The Power of Dumb Luck

"How the <feck> did old people take over the world?" 

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"The average person living in the world today is, on average, ruled over by someone forty years older than them." -How Money Works

Dear Gentlereaders,

Permit me to begin with some deck clearing. 

This missive was inspired by (and borrows heavily from) a video titled Gerontocracy created by the YouTube channel How Money Works. This is slightly less ethically dubious than you might think. My biggest fan, a semi-Luddite who doesn't own a computer, accesses my columns via the dead trees format. He can't watch the video so...

I'm a hooge fan of How Money Works which could also be called Economics For Normal People...in plain English...without econometrics (complicated math)...who may be somewhat skeptical of economists.

{Right? Why do they disagree on so much and why aren't they rich if they know what they're talking about?}

I considered writing that the channel could also be called Economics For Dummies, big BUT, the short individual videos they create (rarely longer than 15 minutes) are packed with a lot of information that's presented at a rapid clip. If you haven't had your coffee yet, or are currently feeling overwhelmed by your absurdly complicated life, you may get lost in the details. 

{Maybe that's just you. You've somehow survived long enough to be seventy-something and I've noticed you're often not quite as sharp as you...} 

However, if you're feeling focused and motivated... Wait, I've just thought of another title, Where the Rubber of Economics Meets the Road of Reality. That is to say, practical hard-nosed useful information, not esoteric theories.

The Boomers, till the Millenials showed up, were the largest generation in American history, which granted, is common knowledge. Big BUT, if not for the fact we Boomers arrived in the midst of "the most intense period of wealth creation in human history" it would've meant that there was a lot of us trying to get a slice of what would've been a much smaller pie.

That, my dear gentlereaders, is some serious dumb luck.

"...the world is hundreds of times wealthier today than it was in the 1950s and Baby Boomers have been able to capitalize on that for their entire lives with their heavy sway on politics." 

"...a perfect combination of being exposed to new technologies that would go on to change the world and create some of the most valuable businesses in history." 

Hey kids, did you know that once upon a time, buying a house, comparatively speaking, was a slice of pie. Home prices weren't completely nuts as they now are in no shortage of various and sundry corners of the Republic. 

I'm acutely aware, as likely are most of you, that Sleepy Joe was the oldest president in American history. Assuming the Donald doesn't die (or is killed) before the end of his second term, he'll be the new record-holder by five months (my favorite fun fact from the video).

I'm also acutely aware, as likely are most of you, that many Boomer homeowners are practitioners of the Not In My Yard philosophy of property management, i.e., nope you ain't building that in my town/city/suburb, I/we like things just the way are thank you very much.

You're gonna have to find someplace else to establish your own homestead. Hey, take it up with the zoning commission. Ya want some cheese with that whine? Geesh, kids these days...

Now, while I was more or less aware that the average age of the average congressman congressperson is almost 60, and the average age of Senators is 64...

{You knew that?}

Cough, cough, as I said, more or less. Hey, I didn't have the exact information stored in Neuron #887925639234989852 but I knew the average is over 60. The good news is that the average age of members of Congress has dropped a few years lately -- several older members have died. 

While I'm not at all surprised that it turns out that only 15 to 27% of Americans vote in local elections (Guilty. I confess I don't always vote in Hooterville's local elections), I didn't know that homeowners over the age of 65 are seven times more likely to vote in local elections than voters 18 to 34.

The Hooterville Metropolitan area is top-heavy with my fellow geezers and geezerettes; the average age of a city councilman councilperson in the USA is 51.

"Elderly people have voted for elderly people who will keep their homes valuable which tends to be more elderly people helping to cement the gerontocracy from the ground floor. So, elderly people were influential at the right time to get rich and then they use that wealth to buy even more influence."    

I have no idea who my city councilperson is or how old he/she/they and their fellow legislators are, and I don't care, primarily because I'm a confirmed renter -- I've been living in Ohio temporarily for 40 years --and Hooterville is relatively small. If our councilpersons do something goofy we turn on 'em quick, and they tend to back off. Fortunately, they're only part-timers who have real jobs in the real world.  

