Shoplifters

Shoplifters are usually characterized as impulsive teens who do it for a thrill.  But that really only accounts for a small percentage of "shrinkage" in retail.

Shoplifters come from all walks of life - from professional thieves, to impulsive teens, to even middle and upper-class people with a compulsion to steal.

I have run into a number of these folks over the years - from friends to family members.   In most cases, the stuff they steal is junk or incidental things.   They feel that life has given them a raw deal, and by stealing little things here and there, they are "getting ahead" somehow, or evening the score.

Let me repeat that again - they feel life has given them a raw deal.    They were born and raised in the wealthiest country in the world, are well-fed, educated, and have clothing on their back and a place to live.   They drive their car to the store where they will steal from.   And they got a raw deal.

These are hardly folks who are stealing a loaf of bread to feed their starving children.  These are people who want to subscribe to the "United States of Feeling Sorry for Ourselves" theory of living.

And they come in all ages, although teenagers are usually what you hear about the most, as they are most often caught.   Being a teenager, as I noted before, really sucks.   Everyone likes to think teens are having a great time, like on television, driving around in fancy cars, wearing designer clothes, chatting on their new iPhones, and of course, having wild teenager sex and getting shitfaced and stoned all the time.

The reality of being a teen is being broke most of the time, wanting all these consumer goods, but never actually having them (unlike the spoiled kids on the TeeVee shows) and Mom and Dad won't even pony up for a new iPhone 5!  (they have to still use that crummy iPhone 4, if you can believe that.  Mom and Dad are so lame).

And as for the sex and drugs part, well, teens again are always wanting, but rarely having.  And when they have, it ain't that great.  (Sex is one thing that gets better with age.)

So they engage in feeling sorry for themselves, aided and abetted by the television, which shows this distorted view of real life, where young secretaries, right out of college, can afford brand-new convertibles and fancy apartments.   Why aren't our lives like on television?

So it seems tempting to steal.   After all, the "big corporations" can afford it, right?   And they expect a certain amount of shoplifting, right?  It's factored into their prices!    And yes, I have heard people make such arguments.   It is idiotic.

The problem is, of course, that it is ridiculously easy to get caught shoplifting these days.    You may get away with it once, or twice, or maybe three times.   But eventually, the hidden cameras and store detectives catch up with you.  They know what to look for.

Fred was a typical impoverished teen.   While his parents had money and were well off, they did not just hand it over to Fred for no reason.   They provided him with food, shelter, clothing, and eventually, a college education, which was expensive enough.  They weren't about to buy him all the junk he wanted in life, although they did buy him a lot.

Fred was fixing up his old car, and he wanted some bitchin' accessories to put on it.  He went to the chain store and in the auto parts aisle, they had all sorts of stuff he wanted, like green windshield wipers and a chrome gas pedal.  Unable to afford this stuff (and also buy pot) he figured he was owed it, as after all, he had shopped in the store before and paid their "ripoff" prices.   So he stuffed a few things in his coat pocket and started to walk out.

Unfortunately for Fred, the scruffy-looking fellow down the aisle, who appeared to be looking for an oil filter for his Chevy, was actually a store detective.   The store security guard intercepted Fred as he left the store, and asked to see inside his coat.

As Fred was under-aged, and since this was years ago, they let Fred go after giving him a warning - and telling him never to come back to the store again.   Today, stores generally no longer do this.  Giving people warnings is pretty pointless.  And telling a potential customer to never come back to the store makes no sense either.  More and more stores prosecute - even juveniles.

Suzie liked to party.  Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, when she could get it.   Unfortunately, since she was just a teen, she didn't have the money for drugs very often.  In fact, coming from a lower-middle-class (if not outright poor) family, she rarely had money for much.   And the idea of getting an after-school "job" was, of course, for idiots, she felt.  So early on in life, she started shoplifting.   The locally-owned stores in her small town were easy pickings, as they didn't have the money to pay security guards or store detectives, like the big chain stores did.  And they didn't have security cameras, of course.  So she took things - small things, at first, usually cosmetics or costume jewelry, which she could stuff in her pocket.

Her parents never asked where these things came from.  In fact, they showed a surprising lack of curiosity as to how things showed up in their daughter's possession, when she had no allowance to buy things with, and the items were not purchased for her by her parents.  "A friend of mine gave it to me," she would say, if her parents asked - if they bothered to ask.   They didn't bother often, and Suzie had a lot of generous friends.

