All Is Well

Can you believe how little I've blogged this past month? I was just looking today and I guess there have been only 16 posts this month. For most people this would probably be a ton, but usually I'm doing this stuff every weekday. That's the fewest of any month in the history of this blog, which is actually coming up on 2 years in May. Number of posts since its inception? Over 630.

I'm a freak.

I guess I've just hit one of those lag periods where I haven't been as motivated to write and post on everything that I've been reading. Truth be told, I've also actually been kind of busy this month. I know, I know. You're not buying it. I was out of town for several days at the beginning of the month, and then various things here and there have been taking up my attention. I've actually gotten some stuff done here and there, too. And I think at the end of the day, there has been a mix of emotions and events recently that have prevented me from a relaxed frame of mind that allows for thinking about sundry topics. Not that things have been bad for me. I've just had my attention scattered in different ways about different things for the last month. It's been interesting, but I'm feeling good about everything.

I'm excited because there are only a few weeks left in the semester. The hardest part about my TA responsibility is done. I just have my qualitative project left to work on, get a solid draft of my thesis to my professor, and finish up strong.

I just learned yesterday that my TA position got switched from Summer to Spring term, and that I won't be able to teach in the summer, which means I'll probably be home for July and August. What am I going to do for a summer job? I'm open to ANYTHING so let me know if you hear of anything. Even stupid stuff, like I'd kind of like to work as one of those vendors at Angel Stadium. I'll bet those guys make decent money on tips, plus I love being at the ballpark. Tonight I was even looking up jobs working on lobster boats, but I don't know if I could stomach the open seas.

You know what's funny about me and my blogging habits? Dave sent me an academic article about Guantanamo Bay, the procedures the US follows, and how the US abides by the Geneva Conventions in running that facility, thinking that I'd like to blog about it. It's funny to me that he thought I'd be interested, that I am, and that I'd even bother taking the time to do something like that. But people have their ways that they like to spend their time. Last night I met this guy who is working on altering a woman's tweed jacket that he found into something that he'd like to wear. People have their pet projects, and mine mostly revolves around exercise, reading, and writing. At least those are somewhat productive things.

I registered for the OC Mud Run on July 18th. You suckers in? I'll be back soon enough.

Peace. Be blessed, y'all.

The Price Of Feminism

I read an article earlier this week by Kathryn Jean Lopez titled What Feminism Wrought over at National Review. Kathryn always has a great take on feminism, family issues, and religion, among other things. In the article she states:

What has happened — and what Rihanna and Chris have to do with Gloria and us — is that by inventing oppression where there is none and remaking woman in man’s image, as the sexual and feminist revolutions have done, we’ve confused everyone. The reaction those kids had was unnatural. It’s natural for us to expect men to protect women, and for women to expect some level of physical protection. But in post-modern America, those natural gender roles have been beaten by academics and political rhetoric and the occasional modern woman being offended by having a door opened for her. The result is confusion.

And perhaps, too, a neo-feminist backlash.

The need for some return to sanity is presented pretty clearly in an article in the April issue of O, the Oprah Magazine. The article details how some women find themselves leaving men in favor of relationships with partners of their own gender.

One recently divorced academic describes what attracted her to a future female lover. “She got up and gave me the better seat, as if she wanted to take care of me. I was struck by that,” she said. “I felt attracted to her energy, her charisma. I was enticed. And she paid the bill. Just the gesture was sexy. She took initiative and was the most take-charge person I’d ever met.”

This article isn’t about closeted homosexuality. It’s not making the case that there is a vast population of women who were born to be with women, who are instead trapped in unfulfilling heterosexual arrangements. No, this article, despite its celebration of unconventional lifestyles, boils down to something much more orthodox: Femininity and masculinity mix well together. And women are taking masculinity where they can get it, even if that’s in the arms of another woman.

The women interviewed in the article appear to want someone to take charge a bit — there is an attraction to, if not a need for, some hierarchy. And in a culture in which masculinity — well, at least in men — is so often suspect, some women seem to be looking to reinvent the masculine themselves.