"That government is best which governs least." -Probably not Jefferson or Thoreau 

Another big BUT: in larger municipalities "...your locally elected representatives probably have more power over your life than the big dogs in Washington." These people could lower housing costs and increase supply, "but across the country, they choose not to."

OK, Boomer? This is why the kids hate you, hopefully not yours, but lots of other people's kids do. Pray they don't start paying more attention to local politics and that many will continue to support the Wokie notion that childless Millies and Zoomers stacked on top of each other like cordwood in large cities constitutes the good life. 

Watch the video irregardless of your age. I've only scratched the surface of the information you'll find. Aren't you lucky I told you about it? 

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

 

 

It's Not You, It's Me

Image by Prawny from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination."    

                                                                             -George Benard Shaw

Dear Gentlereaders,

America, a democratic republic, recently conducted a royal funeral for a gentleman who moved out of the White House 45 years ago at the conclusion of his good/bad/mediocre/coulda been worse (choose one) single term as the Temporary King of America (TKOA). 

When I found out this occasion provided a 12th paid holiday for postal workers this year I thought that Mr. Carter had been canonized by the American Postal Workers Union but I was wrong. The majority of the employees of the Fedrl Gummit were given a paid day off so they could process their grief. 

{Process?}

A very popular word nowadays that's often substituted for the phrase deal with. I'm just tryna stay cool, bruh. 

The Donald's recent coronation marking/celebrating his second and last stint as TKOA is now behind us...assuming, of course, he doesn't morph into the fascist dicktater the Blue Team warned us about.

I started to write that irregardless, given the Donald's age we don't have much to worry about, but then I remembered that Mr. Peanut was our first temporary King who lived to be a hundred years old. 

{I wonder if he ate much fast food?} 

{By the way, whaddayamean temporary king? We don't have kings, we have presidents.}

We used to, Dana, but consider. Team Red raised $200,000,000 (more or less) from multiple sources to pay for several days of revelry to honor the Donald's return to the throne. 

Some proudly and publicly proclaimed their allegiance to the new King (as well as no shortage of various and sundry supporters from behind curtains), "to bankroll a multi-day extravaganza of lavish dinners, galas and events that give big money donors exclusive face time with the incoming administration." 

Call me cranky, but that seems more like financial obeisance to a new monarch, as opposed to a shindig at the VFW hall in the Swamp which is how we do things out here in Flyoverland.  

By the way, I stole the quote above from (yet another) non-profit, Campaign Legal Center, which according to Wikipedia "...is a government watchdog group in the United States. CLC supports strong enforcement of United States campaign finance laws."

I confess to knowing nothing about the CLC, in fact, I never even heard of them till I went a-googlin' in search of estimates of how much dough was spent celebrating the coronation. But mentioning one of our ubiquitous, politically focused non-profits when writing about anything political is a rule, and serves to make the writer sound like he/she/they know what they are talking about.

{I thought you were gonna knock off that he/she/they crap?}

The classics never get old. 

{And another thing, behind curtains? Doesn't the Donald's official inaugural committee have to issue an official report in a few months detailing exactly who gave what?}

Yep, but shockingly, as in campaign donations, there are loopholes available. For example, if I give my buddy the CEO of Acme Inc. some cash on the down-low he/she/they can make a corporate donation without mentioning me or those I may be fronting for.  

All politics, all the time.

If you're old like me, you may have fond memories of an early morning AM radio show that was the place to go for early morning updates as to what was going on in your corner of the country.

"Hey, Ma, did they cancel school?" 

In my case, it's KDKA Pittsburgh. America's first commercial radio station. I can still hear Jack Bogut cracking jokes and trading quips with newsman Ed Chauncey. I'm so old I remember Rege Cordic. I...

{Ahem.} 

A few weeks back I got up late, late for me anyway (7 a.m.), and on an impulse clicked on my clock radio as I wanted to check something out.

