August 25, 2017--Friday Potpourri

Some end-of-week reflections--

On America's declining competitiveness, a quote from Edward Luce's Time to Start Thinking--

"America spends more on potato chips every year than on [scientific and technological] research and development. More than half of U.S. patents are now awarded to non-U.S. companies. And there are now almost as many people (770,000) working in the country's correction industry, mostly prison guards, as there are employed in the auto sector."

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A friend, who I had not thought would succumb to eclipse-mania, had a great time on Monday keeping track of it and taking all sorts of truly beautiful photos, including through the dozens of apertures that punctuate a kitchen colander so that it serves as a kind of multiplex pinhole projector. 

I asked her why she thought the solar event had so engaged millions of us. "Easy," she said, "It was the American eclipse, visible in its totality from coast to coast. No need as in the past to travel to Eastern Europe or some remote Pacific island to have the full experience."

Obsessed as I have been this week with reading Time to Start Thinking, which presents a convincing and disturbing picture of America's decline, thinking metaphorically, I wondered if Americans were so intrigued because we are in our own form of eclipse?

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Then there is Louise Linton, B-picture actress wife of treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, who really stepped into her Marie Antoinette impersonation. 

She was caught posting photos of herself on Instagram, stepping off a government jet, shlepping armfuls of shopping bags from designer shops including Tom Ford, Hermes, and Valentino.

To make matters extra vulgar she hash-tagged her purchases in case anyone didn't recognize the designer labels.

Apparently many did recognize them and eviscerated her in their comments. Not phased, as one peripheral to the in-your-face Trump administration, she responded--

Aw!!! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable. Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololo. Have you given more to the economy than me (sic) and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country? [My italics]

I'm pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our 'day trip' than you did. Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you'd be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours.

Three "sacrifices" in fewer than 60 words. Clearly, they must be hurting, though from his financial disclosure form hubby Steve appears to be doing fairly well. He's worth at least $300 million.

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Then what about ESPN's madness?

They pulled from the play-by-play booth one of the announcers who was set to call the season-opening football game in Charlottesville between the University of Virginia and William & Mary, Thomas Jefferson's alma mater. 

They did so, as they put it, to "avoid offending" some viewers.

What, I wondered, might be doing the offending? 

The ESPN answer--the announcer's name. It's Robert Lee.

Not Robert E. Lee, but apparently close enough. And no matter that ESPN's Robert Lee is Asian American.

A couple of issues--

How many people who might be offended--and for what reason that might be escapes me--how many do you think know enough about Robert E. Lee to be offended? UofV students? The college is about as selective as it gets and one would think students there would know the difference between a 19th century Confederate general and someone on ESPN of Chinese descent.

White supremacists, though, are another matter, and with ESPN losing money they don't want to offend this part of their shrinking viewership.

Louise Linton

August 23, 2017--Spectre of Decline

Edward Luce's persuasive but highly disturbing 2012 book--Time to Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline, in just two paragraphs, sets the context for the rise and election of Donald Trump.

About the hollowing-out middle class--

According to the Economic Security Index, which tracks the number of Americans who experience a drop in their annual income of at least a quarter, the rate has almost doubled since Reagan was president. In 1985 just over one in eight Americans suffered an income loss of a quarter or more. By [2008] the time the financial meltdown hit, almost one in five Americans were affected. Since then, that number has grown sharply. . . 

Since one year's casualties are mostly different from the next, much more than one in five Americans now live in semipermanent fear of falling off the precipice. In the decade leading up to the collapse of the subprime market, more than half of Americans experienced an income loss of a quarter or more in one or more years. Think of the General Motors worker with his pension and health care plan. In the 1960s he earned $60,000 a year in today's prices. Walmart, which as the largest employer is the equivalent in today's economy, pays its 1.1 million mostly female employees on average $17,500 a year, most of them without . . . pension or health care benefits.

Further--

In 2009, "Lee Scott, then the chief executive of Walmart, . . . earned more in two weeks than the average Walmart employee does in her lifetime."