The Late Bus

Tight School Budgets are nothing new.  But in the past, we were more willing to sacrifice unimportant things.  Today, we chuck the important to save the trivial.

When I was in Elementary school, we lived briefly in a town called Lake Forest, Illinois, which is part of the depressed rust-belt region of the United States.  No, actually, Lake Forest is a wealthy suburb of Chicago, and in fact, one of the poshest places to live.  People there are not hurting for money today, or even back in 1968.

The school I went to, Everett Elementary, was a flat-roofed 1960's building built for the baby boom generation, of which my birth year was the largest part.   My older brother went to the middle-school, which was in a creaky old fire-trap built in the 1930's.  Enrollment was up, and just finding classroom space was a challenge.  And the growing pains were putting pressure on school budgets.   There was not enough money in the budget to pay for all the school buses and school bus drivers needed to bus all those students.  And the idea of "just raising property taxes" to pay for it all, even in posh Lake Forest, during the relative prosperity of the mid 1960's, was just not thinkable.

(Today, they would just go out and buy more buses and hire more Unionized bus drivers and then raise everyone's taxes to pay for it.  Or they would cut art and music classes as "unnecessary" but of course never touch the football program.  We have priorities!)

So how did they do it back then?  They were clever, resourceful, and willing to make sacrifices.  As I noted before, much of school is "free periods" and "study hall" and "lunch".  So they divided the student body in half - with the first half having a "study hall" or "recess" in the morning before school started, and the second half having the same free period at the end of school.

The buses made two runs - an early run and a late run, both in the morning and afternoon.  For the early students, it meant getting up an hour earlier to go to school.  And for us late kids, it meant we had to wait for the buses to return, at the end of the school day, to make a second run to bring us "late" kids home.

Was it a hassle?  Maybe.  But if you think about it, it made better use of the equipment and also the drivers, who worked a full day, instead of part-time.   And it solved a budget problem without raising property taxes.

Again, today, such solutions would not be thought of.  In the small town near Aurora New York, where we had our vacation home, the brand-new high school had a planetarium.  Today, they have closed the brand-new elementary school there for lack of enrollment and combined the two schools into one, which still does not fill even that one school.  And a nearly brand-new elementary school sits abandoned and empty, along with the original 1930's high school that builders convinced the school board was "outdated" (after all, it has no planetarium!).

(This is Central New York, so I suspect the school builders, who fanned out across the State to build these monstrosities, were probably tied to the Mob.  Corruption in that State adds to the cost of everything).

And of course, those "overworked" teachers are all being paid scandalous salaries - and the school administrators even moreso.  And their retirement benefits are choking off the school budgets, as the number of retired teachers (often making more than their working counterparts) exceeds the number of working teachers, as school enrollments continue to decline.  In a parallel to GM, for every working person, there are two who are retired.

These are all challenges, to be sure.  The school system made a huge mistake building not one, but two new schools at a time when enrollments were dropping.  And the steadily increasing teachers' salaries and retirement benefits are adding to the problem.   Staggering increases in property taxes are driving more and more people from the area - and "For Sale" signs are sprouting on once-coveted vacation homes - but no one is buying them.  This depresses property prices, which drives down the tax base, which forces them to increase the millage rate yet again.

How did we get here?  Well, there was a lack of discipline on the part of the school boards.  No one wanted to institute a "Late Bus" as they did in Lake Forest.  No one wanted to "make do" with an existing school, when the builders came to town offering to build a "state of the art" school with a swimming pool, all paid for with bonds that are still being paid off.

Well, not everyone jumped on that bandwagon.  My high school, Cazenovia Central, is still run out of the same building built in the 1930's.   When we moved there in 1968, there was a movement afoot to build one of those new mega-schools, with an indoor pool and an auto shop.  And the builder, of course, pushed to get this done.  And the citizens of the town voted it down - three times.  Many called them shortsighted and said that the bulging enrollments would make things difficult for students.   But of course, enrollment flattened out, eventually, as the baby boomers graduated.  And we made do with the building we had, even if we didn't have our own pool for the swim team (if we indeed even had a swim team).