Suzie didn't get caught - very often.   When she did, the stores often did the same thing they did to Fred - giving warnings and banning "for life".  On one occasion, they called Suzie's Mom, and there was hell to pay.  But eventually, this blew over, and Suzie found other places to shoplift.

For example, the new chain store that moved into the strip mall outside of town.  She and her girlfriend would drive there in her girlfriend's car.   There had to be easy pickings here, right?   And one one fateful day, they went from shoplifting to more serious crime.    While looking for things to steal, they saw a woman leave her purse unattended in her shopping cart.  Suzie reached in and grabbed the lady's wallet quickly and skulked away.

There wasn't much money in the wallet, but there were credit cards.  So she and her girlfriend went on a shopping spree - right there in the store - and tried to use the credit card to pay for it all.  They were caught, and since Suzie was now 18, she was charged as an adult with felony theft and credit card fraud.   She was sentenced to 30 days in jail, which she had to serve for the next 15 weekends.

And the felony conviction prevented her from getting even a part-time job after that.

Janet was 50 years old and unhappy with her life.   Her husband had left her for a younger woman, and she let that make her bitter and angry.   Her career had stalled and she had a little run-in with the IRS over some unreported income - a lot of unreported income.   It was easy for her to portray herself, in her own mind, as a "victim" of circumstance.

She liked to shop at the local gourmet store near her house, but the prices they charged were outrageous.  A small jar of mustard was $7!  But she wanted to keep up appearances of her former life, and serving more plebeian brands to her guests was out of the question.   Besides, she got a raw deal in life and she deserved better!

So, one day, while in the store, she found it all-too-easy to slip the jar of gourmet mustard into her fur coat (the latter being a leftover, like her aging Mercedes, of an earlier life).   She walked right out the door and no one said a thing.  It was kind of thrilling, actually.  Sort of like a game.  And when she got home, she felt like she was winning again, for a change.

But of course, she went back.  And pretty soon, her fur coat was bulging with foodstuffs.  But the managers of the store didn't figure that such a well-dressed lady would be stealing. (No, no, they kept their eyes on all the young black people in the store, who they felt were more likely to be thieves.)   And of course, she tried her hand at other stores as well.  Pretty soon, she had a pantry filled with gourmet treats.

But, like with all shoplifters, eventually she got caught.   The gourmet store did have a store detective and video cameras.  And while the store management initially let their own prejudices blind them to what was going on, they eventually saw her on camera, pocketing a jar of caviar.

It was pretty embarrassing for her, as in the small town she lived in, word got around fairly quickly, even if her name wasn't published in the newspaper.  Her effort to "keep up appearances" backfired in a big way.   Friends started to edge away from her.

* * * 

Now these folks are all amateur shoplifters.   Professional shoplifters are a whole different ballgame, although a lot of them have characteristics in common.   They often come from poor backgrounds, they often feel they got a raw deal in life, and they usually get caught, more than once.

But professionals steal for money, not for thrills or to satisfy emotional needs.   And they are often more brazen about it - grabbing valuable merchandise (not trinkets and junk, as most amateurs do) and then just running out of the store.   When the store security officer hollers "stop!" they just keep going.

And to the professional (which is not really a proper word, as it implies they are like cat burglars or jewel thieves, whereas most are just meth-heads) getting caught is just a part of doing business.  Most get caught more than once.

And of course, there are compulsive thieves - kleptomaniacs - who have a mental illness that compels them to steal.  These folks have a mental illness, at least some believe, which can be treated with drugs, in some instances.

The point of this post (and there was one) was not about professional shoplifters or compulsive thieves.  But rather to illustrate yet another trap that sometimes ensnares middle-class people.   And it is a trap, too.  And like so much else that brings down the average middle-class Americans, it is based on emotional thinking ("I'm getting a raw deal in life!") as well as weak thinking (not thinking about predictable outcomes, such as getting caught).

And yea, rational adults, even well-off rational adults, do this.

And the common denominator is to think of yourself as a passive victim and that stealing is somehow "getting ahead" or "evening the score" when in fact it is merely a dead-end.    The amount of crap you can shoplift will not significantly improve your standard of living, or improve your life.  Rather, it will likely make you feel worse about yourself.