I always hate the idea of building up one race, gender, culture, etc. at the expense of the other. One of my biggest pet peeves is when I hear in church someone talking about Adam and Eve, and always having to take some kind of shot at males, or the way in which Adam responds to God when God comes to visit them in the Garden of Eden after they had partaken of the fruit. Building up women does not mean we have to tear down men. Goodness knows that we men already do a good enough job of doing that on our own as it is. We do not need everyone pointing out every flaw that belongs to the male gender.

I really like her point about how embedded within each of our gender's are unique identities and characteristics that allow us to seek out one another to make ourselves whole. Just as Paul says, "neither is man without the woman, neither the without the man, in the Lord" (1 Cor 11:11). The idea is that we form complements to one another in the creation of a perfect union that brings us ultimately closer to God. These points are also emphasized and reinforced in the Family Proclamation issued by the church to the world. It says:

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose...

Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. "Children are an heritage of the Lord" (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

Anyway, her main point is a good one - feminism has worked so hard to eliminate any conceivable differences between men and women that there is very little mutual desire to build up the opposite gender. Men should naturally want to build up and support women, and the same is also true for women, but in today's culture it's more competition than cooperation with one another, and this in turn leads more often to contention than affection.

Positive Psychology

Today at the university forum Dr. Martin Seligman from Penn State University spoke about the field of positive psychology. He is more or less the founder of the movement. While serving as President of the American Psychological Association he noticed the strict emphasis on diagnosing weakness and the treatment of human pathology, but little to no attention on strength and increasing well-being with that strict intent in mind. There was a lot of emphasis on mental illness, but not mental health. So out of those thoughts came his desire to develop this field of positive psychology.

Some interesting things he noted:

• Depression has seen a ten-fold increase in the last century in spite of greater economic prosperity than the world has ever seen. I wonder how much of that is due to actual increasing incidence rates or just the diagnosis of it.
  
• With the sharp increase in depression, happiness has plateaued.
  
• Our country has seen greater military and economic success in this last century than in all of the rest of its history, but people seem less satisfied with their lives.
• If you have some time to kill, visit his Authentic Happiness website and take some of the tests that he has there. It also has a bunch of other resources, TONS of questionnaires on different things.
  

One study that he cited traced two groups of students from 9th-12th grades. One group served as the control, while the other had 20 weeks with one 80 minute lesson a week on kindness, with instruction to perform at least three kind acts within the week. By the end of their high school careers, the treatment group were rated higher in social skills by their teachers (who were blind to which students were receiving the treatment), higher in GPA, and more cooperative by their parents.

This was just kind of a sidenote, but he talked briefly about couples. One thing he said that I thought was funny was that he stated that the main goal of couples therapy is to teach couples how to fight with each other, of course, in a constructive manner. One area which seems pretty simple to target is how each person within a couple reacts to the success of the partner. For example, when responding to a promotion, an aggressive-critical response would be to say something like, "well, great. Do you know high a tax bracket that is going to put us?" and the passive-critical response would be to say, "what's for dinner?" Couples who flourish focus on what he called the active-constructive response and say things like, "that's great! Let's relive the moment...what did your boss say? how did that make you feel?" etc. Invariably, happy couples are ones who celebrate with each other their successes.

I guess what I liked most about the forum was how he talked about the concept of flow, as espoused by Cziksentmihaly. I actually got to take a class from him while at Claremont Graduate University which is cool because he's actually kind of a big deal in the field of positive psychology. Having said that, let me also add that he is a terrible lecturer. Great thinker, bad speaker. Anyway, the concept of flow revolves around not just being content, but applying your greatest strengths to derive the greatest rewards for yourself, and to experience engagement in the process that helps you develop meaning in your life. This can be a variety of things for people, but m0re simply put, it's when you do what you love, and time has no meaning while you're involved with the process, and it helps you find meaning in your life. This can be a number of things - spending time with loved ones, participating in meaningful activities (as simple as sports, or the creation of art), serving others, etc.

I find this all the more interesting because lately I've been reading Freakonomics. It's a very compelling read, but also kind of turns upside down a lot of things that I think are important. I'm interested in finishing it, having some time to think it over, and then read the conservative response found in Freedomnomics. Anyway, a point that Dr. Seligman brought up was that so many economists insist that the point of the economic system is the creation of wealth, that that is its sole purpose. But what's the point if in the creation of more wealth when we're still lacking in finding our own personal peace and well-being? The creation of wealth is a very important goal, but should not be the end in itself. And this was Dr. Seligman's final point - it should be in finding additional security and contributing to the lives of others, to help them attain and find those things that add value to their own lives. In that process we find meaning in our own.