Oh, and it was viewed as one of the best schools, academically, in the region.   Amazing, isn't it?  In that hoary old building from the 1930's, kids can learn calculus.  While the kids in the nearby "mega-school" mostly learned how to make trouble and smoke pot.

But of course, you can't unbark the dog, as they say, and other school districts, who are saddled with these mega-school buildings and dwindling enrollments - as well as staggering salaries - are faced with hard choices today.  And most are taking the easy way out - raising taxes and cutting content, such as art and music, from the curriculum.  The idea of a "Late Bus" of course, would be shouted down as unsafe and inconvenient for parents.  And of course, the bus business has been farmed out to a contractor company already.  So, we just raise taxes and gut content, making school even less relevant than ever before and less of a value than ever before.

But maybe it is time to bring back the "Late Bus" - in a manner of speaking.  Maybe we need to look at ideas other than cutting content and raising taxes, all so that a few people (school builders and school employees) can make more money while delivering less.  Maybe we need to take back our schools from the insiders.

Just a thought.  We've done it before.

Out Behind the Barn...

Our High School had a barn like this out back, and I spent many a Spring afternoon out there, just staring at the sky, rather than going to class.

"Robert could be a great success, if he would just learn to apply himself" one of my elementary school teachers wrote on my "permanent record."   Even back then, I had a hard time taking things seriously - or at least the things they wanted us to take seriously.

School, in my mind, was a training ground, not for education, but to program us to get used to the idea of getting up every morning, putting on uncomfortable clothes, rushing off with a mass of people, and then doing everything in unison with a host of others, for the rest of the day, in an overheated and uncomfortable building, behind a cramped and uncomfortable desk.  School is nothing more than a training ground for cubicle life.  And cubicle life isn't living.

Much of school is just wasted time - study halls, gym, lunch, and "free periods" which few students used to actually do their homework (many student's parents would do their homework for them, to insure their kids got good grades - talk about missing the point!).  It could be compressed into three hours, if you think about it.

One friend of mine actually accelerated his high school career, graduating at age 16 as an "emancipated minor" - illustrating how much the curricula could be compressed.  But he had special family issues that dictated he get out quickly.  When I asked if I could do the same thing, I was told, no, not for me.

For me, goofing off has always had an attraction, and this is still true today.  Owning yourself and owning your own life are things that few people get to do anymore.  This is not to say that doing nothing is desirable, only that doing what you think is important is.   And let's face it, most "jobs" out there are about as time-wasting as High School.   Donuts in the conference room, to listen to some middle-manager drone on with a power-point presentation on how we should all be "more productive" and "work smarter, not work harder!" is about akin to the hour you wasted in study hall or in the school cafeteria.

We all work from 9 to 5, but most of us really only spend about an hour or so, I estimate, actually "working".  The rest of the time is busy-work, filling out forms or going through procedures, or just getting stuck in meetings, office gossip, or whatever, that wastes your time.  I fail to see the point of it.

And it does fill your time - and for most people, this is the "busy life" that they lead - which leads them to believe it is a life filled with meaning.  After all, they have to get up every morning, dash off to work, fight traffic, and then in the evening dash back home to watch their favorite TeeVee shows.  Who has the time to even cook?  Busy, busy, busy!   But in reality, it is the appearance of busyness without actually being busy at anything.  After a decade of such "work" there is often little to show for it, mentally or monetarily.

There is a different way, I believe.  If you can make time in your life to truly think, and to truly do what you want to do, you can accomplish a lot - or nothing at all.  But the key is, you get to do what you want to do.   I have written before how so many people pass up opportunities in life because they have financial obligations - often trivial ones.  They cannot join a startup company because they have to make payments on a car or a house.  They have traded opportunity for consumerism - and then resent the folks who made other choices.

Granted, in many instances, the people who can "afford" to do what they want, often have a head start.  Bill Gates is often touted by the far right (in glurges and forwarded e-mails) as a "rags to riches" kind of guy.  But in reality, he came from an upper middle-class family and could afford to take risks that perhaps a person struggling to get by could not.  But even then, he made a choice to drop out of Harvard and join a struggling software company.  He could have graduated from Harvard business school and gone to work for some big corporation, and no doubt had a swell cubicle and car payments on a 1981 BMW back at the time.  And his friends would have thought him successful.