I rarely listen to it but it's tuned to a local AM station long past its glory days but is still a local icon -- "NewsRadio 570 WKBN - Youngstown's News, Weather & Talk Station." The news and weather reports are limited and brief but the talk (and the commercials) never stops.

The reason for my impulse was a recent local development. Long story short, one of the last two talk show hosts who reside in the Youngstown metro area has recently retired. That means there's only one local Joe Bagadonuts left (3 to 6 p.m.)...and 23 hours of regional or nationally syndicated jaw-jaw. 

Not having listened in quite a while I wondered who was currently talking (hosts come and go) to my fellow denizens of NE Ohio (Canada's deep south) as they trudged to work.

I unfondly remember (I'm retired and don't miss being a wage slave, not even a little bit) driving with one hand on the wheel, wiping my fogged windshield with a stained McDonald's napkin with the other, and squinting to see where I was going while waiting for my semi-trusty steed to thaw out. 

{Is unfondly a word?} 

One Michael Delgiorno (from Nashville) was ranting about how outraged he was about the recently dethroned TKOA, Slow Joe, retroactively pardoning friends and family members for any sins they may have committed -- At. Seven. O'clock. In. The. Morning. 

I turned off my radio. 

{Well, lots of people are upset about it. I don't see what...}

It's not you, it's me. Lots of other people are upset about the Donald pardoning most of the January 6 rioters, but that's not my point. 

Is getting worked up over Red team v. Blue team on your way to work in the morning before having to deal with bosses and coworkers, some of whom may not be your favorite H. sapiens, a good idea?

{Well, there's always Howard Stern. If he's not polluting your local airwaves one of his competitors is probably available on an FM station. They do tend to be sex-joke-saturated but some are quite funny. You're familiar with the FM band, right?}

Oh yeah. Pseudo-country music, "Classic Rock" (about a hundred tunes played over and over again), violent/obscene Rap/Hip-hop, Top 40 computer-generated insipid Pop... 

{Geesh..never mind.}

It's not you, it's me. 

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

      

   

 

Is Cher the Anti-Christ?

Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"I've been famous my entire life; I don't know any other way." -Cher

Dear Gentlereaders,

I (along with Bobcat Goldthwait), for reasons I am sworn not to reveal, have long believed that Scott Baio was the anti-Christ. 

However, I now believe it might be Cher. 

{Perhaps there's more than one, that would explain a lot.}

I don't know, my dear gentlereaders, if you're aware that she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last October, you might think that this alone is proof, but the RRHoF crossed over to the dark side a long time ago. Madonna was inducted back in 2008.

If you're not a geezer/geezerette of a certain age with a certain sensibility, that I will not attempt to put into words, you may not understand why this is appalling. But hey, if you like it (or it's all rock and roll to you), it's good music. 

However. 

Cher — who by the way has recently released volume one of her much-anticipated autobiography, 432 pages written by a ghostwriter, "fixed" by two additional ghosts, and then fine-tuned by Cher and a professional editor — proudly declared "I changed the sound of music forever, all right?" in her induction speech. 

As my millions of regular readers are aware, I'm a news nerd who keeps an eye on multiple news sources seven days a week. I know, I know... In my defense, nowadays I skim a lot more, read a lot less, and I have no shortage of other pursuits. 

When I recently came across the Cher quote in question I was brought up short. Say what? This required looking into. 

It turns out her insipid pop hit Believe was the first hit pop song to use a music producers tool, Auto-Tune, to make a singer sound like a robot. It had been around for a while but had previously been used to correct a given singer's off-pitch lyrics, subtly, so that the public was unaware that their favorite rock/pop star may not have been quite as talented as they thought.

The technology involved has come a long way since then. It's now possible to make the "live" performances of everyone from Taylor Swift to the band fronted by your obnoxious rich cousin's kid sound like sonic perfection. But I drift. 

