Financial Mistakes Are Forever...

When you make a financial mistake, there is usually no "do over" or way to fix it.   The best you can hope for is to learn from the mistake and move on.   Expensive lessons!

One popular trope on situation comedy television is to have an episode where a main character goes out and buys a fancy car.   They then realize it was a mistake and "take the car back" and get their money back.  GLEE! for example, used this in one episode, where the Mr. Shuester buys a new Corvette to impress his girlfriend, and then realizes it was an expensive mistake and "takes it back" and they even give him his old car back in the deal.

Nice fantasy.  In reality, well, things are different.  Financial mistakes often cannot be unwound and set right.   You take a hit and you are hit for life.   And that is one reason why buyer's remorse is so strong.   People buy big-ticket items and then realize they have squandered a large amount of the finite amount of money they will ever earn in their lifetimes and they get upset.  Very upset.

With cars of course, there is no "taking back" a brand-new car to a dealer.   Once you buy it, it is a used car, worth 10-20% less than what you paid for it.   If you decide you don't like it, your only option is to sell it, or try to trade it back in.  Either way, you are out thousands and thousands of dollars.

For some smaller items, it may be possible to "take it back" if a store offers a return policy for unused or undamaged items.

But other items in your life, like home appliances, or expensive vacations, often cannot be returned.   If you buy an expensive washing machine or refrigerator, you generally can't return them, unless they are defective.

For example, a friend remodels a house.   After reading a copy of Fancy Home Magazine they decide to buy a "built-in" refrigerator that has drawers that look like cabinet drawers.   It is really cool looking to be sure, but it costs $10,000.   Is that a lot of money?  Well, if you are a millionaire, it is 1% of your net worth.   Doesn't sound like a lot, but bear in mind you only get 100 of those 1%'s.   And to me, 100 is not a large number.  I can count that high. That's how many times I shake a Martini shaker before serving (I lie, actually 200).   It is a big chunk of change even for someone with a net worth of over a million bucks.

So the friend blows the bucks on the fridge.   It is a done deal, and now they complain they are "broke".   Well, guess what?  You can't rip out that fridge and sell it and get your money back.  You cannot unwind that financial deal.   All you can do is live with the fancy fridge and hope it provides you with $10,000 worth of intimidating your neighbors.

Oh, and you have to pay for all the service calls and maintenance that such esoteric high-end appliances usually require.  My neighbor had a Sub-Zero built-in, and she kidded me that the repair guy was now living in their basement.

On the other hand, the basic refrigerator can be had for under $1,000 and usually never needs service, other than cleaning.  After 15 years you throw it away and start over.   And no, a $10,000 refrigerator does not last ten times as long (150 years, no).

We all make financial mistakes of one sort or another.  There are cars we wish we didn't buy, and maybe clothing that didn't last long or fit well or look good.   There are bad meals we paid too much for in restaurants.   It happens to all of us.   And rarely can you unwind these deals and start over again.   You make a financial mistake, you usually have to live with it for life.

I talk a lot here about the 4th dimension of money - time.   Money over time is a powerful concept and yet it eludes most people.   The lady with the $10,000 refrigerator thinks, "Well, I've already paid for it, so that's that!"  And to some extent this is true.  But it is also true that the entire transaction cost of the refrigerator is easily ten times what it should have been.

You see, appliances, cars, houses, and everything else we own is destined to fail, break, wear out, or go hopelessly out of style (or with electronics, be obsolete or incompatible with new formats) in 15 years max (for electronics, maybe five, particularly Apple products).   When you buy a car or a house or anything, it is tempting (when you are younger) to think, "Well, I have this thing now, and I am now set for life!"

But as you get older, you realize that "things" in your life are very ephemeral.  They pass through your hands in short order, and you end up acquiring new things to replace them.   Cars, clothes, appliances, houses, whatever.   Nothing lasts forever.   And please don't say otherwise, because the cost of rebuilding things eventually exceeds the cost of replacement.

So, to an older person, the purchase of an appliance appears somewhat different than to a younger person.   You look at it as a 15-year relationship, and that over your lifetime, you will be forced to buy a number of these appliances, wear them out, and then buy new ones.   When you needlessly multiply this cost by a factor of 2, 5, or 10, well, you are not necessarily getting 2x, 5x, or 10x life service in return, or even a 2x, 5x, or 10x better "experience".