For parents, the inability to spot teenage shoplifting is also an example of weak thinking or just engaging in denial.  I mentioned before about a local teen (aged 15) who was stealing car stereos in our neighborhood.   When caught, he had over 200 of them in his garage.   His Mother told Police that she thought her 15-year-old son was running a "car stereo business" and never bothered to think about where a 15-year-old would get the money to finance such a business.

If you kids start showing up with a lot of merchandise and with feeble excuses of where it came from ("I borrowed it from a friend") then start asking questions.

And if you feel put-upon in life and think taking shortcuts to "get ahead" is the answer, think again.   Jumping off a cliff is not a "shortcut to the bottom" but just suicide.   And thinking of yourself as put-upon or disadvantaged just because other people seem to have nice things is a dead-end game.   Comparing yourself to others never accomplishes anything, as there will always be someone who has more money or whatever, than yourself.  Worry more about what you think about yourself than what others think.

And stealing shit, well, that's just a dead-end.

Why Lawyers Make More than UPS Drivers (or should)

While physically demanding, driving a UPS truck or working in a factory does not involve a lot of worrying.

(Note:  This is an older post I started working on a long time ago and just got around to finishing.)

While working my way through school, I worked briefly as a Teamster for United Parcel.  It was a fun job, for the whopping sum of $8 an hour, which I felt lucky to get.  And although it was a lot of work physically, washing the package cars, humping the box line and loading package cars, it was pretty mindless work.  You could wear your Sony Walkman (remember those?) to work and just zone out all day long.

At the end of the day, you went home and had a beer.  Nothing to worry about, no responsibilities, no deadlines, no liabilities.  The worst that could happen would be if you mis-loaded a box on a package car and the driver would leave you a nasty note.

Being a Lawyer, on the other hand, is no fun at all.   You worry - a lot.   Your clients entrust you with legal matters, and you can work as hard as you can, but you cannot guarantee an outcome.   If they don't have a very good case, they will lose.  And when they lose, often they blame their Lawyer.  And sometimes they sue their Lawyer, and because of that, you have to carry at least a Million dollars of malpractice coverage - perhaps several million.

For Doctors, it is even worse.  While a Lawyer might end up with a client on Death Row once in a lifetime, a Doctor buries a good portion of his patients, if he practices long enough.  And the worry that perhaps you didn't do enough, or something was overlooked, can be overwhelming.  And of course there are legions of Lawyers out there ready to sue you, if you are even perceived as possibly making a mistake - or even if you did nothing wrong whatsoever.

And the reward for all this worry?  Not as much as you might think.  Many Doctors barely make a six-figure salary, and Lawyers today are lucky to be making that much, in many markets.    These risk-taking jobs are not compensated with corresponding rewards.

Meanwhile, folks having jobs with no responsibilities often end up making about as much, if not more.   A School teacher has few worries - teaching the same lesson plan year in and year out.  Yet many make more than some Doctors and Lawyers - over $100,000 a year in some celebrated cases.

Until recently, a UPS driver made some pretty good dough, thanks to the Union - and still has pretty good benefits.  The self-employed?  They have to fend for themselves.  If you risk all of your life savings on a new business, chances are, you will fail.  Even if you succeed, you may make less than some slug with a mindless, no-risk, no-worry job.

And if you do succeed and make tons and tons of money?   Legions of slackers will say you don't deserve the money, because you are just a rotten 1%'er who didn't do anything to earn it.

Yet a lot of people don't get this.  They assume a job is a job, and everyone deserves to make a "living wage" which includes enough dough to get cable TV, a smart phone, and a new car every three years.  That is a LOT of money, for a job with no real risk-taking or worry.

The downside to the drone job, is, of course, that you have to keep doing it, day in, day out, for 20-30 years, before they let you retire.  And while you get weekends and Federal Holidays off, your only extended vacation might be two weeks a year, if that.   It is a hamster wheel.

For a brief period of time in this country, you could make a lot of money at a drone job, provided it was a union job with a company making a lot of money.   When I was at GM, back in 1980, a forklift driver could make $42,000 a year, with overtime (I reviewed the payroll for the entire plant) which by some measures, would be $115,000 today.  That is a lot of money for a job that requires ten minutes of training.

