[Wednesday’s run: 3 miles; Saturday’s run: 3 miles]
I mowed the grass the other day for the first time this year. I did it in the evening after work, there was enough light to be outside. And I finished it before the rain started. So winter is officially over.
There are national-scale topics that I don’t understand. I have working theories, but also have a nagging feeling that some smart person must see it differently or things wouldn’t be like they are.
One is economics. Here is the working theory I have.
Because of wide-scale political failure, evidenced by continuous buy-off of voters (of all kinds, corporate and individual) we have a large and growing government budget deficit. In order to keep the deficit from stopping the spendage more money is pumped into the system. In order to keep that from creating inflation we lean on the Consumer Price Index artificially leaving out many requirements of actual life. Because of artificially low inflation, interest rates are dead for secured borrowing. Because interest rates are dead people with money to park can’t look to guaranteed income from savings or CDs, those won’t keep up with the actual rate of inflation, so retirement savings has to go somewhere that will actually sustain value which means the stock market. And because everyone is looking at the stock market, there is a glut of money available for high risk investing (as seen by non-product companies having outrageous IPOs). But since retirement money now rides on the stock market, mainly index funds which bet on the general upward trajectory of the market, the politicians are highly tuned to keeping the market moving upward, which sometimes means propping up large companies with government injections of various sorts, increasing the deficit, etc.
So, to keep the level of deficit, lowering the risk for some, we actually push more people into a position of greater risk, a kind of risk inflation, to maintain their current lifestyle.
I donated blood a week ago Saturday, the 3rd. Usually that knocks back my running by about two weeks. I can still run, but my heart rate goes up and the overall efficiency goes way down. It just takes more work and I go a lot slower. (I’m not training for any race or performance, so it doesn’t really matter in the big picture.)
And last Tuesday they had a mass-vaccination event at my workplace so I went in and got my jab-#1 with the Pfizer vaccine. So this week I’ve been blood-low and vaccine high which just leveled out at a low and somewhat distracted energy level.
I had a little soreness in my arm from the injection and a very mild flu-like response about 12 hours after the shot. Otherwise I made it through the week without falling asleep at my desk. They tell me the 2nd shot can be rougher.
My wife got the Moderna first shot also on Tuesday at a different source. She had a few days of chills and basically took to her bed. But she seems to be coming out of it. She tells me the Moderna has the opposite pattern of the Pfizer with shot #1 being the worst.
So we were both under par for the week as far as energy level and clear thinking. And I was perturbed at her for going out and attempting a long run during the nadir and she was perturbed at me for scheduling my blood donation and the shot too close together.
One reply on “First mow”
I have been going through old letters and cards and snapshots. One snapshot is from my grad-school days in Verona WI visiting friends – they took a pic of me pushing a lawn mower (why?). I didn’t know it at the time, but that would be the last time I touched a lawn mower. (I can’t remember the last time I shoveled snow – had to be about the same era when I rented a room in a rural Wisconsin farm house.)
There was a paucity of professionals who foresaw the housing crash timing and severity over ten years ago. (I refused the temptation to buy back then – rented all the while. The housing market didn’t pass my smell test.) Even now, the yield curve suggests those in the know think there isn’t much risk in lending long at low rates. Personally, I think this is because they believe the FED has incredible powers that are sustainable. I agree they have incredible powers. I do not think they are sustainable.
For fiscal policy, it is one thing to borrow in a crisis. An economy cannot get going again out of thrift – that is the wrong tactic and only makes things worse. But what we had recently is tax cuts that created higher structural deficits in a time that politicians were crowing about record low unemployment. Record low unemployment is the time to pay down debt, not have higher deficit rates. The tax reductions were “sold” as a stimulus to create jobs – but there was already record low unemployment. On that point, my employer had a $3B reduction in tax liability in late 2017 with the tax law changes. My employer has since that time been aggressively reducing its workforce through attrition and severance – closing branches while making large investments in tech. The political party that refused to go along with these tax cuts had gains in the last major election – _barely_. (For the voters, 400,000 avoidable premature deaths may have been a more important factor.)
Our household retirement funds are almost 100% in diversified equities and it is through the roof. We dollar cost average and have for ages – we are not informed enough to pick specific stocks or sectors. On the expense front, we are spending far less than usual but keep working remotely. There might be inflation but we don’t see it. We fuel our car for free at the local community college. We buy groceries at Costco or the Asian or Mexican supermarket. Our property taxes are high but by law can go up a maximum of 2%/year… This for us when working class people – the people who actually _do_ things – are hurting owing to the epidemic. They can’t find work and presumably do not have much in equities. The “invisible hand” likes people like us more, apparently.