For example, while I enjoyed owning BMWs over the years, I realize that the cost of these vehicles is very high, and the cost of maintenance and even basic service is often 2x, 5x, or even 10x that of a lesser car.   The problem is, they don't last even twice as long.   In fact, in terms of longevity, some Japanese car is going to yield a longer service life with less maintenance at a far lower cost.

But what about the experience?  Isn't it worth it to have "the ultimate driving machine?"   Maybe in the past, when most "normal" cars handled horribly and rode like buckboards.   Today, well, yes a BMW handles better, but not 2x, 5x, or 10x better than some econobox.   And let's face it, on legal city streets, you aren't going to drive like a LeMans driver - or at least you shouldn't be.

So you can spend twice as much and not get twice as much in terms of service life or user experience.   And once you pull the trigger on a big-ticket purchase like that, well, you can't extract your money back out, unwind the transaction, or otherwise undo the deal.   You've spent X dollars on an item, and that leaves you with Y-X dollars, where Y is your lifetime income, which indeed is a finite number.  No, you can't just go out and "earn more money" even if you wanted to.

So, if you buy a pair of brand-new jet skis and then use them once and let them rot, that's a huge financial mistake.   And you laugh, it happens more often than you think.   I recounted the tail of the dental hygienist who bought a boat at a boat show, used it once, decided they didn't like boating, and then let it sit in the driveway, un-winterized, for several years - unable to sell it because they owed more on the loan that it was worth, compounded by a cracked engine block and a hull full of water and algae.

You really have to think through big-ticket items like this, if you are a middle-class person.   Yes, it is nice and fun to have nice things and all, but then again, if you spend money willy-nilly, you may run out.  And that could be a disaster when you get older.

So you went and bought a motorhome on a 20 year loan and decide you hate RVing.  Or you spend way too much money on a leased Acura, and now regret not buying outright, a secondhand Honda for the same amount.   What can you do about it?

Well, nothing.   Except for one thing.   And that one thing is to confront yourself over the matter, realize you made a mistake (instead of externalizing by blaming the dealer or manufacturer or the loan company) and then learn from the experience.   If you can do this, then the tens of thousands of dollars you spent at least provides you with an education - and painful learning experience that will stick in your brain for life.

And painful lessons are the ones we most remember.

Wait Ten Minutes, It Goes Away....

If you are hungry, waiting a few minutes often makes the hunger go away.

I often compare over-spending to over-eating in this blog, as they are driven by the same neural network pathways in your brain.   Being 20 pounds overweight is like having an intractable credit card debt of $5000 or more.   You keep resolving to lose the weight (or lose the debt) but next month, you get on the scale (or get your monthly statement) and are depressed to find you've gained three more pounds and another $1000 in debt.

And both are similar in that you can keep living in denial an awful long time and still appear to be doing "OK" until one day you are bankrupt or dead of a heart attack.

Of course, along the way, the symptoms get worse.   You lose mobility.  Your knees and back ache from all that extra weight.   Your credit score drops.   You find yourself "short of cash" more and more.

Same deal, different day.   And in America, the land of plenty (and it is, so shut up about how awful things are, we don't buy that crap here) the biggest problem citizens have is not lack of money or lack of food, but over-consumption on both counts.

People regale me about how "broke" they are in messages "sent from my iPhone" and fail to appreciate the irony.

But the parallels go further.  Fat people and folks in debt are perpetually believing that some "trick" will save them from being overweight and overdebt.  The one trick of the tiny belly will let them lose weight while they "eat all they want" or maybe it is some pill, or acacia berries.   Of course, these things never work, and the huge amount of fat people in America is testament to that.

Similarly, people look for shortcuts to "get out of debt" and "secrets" to making money in the stock market.   People claim they are not worried about their seven maxed-out credit cards, because their stock market money system (blessed by Jesus, of course) will set them free.

And yet, the parallels go even further.   Denial is a big one.   "I'm not that fat" we say, and "I don't have that much debt!"  

Or the blame game.  "It is my big bones!" they say, or "all the hormones they put in the food!" versus, "the stock market is rigged!"  or "the big banks are to blame!"

In all cases, however, these excuses and lies we tell ourselves have one thing in common:  While they may make us feel better for the moment, they do nothing to extricate ourselves from our health and financial predicaments.