Today, we are seeing these wages decline, as the companies that once paid them, no longer have the cash to do so, and the unions representing the workers decline in power and scope.   And at the same time, we are seeing wages for the professions (the worry-jobs) stall, as more and more people try to get into the professions, as a way of preserving their middle-class lifestyle.

There reaches a point, however, where folks will just start to think that taking on a "worry-job" isn't worth the worry.   Why?  Because it becomes all risk and no reward.  All worry and no payoff.   You'd make more on the assembly line and never worry about a thing.

And at that point, maybe wages for these sorts of worry-jobs would increase.  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.   There has to be some sort of reward for taking on this additional stress.  And in our society, this reward is often lacking.   As a professional, you might make twice as much as some guy at a drone job.  This sounds like a lot, until you calculate out your taxes and realize that the two of you have the same amount of disposable income when it is all said and done.

And the worst thing the guy on the assembly line has to worry about is losing his job.   For a Lawyer or a Doctor or a Small Businessman, they worry about losing their job - and losing everything they have worked for, over a lifetime.

Gee, that never happens to the folks who say, "would you like fries with that?" - does it?

And that, in a nutshell is why we don't pay folks like that very much.   Their job is no stress, no worry, and at the end of the shift, they don't take their job home with them.

When we stop rewarding risk-takers, and reward the plebes and drones instead (or as much) then there is no incentive whatsoever to be a risk-taker.    You might as well get a drone job.

And that, I think is the worry of some folks in this country, as risk-taking ends up being punished, more and more.

Is America Really a Capitalist Country? Not By a Long Shot!

Are we really living in a Capitalistic Society?  Not really.

Many folks decry the United States as an example of a free-market economy run amok.   We live in a dog-eat-dog world, here, where the "invisible hand of the marketplace" reins supreme - and those who can't hack it, well, fall by the wayside.  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  I've got mine, Jack, you get yours!

But if you examine the history of this country, you'll find that it is anything but that.  Over the years, we have had many laws enacted - by both Democrats and Republicans - which limit competition, establish monopolies, break up monopolies, and set retail, wholesale, and labor prices.

And these things have happened not that long ago - and indeed, some continue on today.

And what is really odd, is that many people in the far right say we should go back to "the good old days" - but the "good old days" were chock full of regulations and government agencies, which often limited competition.   And ironically, it was under Democratic administrations that many of these agencies and their regulations were abolished.

Here is a short list of some government actions, instituted by both Democrats and Republicans, that some might argue border on Communism - the "big hand" of "big government" telling Americans what they can or cannot do, limiting or controlling competition, or handing out huge freebies to selected companies.   None of these actions could be considered evidence of a "free-market economy" in the least sense.

The Miller-Tydings Act.  Enacted in 1937 and not repealed until 1975, the Miller-Tydings act basically set minimum prices that retailers could charge for products.  During the depression, the concern was that large chain stores would slash prices and put little Mom-and-Pop operations out of business (which they did, once this act was repealed).  As a result, stuff was expensive back when I was a kid.   And you couldn't just "shop around" for better prices, as everyone basically charged the same price for goods.   What sort of Commie country controls prices like this?  The Good Old USA, of course!

Regulation of the Trucking Industry (Interstate Commerce Commission).  "ICC is checking all down the line, I'm a little overweight, and my log book's way behind!"  - so said David Dudley back in the 1960's.  Back then, the ICC regulated the trucking industry, including who could travel what routes, what could be charged, and a whole host of other regulations.  The ICC has been abolished since then, and the trucking industry has been de-regulated.  Today, if you want to haul a load from New York to California, no one is stopping you.  Hard to believe that in the "Good old USA" you had to ask permission to drive certain truck routes.  Ironically, the ICC was initially deregulated under a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, in 1980, and finally abolished under Bill Clinton in 1995.  Funny thing, people think Ronald Reagan was the one who de-regulated America's industries!

Regulation of the Airlines (Civil Aeronautics Board).  The CAB was to airlines what the ICC was to railroads and trucking.  If you wanted to run an airline, you went hat-in-hand to the CAB and asked permission to do so, and the CAB told you what you could charge for airfare and what cities you could fly to and from - and what cities you would be required to fly to and from.   The CAB was created during the depression, and once again, legislated out of existence under (wait for it) Jimmy Carter in 1978, sputtering to an end during the Reagan years in 1984.