And we see this, all the time, among the middle class.  Myself, at age 34, not even two years out of Law School, I decided to hang out my own shingle and start my own law practice.  In retrospect, it seems like a ballsy move - one that the more conservative me of today would be reluctant to make.  Did I make a lot of dough?  Was I a staggering success?  I did OK.  But the main thing is, I had my own life, from that point on.  I wasn't confined to the cubicle, chasing the big salary and struggling to make the bills every month, while at the same time looking at new car brochures and buying new electronic toys.  I have friends who did that - and are doing that - and are working 60 hours a week, well into their 50's, to try to scrape together enough money to retire, in a manner they are "accustomed to".   They will need millions in their 401(k) to keep up their latte and iPhone lifestyle after they stop working - if they ever do.

But even after opening my own business, I was still caught on the treadmill, or should I say, I allowed myself to fall back into it.  We started spending, once we started making, and before long, I was back where I started, trying to hump to make money to pay bills for stuff I didn't have enough time to enjoy, because I was always trying to make money.  It was a pretty idiotic way to live.

So I chucked all that, and am spending a lot more time these days behind the barn, just leaning against a weathered board and looking up at a clear blue sky, framed with green leaves.  I did this just yesterday, falling into a profound and deep sleep.  And let me tell you, the freedom to be able to do that is far better than all the jet-skis and other idiotic consumer goods in the world.

You cannot own possessions - they own you.  Less is more.  Experiences are more important than owning things.  And owning things is never as good as experiencing things.  Hard lessons for me to learn.  Most never do.  They live a life on a treadmill and view all the crap they collect as their reward.  Pack rats operate on the same principle. 

No thanks!

Para-Science

Para-Science is used to sell books, seminars, or investment scams.   What is puzzling about this phenomenon is why some people are obsessed with following Para-Science, almost as a religion.  I believe it is just a matter of weak minds trying to drown out the deafening silence in their lives.

A Vegan friend of mine likes to drone on about how milk and dairy products are bad for you, as the human body wasn't "designed" to digest milk.  This is a neat argument, as there is no citation to any science behind it, and it validates their lifestyle choice.  It is made as a statement that cannot be refuted, putting the onus on the opponent to disprove the argument.  Para-Science at its best.

But of course, the human body wasn't "designed" - unless you are particularly stupid and believe in "Intelligent Design" theology.  But even then, if you buy into that, then God designed the cows, too, and in the Bible told us to take dominion over them.  But getting back to real Science, the human body has evolved over millions of years to digest a whole host of food products.  We are omnivores, not carnivores or herbivores.  We can eat just about anything, even Oysters.  And milk is good for you, as is cheese - in proper portions, of course.

But the rantings of Vegans (who tout their lifestyle as "healthy" even as they all look a little sickly) are not the point of this post.  Increasingly, Para-Science is taking over our society, or at least the media.  And you see this increasingly, and to me it is a sign of the decline of our society, as we substitute superstition and religion for the Scientific process.

I wrote before about the Howard Johnson Motor.  It was one of a string of "perpetual motion machines" that have been touted since time began.  And in Para-Science tradition, the people pushing these things claim that the onus is on the rest of us to prove they don't work, rather than on the inventor to prove that they do.

And of course, when they are proven to be hoaxes or cons, even that evidence is swept under the rug, with the reasoning, of course, that the oil companies fabricated it to "suppress the technology".   It is like trying to argue with someone who believes in Space Aliens or Ghosts - no matter what you say, they have a "yea, but...." argument, and they completely ignore the basic proposition that the burden is on THEM to prove these things exist, not on society at large to prove they don't.

Para-Science freaks like to use the phrase, "Well, anything is possible, after all the Universe is vast...." as if that proved that Sasquatch existed, by default.  Since, in an infinite universe, the probability that the Loch Ness Monster exists is greater than 0.0, therefore it must exist, after all.  The ball is in your court, world!  Prove I'm wrong!

But this is a perverse reversal of the Scientific Method.  In real science, we accumulate data through testing and observation, and then come up with a theory to fit that data (and not vice-versa, like in politics).  If further testing shows the theory flawed, we revise the theory or throw it out.  And such theories are published, in peer-review journals, where they are subject to scrutiny and further testing, and thus can be shown to be wrong, or validated as possibly right (a theory is never proven right, just possible, but its nature).