So what is the "one trick to the tiny belly?" and the "one trick to getting out of debt and accumulating wealth?"   It is not trick:

Consume less than you need to.

End of story.  Eat less, have a calorie deficit, and you will lose weight.  Eat more, have a calorie surplus, you gain weight.  100 surplus calories a day is 3000 calories a month - about one pound of body weight.   That's 12 pounds a year, 120 pounds in a decade.   Even half that amount - or 1/4 - will cause you to gain weight.

Similarly, if you spend $100 more a month than you make, over a year, your debt load will increase by $1200.  Over a decade, $12,000.   Over a working lifetime, $50,000 or more, with compound interest - perhaps $100,000.

On the other hand, if you save $100 a month it snowballs into a small fortune over a working lifetime.

OK, you say, I get it.   But it is so hard to do.   After all, food is tempting and yummy, and when you are hungry, grabbing a handful of chips seems like the thing to do!

And when you are at the car dealer, the jet ski store, or the smart phone store, you want to have these shiny new things, and the salesman says you can afford them, so why not?

Yea, it is hard.  And that is why I have struggled with finances and weight since the day I was born in this filthy rich country.   We have too much of everything in the USA.   And I think it is sort of criminal to complain about this, when the rest of the world struggles for basic needs.   But bitch and whine we do, and you'd think, from talking to people or reading online comments, that living in the wealthiest country in the world was the worst thing!   It is not.   You just have to have the self-control to get ahead, and not fall into the many traps laid for the unwary consumer.

I recently stepped on the scale and realized that I had gained a lot of weight back.   It happens.  You stop checking your weight, you stop measuring portion, you get fat.  You stop balancing your checkbook, you stop checking your net worth, you go broke.  Again, same deal, different day.

I have managed to lose ten pounds recently, which is a good start, but I still have a long way to go.   My motivations include pain.   Yes, being overweight is painful, and it affects all your joints and well as other bodily functions.   The problem for many young people today, is that they don't feel all that pain - just yet - and then assume they can carry a 60 lb sack of concrete around for the rest of their lives.   They can't - they will end up in one of those electric scooters in Wal-Mart buying Candy Corn Oreos before too long.

Candy Corn Oreos?  ouch.

I don't eat Candy Corn Oreos, or any Oreos for that matter.  Or soda pop, or chips and whatnot.  But still, if I don't watch how much I eat I gain weight.   You can get fat on celery, I suppose, if you really put your mind to it.  It ain't what you eat, it is how much you eat.   Same deal with spending.  You can coupon yourself to death, it doesn't "save" you money if you are spending more than you make.

So lately, I have been measuring portions again, making sure the meal I eat is an appropriate size.   And when I am done eating, if I am still hungry, I resist the temptation to go back for "seconds" or to snack.   Because I have found that if I wait ten minutes the hunger urge shuts itself off.   It is a weird thing, but after breakfast this morning I was still hungry.  But ten minutes later, no hunger.

And the same is true with spending.  No car salesman likes it when a customer says, "I'll think it over and get back to you" as that customer is gone and gone for good.  Once they drive away, the customer will start thinking of the costs involved and then say, "forgetabout it!"   So many people buy things as impulse purchases not as real needs in their lives and instead of shopping around based on price and quality, they just buy things because they want them at the time.

If they waited ten minutes, the urge to spend would have dissipated.   Are you in a store looking at a new dress or a new electronic toy?   Put it down, walk around the block and come back.   Chances are, your urge to buy will have dissipated by them.   Funny how that works.

Or at least, maybe walking around the block, you'd have time to think about whether you really need it, and if you do, where it could be bought for less.  But the urge to buy now will have attenuated.

Wait ten minutes, it goes away.....

Average Net Worth of Americans

How does your net worth stack up to others?  Does it really matter?

Comparing yourself to others is always a path fraught with peril - for a number of reasons.  First, most others are brain-dead fools who over-consume and under-save and vote based on social issues.   So saying you are "doing better" than your bankrupt neighbor is an exercise in self-delusion.

But we all do it.  We look to the herd for normative cues as to how we are doing.  If we are doing better than the herd, we pat ourselves on the back.  If worse, we say the game is rigged and "unfair".

You can see why comparing yourself to others is a pointless game.

