Watching Them Watch Us
Watching Them Watch Us
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It Will Take More Than An Election
Days Like Today Make Me Dream of Spain
Y’all know that I am not making any attempt to change your mind, I am simply too exhausted for that. This has been a very long, tiring year. Perhaps I should simply take the most personally profitable path and exit quietly. That place would be Spain, probably. It won’t be today. I am still committed to fixin’ it.
Agenda: I will be looking at markets’ reaction to incoming headlines and observations that appear on X and on TV.
When a child in my 20s, you have a lot to prove. In my instance, discrimination to overcome. I stated it before, here: I have lost millions of dollars due to it, and upside from there. By plural, I am not saying “a couple.” I have names, and faces, I could give them to you, today. I am not alone, more than 50% of the population is paid 80 cents on the dollar. When a prominent black male said that the greatest privilege is male privilege, I couldn’t believe my ears. With the context he certainly faced, he maintained his opinion, that being a male was the greatest privilege. Jeezus.
That there is a financial information crisis as a whole, and that is much, much worse because more than half is starting with a financial handicap. Plus gender roles on top. No slogan will fix that overnight, to fixate on any slogan is comical to me.
A national election won’t fix our deep trouble here, the home of the free and the brave…and sanctimonious hypocrisy. Boomers dislike the ‘participation medals.’ That same generation tells me, to my face, that my service is a commodity. When this occurs, I think to myself: “I should charge the fair market rate for my time, which you cannot afford at all. And you would remain with the wrong set of information, with the idea that the earth was flat. I would make much more, with much less regulatory oversight, and almost no hassle. Spain is calling louder.
It gets worse, the contradictions continue. “We built this country.” True. You were also complacent, and systematically underestimated your competition for decades, and now your grandchildren are faced with global war that they will be the perpetual underdogs. How Hillary of you (I am going to use that phrase to throw shade at others from this point forward). Companies like Hyundai, LG, and Samsung should have never, ever become prominent in the United States. Sylvania and RCA are names for museums and history books now. The Grand Prix and Monte Carlo? Obliterated by the Corolla and Accord. Pontiac Fiero lasted a mere 2 (or 3) years before GM gave up, because its battle with Toyota’s MR2 was over, that fast. That all occurred on your watch.
“It’s not a home run when you start on third base.”1 The sanctimonious generation is also responsible for the fact that man was stranded on third. How Hillary of you.
In Korea (I was born in the US, my parents were immigrants from Korea, one of the most desperate nations on the planet), some would say “we are smarter than the Japanese, so we are winning.” Don’t be daft, that cannot be it. IQ has an arithmetic average of 100, the law of large numbers applies. How about my favorite line by Gordon Gekko: “give me poor, smart, and hungry, and no feelings.” Chicken dinner.
A good example is the idea of tariffs. Tariffs are poor solutions for the fact that 1.7billion Chinese and 1.4billion Indians are poorer, far better educated on average, and hungrier. And in the United Stated, we think we are entitled. They outnumber us 10:1, and in India, the average age is something like 30 years old. A tariff of 10% on a $500 TV = $50. That $50 hurts a struggling lower-middle class person 1000x more than it does a multi-millionaire. The lack of understanding of financial principles in our nation is stunning. If you want to go down the tariff rabbit-hole, then you are opening the door to other public policies, such Medicare for All. Cancelled.
To give you an idea of how far behind we are. A foreign student arrives in the United States, at the age of 11, and does not need to look at the math book for at least 3 years. He/she can study english and history and apply to Harvard, the Michigan of the East (just kidding, U of Michigan is a backup school, namely my backup school). Back to the story. That same foreign student returns home, and has to enter into an international school. Do you know why? He is irrecoverably behind in his home nation. This happens, right now. Go ahead and ask your foreign-born expat co-worker working as an engineer. 2
And yet, a younger friend and I were texting the other day. He got divorced, changed jobs, his new wife supported him through school, he graduated from both college and graduate school. He is a fierce liberal, I send him mocking texts with Marxist slogans in order to mock him. He has told me that I am one of the most capitalist people he knows.
I told him that I was happy for him, that he re-discovered, and re-invented himself. I then reminded him that I have been to over 50 countries, lived on three continents. I have made speeches to government officials, portfolio managers of the national pension funds, played golf where beggars lined the fences outside while we played on resort courses. And then, I reminded my friend that his reinvention was possible only in the United States of America. In those 50 other countries, the path he took was almost completely impossible.
Example 2. Love this kid. Gimme Nique: there’s still hope. He starts with himself, he pleas for the Bucks fans to look at the mirror first. We can learn from him, despite his ugly red hat.
I have work to do, Spain will need to wait.
A crazy, hyper-competitive person said that, I think. He is head coach for the Los Angeles Chargers now.
They will confirm what I am saying or I will eat my shoe.