But in Para-Science, peer review is avoided.  Data and theories are published in press releases or in non-scientific or quasi-scientific journals.   No critical evaluation or analysis is allowed, and any that gets through is denounced as propaganda for the oil companies, the government, or anyone else trying to suppress the "truth" about 9/11 or whatever.

It is a waste of time trying to argue with such folks, as their minds are made up and they tailor the data (which often is made up from whole cloth) to fit the preordained conclusion.  So their theories about the Kennedy Assassination or whatever, are set in stone, and their minds are made of a similar material.

And this is sad, and also illustrates why our country is falling behind in real Science - it is far easier to believe in bullshit, as it doesn't require four semesters of Calculus, Differential Equations, Electromagnetics, or Thermodynamics.  Besides, Nazi Alien Antigravity is so much more fun!  Although you can't get college credit for it, except perhaps at Syracuse University.

What is puzzling about para-science is not the people who promote it - who are often doing so to sell a book, an investment scheme, or a ghost-hunting kit - but rather the people who obsessively follow it.  What does it profit a man to obsess about Area 57 or a perpetual motion machine?  It adds nothing to your own bottom line, and arguably detracts, as rational people will correctly perceive you are off your rocker - which can cost you a job, friendships, and relationships.   No one wants to marry a conspiracy nut, and I highly recommend you avoid them as friends, spouses, and employees or employers.

The answer, of course, is that people like to drown out the deafening silence in their lives - and forget about how pathetically unimportant our own existence on this planet is.  We are all, for the most part, forgettable people who will do little of significance that will even merit a Wikipedia entry, once we are gone.

Buying into conspiracy theories or Para-Science, on the other hand, is way of pretending you are part of something more important in the world.  A chance to be in on the secrets of those in-the-know!  And so people do this, to feel significant, just as lonely old Gay men build a shrine to Cher in their basements.  It helps to avoid thinking about our own insignificance and impending death.

For me, however, living in reality is far better than pretending to believe in things that are impossible.  I do not need distractions to drown out the silence in my life.  I am comfortable that my stay on this planet will not generate any Earth-shattering changes or leave a mark for Centuries to come.  And I am not afraid of death, but, as Woody Allen said, would not like to be there when it happens.

Is "Wealth" a dirty word?

This is how most Americans view "Wealth" and they assume that it is inherently evil.  Unfortunately, this attitude prevents them from building up any wealth of their own.

Much has been made of Mitt Romney's wealth in this election.  I have no beef with someone being wildly wealthy, depending, of course, on how they made it.  An invention broker, for example, who makes millions of dollars by deceiving small inventors and wanna-be inventors, is not to be lauded for his "success in the capitalist system" as some Republicans would have you think.  Such folks are basically crooks, albeit barely within the confines of the law.  And similarly, one has to ask pointed questions as to how Mr. Romney came into his money, particularly given the concerns about the antics of Bain Capital, a company he owns 100% of the stock of, but claims no memory of how it was ran.  And then there are the tax returns and off-shore accounts.

And of course, more than that, I think it is hard for someone making $22 Million a YEAR to claim to be able to connect with Joe Paycheck and Johnny Lunchbucket, who might hope to save half of one of those millions over a lifetime of backbreaking hard work.   No, I don't think Mr. Romney connects with the little man, and the little man is deceived if he believes that.  Deceived by paid political ads on television, of course.  Yet another good reason to not watch television - or a good reason to spend political silly-season in Canada.  Boy, those provincial elections are controversial!  And the attack ads!  Oh, wait....

But many on the Left, and many poor people, perceive wealth itself as an evil thing, and will quote (or misquote) Bible verse to make their point.  In their mind, the desire for wealth is bad, and therefor anyone who tries to get ahead in the world is inherently evil or "greedy" whatever that means.  And not surprisingly, people who have this sort of view are inevitably poor.

To some extent, it may be an example of bootstrapping poor financial decisions.  When you are poor, it is comforting, to some extent, to think of yourself as morally superior to those rich folks.  At least you are poor and honest!  But that is a booby-prize if there ever was one.  And the evidence of this is that those same said poor people who decry wealth are the same ones buying lottery tickets and/or praying for wealth to come to them.  Neither technique works very well, of course.

