One year ago today: April 2, 2018, a generic day.
Five years ago today: April 2, 2014, but bass lessons is cheating.
Nine years ago today: April 2, 2010, RIP Millie.
Random years ago today: April 2, 2007, “metaphorically”.
Major nothing today, my cumulative life injuries have caught up after three weeks of cold weather. Years ago, I really did think it was my imagination, but time after time, three weeks and I can list long forgotten cracked ribs, sore elbows, shoulder aches, and that old broken wrist. The one that gets me worst is the boot lace throb. I worked a shift when it was 15 below back when I was 22. I knew I’d laced my work boots too tight that morning, but the laces were frozen and who wants to take their gloves off in that weather. The pain is deep and right where the laces were, and I barely made it down the stairs this morning.
I wanted to give you that list of how I’m creating these gifs without specialized software. Not today, instead I stayed inside the nice warm house and made Texas chicken pie. The kind with sage, and a hint of garlic. The dogs are supposed to be “allergic” to chicken, but I heard dog DNA does not even have the histamines to cause that. How could a breed of dogs allergic to any birds have even evolved? If you’re nice, I’ll include a picture of the pie. Okay, you’ve been nice. Enough, I mean.
You don’t remember Elliott, this inventor I hung around with back in the 90s. We used to red-ass a lot about everything wrong in the world. He’s conservative, I’m libertarian, so while we rarely agreed on the causes, we mainly came to the same conclusions. We saw no problem with drastic measures for drastic problems, and I’m not even an extremist. I simply believe that I do not know what is right for other people and other people do not know what is right for me, that taxation is a violent crime, and government should be limited to the national safety. Freedoms are self-limiting in the sense that they must cause no harm to others, but even then, that is the job of the police, not the politicians.
The connection here is that Elliott and I agree on treating everybody alike, as far as possible. But he means open association, whereas I equally ignore most people who do not look like Taylor Swift. Since I arrived here in a month ago, I’ve experienced a major upswing in the number of “old people” who want to talk to me. I have an intentional stand-off manner on this issue, but it isn’t working here. I now estimate around two or three times per day I find myself having to plan an escape from old people who want to talk shit. For sure, I do not consider working a job for 40 years and raising a family anything out of the ordinary, and don’t care to hear it. This morning at the dam, it took me five minutes to extricate myself from this couple who wanted to know how come I “knew so much”.
Duh, because I read the sign at the park entrance?
Jakarta coffee house.
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The park was the high point. There was a small information center, so I went in there and scored all the free maps. They had a stuffed turkey, just not the kind you eat. All open areas are covered in buttercups. Spring happens in layers. Things look around half-way there. It felt like starting an old tractor to get me moving but the dogs and I were at the lake a good two hours. There should be a picture of a field of buttercups.
He does well in this nearly typecast role in “Quigley”. An American sharpshooter is hired to kill off Aborigines, which he refuses to do. Hey, we’re talking Tom Selleck here. Actors like him and that Ritter guy always give me a chuckle when they are described as wonderfully nice persons. Give me a fraction of that fame and money and we’ll see who is nice. Just you remember that these days nobody buys that crap about how hard they worked for it.
What, they worked hard at being actors while the rest of use worked hard at the lumber mills, freezing our feet? I’m just point out a few discrepancies in the hard work theory. I’d like to work hard at being a rock star, but not as a butler. Those who can’t spot the distinction are probably reading the wrong blog again.
A place in Tennessee is still not an idea I’m that keen on. What I’ve found that’s up to snuff is too expensive or too remote. That’s why I’ll have to sit down with my partner-so-to-speak and go over the option of taking advantage of somebody. This will be perceived as shafting them, but think that one through. Who did the conniving? The people who borrowed and promised to pay for it without being prepared to keep up the payments no matter what. That’s who thought they’d get rich quick and flip and get the system. My plan will again be based on the fact that most nice people simply do not want to sell their house to certain types.
For those unaware of my house purchase, I found out years later why the sellers almost instantly took my half-price offer. I don’t know who had looked at the place before me, but the whole neighborhood was terrified that one of them was going to come up with the money. If I’d known that, well. I’m going to tour Old Hickory again tomorrow. It was really nice.
ADDENDUM
Awright, awright, here's a picture of the turkey, now quiet down back there. Up late reading with the dogs snoring, I came across several articles on American business decline as seen from the countries that are causing it. Causing? Yes, because Ricardo’s theory about competitive advantage can be misused by political systems. He’s the guy that said each country should produce best what it can and become enriched by trade. Possibly true, but rarely practiced. Why? Because government subsidies easily upset the balance. It’s dandy when Portugal produces wine and England produces wool. But suppose the Portuguese government began rewarding those who copied English wool production and subsidized factories to manufacture it. Not so fair anymore, huh?
So it was with some amusement I read how workers over in India and Pakistan regard undercutting American prices as “leveling the playing field”. This implies that they were innocently plying their trades when the big bad Americans came along and upset their market stalls. But, they are not improving any made-in-India practices. They are going after Yankee support, service, and tech jobs. Where is the subsidy? Think it through. The American worker was paid a lot more and he had a pension, health benefits, and similar items not required in foreign countries.
He was also the result of long and often difficult process of innovation. The businesses being copied are Yankee born and raised. Aircraft, auto, computers, spacecraft, nuclear power, farm machinery, you name it. These things were not invented in Asia. It is always far easier to copy the finished product, and as a musician, I’m very keen on that concept. Doubtless, there are some who’d argue that imitation on such a scale is in itself innovative. That’s baloney, because they are identically copying best practices. The lower wages are a result of long-standing cultural differences. If they had to pay decent wages and benefits, I wonder if they could even produce an American-style profit. That’s where the gain comes from worker productivity and not exploitation. And yes, I’m aware both those terms exist on a sliding scale.
However, there was something the Americans had that within a century bested every other system, every culture, every work ethic, and every brand of incentivization that these other places ever had, even in their glory days. I hold those responsible for free trade to be the culprits. I was a lonely voice against free trade, my concept was to keep the technology here and charge other countries the full going price. That would have maintained our society and status as the wealthiest in the world—and those who didn’t like that arrangement could just go right ahead and quit buying our stuff.
And if they still want what we got, let them try developing things themselves. Then watch them appreciate how expensive innovation is. Especially when they discover they don’t have any Yankee know-how.
It appears to me a lot of their “progress” is only feasible because there is a huge discrepancy in pay rates. They are only copying the income model and I have personal doubts they will survive any type of worker demands, which if the truth were known, is brewing and simmering away over there. There is a reason an American was being paid five times as much for the “same” job. Where did I read that when Sysco in India advertised 6,500 jobs, they got 1,000,000 applications. Yet here, every laid off American I know went back to work at a lower-paying occupation. Including myself.