I just really liked this message because it runs counter to so much of the sentiment that is out there right now when you watch the news or read the paper. Money is important, and in its absence a person is very hard pressed to reach a satisfied state. A prominent figure in psychology is Abraham Maslow who constructed a pyramid that he refers to as the hierarchy of needs, with basic physiological needs at the bottom that must be met, and culminates in the highest-order need which is self-actualization. Out of self-actualization creativity, morality, acceptance, and other things are born. The part that we seem to be getting wrong is confusing the difference between wants and needs. Whatever difficulties we may be having, we still have plenty of reasons to be happy and to feel optimistic. As Louis CK attests...

Obamanomics

Came across this article this morning and thought it had some interesting points. It comes from Commentary, and is actually an excerpt from the full magazine. It says:

The cap-and-trade tax will inescapably and adversely impact the economic recovery and future growth rates. If passed, it will act on the economy as a whole exactly the way a governor acts on a steam engine, increasingly resisting any increase in revolutions per minute. With the supply of licenses to emit carbon dioxide fixed, the price of the permits will inevitably rise as economic activity picks up. That means that any increase in overall demand will increase the price of energy, and thus, in a feedback loop, nearly everything else. That will damp down demand. The more the economy tries to speed up, the more the carbon tax will work to prevent it from doing so.

The same is true of many of the other policies embedded in Obama’s budget. He will raise taxes on high earners rather than lowering them to give those earners an incentive to put their money into the private markets. He intends to increase the number of federal regulations on private business and industry, rather than reduce the number of those regulations for the purpose of eliminating barriers to growth. Taken together, these counterproductive actions will make job creation in the private sector difficult, because they will make it more expensive to hire new workers. The Obama plan will, in general, make it more expensive to do business at a time when one would think he and the nation as a whole have every reason to make it as inexpensive as possible to do business.

I'll bet that the average American has no idea how much cap-and-trade will work as a tax against him in the near future, and how this is something that will be more permanent than temporary.

He has commented on this before, but Thomas Sowell wrote another article yesterday lamenting the hypocrisy of Democratic leaders harping so heavily on the AIG executive bonuses. He mentions:

What makes this all the more painfully ironic is that it is precisely those members of Congress who have had the most to do with creating the risks that led to the current economic crisis who are making the most noise against others, and summoning people before their committee to be browbeaten and humiliated on nationwide television.

No one pushed harder than Congressman Barney Frank to force banks and other financial institutions to reduce their mortgage lending standards, in order to meet government-set goals for more home ownership. Those lower mortgage lending standards are at the heart of the increased riskiness of the mortgage market and of the collapse of Wall Street securities based on those risky mortgages...

Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.

Politicians and bureaucrats micro-managing the mortgage sector of the economy is precisely how today's economic disaster began. Why anyone would think that their micro-managing the automobile industry, or executive pay across a wide sweep of other industries, is likely to make things better in the economy is a mystery.

And just a couple of quick items that came via Carpe Diem:

And last Friday there was an interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker in the Wall Street Journal. The interview is presented here. I guess I like this article because much of what he says line up with my own thoughts on the current state, so it's nice to feel validated by someone so smart. A couple of key paragraphs:

Mr. Becker sees the finger prints of big government all over today's economic woes. When I ask him about the sources of the mania in housing prices, the first culprit he names is the Fed. Low interest rates, he says, were "partly, maybe mainly, due to the Fed's policy of keeping [its] interest rates very low during 2002-2004." A second reason rates were low was the "high savings rates primarily from Asia and also from the rest of the world."

"People debate the relative importance of the two and I don't think we know exactly," Mr. Becker admits. But what is clear is that "when you have low interest rates, any long-lived assets tend to go up in price because they are based upon returns accruing over many years. When interest rates are low you don't discount these returns very much and you get high asset prices."

On top of that, Mr. Becker says, there were government policies aimed at "extending the scope of homeownership in the United States to low-credit, low-income families." This was done through "the Community Reinvestment Act in the '70s and then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac later on" and it put many unqualified borrowers into the mix.

The third effect, Mr. Becker says, was the "bubble mentality." By this "I mean that much of the additional lending and borrowing was based on expectations that prices would continue to rise at rates we now recognize, and should have recognized then, were unsustainable."

...

On the subject of recovery, Mr. Becker repeats his call for lower taxes, applauds the Fed's action to "raise reserves," (meaning money creation, though he said this before the Fed's action a few days ago), and he says "I do believe one has to try to do something more directly to help with the toxic assets of the banks."

...

Mr. Becker is underwhelmed by the stimulus package: "Much of it doesn't have any short-term stimulus. If you raise research and development, I don't see how it's going to short-run stimulate the economy. You don't have excess unemployed labor in the scientific community, in the research community, or in the wind power creation community, or in the health sector. So I don't see that this will stimulate the economy, but it will raise the debt and lead to inefficient spending and a lot of problems."

There is also the more fundamental question of whether one dollar of government spending can produce one and a half dollars of economic output, as the administration claims. Mr. Becker is more than skeptical. "Keynesianism was out of fashion for so long that we stopped investigating variables the Keynesians would look at such as the multiplier, and there is almost no evidence on what the multiplier would be." He thinks that the paper by Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, "saying that the multiplier is about one and a half [is] based on very weak, even nonexistent evidence." His guess? "I think it is a lot less than one. It gets higher in recessions and depressions so it's above zero now but significantly below one. I don't have a number, I haven't estimated it, but I think it would be well below one, let me put it that way."

Anyway, thought those were worth passing along...

...And Not Shrink

A couple weeks ago someone mentioned the story of Jonah in a talk that he was giving. Being reminded of that story, I started to think of other prominent characters in the scriptures and the ways in which they were able to contribute greatly to God's work, while also being very human and imperfect. I always seem to cling to those stories because it makes me feel like I have hope knowing that someone else who eventually turned out so great can also start out so slovenly as I seem prone to behave.

Here's a quick rundown of my favorites:

• Jonah's story is helpful to me because he so obviously fled from his responsibility, choosing instead to get on a ship rather than preach repentance as he was commanded to do. He was so negligent in his efforts to escape his duty that he even put the lives of other people at risk. God was so set on having Jonah preach for him that he even had him swallowed up by a whale. A whale! And when he was done preaching and it actually got the people to turn themselves around and avoid destruction, what did he do? He got upset at God because he still thought they should be punished. The guy was far from perfect, but still useful to the Lord and had a direct hand in the salvation of many people, even if it wasn't exactly what he had in mind. In my case, I wonder how many whales the Lord has to send after me to get me back on track?
• Jeremiah had one of the toughest assignments. He had to preach to apostate Israel around the peak of their iniquity, just before the Babylonian captivity. And as must have been the case, it got tiresome for him. He had to be tired of knowing that he was fighting a losing cause, preaching to people who would were so unrelenting in their wickedness. In Jeremiah 20, he mentions feeling deceived and disappointed that he was held in derision daily, being mocked by everyone. I love the humanity of his expression. And what's more inspiring is that just after promising himself that he wouldn't do it any longer, his word burned so strongly within him that he couldn't restrain himself from doing God's work. He says, "I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay."
• When I was in CCD growing up before joining the church, I had to do a report on a Pope. I ended up going with Peter, the first proclaimed Pope of the Catholic church. I always loved his story. He was brazen, but impetuous. The Lord rebuked him a number of times in the gospels, and of course, the worst of all his sins was denying that he knew Christ. I'll let Elder Holland finish telling this story:
  

  Or what if a mistake or two had so crippled Peter that he had not come back, stronger than ever, after the crucifixion and resurrection of the Master? A few years ago President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke of Peter's struggle. After recounting the events of Jesus' ordeal in accusations, mock trials, and imprisonment, and Peter's remorseful acquiescence to it, he said:
  
  As I have read this account my heart goes out to Peter. So many of us are so much like him. We pledge our loyalty; we affirm our determination to be of good courage; we declare, sometimes even publicly, that come what may we will do the right thing, that we will stand for the right cause, that we will be true to ourselves and to others.
  
  Then the pressures begin to build. Sometimes these are social pressures. Sometimes they are personal appetites. Sometimes they are false ambitions. There is a weakening of the will. There is a softening of discipline. There is capitulation. And then there is remorse, self-accusation, and bitter tears of regret.
  
  Well, if Peter's story were to have ended there, with him cursing and swearing and saying, "I know not the man," surely his would be among the most pathetic in all scripture.
  
  But Peter came back.
  
  He squared his shoulders and stiffened his resolve and made up for lost ground. He took command of a frightened little band of Church members. He preached such a moving sermon on the day of Pentecost that three thousand in the audience applied for baptism. Days later five thousand heard him and were baptized. With John, he healed the lame man at the gate of the temple. Faith in Peter's faith brought the sick into the streets on their beds of affliction "that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them" (Acts 5:15). He fearlessly spoke for his brethren when they were arraigned before the Sanhedrin and when they were cast into prison. He entertained angels and received the vision that led to carrying the gospel to the Gentiles. He became in every sense the rock Christ promised he would be. Of such a life President Hinckley said:
  
  I pray that you may draw comfort and resolution from the example of Peter who, though he had walked daily with Jesus, in an hour of extremity denied both the Lord and the testimony which he carried in his own heart. But he rose above this, and became a mighty defender and a powerful advocate. So too, there is a way for you to turn about and . . . [build] the kingdom of God.

• I love Alma the younger and the sons of Mosiah. These guys were the son of the prophet and the king, and they were royal screw-ups, to the point that they even persecuted the church and did their best to tear it down, until they had an angelic visitation. Mormon describes them as being "the vilest of sinners," but the Lord saw fit in his infinite wisdom to rescue them from themselves, and they turned out to be the most amazing missionaries, not unlike Paul.
  
• And more recently we have Joseph Smith. I already mentioned his mishap with the lost pages of manuscript while translating the Book of Mormon, nevertheless, the Lord knew that he would come out better from the experience and still fulfill the mission which he had given him.

These stories fascinate me, if only because they help me to know that in spite of my many frailties I can overcome. What makes all of these case studies possible and not completely tragic is that there was one who drank from the bitter cup and did not shrink. He was always up to the task, and it's only because of him that all of us have any opportunity to find redemption. And in just a few weeks we get opportunity to commemorate his victory over both physical and spiritual death.

OC Mud Run

So last time I was home I happened across an ad promoting the OC Mud Run on Saturday, July 18th. Up until next week it is $30 for the 5k, and $35 for the 10k. Who's with me? I'm not entirely sure what my plans will be for the summer because I could end up teaching a class in the summer term, but I'm definitely planning on coming down that weekend for this one. It's right over by Wild Rivers in Hidden Valley Park. Kinda weird, but the first part of the course is run around the perimeter of the parking lot over by Wild Rivers/Verizon Amphitheater. In any case they are still advertising mud pits, climbing walls, tunnel crawls, and cargo net crawls. Sounds super awesome...who's with me?

On a Chris note, I'm running in the Provo City Half Marathon in two weeks. I ran more than 10 miles for the first time since the Chicago marathon and I was surprised at how little residual effects there have been. I don't have any muscle or joint soreness. It seems that I got the right amount of carbs, protein, and electrolytes pre- and post-run. I think for me 15 miles is the magical number where the joint pain really starts to settle in. Anything under that I'm good to go.

I can't believe how warped my sense of running has become since running the marathon. I never run less than 5 miles, never fewer than 3 times a week. And before last week, I felt like I had been shorting myself because I hadn't cleared 20 miles in a couple weeks. They say you shouldn't increase mileage more than 10% from one week to the next, but I had to make sure last week that I got a good solid stretch of running before having to run the half in two weekends, so I jumped up from 19 the week before to 27 last week. I've had a lingering calf problem, but somehow running more last week has made that pain subside. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that increasing my mileage made me much more aware of making sure that I was properly fueled. I don't know why it still surprises me how much just eating right makes my body work better.

I need to pick out a marathon to run. The ET Highway Marathon still sounds fun, but I don't think I like the timing of it. I'm thinking something maybe in September. Not sure. If any of the five of you out there are seriously going to commit to one, then I will almost definitely join you...

The last couple of weeks I've started subscribing to podcasts for This American Life and Stuff You Should Know. Love the former, not entirely impressed with the latter. It kind of makes me want to start coming up with my own stuff to podcast. My friends are creative and funny enough that I think we could put together an entertaining one. This, of course, is inspired by Kent who mentioned having done a few with his friend Dave.

Anyway, if you haven't ever listened to This American Life, do it. They have the most interesting stories that you can imagine. I guess I bring this part up because I'm looking for any suggestions on any podcasts that are worth listening to, especially any finance ones. So I guess I'm really asking Jared if he still frequents my blog...do you have any that you can recommend? If I don't hear from you then I'll shoot you an email to ask. But if anybody else has any that they can suggest, I'm open to it.

What a lame post...

From Carpe Diem

The more I read Mark Perry's blog Carpe Diem, the more I love him. He is a professor at the University of Michigan. I love his politics. Anyway...he had several posts yesterday that I wanted to point you towards that I thought were especially insightful. He posts like ten times a day, although a lot of his stuff is just referring you to other article and posts at other blogs. Kinda like me. See why I like this guy? Anyway, here they are:

• This post talks about the outcome differences between public v. private schools. The most revealing line in the post: EVERY study that compares academic achievement per dollar spent per pupil between market school systems and public school systems finds a significant market advantage.
• Then this post talks about the best and worst states to do business in. Of course California and New York are 49th and 50th, respectively. I was blown away by a related post I saw recently about the states with the lowest unemployment rates. What did the nine states with lowest unemployment have in common? Right to work laws, laws prohibiting unions from bullying people. Unions are evil. They started out well intentioned, but they have become their own problem with much more bad than good. I couldn't believe the unemployment rate here in Utah when I saw saw it a month or two ago. I think it was less than 5%.
  
• He quotes this article at length that actually comes via an econ professor at George Mason University. This one is my favorite of the three because I think it's so spot on. I'm also going to put a lengthy portion in here:
  

  The single greatest fact about capitalist society is that the great bulk of it appears to be the handiwork of a master designer but, in fact, is unplanned and even unimaginable before it becomes real and familiar.
  
  Remember this lesson whenever you hear alleged "experts" insisting that only conscious effort by government to "stimulate" demand can save the economy from its current downturn.
  
  It's true that no one can know beforehand the precise path by which a free market travels to escape the downturn. No one can foresee that, say, entrepreneurs in Texas and Ohio will be especially creative at finding ways to produce things that consumers will open their wallets wider to buy -- and, hence, that these entrepreneurs will succeed at launching profitable firms that hire more workers.
  
  No one can foresee exactly when, say, the increased efficiencies that the downturn obliges many established firms to pursue will make those firms again attractive to investors who then pump more money into them, enabling these firms to expand operations.
  
  No one can foresee or predict any of the details about how recovery will happen.
  
  But economics and history tell us that our inability to foresee and predict -- or even to imagine -- how recovery will come in the absence of conscious government stimulus is no reason to conclude that recovery requires conscious government stimulus.
  
  Yet, despite all of our experience with the marvels of free markets, the case for the massive government stimulus plans rests chiefly on people's fear that this time the market will fail.
  
  Why suppose that this situation differs from the countless other coordination challenges successfully met by market forces? I can think of no good reason other than the fear that oozes from biased imaginations. Despite experience that should teach us differently, we can imagine market failure much more easily than we can imagine just how markets will succeed.

Did you all know that I almost went to George Mason for grad school? It was in my top 3. I got accepted, they made a great offer with funding, but I decided against it. What's the best part about it? It's in Virginia right over by DC, total east coast school, but VERY conservative. How awesome is that? Hyper-conservative education embedded within an ultra-liberal environment. The law program, and the economics program that Perry refers to regularly. I actually kind of want to go there and enroll in their econ program. Why do I want to do more school when I'm already in school, and struggle with motivation sometimes? I'm a dummy.

I can't believe I chose Claremont over any of the other schools I got accepted to. I could have gone to Virginia Tech, George Mason, or become a Fighting Illini. Ugh...my blood is starting to boil...

