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“United We Stand…”

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e-pluribus-unum

Paul Krugman has an interesting and kinda scary article in this morning’s Times. He points out that the biggest threat to our economy right now is not the deficit but the fact that not enough is being done to fight unemployment. Says he, the recent hiring gains have, to date, “brought back fewer than 500,000 of the 8 million jobs lost in the wake of the financial crisis.” In that department, he notes, the Administration is doing way too little.

Eight million jobs gone. Heaven help us!

Krugman says the fairest comparison between our economy and another country’s is not with Greece’s debt-ridden economy but with Japan’s, which has never fully recovered from the deflationary cycle of the 1990s. He lays the blame for Europe’s unrest over national debt issues on the establishment of the euro, whose creation, he observes, “imposed a single currency on economies that weren’t ready for such a move.”

Though you’d never know it by the grocery bills I racked up today, inflation is at a 44-year low, and that is not a good thing. Smart money, fearing deflation will extend the economic slump, is moving out of the stock market and into treasury bonds, perceived as safer than equities.

Come to think of it, this morning my financial manager e-mailed to say they’re moving my investments to a cash position. Let’s hope this time they manage to salvage some of that fund. It hadn’t regained all it lost during the crash, but it had recovered to the point that it might reasonably be expected to support me through old age.

Krugman calls for more aggressive recovery measures, but observes rightly that a new stimulus plan “would have no chance of getting through a Congress that has been spooked by the deficit hawks.”

IMHO, something far more basic is at work here.

America is not going to recover economically as long as we continue on our track toward political schism. That way is the road to ruin. The polarization of our thinking between the extreme right and the extreme left is spinning this country around in circles. Ultimately, it will destroy us. Indeed, I fear that if it continues, within a generation it will lead to uprisings, possibly even civil war.

David Brooks observes, in a column also appearing in today’s Times, that our political center presently “is a feckless shell. It has no governing philosophy. Its paragons seem from the outside opportunistic, like Arlen Specter, or caught in some wishy-washy middle, like Blanche Lincoln. The right and left have organized, but the center hasn’t bothered to. The right and left have media outlets and think tanks, but the centrists are content to complain about polarization and go home. By their genteel passivity, moderates have ceded power to the extremes.”

In a little parable meant to elucidate the thinking of people who subscribe to the Tea Party, Brooks predicts that just throwing the rascals out and replacing them with new demagogues won’t get us far. “[Brooks’s fictional angry voter] is going to be disappointed again. He’s going to find that the outsiders he sent to Washington just screamed at each other at ever higher decibels. He’s going to find that he and voters like him unwittingly created a political culture in which compromise is impermissible, in which institutions are decimated by lone-wolf narcissists who have no interest in or talent for crafting legislation. Nothing will get done.”

Just so. The motto on our currency and on the Great Seal of the United States, E Pluribus Unum—”out of many, one”—resonates with the last great words of Patrick Henry:

“United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.”

We’ve forgotten those words. It behooves us to remember them, before it’s too late.

Where Do All the Shoppers Come From?

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Must be payday, that’s the only explanation.

Out of food and out of about everything else, too, I made a long circuit of the globe by way of refilling the freezer, the fridge, and the pantry.

Started around 10:00 ayem at the Sprouts just down the street. Determined to avoid a run on Safeway, I managed to pick up most of the non-Costco food items: cabbage and celery and ground lamb, and to find the shea butter I went there to track down.

The place was overrun with bluehairs. From the minute I walked in to the minute I walked out, flying phalanxes of elderly women made it their business to park themselves and their shopping carts everywhere I went. If I was already where I needed to be, they’d come up and push me out of their way! Have you ever been in a store where you just could. not. get. AWAY. from some annoying customer? One old gal and her hubby fit that bill today. When I walked in the door, she was parked in the bakery section, smack in the middle of the lane that would allow one to get around said department. She was just standing there: not looking at the merchandise, not doing anything…just standing there. So I find another route around, and the next time I look up, there she is again, with her husband’s cart blocking my way! The two of them homed in on me like heat-seeking missiles! Everywhere I went, there they were…parked smack-dab in the middle of the aisle!

Oh well. Thence, on down the road…

Surfaced at Costco shortly after the store opened. Consumed half the month’s gasoline budget at the tanks and then moved on to the store itself.