The real comparison, is to see how much you have set aside (or in a pension or whatever) and figure out whether that is enough to meet your life goals and fund your retirement.   What Bubba across the street has saved, really isn't relevant.   You may have twice as much as he has, but still far less than you need to retire.

But, we all want to know - how much do others have saved?  Am I doing better than the norm?  Worse?  What? 

Curiosity killed the cat.

The problem is, what the average American has saved is hard to quantify, as there are a few "whales" out there who have Billions, and this skews the average.   Median savings is a far more relevant number - and far scarier.

But it gets weirder.  Depending on who you talk to , we are either the richest country in the world - or the poorest:

Middle class Americans: Not so wealthy by global standards ...

money.cnn.com/2014/06/11/news/.../middle-class-wealth/

CNNMoney

Jun 11, 2014 - Americans' average wealth tops $301,000 per adult, enough to rank us fourth on the latest Credit Suisse Global Wealth report. But that figure doesn't tell you how the middle class American is doing. Americans' median wealth is a mere $44,900 per adult -- half have more, half have less.

The Typical American's Net Worth By Age: Here's Where ...

www.fool.com/.../the-average-americans-net-worth-by-...

The Motley FoolJan 26, 2015 - Photo: Quozio. Ask most people what their net worth is and they probably don't know. Show them how to calculate it and they'll be dying to ...

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In the news
How does your net worth compare with the average American's?
MSN.com‎ - 1 day agoIt may be surprising, however, to learn that the average American's median net worth peaks in the year just following retirement, and then slides ...
Compare Your Net Worth to the Average American's
Money‎ - 1 day agoMore news for average net worth american

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The Average American Net Worth Is Huge! | Financial Samurai

www.financialsamurai.com/average-net-worth-is-huge/

Then came a 2014 Credit Suisse survey highlighting the average net worth in America is a whopping $301,000 (see pic)! Regulars here know that I've been pretty positive about the economy for a while, and this stat just makes me even more so.

It Only Takes $10,400 to be Richer Than Most Millennials ...

blogs.wsj.com/.../it-only-takes-10400-to-be-riche...

The Wall Street Journal

Sep 4, 2014 - Are you a millennial with a net worth of more than $10400? ... released today, which tracked the net worth and income of American families in 2013. ... (the median) but it takes $75,500 to be richer than millennials on average.

Compare Your Net Worth to the Average American's ... - Time

time.com/money/3883054/net-worth-compare-average-american/

Time

1 day ago - It may not be the best way to evaluate your accomplishments, but knowing how your financial situation stacks up against your peers can offer ...

Wealth in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States

WikipediaWhen observing the changes in the wealth among American households, one .... and 2007 incomes of the top 1% of Americans grew by an average of 275%.

To some people, the "average" savings of $301,000 seems like a "huge" amount.  To others, the "median" savings of $44,900 seems pitifully small.  Same numbers, different perceptions!  And it gets harder to pin down, as it varies by age as well.

And then there are those who have no savings (like some friends of mine) but huge pensions - well over $100,000 a year.  That's the equivalent of well over $2,000,000 in savings, yet it would not be counted by any "net worth" calculator on the market.

And then we have to ask - where does this data come from?  Well, it doesn't come from computers linked to your bank account.  It comes from surveys.  And survey data can be very misleading, as people lie (to themselves, and others) about how much money they have - or think they should have.   And then there are people like "Financial Samurai" who think $310,000 is a "huge" amount of money.   It isn't.  It isn't enough to retire in a trailer park in Florida, much less in a nice house somewhere.

And then there is the question of what is net worth exactly?  As I noted in my Millionaire versus millionaire posting, many folks don't count equity in the home as part of your "net worth" even if it would be liquidated as part of your estate.   And indeed, you can sell a house and live somewhere else fare more cheaply.

What it comes down to is another number provided by the Bureau of Specious Statistics.   The net worth of the average American is damn hard to calculate and any numbers bandied about based on self-reported data, that don't take into account pension plans and home equity, are basically nonsense numbers.

 A man with a $100,000 a year pension and $50,000 in the bank has a real "net worth" of far more than $50,000.  And if his $500,000 house is "paid for" then he is a wealthy man.  But our friends at the Bureau would have you believe he is "poor" because he has only $50,000 in the bank.  Is he?   Of course not.

Similarly, the fellow with $500,000 in his 401(k) might seem to be "rich" but using the 5% rule, that amounts to only $25,000 a year in income in retirement, which with Social Security, might net him $40,000 a year in retirement benefits - far less than the median or average income in the USA.  And if his house is over-mortgaged, well, does he really have any net worth at all?

It gets down to the same thing I have been saying over and over again - you have to use your own internal compass in these matters, and worry less about what the herd is doing, because the herd is basically insane.  They all have iPhones and think Justin Beber is a "star" or something.   I think they smoke crack.

So, if you look at the TIME article above, and see that the "median" net worth for someone in your age group is say, $150,000 and you are doing better than that, well, don't think you are home free.   You've basically saved up three years worth of income, perhaps less if you have a high-dollar lifestyle.

And sadly, most of the financial media is like this - providing data that is of little use, inaccurate, obsolete, self-reported, or just downright wrong.

* * *

NOTE:  One interesting piece of data from the Wikipedia page is the net worth of self-employed individuals versus those employed by others.  Look at it - it is startling.   But this reflects the necessity of the self-employed to self-fund their retirements.  It may also reflect that the self-employed, not getting money in weekly paychecks, tend to look at money in a different light - in terms of net worth, not monthly cash-flow.

Having it all - and Having nothing.

Like anything else, in RVing, it is possible to take a good thing too far!

We have been traveling to the Keys for a couple of weeks with our tiny camper trailer.  This was just a getaway for a while.  We usually spend about four months of the years this way.  For most folks, two weeks is about it.

Why is this?  Well, we have a tiny camping trailer that cost $8300 used, and a cheap Japanese pickup truck, all paid for.  I don't have to go back to work on Monday to earn money to make payments on toys.

Others in the campground have different ideas.   It is not unusual to see a large camper costing $100,000 to $500,000 (or more) with several cars parked next to it - including BMWs and Mercedes.  In addition to this, are motorycles, scooters, bass boats, jet skis, and the ubiquitous golf cart.  Apparently, riding around in a golf cart (not for golfing) in the campground is the height of entertainment.

I am sitting next to our tiny camper trailer and adding up the amount of motorized depreciating goods at each site around us.   And on each site, is literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, sitting around baking in the hot sun and getting rained on in the rain and depreciating by thousands of dollars a month.   Literally, some of these folks have more "invested" in camping toys than they have in their principal residences.

So what's the harm in all of this?  Lifestyle choice, right?   Well, that's true, in America you can do as you please.   But these choices are often toxic ones, as the hazardous outcomes are delayed by years or even decades.   So the victims are having fun now - but paying for it later.

As I noted in another posting, most RVs are poorly, poorly made.   The fiberglass walls delaminate over time, leaving unsightly bubbles which are testament to the leaks in the unit.  Rubber roofs bubble up and then crack and leak - often leading to the delaminating sides.  The colorful graphics fade and mildew.   After a decade or so, most of these units are trashed.   And yet many are financed on 20 year notes.

And I can see this on a neighbor's rig.  The rubber roof is starting to chalk up and run down the sides - and wrinkle and bubble at the edges.  Parts of the fiberglass laminated sidewalls on the slideouts are bubbling as the glue holding the fiberglass to the luan plywood starts to fail.   A clapped-out, cheaply made "bread truck" Class-A?   Hardly - a five-year-old "Rock Star Bus" Motorhome costing a quarter-million or more, new.

And each RV'er I talk to says the same thing.  "Well, that will never happen to my rig!  I maintain mine properly!   I treat the rubber roof each year with a cleaning compound and that will keep it from leaking or bubbling up!"   But the reality is, it is just time that wears these things out.  Time and the flexing of the multitude of joints as these things go down the highway.

Everything wears out over time.  Cars get old and go to the junkyard.   And no, buying the right brand of motor oil isn't going to get you to 300,000 miles - it is just going to sell motor oil.  It is the latest marketing gimmick - selling cars and car care, by implying that just anyone can make a car last forever, "if they have the inside secret!"   Same folks selling the "trick to the tiny belly!" and those hot penny stock tips.

The reality is, any piece of machinery or even a building or whatever can be made to last forever, provided you throw enough money at it.   But practically speaking, there comes a point where the cost of repairs exceeds the value of the item, and it is time to start over.

Replacing the rubber roof on a motorhome can cost thousands of dollars (and is a time-consuming pain in the ass).   By the time it is necessary to do this, the motorhome is worth only a few thousand dollars - and many other things need replacing as well.   Thus, it becomes time to cash it in.

And there is the rub.   It is money over time - the 4th dimension of money.  You finance an expensive motorhome, boat, or whatever, and the payments are equal for all the years of the loan.   However, for the first years, you have a nice shiny new motorhome.   For the last years, you have a dilapidated worn-out piece of crap.   Same payment.   And oftentimes, you are "upside down" for most of that loan.

So the folks I see in the campground with all the toys and cars and junk (who all have to leave on Sunday night to get back to work Monday to pay for it all) don't yet realize how much they have spent on all this crap, as they have made only the payments on these things from their bank account, but have not realized the loss in terms of depreciation over time.

At the end of the day, the $250,000 motorhome is worth $125,000 after five years.   And that represents $125,000 subtracted from your net worth.   But since folks see things only in terms of monthly payments, they think, "Well, it is only $2000 a month!" which doesn't seem like a lot of money for a house on wheels - right now.   In five years, or ten years, when it starts to wear out, well, it starts to seem like an awful lot.

Maybe if the RV had a "depreciation counter" in LEDs on the side, they could understand what I am talking about.   A $250,000 motorhome depreciates about five cents a minute, for the first five years (actually very quickly the first years and then slowing down over time).   I would be scary, to be sure, to watch such a clock tick by and run out your bank account over time.

One poor fellow in the campground was starting to feel the effects of time on his RV investment.  He had a nice trailer which was now ten years old and starting to show the usual signs of trouble.   And he had two tow vehicles, one to tow the trailer and another to tow a flatbed trailer carrying the wife's car, golf cart, and motorcycle.   A lot of junk to be hauling around camping.   And one of the tow vehicles, a Ford diesel, was firing on only seven cylinders (most likely the notorious cavitation problem with the powerstroke diesels - if you don't add water wetter to the coolant, it cavitates around #7 cylinder due to an idiosyncrasy in the design, and eventually eats through the cylinder wall).   So now he has to buy a new truck.   Or maybe just make do with less motorized shit in his life.   Myself, I would (and am) choosing the latter.

We've managed to avoid a lot of these problems by insisting on paying cash for "toys" in our lives.   It is tempting to sign those loan documents for the "low low monthly payments" but we've said "No" for more than one reason.  To begin with, usually loan rates for "toys" are higher than rates for ordinary car loans or mortgages.   Secondly, the depreciation on these things is murder, and it is all-too-easy to get "upside down" on an RV or boat loan and end up not being able to sell these albatrosses when you want to.

I guess, too, my thinking is that as "toys" they are not really necessities.  And as such, it is really sort of scandalous (at least to me) to leverage myself so I can have nicer toys - at the expense of my future self.

And since we don't have payments to make, we don't have to rush back to work on Monday morning to earn yet more money to pay for depreciating assets.   We can afford to stay all week - and maybe the next.

The guy next to us, who "has it all" has his motorhome buttoned up for the week and his boat under cover.   Come Friday, he'll fight traffic down the causeway, dunk the boat in and try to get in two days of fishing, if the weather cooperates.   It is a great way to spend a weekend.   But a lousy way to spend money.

It is possible to "have it all" and have nothing.  It is possible, too, to have less and end up with more.

The Passive-Aggressive Media

Is the news media passive aggressive?  I think so.

As I noted in an earlier posting on this subject, there are some hallmark characteristics of Passive-Aggressive behavior:

• Ambiguity or speaking cryptically: a means of creating a feeling of insecurity in others or of disguising one's own insecurities.
• Chronically being late and forgetting things: another way to exert control or to punish.
• Fear of competition
• Fear of dependency
• Fear of intimacy as a means to act out anger: The passive–aggressive often cannot trust. Because of this, they guard themselves against becoming intimately attached to someone.
• Making chaotic situations
• Making excuses for non-performance in work teams
• Obstructionism
• Procrastination
• Sulking
• Victimization response: instead of recognizing one's own weaknesses, tendency to blame others for own failures.

It struck me recently that many of these characteristics are quite typical of today's news media.   Ambiguity and speaking cryptically is often the hallmark of network news or newspaper articles, where "the whole story" is often not told, or if told, told poorly.

For example in a recent article about trailer parks, the Guardian words the article so poorly it is hard to figure out what is really going on.   In one sentence that claim the owner has doubled the rents and doubled the utilities (the latter being illegal in most States, as utilities are regulated, and not up to the whim of the park owner).   This ambiguity, of course, is designed to get you all riled up - thinking that he has increased rents by four times.

The reality is, if you parse through the horrific language of the article (and they say the Brits invented English?  I cannot see how) is that the owner raised the rents to $450 a month which is pretty standard for trailer parks across America, particularly in urban or tourist areas, and is now requiring tenants pay their own utilities (to the utility company).  But that doesn't create the ambiguity needed to make the story seem more outrageous than it is.   And in the UK, they love to put up stories about how rotten our "capitalistic" system is how lucky they are to have a benevolent monarch to lord over them, put them on the dole and provide a council flat.

Making Chaotic situations seems to be the hallmark of CNN.   While the Ferguson grand jury was deliberating for a week, rather than get to the bottom of the story and realize there was no story, CNN decided to engage the speculo-tron and speculate endlessly about how many riots there would be, how bad they would be, and whether they would spread to other cities.  They might as well have put up a big sign saying, "Hey everyone, let's riot!"

It is irresponsible journalism at its worst - causing rioting and death by not investigating, but rather by reporting the "story" that generates the most ratings.

The folks at Fox News, of course, specialize in sulking and victimization behavior - even as they themselves decry our "victim mentality" culture.   From the Fox News perspective, they are an embattled minority of right-thinkers who are being circled - like settlers in a doomed wagon train - by the far left and its war on Christmas, Christianity, and of course, marriage.   To hear them tell it, they are the victims here!  And until Obama leaves office, they are just going to sulk about it.

And yet, most people get their "information" from these sources, without thinking as to whether the data presented is reliable, accurate, slanted, or even clear.   Most of us want to fit the data to our preconceived notions, rather than look at the data and draw conclusions.

For a lot of young people today, continual outrage is the norm.   We are told that "Black Lives Matter" as if the Police suddenly went on a killing spree of blacks - and many of the folks protesting this are young white males.   They have a world-view that the police are jack-booted thugs, and thus any news story that fits this narrative is instantly molded to fit the world-view.

Meanwhile, weeks or even months later, we learn that the media has "spun" these stories to boost ratings.  It turns out the jack-booted thugs were the so-called victims in these cases - people with criminal records for robbery and assault that go on for pages.  Which would you rather meet in a dark alley?  The mugger or the cop?

Similarly, there is a sudden "outrage" that something called Civil Forfeiture exists, even though its existence goes back to the dawn of our country, and its use in the so-called "drug wars" has gone on for decades.   People are "outraged" that someone carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash, on a known drug route, for no explainable legitimate reason (and large amounts of cash are almost always related to illegal activities) has their money confiscated, at least temporarily (you can, of course, go to court and get it back, but few of these drug couriers do so).

The news media, by telling you half the story, wants to get you all riled up - being cryptic and ambiguous on purpose, in order to create chaotic situations.  And most people bite on these stories, hook, line, and sinker - without considering whether there is "another side to the story".

And years, sometimes decades later, we learn the whole story, but it is too late - the story the media "sold" is already out there and has currency.   A lot of people still believe that the robber in Ferguson was shot "with his hands up" despite the reports of the Grand Jury, the Justice Department, and the President himself.   People telling the story the media wanted to report turn out not to have been there - at all.

But this sort of misinformation fuels more misinformation, until every day is a grueling grind of "another police brutality story" when some suspect decides to fight an arrest, with predicable results.

Of course, it is only going to get worse - as political silly-season goes into high gear, and the media hypes on which candidate you'd like to have a beer with, or which one ate his pizza with a fork and knife or whatever nonsense they decide is "important" this time around, because it attracts eyeballs to sell to advertisers.

Is this the media's fault?  In part.  But it is also our fault for watching this shit - uncritically and 24 hours a day.   We obsess about the "news" but rarely critique it or challenge it or assess it.   So in a way, it is our fault the news media is the way it is - we have met the enemy and he is us.