The Rage Diaries

When current events are history

The Watchman trailer has revived a comics conversation in some online circles, and a sentiment I've run across a few times was this one: "Yeah, I read it, but I don't get what the big deal is." And then old people like me had to explain that if you grew up in the post-Watchman world, you took things like dysfunctional superheroes and densely-layered narrative for granted, the same way that comics readers who came of age in the post-Sandman, post Love & Rockets world take for granted the idea that women in comics aren't always the real characters' love interests, but well-textured characters in their own right.

This got me thinking: is there ever anything that feels more historic than a work that embodies the seed of a new status quo?

I just spent a little time on the other end of that time-dilating media continuum. New York magazine -- the city magazine by which I measure all others -- turned 40, and it featured links to some of its most iconic covers. Some have articles. I clicked and read, and was charmed by each piece's tone of immediacy. It helped the words reach across the years, and gave their subjects the contemporary context that explains why Ms. magazine and disco and Central Park crime and Bill Clinton were so appealing when they appeared. And from a historical context, it's enlightening to look at where we are now while reading these pieces.

So tear your thoughts away from your ever-dwindling 401(k) and read the following:

"The Housewife's Moment of Truth," by Jane Reilly, Dec 20, 71 ... "The nineteenth century ended 72 years ago, but we are still trying to arrange our households according to that "ideal" image of family life. Think of something new."

"Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," by Nik Cohn, June 7, 76 ... "The sixties, unlike previous decades, seemed full of teenage money. No recession, no sense of danger. The young could run free, indulge themselves in whatever treats they wished. But now there is shortage once more, just as there was in the fifties. Attrition, continual pressure. So the new generation takes few risks. It goes through high school, obedient; graduates, looks for a job, saves and plans. Endures. And once a week, on Saturday night, its one great moment of release, it explodes."

"Rendezvous in the Ramble," by Doug Ireland, July 24, 78 ... "Others gravitate toward the Tunnel, that part of the Bridle Path which runs under the 77th Street overpass. The Tunnel is the most active group-sex scene in that area of the park. Some nights it will be crowded wall to wall with men until four in the morning."

"Bill Clinton: Who Is This Guy?" by Joe Klein, Jan 20, 92 ... "The other half of the confluence and the key to Clinton’s early success is a message that transcends traditional labels (and therefore is often called “moderate” or neo-something) but appears to be connecting with actual civilians. Clinton is offering activist government—national economic, educational, health, and energy plans—but he’s also ready to acknowledge that it hasn’t been just the Republicans or the Congress, the rich or the poor, but a lack of responsibility across the social spectrum that has caused the economic drift and strange, sour mood that permeates the country."

Do you believe in the Costco effect?

[W]hen there are more bagels in my refrigerator, I consume more of them. I think that's human nature. Call it the Costco Effect.

People are often price-sensitive about an initial purchase. But after the money has been spent, there's a tendency to view the stash -- be it a pile of bagels or imported stout -- as manna from heaven. And that's why I've often wondered if shopping at discount clubs saves people as much as they think.

-- "Do Warehouse Stores Really Save You Money?" WSJ, Sep 26, 08

Neal Templin's column goes on to admit that while there's no formal research into the Costo Effect, a few economists suspect that people end up spending more money owing to their Costco habits. The theory goes: if you have more of something around, you consume more of it. Then you're thinking, "Well, I'll just get more," and before you know it, you've increased your consumption and the amount you're spending.

Personally speaking: my experience is the exact opposite of what Templin describes. Perhaps it's because of what we buy at Costo, but perhaps it's because of what we don't. For example, I don't get produce or baked goods or dairy there, because there's too much for two people to use. It would be wasteful to buy food that we know is going to spoil. We do get meat there -- but I tell you, the first thing we do when we get home is to split up all the portions, label them, and throw them in the freezer. There's no meat-binging, because it's not like we have four pounds of skirt steak just waiting to be eaten in the fridge. (Instead, we have eight individual portions in the freezer.) Phil gets beer there, but we keep it in the garage; he only brings in a bottle or two at a time to be cooled in the fridge.

Enough about us. Do you go to a bulk-buying club? Have you had to deal with a portion-control issue? How did you do it? What are the things you steer away from at those places so you don't end up eating a 96-ounce jar of trail mix by yourself?

Forget the $700 billion!

Here's what I want to know ... was this troublesome little clause:

Sec. 8 Review

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

laughed off the table? The NYT didn't say.

Because, squandering my children's future aside, I'm a little concerned that we've just made Henry Paulson accountable to nobody. And honestly, I'm a little tired of my Congress deciding that it's okay for unelected governmental officials to act in my name without any accountability. Might it be time to join the angry constituents who are clogging Congressional in-boxes all over the country? Feel free to look up contact information here.

ETA, 5 p.m. PST: Or perhaps we all spoke too soon? Apparently the bailout talks broke down? What, is everyone trying to avoid the debate tomorrow? Is McCain still saying he won't go? But's all about fahrn parts! That's McCain's bailiwick!

Wha' happened?

So we all know that Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns paid out a record $39 billion in bonuses last year, presumably because everyone did a heckuva job. And now some of these firms have been reduced to smoking ashes, the banking industry is asking those of us who weren't in on the $39 billion money train to please do our part and pony up $39 billion plus another $661 billion so that the banks can fix the mess, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is essentially asking for unchecked power by Friday or else terrible things will happen ... but do we have a clear picture of how this whole mess came about? I mean those of us aside from Wanda Sykes?

Below, the links I found that help explain what just happened and what it means.

Among the reasons we don't live in Berkeley

Last night, Phil and I got around to the topic of French restaurants in the Bay Area. We had a moment of silence for departed favorite Creme de la Creme in Oakland's Rockridge area, then briefly discussed the notion of venturing to Berkeley for a French restaurant there. Then we mulled the inevitable parking issue, weighed the probability that any experience would be similar to our last three Berkeley eating experiences -- average food with a gourmet ghetto-justified price tag -- and decided that we'd take our chances at Oakland's Soizic Bistro or give Hayward's A Street Cafe another try.

So long as you're already feeling disgruntled on the job

Over the past decade, the failure of the economy to raise wages has become undeniable. Until recently, both corporate profits and the nation's productivity -- to which economists have traditionally linked wages -- have risen strongly. Although the value of corporate benefits such as health care have risen somewhat faster, the median full-time worker's wage still amounts to some $38,000 a year, only marginally higher than it was in 2001. Median family income is about $1,000 lower than it was then.

This situation may now be getting more attention, but it is not new to the 2000s. The real wages and salaries of the median full-time male worker in his thirties with a high school diploma are down steeply from levels reached at the beginning of the 1970s. But even those with college degrees have not fared especially well. For example, for men between twenty-five and thirty-four with college degrees, median earnings, according to Census Bureau data, are up only marginally, by about 3 percent. For women of the same age and education, median earnings have risen more rapidly, by about 20 percent, but this is an annual rate of gain of only 0.5 percent. And despite the increase, women working full-time with similar educations still make only about three quarters of what men with similar educations earn. Family incomes have risen modestly over this period largely because spouses work many more hours.

-- From the NY Review of Books' assessment of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker

You can read the first chapter of the book here, or the NYT review on May 28, 08. The review's ending is worth attention:

[T]he components of an efficient social safety net are reasonably well understood. For instance, we could easily afford a single-payer health system like the one in France, which covers everyone and delivers better health care for about half the amount we now spend per capita. We could easily afford to supplement the American Social Security system, which transfers income from workers to retirees, by establishing a national retirement savings plan in which a portion of each worker’s wages was deposited in a tax-sheltered investment account, enabling families to take full advantage of the miracle of compound interest. We have ample resources to supplement lagging wages by raising the Earned Income Tax Credit, which Ronald Reagan called the most effective antipoverty program ever devised by Congress. And we could easily reduce the college-tuition burden on low-income families by expanding the existing program of Pell Grants.

Skeptics invariably counter that the taxes needed to pay for an expanded social safety net would cripple the economy by weakening people’s incentives to work hard and take risks. Yet there are many ways to raise additional tax revenue that would actually cause G.D.P. to grow rather than shrink. A tax on carbon and other environmental pollutants, for example, would raise substantial revenue and yield a cleaner, more sustainable environment. Congestion taxes would save millions of hours currently wasted in traffic jams. A progressive income tax that exempts savings would divert billions of dollars from wasteful mine-is-bigger spending contests.

As Greenhouse’s interviews vividly remind us, no economic system can prosper in the long run if people who work hard and play by the rules cannot meet their basic needs.

I may have to get over my needlework store aversion to make a sampler: No economic system can prosper in the long run if people who work hard and play by the rules cannot meet their basic needs.

From the "no kidding?" files ...

This may be a Main Street bailout backlash in the making. The details of the financial crisis are still hard for most people to follow -- what with talk of exotic "derivatives" known as "credit-default swaps" and so on -- but the central fact of the matter hasn't been lost on anyone in this Northern Virginia community: The taxpayers are on the hook for the bad judgment of others.

And they say they don't like it. They didn't break it, but now they've bought it. Political leaders and financial titans say the bailout is necessary to save the economy, but on the ground, in such places as Manassas Park, people think that the bailout will reward the wrong people. There's a sense that too many folks bought houses they couldn't really afford, banks urged them on, common sense went on vacation, and now the grown-ups have to clean up the mess.

-- "A Sense of Resentment Amid the 'For Sale' Signs," WaPo, Sep 22, 08

I am still looking for the financial reporting that explains exactly how this proposed $700 bil bailout plan affects American taxpayers. The NYT's piece yesterday, "The Wall Street Bailout Plan Explained" didn't do what the headline promised. It gave answers like:

It would not be correct to think of the federal government as simply writing a check for $700 billion. It is just committing itself to spend that much, if necessary. But the bottom line is, yes, this bailout could cost American taxpayers a lot of money.

And, sadly, the Q&A did not include questions like "Why is it necessary for the next two to three generations of American taxpayers to pay for the bad judgment calls of profit-chasing executives at investment banks?" and "How many millions of dollars will the people who work at Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers still end up making over the course of calendar year 2008?" and "Explain to me again why we can't invest in a crumbling transit infrastructure or healthcare for our citizens, but the people who made the market collapse will get free money to fix the problem they caused?"

Perhaps I shouldn't have done this on a Friday ...?

Not that I've had anything up at schmeiser.com for some time (because I keep meaning to point it here), but for those of you who email me ... I just switched hosting services for my domain, and the changes need to propagate around the internet. So the @schmeiser.com email addy may not be up and running this weekend.

Once everything's chill, then I can figure out how to make my domain point here, and I will achieve small-scale nerdvana.

Where it pays to be selfish

According to "Is Retirement Different for Women?" (Fox Business/Bankrate, Sep 16, 08), more than one in ten retired women are living in poverty. Why? Because women usually make less money, meaning they have less in savings and a smaller Social Security payout. There is this sobering argument:

"If you drop out of the work force to take care of children, that is probably going to be a time in your late 20s or early to mid-30s, when your male colleagues who stay in the work force are getting promotions and climbing the ladder," says Ginita Wall, CPA, CFP and co-founder of WIFE.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing financial education to women.

For women who choose to take time out to raise children, losing those working years means that they return to the work force at the same level they were at years before, maybe even with obsolete skills -- putting them further behind in their careers and savings.

"That means you'll be earning less and will have lost crucial years that you could have been adding to your 401(k) and earning years of service that would get you a higher return," Wall says.

This is why I rarely, if ever, take any "it's better for the family finances if I don't work!" argument seriously. Because for every insistence that the family is no longer spending a king's ransom on dry cleaning and takeout, so of course they're coming out ahead, there is also a conspicuous lack of exposition regarding the retirement plan for the (usually female) parent who is dropping out of the workforce and losing ground in the retirement savings slog.

So, stay-at-home parents -- get a little selfish! Look out for your own retirement. The idea of so many women spending their declining years in poverty should be a sobering lesson for all of us now.

"This cockroach is the most honest thing I know"

If you are not watching Hope Is Emo, you need to go and watch all the episodes.

Ah, emo kids. I feel your pain! And I am sharing it by showing it to the rest of the world.