Our generation - the 401(k) generation - cannot afford to have such childish views about money and wealth.  We will have to fund our own retirement, which means taking an entrepreneurial view of money and thinking of it in terms of wealth, not something to be spent on a new iPhone or a leased car.  We are not being coddled like the generation before us, who suckled at the teat of corporate largess, and relied on defined-benefit pensions to make the payments on our retirement Grand Marquis.

And of course, that generation, thanks to companies like Bain Capital, are finding out that those defined-benefit pension promises can be negated in a bankruptcy court, after management has run the company into the ground - sometimes on purpose.  I have a friend with a pension from J.C. Penny who is doing the nail-biting thing right now, wondering whether the company will survive them, or whether their retirement income may be slashed by 40%.  And by the way, 40% is a lot.

So, it is high time we stopped thinking of "Wealth" as something that is bad or evil or worse yet - something that only other people have.  As I have illustrated here again and again, if you want to have an even average income in retirement, you will need to put aside about a million dollars.  Using the 4% rule, that would yield about $40,000 a year (which is not a lot) and when combined with Social Security (which Mitt Romney promises to put a "needs test" on) might bring you up to about the median household income of $51,000 a year in America.

And if that number scares you - particularly when you might barely have $100,000 in your 401(k), well, it should.  Retirement, even for those of us who saved will be a scary thing, as even saving a million dollars will not assure you a cushy retirement of golfing, living in Florida, and traveling the world.

And that, in short is why I started this blog.   I realized I was burning through money, not saving it, and moreover, spending a lot on "things" which were preventing me from having experiences.   We bought a house on a lake connected to the Erie Canal, with the idea of exploring the canal by boat.  Six years later, we never took that canal trip - the cost and labor of owning the home prevented us from having the time or the money.  Now, we can afford to go.

And by cutting expenses, I am "practicing for retirement" by learning to live on less - far less - than I did in the past.  I could comfortably live, today, on that $51,000 annual income.  But in the past, I would have needed twice that amount just to pay all the bills.   I chose bling and things over building up wealth - personal wealth.

Few of us will ever be as wealthy as Mormons, but we can at least try to improve our personal situation the best we can.  And one way is to stop thinking of wealth as evil, but as something that is value-neutral, and moreover necessary in order to survive on this planet.   You have to build up an estate - you have no choice.  Well, the other choice is to live in poverty and be dependent on others - including an unsteady government - for promises of income.

Cheap Laptops

A simple PC-based laptop can be had for under $500, brand new.  Why do people pay as much as ten times more for one?

A recent "heartwarming" story on MSNBC was about a stolen laptop.  A fellow buys a high-end laptop, gets it stolen (his second one stolen) and finds it using tracking software.  Not a big story.

The family who claims they bought the laptop, not knowing it was stolen, paid $900 for it, and was supposedly "struggling" to put their son through college.  The fellow who had his laptop stolen feels sorry for them and starts an online fundraiser for the family, raising well over $900.

This seems to be a trend these days - picking people to feel sorry for, and then setting up online fund drives.  We all recall the bus monitor from Rochester, New York, who was teased on the bus and cried, and was shown in a viral video.  She ended up with over three-quarters of a million dollars as the result of an online fundraiser.

While we might feel sorry for this woman, is giving her nearly million bucks any sort of justice?  We don't know her back story or anything.  As a New York State School employee, she might be very well off already.  And it begs the possibility that in the future, people will stage such events for the purpose of raising money. 

And isn't a bus monitor supposed to knock heads together and keep the kids under control on the bus?  When I was in school, we had one named "Sarge" and you didn't mess with her, let me tell you.  But I digress...

Before you go off sending money to someone you "feel sorry for" think about it carefully.  Altruism is suspect, if not totally evil.

What struck me about the MSNBC story was the huge holes in it - holes not apparent to six-figure-salary reporters living in the big city.  To them, $900 is a cheap laptop, as they have paid thousands for their MacBooks.  And to them, everyone has a Mac, right?  And an iPhone and iPad as well, right?  That is just baseline living, to them.