It seems that neither Cher nor her producer, Mark Taylor, were happy with the sound of Believe despite much tinkering. At a certain setting, Auto-Tune will make any singer sound like a robot, this was considered an audio glitch at the time but Mr. Taylor thought it was perfect for Believe, and Cher (and ultimately many H. sapiens) agreed. 

Cher had to fight her record label, who disagreed, but she won the skirmish. The deliberate "glitch" became known as the Cher effect, and the rest is history. And that's how Cher changed the sound of music forever, all right? 

{I wonder when volume two will be released?}

We can only hope it's available before Cher, a remarkably well-preserved 78-year-old, releases it before she moves on to Rock and Roll Heaven, Dana.   

The age of the remakes and "franchises" continues apace. Given the number of updated versions of movies and TV shows, as well as the fact that sequels and prequels are now franchises (is it just me or are there 31 flavors of Star Wars available?) I would like to suggest a remake of a TV show that I loved watching that was on from 1955 to 1960, The Millionaire. 

Sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive!

When I went a-googlin' I discovered the show ran from '55 to '60, Since I didn't come along till 1953 for a moment there I thought that Mum's favorite child must have been an unusually precocious little bugger... till I discovered that reruns ran here, there, and even there till the 80s. 

And then, according to Wikipedia, "In 2015, the series began to air on CBS's digital subchannel network Decades...". 

{Digital subchannel network?}

Right? I don't know either. If you're interested, Wikipedia has a detailed explanation. Personally, I'm not. It's a broadcast thing and I've been tethered to my cable for decades. I'm a world-class streamer and if it were up to me I'd keep the cable for high-speed internet access and nothing else. But I'm no longer the Grand Imperial Poobah of Casa de Chaos, I just rent an overpriced room here. 

Suffice it to say, it seems to me that a black-and-white show made in the late 50s that's still around is a prime candidate for a remake.  

On a related note, in the course of my research, I discovered that 19 of the more than 200 episodes have been removed from syndication by CBS, which apparently has control of the show. I'd love to know why, but CBS hasn't returned my calls or responded to my emails.    

I've previously noted elsewhere that I've often been a day late and two (inflation-adjusted) dollars short over the years. I've successfully avoided the burdens of fame and fortune for multiple decades, and now that I've reached my seventies I suspect the odds are I will continue to do so. 

I've reached a point in my life where I'm glad I've never been even a minor celebrity but I still dream of winning FU (that's feck you, not the other one) money via a lottery ticket  — or being paid a visit by John Beresford Tipton's executive secretary, Michael Anthony.   

The executive secretary introduces each show. He's charged with delivering a check for $1,000,000.00 to the subject of that particular episode by his boss, John Beresford Tipton, a reclusive billionaire, one of the world's 19 multi-billionaires.  

{Nineteen? Aren't there like, 3,000 billionaires nowadays?}

Yeah, more or less. Billionaires, just like we thousandaires, experience occasional streaks of bad luck and are reduced to being mere millionaires, convicts, or plant food.  

Anyway, you never actually see the reclusive billionaire (think Charlie's Angels) and the executive secretary character gets minimal screen time. The bulk of the show is about who gets a check in that particular episode and its impact on their life. 

This same formula, resuscitated, would result in relatively modest production costs and serve as a showcase for current stars looking for publicity or career resuscitation, and wanna-be (i.e. cheaply and easily obtained) TV stars.

Check out the show's Wikipedia entry and scroll down to view a list of guest stars who were, or became, famous.  

Potential audience? The Precariat. The hundreds of millions of us out here dealing with transitory inflation and little to no confidence in what's next who get up every morning wondering if this is the day the other shoe drops.

{Speaking of inflation, according to my calculations, Mr. Tipton would have to cut ten million dollar checks nowadays. A mere million won't even buy a nice house in no shortage of Zip codes.} 

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

Scroll down to share my work or to access previous columns.   

Comments? I post links to my columns on Facebook where you can love me, hate me, or cancel me. Cranky don't tweet (Xclaim?).

Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved