One year ago today: July 1, 2016, extreme debt forgiveness.
Five years ago today: July 1, 2012, requires too much patience . . .
Nine years ago today: July 1, 2008, I played Donovan’s.
Random years ago today: July 1, 2007, it doesn’t work.
Not feeling chipper this AM, I used the down time to follow up on New Zealand real estate. As far as living anywhere near a population center, the place is already out of most buyer’s league, with prices in the suburbs hitting US levels. Even if you buy with proceeds from sales here in the States, the prices in Aukland, Wellington, and similar towns are going to eat up all your cash surplus just getting settled. So once again, it is not what you have that counts, it is what you make. That is why today’s addendum is required reading for anyone who lives in the fantasy that you can borrow or save yourself to security and retirement.
First, peek at this two bedroom an hour out of Aukland. Priced at $88,000 but at least in New Zealand, you don’t have to worry about bad neighborhoods. The country was on the brink of liberal policy collapse not that long ago. I don’t know the immigration rules, but you can be they are not letting in America’s participation trophy winners or social justice warriors. They want to see positive cash flow. This was the only house in my price range and you can bet that tap is being turned off fast. There are pieces of vacant land that might be a good idea just to have something.
I don’t know the ground rules for New Zealand. I looked at Belize ten-fifteen years ago, but since have heard too many horror stories of the people who move there permanently. The Belizeans know such people are rarely welcome back in their old countries. That’s about when you get a midnight knock on the door concerning your donation to the candidate of their choosing. The one who has the armored car in your driveway. With the police escort.
What I have to say would tend to be of most interest to those who have to get out of debt or poverty. Most people I know could live quite comfortably if they ever get out of debt and in my books, debt and poverty are the same thing, except with debt you may have nicer toys in the meanwhile. It is actually harder to get out of debt than poverty because one has learned the wrong lessons and nobody is likely to help you.
There are countless maxims out there, but the three items that tend to be ignored are that you should always work alone, discretion is the better part of obeying the rules, and deal exclusively in cash. This limits the field—but that is better than limiting your chances for success. The one saying I find universally true is: do not invest in anything you don’t understand. But how do you know when you really understand something? That’s actually easy because that is how the rich operate. It’s the point at which you can see how to cheat at it. You are, after all, gambling with your future and the people betting against you rarely got there by being nice guys.
There is the “should I” factor as well. I’m going to answer this the same way I did forty years ago, so listen up. The example I use is bank interest. Should I invest in anything that is going to lose money? The obvious answer is no. But not so fast. First, talk taxes, and experience has shown me that only those in the top income bracket can afford to invest on a large scale. Call the top tax bracket 35%, I know it changes but I want this example to be generic. So you place $100,000 into a 12-month CD paying, these days, a whopping 2% return.
So at the end of the year, you’ve got $2,000 in interest. You pay 35% tax, you have $1,300 plus your original $100,000 giving you $101,300. Or do you? During that year, realistic inflation has easily hit you 8%. Prediction: if you are dumb enough to believe the government’s reported index, you probably will never have the $100,000 either. When it is all said and done, you have only $93,196 purchasing power left. Should you make this investment?
My answer is a qualified yes. You should make it, but under some circumstances, one of which is understanding your loss. First, make it $20,000. No matter what the advisors say, you should have a year’s cash money in the bank as a buffer. CDs are cashable, but get one with a low penalty for early withdrawal. Plus, ten small CDs are better than one large one in case you need to liquidate just a bit. See, you’re getting sophisticated already. And as for the inflation, this is a tough one to swallow. Although you are only earning 2% on paper, you are not losing money as fast as those who do not invest at all.
Did you follow that last item? Not only can I win by simply not losing as much as others, I’ve done it many times in many areas besides money. You probably know this by its Hollywood moniker: the last man standing. Example? This house. If there is another crash, a real possibility, I’d be the least affected person that I know of.
Fish schooling.
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Quantum leap, that would be a good term for what I’m doing musically. A little over a year ago, I played Thursdays at that bicycle shop in Ft. Lauderdale. That involved my easiest guitar material and of course allowing for certain people to try to upstage my act, the fool. Each of three weeks I played three tunes, a total of nine. But never more than three on my plate at once. I no longer have that luxury. Here’s a meaningless picture included to generate hits.
I find I can just nudge past the 12 song guitar player limit—yes, I am also subject to the same constraints as others. Any hack can max out at 12 songs. However, I know more than 12 songs total. That is just how many I can normally play at one sitting. I’ve been adding and dropping a small number of tunes as the limits on my guitar playing become more evident. I had to start keeping track of which ones I rehearse, since 12 is not any factor of 32. Judging by my progress, my show will be confined to B rooms and such for now.
But I’m a fast learner and I don’t have to commit to four hour gigs. I’ve failed guitar many times in my life yet on the other hand, I’ve never gotten this far before. To solidify the list, I’m treating each song, even the ones I know, as new material and plowing through each the magic 30 times. It’s work, and if I play a given tune several times to iron out a wrinkle, that only counts as one on the chart.
This theory that to make a tune your own, you must play it 30 times, is based solely on my historical rehearsal times with the electric bass. I don’t think I’ve made that clear before, but I certainly expect any guitar player worth his salt to play anything on my list by that standard. Another difference is while I would frown on comping from anyone who fancies themselves a guitar player, I will comp if that is what it takes—and you should not make unfair comparisons about this. Often, I simply cannot play anything else so I have to comp. Big difference.
“You only live one,
but if you do it right, once is enough.”
~ Mae West
Y’know, I’m really one to talk about small town politics. I’ve been there but all too often even knowing the ropes doesn’t work. Once you’ve been exposed to the world, even a short time being away can make you an outsider and less tolerant of locals. Iosef Stalin understood this. You’ve been exposed to ideas that don’t belong in a local setting, the guy got so irritated he would not even accept his returning prisoners of war. Off to the re-education camps.
I met this lady tonight who was my own age. I’ve been friendly with her daughter for months. I was nearly horrified by the implications of what the mother was saying. It doesn’t work that way. This would not be the first time in my life I’ve been there and not the first time the mother was more interested in her own gain than her daughter’s. Who is the bad one in those circumstances? Who is zooming who? I’ve still got a lifetime ahead of me if I live that long. Return tomorrow and I’ll tell you about this episode. I told her mother I was 73 to see what she’d say.
I contacted Agt. R and told him to keep stabbing at that guitar. He knows his role behind the bar is just as much entertainment as the guy behind the microphone. This is not a common realization. I had one barmaid the other day ask me if I had a following. The implication was that she did and I didn’t, but if I bought that bar and fired her, we’d see about that. It’s drama and the locals have more mileage than us city people any day.
ADDENDUM
Does crime pay? Overall, it pays big time. The upper lofts of society are filled to the hatches with crooks, shysters, and corruption. The odds are stacked in their favor, even if they get caught, they don’t do hard time. Whenever a politician or crime boss gets busted, it is normally a setup by his enemies and he conducts business as usual from inside his cottage at minimum security. Everybody knows somebody who has gotten away with a crime for more than half their lives, past the point of no return. There’s probably not one of us who would not have traded a youth of endless cash (by committing a crime) for a slap on the wrist down the road.
These days, 15% is considered an excellent return. So where can you first hand witness this kind of operation? It’s a snap, visit any flea market or swing past a garage sale. It’s evident a lot of those are major undertakings. Look at the swap meets in Hollywood, Florida. The booths are paying up to $700 per month for the right to set up. Their inventory is worth so much it has to be locked in storage containers during the weekdays. The vendor parking lot is packed with late model cars bearing disability stickers.
This brings in another factor the so-called professional magazines leave out. They ignore the welfare state. I had my first argument with a liberal on this one when I was twelve years of age. As a refresher, my argument is that if somebody paid for all my food, clothing, shelter, and gave me a free phone, cable TV, a bus pass, education, and medical, I would gladly work under the table for minimum wage. That is one excellent description of how welfare works.
So what do you call people on welfare who operate in these shadows? Well, crooks, I guess, or the proper term is criminals. But when was the last time you heard of the feds cracking down on a swap meet or flea market? Yet it is evident the majority of people who operate such businesses are somehow on welfare. Working people would not have the time to devote to running a business that only paid minimum wage. I know people who tried and quickly burned themselves out. A person with a day job would have trouble competing with the “full time” welfare businesses.
The key is the “equivalent investment” formula again. It rests on a difficult to determine number. Take a person making $100,000 per year. After he pays his taxes and all the living expenses listed above, how much does he actually have left over for himself? I’ll wager it isn’t even fifty bucks a day, stressing that is one huge guess. I know in my day, I limited myself to $20 per day, so crank that up to $30 per day in 2017. So, if anyone on welfare could run a booth that made a lousy $210 per week under the table, they would be doing as well as I was working for a living near the top.
This is the true effect of putting people on welfare, it creates a permanent subculture of dependency. It is also my contention that welfare should be handled by the churches. They are experts at keeping an eye on everything other people do and are always eager to improve their neighbor. The church would make excellent watchdogs for catching welfare cheats, and if you’ve ever dealt with some of these religions, it would make the few who really needed welfare feel like they’ve worked for it. Which is as it should be.
So does the crime pay? If you don’t get caught, sure it does. What are the odds? Again, no data, but in England, only 14% of crimes ever get solved. Certain types of violent crimes, like rape, are vastly under-reported because of disagreeable police tactics. If you join the ranks of those working for cash, there are only a few rules to obey. Don’t draw attention to yourself and be careful what you buy for cash. That’s mainly how people get caught.
That’s why I get a laugh out of those police articles that state they have so-and-so under surveillance and the suspect has been careful to keep his cash purchases under the reporting limit. This is an outrage against the presumption of innocence, since there is no valid or legal way of determining that. That is against every rule in the book. I wonder why somebody hasn’t taken such a matter to the supreme court.
Last Laugh
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