But most of us do not.  I am typing this on a Toshiba Satellite I bought at a Wal-Mart in Maine last year, when I spilled a Martini on my hoary old Dell Laptop.  I paid $320 for the Toshiba, and it works fine for writing, surfing the web, sending and receiving e-mails, and basic graphics chores.  No, it is not a gaming platform.  But who needs that?  Oh, and by the way, the old Dell still works and I still use it.

I guess I am a bit outraged that people think that $900 is a baseline price for a computer for a family that is "struggling" and that we should feel sorry for such folks when the laptop they "bought" turns out to have been stolen.  For a freshman in college, such a luxury is hardly necessary.  But it illustrates how kids today end up with tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in consumer debt - there lifestyle expectations are very high - and very expensive.

And it disturbs me that the United States of America is slowly turning into the United States of Feeling Sorry for Ourselves, as we pander to each successive victim story that the media touts - and the media loves to tout a good victim story.

And everyone is a victim, it seems, except me.   Well, the only way NOT to be a victim in America is to not buy into all the victim crap.  Once you do that, you are tagged as a heartless bastard and whatever you get in life is deemed to be what you deserve.  And of course, people will suspect you of being Republican.

But, looking at the big picture, the victim mentality really doesn't pay off in the long run.  We can't all be teased bus monitors who win the lottery.  For every victim celebrated on the TeeVee there are thousands of other victims who get nothing.  And many of these folks are real victims, too - not just some middle-class family suckered out of $900 for a stolen computer (and anyone who can afford to pay $900 for any computer is not a "victim" in any sense of the word).

In the long run, you are far better off being self-actualizing and self-reliant than to play the victim card.  But the media doesn't want you to think that - ask yourself why?  The answer, of course, is that depressed people who perceive themselves as victims, make excellent passive  consumers,  who will drown their misery in car payments and credit card deals.  When they sell you a victim story, they are selling you a lifestyle.

The reaction to the story online was sad, as it reflected how this victim mentality is so deeply set in America.  Most people posting responses said things like, "Well, maybe the college student needed an expensive computer for college!" - as if Freshman English required more than mere Internet Access and a Word Processing program.

Our country has still lost its way - and has learned nothing from the economic fiasco of the last four years.  We still believe we are entitled  to fancy electronics and toys and new cars and cable television and a whole host of crapola in our lives, that costs, cumulatively, a ton of money, but adds little to enrich our lives, either spiritually or financially.

But of course, the media, beholden to advertisers, never will sell that message.  The advertisers want you to buy, and the more you spend and the more you borrow, the better.  And people just don't get that.

We are in an RV park near Montreal, and our RV is arguably the smallest in the place, and one of the oldest.  Our decade-old BMW tow vehicle is one of the oldest cars here.  Most folks here have shiny new cars and large RVs - and take two weeks of vacation a year, or go camping on the "weekends"when they are released from Job-Jail.  They have to go back to work on Monday, as they need to make money to make the payments on it all.

The campground host, seeing our Georgia tags, said, "Gee, that's like what, a 20-hour drive from here?" which floored us, as it had taken us nearly a month to get to this point.  But it illustrated the difference in thinking.  To him, you drove "straight through" to make the best use of your limited vacation time, so you could get back to work to pay for all your crap.

For us, well, you can't even explain our life to someone on the salary-slave bandwagon.  No, we took a month to get here, as we don't have to go back to work.  And we don't have to go back to work, because we don't owe anyone money on anything.  And yes, maybe you can laugh at our old camper and worn-out car, and my cheap Wal-Mart laptop.  But they are all paid for.  And come Monday, I won't be hurriedly packing up all my stuff because I have to get back to the office.

In fact, I won't be back for another three weeks. ( And our net worth is far higher than the folks in the shiny new cars and campers.   Not that I would tell them that, of course.  Sometimes it pays to appear poor.  They might think we are victims!  Just kidding.)

But that is a lifestyle choice.  You can have lots of shiny bling and spend the rest of your life paying for it, or learn to live with less and enjoy life more.   It is a choice, not an obligation.  And no, I don't feel sorry for a family that buys a stolen laptop for $900.  Not when I make do with a whole lot less.

--Sent from my $320 Toshiba from Wal-Mart.