS (Big Brown) and FedEx are remarkably efficient. Just compare their package tracking services with that of the USPS. The USPS is twenty years behind the package services, especially so when it comes to capturing signatures.
I don’t ship many parcels. But I do know that I can go online to Big Brown and print a shipping label much easier than I can at the USPS website. With the post office, I usually resort to using the one-rate envelopes or boxes even though it costs more. If I overestimate shipping weight and pay Big Brown too much, the company refunds the difference after weighing the parcel.
The USPS has had a monopoly on first-class mail service since the nation began. By definition, monopolies cherish archaic work rules and resist innovation as long as possible. At any given moment in a monopoly’s workday, one-third of its employees are “in meetings.”
A good example of how the USPS monopoly operates is provided by its web-based postage stamp store. When I order stamps online, the USPS charges a service fee. And even though my order is an electronic credit card transaction, it takes five business days for my stamps to arrive.
If the USPS cannot provide next-day, or even second-day delivery of postage stamps, then I ask, “What can it do efficiently?” Nothing much, it seems.
It is particularly galling that the USPS charges a shipping and handling fee on stamp sales. It’s not as if the mail carrier is making a special trip to my mailbox to deliver the order.
Big Brown employs about 240,000 people. The post office employs well over 600,000. FedEx has even fewer employees than Big Brown, but that figure can be misleading because FedEx classifies some delivery people as independent contractors.
I would guess that the USPS is overstaffed by at least 200,000 employees. As to whether the real number is higher or lower matters little because the post office is in no hurry to downsize.
Can you imagine what would happen if Postmaster General Potter recommended firing as few as 50,000 employees? Congress and the postal unions would go berserk. By the end of the day, Gen. Potter would be on the street, and Congress would have blocked any downsizing until it was thoroughly studied by a special commission.
The Postal Service has two options going forward. First, it can limp along as it has for years making fixes to the system like the proposed reduction in service and rate increase. Such thinking will continue to drive customers away.
The second option requires embracing technology. The Postal Service could be just as efficient as Big Brown and FedEx. And if it was, the USPS just might find that it could cut rates and reclaim some of its lost market share.
Regardless of choice, however, the USPS faces a major reduction in its workforce.
In the recent past, the USPS has invested heavily in bricks and mortar—the buildings are called Processing and Distribution Centers. To my ear, the words “distribution center” connote a warehouse operation—not a delivery service. As for “processing”, I can only wonder idly: If Spam is processed meat, then what is processed mail?
If I was facing extinction (like the USPS is), then I would want a warehouse full of processed mail, too. I’d gather as many things as I could that reminded me of the good old days when I had it all.
Netflix ships DVDs to over twelve million subscribers and is the USPS’ biggest corporate customer. Saturday delivery is crucial for renting movies by mail. And higher postage rates won’t help the company’s bottom line either. Rather than wait for the USPS put it out of business, Netflix is now offering unlimited movie downloads. Netflix users can now watch movies all day for their regular subscription price.
In trying to save money by eliminating Saturday mail service, General Potter is shooting his mail carriers out of the saddle. Netflix is moving its deliveries to cyberspace, never to return to snail mail.
As a general rule, businesses bend over backward to accommodate their biggest customers. In this case, one Netflix equals one million or more small businesses when it comes to earning revenue. Do the math Gen. Potter.
UPS (Big Brown) and FedEx are remarkably efficient. Just compare their package tracking services with that of the USPS. The USPS is twenty years behind the package services, especially so when it comes to capturing signatures.
I don’t ship many parcels. But I do know that I can go online to Big Brown and print a shipping label much easier than I can at the USPS website. With the post office, I usually resort to using the one-rate envelopes or boxes even though it costs more. If I overestimate shipping weight and pay Big Brown too much, the company refunds the difference after weighing the parcel.
The USPS has had a monopoly on first-class mail service since the nation began. By definition, monopolies cherish archaic work rules and resist innovation as long as possible. At any given moment in a monopoly’s workday, one-third of its employees are “in meetings.”