 

Richard Nixon's Wage and Price Controls:  Many people conveniently choose to forget this one.  During the era of Stagflation (which I will discuss in another post) - driven by escalating oil prices and labor costs - a Republican President did the ultimate Commie thing - he told everyone what they could charge for their labor and their products.   No really.  In America.  Under a Republican President!  The limits were temporary in nature - and were ineffective as well.   But when confronted with an economic problem, even Republicans will resort to the heavy-hand of "big government telling us what to do!"

Grazing Rights:  This was in the news recently as some yahoo rancher decided he didn't want to pay his accumulated grazing rights fees.   Even Glen Beck though he was whacked!  Historically, the Federal Government has allowed ranchers to let their cows graze on public lands for very low fees - so low that they are, in effect, a government giveaway.   Apparently some folks don't want to even pay that.

Oil&Gas Drilling Rights:  This is another area of government giveaway, and interestingly enough, many oil and gas companies buy these leases and then do nothing.    They are not so much interested in exploring for gas and oil as they are in making sure no one else does.  In other words, limit competition, by creating an artificial shortage, much as the DeBeers people do with diamonds.

Crop Subsidies and Farm Aid:   These programs originated in the Great Depression, but over the years, they have been morphed by big agri-business to achieve different ends.   Sugar price supports destroyed the market for sugar in this country and nearly bankrupted Cuba (which was, perhaps the intent).  It also meant that the corn industry made a fortune by selling cheaper, but perhaps unhealthful, High Fructose Corn Syrup.   The teabaggers deride Obama for "picking winners in the marketplace" but historically, both parties have picked "big corn" as a winner, again and again.  Ethanol mandates, of course, have bootstrapped this by a factor of 10.   Big milk is another area of historic subsidies, to the point where the government was buying up tons and tons of milk and cheese and warehousing it.  Republican or Democrat, if you are from a farm state, you cannot afford to vote against these subsidies.

* * *

Those are just a few examples of old-school "socialism" from the "good old days" - much of which is still with us today.  There are dozens, if not hundreds of examples of other forms of "regulation" from the good old days - if you bother to look.   Regulation is nothing new.   Our economy has been managed and directed since this country was founded.

The battle cry of the teabagger is "That's Socialism!" when talking about Obama policies.   But these sort of Socialist or even Communist policies have been around for a long time.   And to the far-right, they no longer even register on the radar.

The teabagger decries Food Stamps as "socialism" but says, "Don't touch my Social Security!" - failing to realize that both are government wealth-transfer programs.

Similarly, they decry Obamacare, as "the government should not be collecting tax money from people and using it to pay for the health care of others!" - but of course, in the same breath, they say, "But don't touch my Medicare!"

In other words, there is a lot of selective memory going on here.   The narrative being sold is this:  America used to be a great place where you could buy big-block muscle cars with no seatbelts and do whatever you wanted to.   Then those namby-pamby Democrats got into the picture and "regulated" everything.   Fortunately, Ronald Reagan put a stop to that!  We need more Republicans in the White House to de-regulate things!

The reality is quite clearly otherwise.  Cars today are better then they were 'back then' - in every measure.   And it was a Democratic President who signed most of the de-regulation legislation that people give Ronald Reagan credit for.

What Republicans have done, in the last 30 years, has been to de-regulate our banking system - twice.   The result the first time was Michael Millikan and the Junk-Bond debacle, and the "Savings and Loan" crises and a housing sector meltdown.  Twenty years later, when another Republican administration loosened the reins on the banking industry, we saw "Credit Default Swaps" and bundled mortgage-backed securities - which were as worthless as Millikan's junk bonds of 1989.   And once again, we saw a crises in the housing sector.

But, you know, you can't tell the teabaggers anything.   To them, the entire housing crises was caused by an obscure program called the "Community Reinvestment Act" which was designed to put an end to redlining in the lending business and allow the poor access to mortgages.  In their narrative, it allowed welfare queens (read:  black people) to buy houses they could not afford, which of course crashed the entire economy.   A bizarre fantasy, to say the least - at least to anyone who worked in the Real Estate business or was an investor at the time (or both).   I can tell you firsthand that in  Ft. Lauderdale Florida, the people buying and flipping mini-mansions and condos were not poor black folks, but middle-class white people who all got a little too greedy - and were using funny-money "liar's loans" to finance it all.  

The Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with it.   And it was not the bank's fault that liars chose to lie on liar's loans - right?   For some reason, the teabaggers have selective memory on all of this.   They are the victims here, having bought huge houses they could never afford in the first place, and lying to get them - and wondering why they lost it all.   It must be the black people's fault!  After all, they steal everything, right?

And therein lies the problem.   People believe what they want to believe, not what is actually true.   And if someone sells you a "story" that all your problems are the result of someone else's action - preferably a minority group that you hate anyway, it is an easy story to sell.

You are not at fault for your situation in life!  Your stupidity, your lack of interest in education, your laziness, your sloth, your astounding level of chutzpah, have nothing to do with the fact that you squander money, are not qualified for any sort of high-paying job, and the fact you just got laid off.   No, no, it was the black people and the Democrats.  They are the reason you are put-upon!

Only a stupid child would believe such a story.   But sadly, that is increasingly the mentality of adults in America today.

More Economic Bad News!

The economy is in the toilet!   Oh, wait.   It isn't.

OK, I feel like one of those frauds at CNN, who uses headlines like, "You'll never believe THIS!" or "She did WHAT?" and the like, as click bait to get you to watch.

But the truth is, whether you like it or not, that the economy has been slowly recovering for the last five years.

Unemployment is down.   Housing prices are up.   People are spending more.  And the Government deficit is dropping.   Oh, and the stock market is still on a five-year tear.

Why then, do so many people believe "the economy" is in bad shape?    Even when you posit all this good news to a right-wing "true believer" their standard answer is, "Oh, yea?  Well you just wait for it, buddy, the end is nigh!  This bubble economy will collapse along with Obama's Fiat Currency!"

Well, buddy, it's Chrysler-Fiat currency these days, so get your facts straight!

People love bad news.  They love to feel sorry for themselves.   As I noted before, even during the boom times of the Clinton era (or the Reagan era) most people thought things were "bad".    "Sure, some folks are making money," they'd say, "which makes it even worse for the poor!"

And on the Left, the news media (our friends are the People's Republic of NPR) love to regale us with stories about "America's Left-Behind" or some such nonsense, every morning.   Times are tough all over, we are told, and you're a fool if you think otherwise.

But that is not reality - the picture from the Left or the Right.

The reality is, most people are still going about their business, making a little money, spending a lot, and just living.   While unemployment among recent college graduates is high, the vast majority of them do find work and all of them will find work, eventually.

And I say this as when I was in college (and right after) the unemployment rate topped 10%, and was even higher for young people.   This did not stop me from getting a job, or indeed, holding three jobs at once.

Funny how that works - that some people can find a job during periods of high unemployment, and in fact,  find multiple jobs.

I did, however, have a desire to work, and was willing to accept the prevailing wages.   That was the key.   Some of my privileged friends, however, waited for a "corner office" job with a fat salary to be handed to them.   It never panned out.   And on the few occasions they did find work, they were not employed for long.  To them, the economy was always in the tank, or so it seemed.

Negativism is popular in our culture.  And the reasons for this are many.   One, I think, is that by feeling negative and put-upon, people can feel that they "deserve" the few luxuries they have in life, like a car, a house, a microwave, air conditioning, a 55" television, 500 channels of cable, a smart phone, and so on.  We are actually very wealthy people in this country, but most folks fail to realize it.

By playing the victim game, they can pretend that they are struggling and suffering under harsh conditions, and thus no one can accuse them of being pampered or over-paid.   Far from it!

This disconnect occurs because most people, quite frankly, are not worth what they are paid in this country.   Some schmuck clerk gets promoted to department manager and gets a corner office and $100,000 a year - and really has no talent, no pressing duties, or any real value to the company.   Yes, the character Ricky Gervais played in The Office does really exist.  Lately, though, these sorts have been laid off in droves, which is why they will tell you how rotten they have it (of course, not having saved any of that $100,000 a year they were making).

A lot of people today have a smart phone, but they don't know how to even use it, much less know how it works.   Ditto for their cars, their homes, their appliances, and their computers.   We are a cargo-cult culture, using magical devices handed down to us from our Geek Gods.  We don't want to think about the disconnect between our technological society and our utter lack of technical skills.

So, we play this "ain't it awful" game to compensate.  That's my theory, anyway. 

That and it is human nature to feel bad most of the time - to get depressed and wallow in our own depression and self-loathing.

So, people get together and the topic of conversation is "Ain't It Awful Because...." and no one wants to hear you say, "Aren't Things Great Because..."

I run into this all the time, here on our island and well, just about everywhere else.   Here on our idyllic island, which is maintained like a golf course, thanks to the State of Georgia, they are building us new hotels, restaurants, and a shopping center.   It is all very beautiful (it is most people's idea of a vacation resort).   Pretty sweet deal, right?   Well, to hear the residents tell it, it is all awful, corrupt, rotten, and poorly planned.   If they had their way...

But other idyllic places are the same way.  Talk to anyone who lives in Key West and they will blather on for hours how rotten the place is, what with the tourists and all...

Being positive and upbeat has two ironic consequences.   First, people will be attracted to you, as people like to be around positive and upbeat folks - if only to try to drag them down to their level.   Second, they will hate you, because your positive attitude puts their own negativity into contrast.

So, sometimes, you have to keep your positive attitude to yourself, as no one wants to hear how happy you are, or that things really are going OK.   When I say the economy is doing very well (which it is) I get shouted down by people who say it is in the toilet (which it isn't).   When I say our little island is beautiful and the improvements are great, the negative nabobs cry that it is all horrible and bad - and that I am living in a fantasy-world if I can't see all the vile corruption beneath the surface.

Perhaps.  But I think when it comes to fantasy worlds, I'd rather live in a utopia than a dystopia.  If reality really is based on perception, then why perceive it to be bad, when you could perceive it as good?   And if you really perceive reality as it is, you might just see that good outweighs the bad, particularly for people lucky enough to be living in the USA and living a middle-class lifestyle.

Collectables and Relics

This is how middle-class people squander money.

The SkyMall catalog may be no more - morphing into an online store, according to one source.   That's too bad, as I had clients sell products on there.   And of course, it provided hours of endless amusement when you were on the airliner.   Who in their right mind pays $500 or more for a resin-plastic "Garden Yeti" or talking monkey head?

One of the items they regularly featured were "autographed collectibles" which usually included jerseys or whatever of sports greats, or autographed album covers of rock and roll stars.   Usually, these were enshrined in a glass frame, along with other memorabilia, such as tickets to a baseball game, or a program or whatever.

The thing that got me, while looking at these "collectibles" was, "Gee, how can they stock enough autographed jerseys to make this work?   I mean, the team players must have an assembly-line for autographing junk, in order to provide sufficient volume of product!"

And of course, as it turns out, my question was valid.  

The dirty little secret of the "Collectibles" industry is that much of the "autographed gen-u-ine" articles, such as jerseys, photos, and baseballs, is just fake, fake, fake.

And even the "legitimate" autographed crap is pretty worthless, simply because it was autographed on an assembly line, and thus there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of such "autographed memorabilia" out there, thus making them less collectible and less valuable.

Charles Mckay addressed this in his "relics" chapter of "Madness of Crowds".  Back in 1841, not many were clamoring for autographed Cricket jerseys.  The big ticket then was to get a religious relic - a piece of sand from "the holy land" or a supposed tooth or lock of hair from a saint, or even a real, gen-u-ine "piece of the true cross."   And of course, the Holy Grail was the Holy Grail of collectibles, although it is not clear that anyone found the real one, ever.

Ford's Theater, in Washington DC, was boarded up shortly after President Lincoln was assassinated there.  It remained boarded up for over 100 years, only being re-opened as a National Park monument in the 1960's (imagine that!).   Lincoln's clothing that he wore at the time of his death were, however, on display nearby, and in the 1800's and early 1900's, tourists to Washington DC thought nothing of clipping off a little piece of Lincoln's jacket or shirt, to take home as a "souvenir" of their visit.   The idea that these relics would eventually be cut down to nothing, apparently never occurred to most folks.

So the trend has been around a long, long time.   People want a piece of something historical - a memento or souvenir or talisman of a significant event or person.