What a zoo! It was just jammed. This, in the middle of Friday morning. It must be payday. Or Unemployment Insurance benefit day. Where do all these people come from??? When I hit the parking lot, the coast looked clear—I even got a crip space, a miraculous development, since those are almost always occupied. But during the time I circumnavigated the store, the place filled up.

Which reminds me of another funny Sprouts story: As I’m loading groceries into my car, one of my fellow crips comes along and parks his car smack in the middle of the lane, holding up a line of traffic, and waits for me to move so he can grab my crip space. It’s a 100-degree day, and I know the Costco junket will take a good hour, so I’ve brought along a small cold chest and a bunch of those frozen blue cold brick things to keep the Sprouts produce cool. This requires me to take some time to unpack the bags the check-out lady has tossed together, sort the perishables, and fit them into the cool container. Then I have to pack the rest of the stuff into the plastic bins that keep stuff from flying around the back of my van.

The guy stands there and stands there and stands there. His fellow shoppers stacked up behind him stand there and stand there and stand there. I finally climb into the driver’s seat, change into my distance sunglasses so I can drive without killing or crippling some other motorist, and pull out. He races into the vacant spot. The wacky thing about this is that not twenty feet away was another parking spot that was closer to the door! It wasn’t a crip space, though, so I suppose it didn’t meet his exacting requirements.

LOL! Ain’t human nature grand?

By the time I was ready to leave the Costco, check-out lines were halfway back to the far side of the store. Naturally, I picked the line where the guy who was stocking his sports bar with every spirit in the damn store had parked himself in front. Not only did he have to buy every bottle of booze in the house, he had to send his wife back into the store to pick up something else.

While he gassed on and on and on, I moved to another line, where things didn’t move one whit faster. At least the lady who looked like she was buying only one thing but really was waiting for her companion to show up with a truckload of purchases let me go in front of her. Not that it did much good.

Packed as much frozen and perishable stuff into a cold case as I could. Decided against the run on Target, which is always crowded and often nuts. Moved on to Trader Joe’s.

I swear, I have never seen so many people jammed into one building in my life. Here, it was impossible to get a place to park within walking distance. I gave up and parked in the semi-shade of some trees on the far border of the parking lot. Hiked a quarter-mile to the door. The younger set of greenies shops here, while their parents and grandparents hang out at Sprouts. They have their forebears’ manners: if you’re standing in front of a display trying to find, say, the capers, they weasel in front of you to search for what they want, so you can’t see what’s on the shelves. Two women with children encountered each other and parked their kid-ridden carts side by side, coming and going, in the middle of an aisle, yakking companionably while they blocked the way for all comers. When one lady tried to s-q-u-e-e-e-e-e-e-z-e around them, they just ignored her.

Lines were interminable there, too, but miraculously they opened a new line and I got picked to be first! w00t!

Stopped at a Walgreen’s to pick up couple of the Target things I missed by opting that leg of the junket: rubbing alcohol, doggie tennis balls.

Argha! I spent $214 at Costco and about another $75 at the other stores, consuming almost half this month’s budget in one day. But the freezer and fridge are now stuffed and the car is reloaded with gas. With any luck I won’t have to go out again for another two weeks.

Hope not. I hate shopping!

Hmh. Am I alone in that sentiment?

Nail Protection: A pretty good product

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Acrylic-nails

Over the past few months, my fingernails have slowly slipped into the category of “blighted neighborhood.” But last Easter when I fell, it was like Hurricane Katrina meets Daughter of Snagnail. In addition to dislocating the shoulder, the fall sheared off the nail on my ring finger halfway down the quick, tearing apart the cuticle in the process.

Oh well.

A month and a half later, it’s about healed and the nail has almost grown back out. In the interim, the other nails grew even shaggier than normal, because my arm and hand hurt too much to fool with manicuring them. It was as much as I could do to occasionally massage a little shea butter into my fingers.

Late in life, one’s nails tend to split longitudinally as a natural result of aging. One of my thumbnails cracks as soon as it grows an eighth of an inch past the quick, which is annoying, not to say ugly as pussley. I’ve considered going back to acrylics, but I really don’t like that stuff. In the first place, it wrecks your natural nails—the manicurist has to rough up your nails by filing off the surface. In the second place, nothing that stinks that bad can possibly be good for your health. And in the third place, trotting in every ten days to two weeks for a fill gets expensive.

So I’ve thrashed around looking for something that I could paint on—at home, not at a salon—and have it hold my nails together through repeated dips in water and detergent and through constant batting against a keyboard. Hard as Nails has never performed impressively, to my taste. It’s your basic high-gloss nail polish, no more nor less given to chipping and peeling than any other polish, and certainly not much protection against the vagaries of housework, yardwork, and office work.

However, the outfit that makes Hard as Nails has a new product that seems to work really well: Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Hard as Wraps Nail Gel. This stuff claims to contain “acrylic gel” and nylon. Note that it’s not the same as the stuff  manicurists use to do gel nails—that product should be applied professionally, and it’s even worse on your nails than regular acrylics.

Hard as Wraps goes on the same as nail polish. However, it dries (in about the same time as regular polish) to form a tough, rather thick coating that works almost like filler, a product I haven’t found on the market in years. One coat almost fills the deep vertical groove in my thumbnail. Two coats leave the nail almost smooth, and three coats have protected that nail from splitting for a week. Even though it’s very glossy, I think you could use it as a base coat or as a top coat with your favorite colored polish. I’m leaving it clear, and it looks pretty nice. That’s saying something, given the condition my nails have taken on.

A few caveats:

• It’s harder to remove than regular polish. Don’t think you’re going to wipe it off with a dab of polish remover on a scrap of tissue paper. You’ll need some good cotton balls or pads and plenty of remover, and plan to spend a few minutes at the job.

• Don’t shake the bottle before applying. This will cause the product to bubble as it dries on your nails.

• Remember to let each coat dry well before applying another coat. If one layer is still tacky when a second coat is applied, that also can cause bubbling.

As in applying any polish, less is better than more. Better to apply two or three thin coats than one thick coat. Glopping it on also will lead to bubbling problems, plus it won’t dry as fast.

I’m impressed, though. This Hard as Wraps product actually does protect nails from day-to-day wear and tear, the way the old Hard as Nails promised to do. It’s worth a try.

Image: French Manicure on acrylic nails. ImGz. GNU Free Documentation License.

Ten Ways to Cope with a Budget Shortfall

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Susan-B.-Anthony-Dollar

Argh! I’m busted, disgusted, and can’t be trusted! By yesterday morning, my discretionary budget was $2.26 in the black, with two days to go to the end of the budget cycle. But, having stayed out of grocery stores for a good two weeks, I was running out of food. I had to make a grocery run, leaving me with about a $25 shortfall for the month.

Thank goodness today is the end of this month’s budget cycle. Tomorrow is another day. A major grocery-run day, we might add.

Even after applying $700 from savings to cover the clothes shopping frenzy, I started this month’s budget very thin. Right off the bat, a dentist’s bill sucked $232 from my $800 allowance. That would have been tolerable. But then the air-conditioning guy blindsided me with a $467 bill, blithely doing some work at the downtown house without telling me first what it would cost.

$800 – $232 – $467 = not enough $ to live on for a month!

When you come right down to it, surviving only $25 in the red after the budget was reduced to $101 for a month’s worth of food, gasoline, dog care, and house maintenance is pretty amazing. With a few simple strategies (and some mildly onerous belt-tightening), I managed to get through the month without having to visit the pawn shop.

So, how can you cope when you see a budget shortfall coming your way?

1. Plan way ahead. While you’re in the black, realize that sooner or later a time will come when you’ll miss your budget goal.

• In flush times, stock up on staples and frozen food.

Example: Because my freezer was full of chicken, pork, beef, and fish bought in prior months, at no time this month did I have to buy meat. Pantry shelves also held enough pasta, rice, beans, and canned goods to supplement the frozen meat and veggies.

• Grow a garden. At the very least, have a few herbs and veggies growing in pots.

Example: Even though it’s the tail end of the season, the chard in the backyard has been edible all month. Thanks to the oranges on the trees, I haven’t had to buy juice all winter, and the lemons added to cooking and made salad dressings.

• Build an emergency fund. This should go without saying.

2. Leave the car in the garage. Don’t drive anywhere unless absolutely necessary, and when you do, plan trips to hit several destinations along the way, limiting the number of times you have to go out in the car. This has several benefits:

• Obviously, the less you drive, the less you’ll spend on gas.

• Not driving means staying out of stores. Staying out of stores preserves capital. You discover you can go a lot longer between grocery-store runs than you thought, and that those little repair jobs that might send you to Home Depot can wait for a while.

• If you walk to a grocery store, you can only carry so much home. This will limit your purchases to what you really need.

3. Eat at home. I’ll say that again: Eat at home!

• Never eat in restaurants when you’re short on cash.

• Brown-bag your lunch to work or school.

• Make your own bread to help save on grocery bills. It’s cheaper and tastes a lot better than most grocery-store loaves.

4. Eat well, but eat less. This is a good time to go on a diet.

• Cut portion sizes.

• Prepare dishes that lend themselves to leftovers, such as stews, roasts, and pasta dishes, and then be careful not to pig out the first time they appear on the dinner table.

5. Get off the sauce.

• A bottle of wine or beer is a hole into which to pour empty calories and money.

6. If you smoke, cut back as far as you can without suffering intolerable discomfort.

• A cigarette is a torch with which to set fire to cash.

7. Do without. If you don’t need something right this minute, chances are it can wait until after the budget crisis passes.

• A burned-out lightbulb, an empty bottle of vitamins, a dead triple-A battery can be replaced later.

8. Substitute creatively. If you run out of something you regard as crucial, look around for something that can take its place for awhile.

• Woolite or unscented dish detergent works well as shampoo.

• Ordinary hand cream is the same stuff that’s in expensive face creams.

• Hand soap worked into a thick lather works as well as shaving foam.

• Baking soda works in place of toothpaste.

• Vinegar substitutes nicely for Windex.

• Rice or pasta can take the place of potatoes, to good effect.

9. Return stuff. If you’ve recently bought something that you don’t need to use right away, take it back.

10. Drink water, coffee, or tea, not pop.

• Another good excuse to start a diet! Water is free; home-brewed ice tea  or iced coffee is very cheap. All are better for you than soda pop.

w00t! Carnival of Money Stories headed this way!

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On Monday Funny hosts the Carnival of Money Stories, now being overseen by Mrs. Accountability. A few posts have already come in. Don’t forget to send yours by Sunday evening. Says Mrs. A:

Here is a reminder of the guidelines for submissions. . .

• The article should be a personal money story or experience. Any other type of article will not be included in the carnival.

• The article should be related to some form of personal finance/business.

• Only one submission per blog per week.

• The article should be less than one month old.

So send your posts in now—I’m looking forward to reading the greatest money stories ever told!

Taxes, Government, the Tea Party, and America’s Way of Life

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Tea-Party-Logo

Listening to NPR’s All Things Considered during a quick grocery run this afternoon, I heard newly triumphant Tea Partier Rand Paul trumpeting on about what he thinks of as his “moderate” views on the future of American government: basically, get rid of everything that costs anyone anything. The Americans with Disabilities Act, he tells us, was “overreaching,” and businesses should be allowed to refuse service to anyone they please, including those needing special accommodations. Asked if, by that line of thinking, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was overreaching, he backed and filled like crazy, first trying to say that he agreed with legislation intended to eliminate “institutional” discrimination. Then, when pressed by the reporter who pointed out that the Civil Rights Act said businesses could not refuse service to anyone they please, he admitted he hadn’t ever read the darn thing.

The mixed results of the current round of voting, and the silly “We’re here to take back OUR government” motto that’s being used to fine demagogic effect (hey, it’s not your government, folks…it’s everyone’s government), presage re-election of doctrinaire kill-the-beasters. These people would like to see every tax-funded safety net taken away from every American, and if possible every tax eliminated, first starting with big corporate taxpayers, them moving to the extremely wealthy, and finally focussing on the middle class. As we know, the deadbeat working poor don’t pay taxes.

What, really, would this mean? A few days ago, Jim at Bargaineering ran a post in which he mentioned, in passing, USA Today‘s report that American tax rates are lower than they’ve been in 60 years. He also pointed out that those scary-sounding tax brackets do not even vaguely represent the typical American’s actual ratio of tax to income; after deductions and credits, he observes, “very few people pay anything close to their marginal tax rate.”

This engendered a lively round of screaming and wailing from Bargaineering’s readers. I left a half-baked yelp there, myself, which I’d like to refine a bit today.

You know, the American middle class exists not in spite of the government, but because of it. The affluent lifestyle that has been enjoyed by the majority of our citizens since World War II is an artifact of government protectionism and social programs that date back to the 1800s. The amenities we enjoy and that are envied by citizens of other countries, even in the developed world, were put in place by our taxes. As scholar Michael Lind remarked a few years ago, our middle class has “been invented and reinvented by the government.”

How, I wonder, do the Tea Partiers, the Kill-the-Beasters, and the chronic complainers think we get roads built? Bridges built? Airports constructed? Air traffic controllers trained and in place 24 hours a day?

Where do they think schools come from? Do they really believe it would be better for all of us to home-school our kids, or to rely on private entities with customer service like, oh, say Qwest‘s or Comcast‘s, to educate our children? Did none of them watch last week’s Frontline report on the quality of education delivered by for-profit “colleges” and “universities”?

Have they never used a public library? Have they never put their kids in a summer program run by their town or city’s public parks program?

Where does the water that flows out of the taps in their kitchens and bathrooms come from? Who works to make that water as safe as possible and keep it coming, clean and steady, day and night, year after year?

Is each and every one of them ready to pick up an automatic rifle and defend his home against an invading army? And who among them will be the general and who the privates in the unfunded militia that will protect our country against those who hate us?

And do they never go to professional football or baseball games, held in enormous arenas built at taxpayer expense for the benefit of private entrepreneurs? Do they not watch television, an amenity developed and delivered to us at taxpayer expense?

Did they all go to private colleges and universities, paying the vast tuition for places like Princeton, Yale, and Stanford out of pocket? Maybe they went to lesser schools, like Carleton College or Lewis and Clark—no problem sending the kids there with the savings from all those taxes not paid to support public universities and community colleges.

Maybe these folks, the Joe the Plumbers Sarah Palin pretends to speak for, can afford to put their kids in private or parochial schools. But most people can’t. What do they think will happen to America when 70 or 80 percent of the families in this country, absent public schools, cannot afford to educate their children?

One commenter at Bargaineering says about the claim that taxes are now historically low: “You forget to add into taxes things like social security, state and local fees and also real estate taxes.” Oh, the pain. I weep, I do.

Were it not for Social Security, after a lifetime of hard work and with a bouquet of graduate degrees, I would be sleeping on the street and blogging from the library. Oh, wait! No, I wouldn’t. There wouldn’t be any libraries without local taxes. I would not be blogging at all.

Nor would I be eating.

When I was laid off from my job—the micro-local consequence, we might add, of lax regulation of the financial industry and misguided theories about economy and government—I was forced into unwilling retirement because I am too old to get another job and do not know how to wait tables or stock shelves at the local WalMart (which wasn’t hiring anyway). I could not even get a job driving the tourist train at the zoo. Without Social Security, which now represents more than half my income, I would have lost my paid-off home because I could not have paid the utilities or the cost of basic maintenance. I would not have enough to to buy food or clothing.

If Social Security did not exist, my son would have to take me in and care for me through my old age, or else I would be on the street. And all those Tea Partiers would be doing the same for their parents.

Were it not for Medicare, I would not have any access to health care. Even with a better-than-average medical track record, my age, an evening in the ER with a stress attack pushing my blood pressure through the stratosphere, an incorrect diagnosis of a heart murmur, and a single hairline wrist fracture (signaling nonexistent “osteoporosis” to one insurance bureaucrat) render me ineligible for health insurance at any rational cost. If I could get an insurer to cover me, I could not afford it. For the health plan that cost $36 a month while I was working, COBRA charges $500. One early retiree I spoke with earlier this week said that he and his wife, both cancer survivors, are each paying $2,200 a month for health insurance!

That is more than my monthly gross income. It is $666 more than the 2005 average monthly income for Americans.

Medicare is pretty stiff, too: 8.33 times what I was paying on the job, where my employer footed most of the bill. The largest part of the individual’s cost of Medicare goes to private entities: Medicare Part D and Medigap are provided by the same insurance companies that rip you younger folks off; the only reason you can get full coverage in these programs—assuming you move fast and get yourself a policy the instant you become eligible—is that the federal government requires insurers to cover you without prejudice.

Taxes don’t just evaporate into the air. They buy essential services.

Those services keep our country safe, make commerce and communication possible, build and maintain the world’s best land and air transportation system, keep our food and water reasonably safe, give us a record high life expectancy (if you were born in 1900, when taxes were nil, you could expect to live just under 50 years), make it possible for us to educate our children for nothing or nearly nothing (have you priced private grade schools and high schools lately?), and relieve us from having to support our aged and infirm parents.

Among other things.

So please. Let’s get a little common sense!

Images:

Chicago Tea Party logo: shamelessly ripped from the Internet, without tax payment
Deutche Truppen am Arc de Triomphe, Deutches Bundesarchiv, Wikipedia Commons