A good example of how the USPS monopoly operates is provided by its web-based postage stamp store. When I order stamps online, the USPS charges a service fee. And even though my order is an electronic credit card transaction, it takes five business days for my stamps to arrive.
If the USPS cannot provide next-day, or even second-day delivery of postage stamps, then I ask, “What can it do efficiently?” Nothing much, it seems.
It is particularly galling that the USPS charges a shipping and handling fee on stamp sales. It’s not as if the mail carrier is making a special trip to my mailbox to deliver the order.
Big Brown employs about 240,000 people. The post office employs well over 600,000. FedEx has even fewer employees than Big Brown, but that figure can be misleading because FedEx classifies some delivery people as independent contractors.
I would guess that the USPS is overstaffed by at least 200,000 employees. As to whether the real number is higher or lower matters little because the post office is in no hurry to downsize.
Can you imagine what would happen if Postmaster General Potter recommended firing as few as 50,000 employees? Congress and the postal unions would go berserk. By the end of the day, Gen. Potter would be on the street, and Congress would have blocked any downsizing until it was thoroughly studied by a special commission.
The Postal Service has two options going forward. First, it can limp along as it has for years making fixes to the system like the proposed reduction in service and rate increase. Such thinking will continue to drive customers away.
The second option requires embracing technology. The Postal Service could be just as efficient as Big Brown and FedEx. And if it was, the USPS just might find that it could cut rates and reclaim some of its lost market share.
Regardless of choice, however, the USPS faces a major reduction in its workforce.
In the recent past, the USPS has invested heavily in bricks and mortar—the buildings are called Processing and Distribution Centers. To my ear, the words “distribution center” connote a warehouse operation—not a delivery service. As for “processing”, I can only wonder idly: If Spam is processed meat, then what is processed mail?
If I was facing extinction (like the USPS is), then I would want a warehouse full of processed mail, too. I’d gather as many things as I could that reminded me of the good old days when I had it all.
Friday, May 7, 2010
A Tribute to Real Tomatoes and Mom's Bloody Mary Mix
When May rolls around, I think of gardening. Actually, I think about how long I will have to wait for the first ripe tomato.
When I was very young, I asked my mother, a Methodist, what Methodists believed in. Dad was a Baptist, and he wanted me to be one of them, so it followed naturally that I inquire about Methodists. She told me that Methodists (at one time) believed that tomatoes were poisonous.
This revelation about poisonous tomatoes bewildered me and put me squarely in the Baptist camp during my formative years. I will say this much, that in salving my curiosity about tomatoes, and Methodists, I learned later in life that the tomato is a member of the nightshade family, and further, that eating the vines and leaves of the tomato plant will make you nauseous. So I defend my Methodist ancestors and their fear of tomatoes accordingly.
Our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Smallwood, raised tomato plants in their backyard garden each summer. The practice was fairly common in my neighborhood. When the tomatoes ripened, Mr. Smallwood, a grandfatherly type if there ever was one, would hail and invite me over for a tomato sandwich.
That’s all it was--a thick tomato slice on white bread with a little salt and pepper. One tomato sandwich always led to a second; they were heavenly. And I think it had to do with the anticipation of green tomatoes turning red. Of course, picking the tomato off the vine and slicing it right then also piqued my taste buds.
I wonder how many Americans have never tasted a vine-ripened tomato from the backyard garden. And worse, I wonder how many Americans believe that the reddish thing sold by the supermarket as a tomato is a real tomato.
Supermarkets puzzle me.
I have raised and butchered my own beef. However, the beef sold in stores looks nothing like fresh, farm-raised beef. I have to believe that three-out-of-four Americans have never tasted the real product.
When I shop for chicken, I usually see a red tint to the water in the package. The only red parts of a chicken are its blood and feathers. Pardon the pun, but there is something afoul with the corpus delecti.
It’s the age of manufactured food, an age made necessary because Americans are extremely price-sensitive when it comes to buying food. The soccer mom who routinely drops $100.00 on a pair of Nikes bristles when she sees the price of head lettuce. She’ll sometimes go without lettuce but never even wince at the Nikes sticker.
The University of California at Davis ushered in the manufactured food age when it developed the modern tomato. The school crossbred a tomato that was uniform in size and resisted bruising. The Davis-bred tomatoes could be picked green, handled roughly, and ripened with ethylene gas while in transit from farm to market.
The fact that Davis-bred tomatoes never tasted like tomatoes made no difference. And why should it? Everything else in California is make-believe.
The uniform size concept also led to the modern meat packing industry. Whether it’s beef, pork or poultry production, the animals are bred and fed in a way to make standard-size carcasses that fit the slaughterhouse handling machinery.
In one respect, the food industry deserves credit for its efficient mass production. The family food budget, as a per cent of family income, is about half of what it was forty years ago. But there are trade-offs with mass production, taste and appearance being the most obvious.
“Food, Inc.”, the 2008 agribusiness documentary, provides a good overview of how we have changed agriculture. The documentary does mimic Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, but its bias is pretty transparent. Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, “Botany of Desire”) is interviewed, and his commentary, along with others, is level-headed.
If you feel that some of the scenes in the film depict animal cruelty, then I would hope that you don’t. The only reason these animals ever lived was to become food on someone’s plate. Or, as farmers have long said: “What’s time to a hog?”
Going back to the tomatoes of my youth, I am glad that my mother never feared them. She perfected a Bloody Mary mix that cannot be topped. She would can a hundred quarts of the beverage each summer, and when football season came, she was the hit of the tailgate parties.
In the end, Mom won me over to the Methodist camp with her Bloody Mary mix. The Baptists were never going to top that.
When I was very young, I asked my mother, a Methodist, what Methodists believed in. Dad was a Baptist, and he wanted me to be one of them, so it followed naturally that I inquire about Methodists. She told me that Methodists (at one time) believed that tomatoes were poisonous.
This revelation about poisonous tomatoes bewildered me and put me squarely in the Baptist camp during my formative years. I will say this much, that in salving my curiosity about tomatoes, and Methodists, I learned later in life that the tomato is a member of the nightshade family, and further, that eating the vines and leaves of the tomato plant will make you nauseous. So I defend my Methodist ancestors and their fear of tomatoes accordingly.
Our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Smallwood, raised tomato plants in their backyard garden each summer. The practice was fairly common in my neighborhood. When the tomatoes ripened, Mr. Smallwood, a grandfatherly type if there ever was one, would hail and invite me over for a tomato sandwich.
That’s all it was--a thick tomato slice on white bread with a little salt and pepper. One tomato sandwich always led to a second; they were heavenly. And I think it had to do with the anticipation of green tomatoes turning red. Of course, picking the tomato off the vine and slicing it right then also piqued my taste buds.
I wonder how many Americans have never tasted a vine-ripened tomato from the backyard garden. And worse, I wonder how many Americans believe that the reddish thing sold by the supermarket as a tomato is a real tomato.
Supermarkets puzzle me.
I have raised and butchered my own beef. However, the beef sold in stores looks nothing like fresh, farm-raised beef. I have to believe that three-out-of-four Americans have never tasted the real product.
When I shop for chicken, I usually see a red tint to the water in the package. The only red parts of a chicken are its blood and feathers. Pardon the pun, but there is something afoul with the corpus delecti.
It’s the age of manufactured food, an age made necessary because Americans are extremely price-sensitive when it comes to buying food. The soccer mom who routinely drops $100.00 on a pair of Nikes bristles when she sees the price of head lettuce. She’ll sometimes go without lettuce but never even wince at the Nikes sticker.
The University of California at Davis ushered in the manufactured food age when it developed the modern tomato. The school crossbred a tomato that was uniform in size and resisted bruising. The Davis-bred tomatoes could be picked green, handled roughly, and ripened with ethylene gas while in transit from farm to market.
The fact that Davis-bred tomatoes never tasted like tomatoes made no difference. And why should it? Everything else in California is make-believe.
The uniform size concept also led to the modern meat packing industry. Whether it’s beef, pork or poultry production, the animals are bred and fed in a way to make standard-size carcasses that fit the slaughterhouse handling machinery.
In one respect, the food industry deserves credit for its efficient mass production. The family food budget, as a per cent of family income, is about half of what it was forty years ago. But there are trade-offs with mass production, taste and appearance being the most obvious.
“Food, Inc.”, the 2008 agribusiness documentary, provides a good overview of how we have changed agriculture. The documentary does mimic Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, but its bias is pretty transparent. Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, “Botany of Desire”) is interviewed, and his commentary, along with others, is level-headed.
If you feel that some of the scenes in the film depict animal cruelty, then I would hope that you don’t. The only reason these animals ever lived was to become food on someone’s plate. Or, as farmers have long said: “What’s time to a hog?”
Going back to the tomatoes of my youth, I am glad that my mother never feared them. She perfected a Bloody Mary mix that cannot be topped. She would can a hundred quarts of the beverage each summer, and when football season came, she was the hit of the tailgate parties.
In the end, Mom won me over to the Methodist camp with her Bloody Mary mix. The Baptists were never going to top that.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Politicians Have a Poor Record of Managing Toll Road
We had a brutal winter. The potholes prove that. The damage that motorists don’t see yet is the cost of plowing and salting the roads. That cost will show up later this year when paving projects are scrapped for lack of money.
Making matters all the worse is the continuing failure of our leaders to address a shrinking road fund. Prior to 1980, the user taxes that comprise the road fund grew sufficiently from year-to-year to adequately maintain our roads. But since 1980, driving habits have changed drastically, thus making the user tax concept archaic.
In the 1970s, cars got very poor gasoline mileage. Owners also traded cars more often because cars wore out faster. When gasoline hit $1 per gallon in 1979, consumers demanded fuel efficiency and long-term warranties. Ever since, the two main user taxes – the gasoline tax and the privilege tax on motor vehicle sales – have increasingly lagged.
Every year, there is talk amongst the pundits about building toll roads and bridges as a way to solve our road funding woes. Tolls are just another user tax. Given the high cost to build a highway or a bridge, there has to be sufficient traffic to pay the tolls that, in turn, pay off the bonds that funded the project.
Unfortunately for West Virginia, there is not enough traffic to justify toll roads or bridges anywhere in this state. But even if there were, politicians do not have the will to maintain tolls to keep up with inflation.
The original West Virginia Turnpike was funded by revenue bonds in the 1950s. Within four years of its opening, the turnpike found itself unable to pay interest to the bondholders, a situation that remained so until 1979. The turnpike never did accumulate a sinking fund sufficient to retire the bonds.
The turnpike was rebuilt as I-77 under an agreement with the Federal Highway Administration which paid for 90% of the cost. The state’s road fund paid the balance. The agreement allowed for tolls to remain on the highway until the original bonds were retired, and then the road was to become a free interstate.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a free road – that’s funny peculiar, not funny ha ha. The new four-lane highway became a favorite north-south route. Traffic also increased significantly when I-64 was completed. The bankrupt West Virginia Turnpike quickly became a money maker, and the politicians smelled bacon on the griddle.
If you came into the movie late, that’s okay. You know what happened next. The Turnpike Commission became the WV Parkways, Economic Development and Tourism Authority. This led to Tamarack, one of the biggest money-losing enterprises ever concocted by the statehouse gang. The Authority also removed turnpike tolls everywhere except the three main toll barriers, a perk for locals that cost the turnpike some $2 million in annual revenue at the time.
Today, the Authority’s bastard child toll road is facing over $335 million in deferred maintenance with about one third of the 88-mile highway rated as substandard. And there seems to be faint political will to raise tolls to adequate levels or to cure Tamarack’s annual cash drain.
This is how West Virginia politicians run a toll road. If you think that the state should consider building more toll roads, then you deserve a desk at the state capitol in the Head Examiner’s office.
There are two plausible solutions for the state road fund’s inadequacy. The first is simple. As the state maintains a network of secondary roads that were once, and still should be, the responsibility of the counties, the personal property tax collected on motor vehicles by each county should be transferred to the state road fund. It makes sense to do this because the counties have gotten off scot-free since 1933 when the State Road Commission was formed to rescue Depression-era counties from their road building and road maintenance duties.
The second solution does not involve taxes. If the state eliminated the prevailing wage requirements in road contracts, the annual savings would be huge. West Virginia cannot justify paying road contractors to hire laborers at $34.71 per hour. But it does just that because $34.71 per hour is the "prevailing wage" for the lowest-paid laborer.
That’s funny ha ha.
The impact of these high prevailing wage rates doesn’t end there. Road construction is seasonal work, and construction workers’ wage-based claims are a big drain on the unemployment fund which you, the motorist, also pay for.
Making matters all the worse is the continuing failure of our leaders to address a shrinking road fund. Prior to 1980, the user taxes that comprise the road fund grew sufficiently from year-to-year to adequately maintain our roads. But since 1980, driving habits have changed drastically, thus making the user tax concept archaic.
In the 1970s, cars got very poor gasoline mileage. Owners also traded cars more often because cars wore out faster. When gasoline hit $1 per gallon in 1979, consumers demanded fuel efficiency and long-term warranties. Ever since, the two main user taxes – the gasoline tax and the privilege tax on motor vehicle sales – have increasingly lagged.
Every year, there is talk amongst the pundits about building toll roads and bridges as a way to solve our road funding woes. Tolls are just another user tax. Given the high cost to build a highway or a bridge, there has to be sufficient traffic to pay the tolls that, in turn, pay off the bonds that funded the project.
Unfortunately for West Virginia, there is not enough traffic to justify toll roads or bridges anywhere in this state. But even if there were, politicians do not have the will to maintain tolls to keep up with inflation.
The original West Virginia Turnpike was funded by revenue bonds in the 1950s. Within four years of its opening, the turnpike found itself unable to pay interest to the bondholders, a situation that remained so until 1979. The turnpike never did accumulate a sinking fund sufficient to retire the bonds.
The turnpike was rebuilt as I-77 under an agreement with the Federal Highway Administration which paid for 90% of the cost. The state’s road fund paid the balance. The agreement allowed for tolls to remain on the highway until the original bonds were retired, and then the road was to become a free interstate.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a free road – that’s funny peculiar, not funny ha ha. The new four-lane highway became a favorite north-south route. Traffic also increased significantly when I-64 was completed. The bankrupt West Virginia Turnpike quickly became a money maker, and the politicians smelled bacon on the griddle.
If you came into the movie late, that’s okay. You know what happened next. The Turnpike Commission became the WV Parkways, Economic Development and Tourism Authority. This led to Tamarack, one of the biggest money-losing enterprises ever concocted by the statehouse gang. The Authority also removed turnpike tolls everywhere except the three main toll barriers, a perk for locals that cost the turnpike some $2 million in annual revenue at the time.
Today, the Authority’s bastard child toll road is facing over $335 million in deferred maintenance with about one third of the 88-mile highway rated as substandard. And there seems to be faint political will to raise tolls to adequate levels or to cure Tamarack’s annual cash drain.
This is how West Virginia politicians run a toll road. If you think that the state should consider building more toll roads, then you deserve a desk at the state capitol in the Head Examiner’s office.
There are two plausible solutions for the state road fund’s inadequacy. The first is simple. As the state maintains a network of secondary roads that were once, and still should be, the responsibility of the counties, the personal property tax collected on motor vehicles by each county should be transferred to the state road fund. It makes sense to do this because the counties have gotten off scot-free since 1933 when the State Road Commission was formed to rescue Depression-era counties from their road building and road maintenance duties.
The second solution does not involve taxes. If the state eliminated the prevailing wage requirements in road contracts, the annual savings would be huge. West Virginia cannot justify paying road contractors to hire laborers at $34.71 per hour. But it does just that because $34.71 per hour is the "prevailing wage" for the lowest-paid laborer.
That’s funny ha ha.
The impact of these high prevailing wage rates doesn’t end there. Road construction is seasonal work, and construction workers’ wage-based claims are a big drain on the unemployment fund which you, the motorist, also pay for.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)