But beyond that, people will buy things they perceive to be as rare or desirable.   I wrote before about the idiocy of Beanie Babies, which were "collectable" by the very dint of the manufacturer saying they were so.   The market peaked for these ugly little bears, and then crashed.   Lately, the company has gotten back into the game, as sufficient time has passed that the very poor (who buys junk like this) forgot how much Momma lost on her Beanie Baby "investment".

And the very poor (or middle-class poor) are the ones who buy this nonesense - often advertised in the back pages of Smithsonian magazine.   Collectible plates, collectible coins, collectible thimbles, collectible model cars - all punched out by "The Franklin Mint" (not affiliated with "Gov't Mint" or indeed, any government) are hawked to the poor and middle-class, who can easily be convinced that such tchotchke is a valuable investment.

And they think this, too.   I have been to more than one poor person's home, and show the precious family collectibles, including Elvis Plates, and told, in hushed tones, how valuable they are now - or will be.   These are the same folks who had cabinets of Beany Babies, all in their original boxes.   Why invest in stocks, when stuffed bears are a sure thing?

Why do the poor and middle-class do this sort of thing?   For the poor, the answer is easy - they really don't understand money, and they don't understand that a mass-produced item isn't "collectible" when it comes off an assembly line.

The middle-class is harder to parse.   I think in the past, many middle-class people had lower educational backgrounds, and thus were more susceptible to this sort of nonsense.  Back when I was a kid, you could be comfortably middle-class without a college degree, by getting a job on an assembly line or working as a mid-level clerk or whatever.  These were people who had money, by dint of high wages and generous pension benefits, but really didn't understand how it worked.   These are the Smithsonian subscribers, and they are a dying breed. 

Rent About Schmidt and you'll see what I mean.  Schmidt is an assistant-Vice President and Actuary, which sounds impressive, but it is basically a clerical job.   He has some money, which his wife spends on collectibles.  His dream retirement car is a gold Cadillac with a Burgundy vinyl roof.  They are mere consumers - cattle (the theme of the movie) - just buying stuff, consuming things, and wondering what to consume next.   Their lives are without meaning.   Perhaps collectibles are a distraction.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are real collectors out there who collect real things.  A man who has a collection of antique rifles, that he obtained through years of careful research, trading, and restoration, is a true "collector".   He didn't buy them from the Franklin Mint.   

Or take the car collector, who buys and restores old cars.   He spends years on this hobby and thousands of hours of his time.   He didn't just go down to the car dealer and buy cars.   But that hasn't stop car dealers from trying to sell even brand-new cars as "collectible" when in fact, they aren't.

And of course, there are Hoarders.  These annoying folks just take in junk and convince themselves that anything rare or old has inherent value, when in fact, it usually does not.   A unique rock is not valuable unless it is made of gold or diamonds.   Uniqueness in and of itself it not collectable.  And age alone does not make something valuable, absent uniqueness.   Old Volkswagen Beetles could be bought pretty cheaply (and still can) simply because so many of them were made, and they are not all that rare, even today.

Plebes love collectibles or relics.   You can spot a poor person a mile away by how he covets older things.   He will tell you that his rusted-out Plymouth is a "rare collectible" when in fact, it is barely more than a parts car.   And as I noted before, even collector cars are a horrifically bad investment - as even "valuable" ones represent only modest rates of return, over time.   Most are worth half the cost of restoration and are a labor of love or a hobby, not an investment.

But the poor will have none of that.  Clem's old Chevelle is worth a mint, because he "restored it" and keeps it in his garage all the time.   It must be worth a million bucks!  After all, we saw that one old "muscle car" that was up for auction and asking that much money, right?   But it really isn't the case.   Collectables and relics are a trap for the poor.

If you do collect antiques or restore old cars, you appreciate the efforts of the poor in keeping this stuff.   These are the people who create the "barn finds" that you discover years later, when they are dead, and you buy them for a pittance and make money from them.  But the original hoarder does not.

Walk away from collectibles.   Unless you are serious about developing something as a hobby, it is likely to be a dead-end.   And as a hobby, it is going to cost you money not make money for you.  The best most can hope for is that maybe someday, when the collection is liquidated, you might make your money back, with a little interest.   But that's about it.

For the rest of us?   Forgetaboutit!   You are not going to be one of the people who wins "relic lottery" by hanging on to some piece of junk, which later in life will be worth millions.   It just doesn't happen that often.

But then again, this illustrates how the poor don't understand the laws of probability, either!