Quick Hits

A couple of quick items:

• So President Obama appears on the Tonight Show this evening with Jay Leno. I had a brief exchange yesterday with a friend wondering aloud if any other president has ever enjoyed such celebrity status. She mentioned JFK, but even then, he still seemed like a politician first, right? I guess I don't have any of my own primary knowledge to base this off of, but Obama feels like he enjoys an incredible amount of rock star status in today's America. Did people swoon over JFK the way they do with Barack? Did they look at JFK as a savior like so many people are today with Obama? I'm not sure...
• The House passed a 90% tax on the bonuses that AIG executives will be receiving. I read somewhere that many of those executives signed up for the bonuses with the understanding that the bonuses would supplant the salary that they would normally be receiving, so some of them agreed to a $1 annual salary as a condition for receiving the bonus instead. But that deviates from my question...what does the demonization of the business sector do to future entrepreneurs and businessmen? They are the ones who drive our economy, that inspire wealth creation. If people see the way they're being treated, do they flee the industry? Maybe we lose business to other countries, but do we lose their acumen to becoming school teachers, artists, and the like? Is that an overreaction to the most recent developments? And not that it's a bad thing for these very capable people to go into the arts, education, etc., but it's also not a bad thing in the least for them to pursue business. Where would we be without Henry Ford? Bill Gates? Steve Jobs? America needs commercial enterprise. Like it says in that David Brooks article I posted yesterday, the entrepreneurial spirit is what drives the American dream. At what point do all of these people who make the world's motor run decide that they have had enough? And what happens to the rest of us who depend on them?
• Related to the last point...wanna know what search term commonly leads readers to my blog? especially in the last couple months...John Galt's Oath -
  

  I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

• Will the Lakers please take the rest of this regular season seriously and secure home advantage throughout?
• This is Jay Nordlinger's column from today and I loved this part he mentions about former President Bush, and the additional insight Jay provides:
  

  Former president George W. Bush — I hate writing those words as much as his foes love them — gave a speech in Calgary, Alberta. He said, “I love my country a lot more than I love politics.” And “I think it is essential that he be helped in office.” The “he” is President Obama.
  
  Well, that was the posture of Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and all those folks during GWB’s own years, right? (For a brief discussion of Dick Cheney’s recent interview on CNN, consult yesterday’s Impromptus.)
  
  *Let me toss you an Associated Press report: “The Obama administration said Friday that it is abandoning one of President George W. Bush’s key phrases in the war on terrorism: enemy combatant. But that won’t change much for the detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba — Obama still asserts the military’s authority to hold them.”
  
  One of the curses of the age, I think, is euphemism. This is part of the Oprahfication of America (to use a shorthand). Some euphemisms are relatively harmless. I mean, if you want to call the physically handicapped “differently abled,” fine, fine. But some things are important to describe straight-out — such as enemy combatants. Language can either clarify or murk up. And I believe that the Obama people — and modern liberals at large — are great murkers-up.
  
  They say that Obama is a great communicator, and that George W. Bush was a poor one. I rather like the way Bush communicated, frankly. He communicated to me just fine — but I, of course, am not the average voter (or journalist). One helpful thing about Bush’s communication: You knew where he stood, what he meant. There was very little “hope/change” BS.
  
  And he did not try to fudge the fact that America and freedom, like it or not, have enemies.

  Is Jay not always spot on with his observations? If he were taking on pupils, I would be the first in line. I admire him so much. And President Bush, as well. I read the MSN article about that speech, and it's uncommon the graciousness that he exudes in spite of all the flak that he gets from the media at large. Not sure that it's the right thing to do, but Bush stated that Obama deserves his silence. What an amazing gesture and show of support and solidarity with our nation's leader, is it not? keep in mind two other former presidents who cannot get enough of their own spotlight at whatever expense necessary, i.e. Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter. What about the other living former president, GHW Bush? Remarkably reticent. I don't care what any of you say about the Bush family, for all of their flaws, they are a classy family who have contributed so much to this country. Hopefully Jeb Bush will pursue the Florida Senate seat in the next election. We should only be so lucky...
• Do yourself a favor and hit that link for Jay's Impromptu's article. There it is again. I'm almost inclined to post every snippet that he posits on here, but I'll let you seek it out yourself. Today's is especially good. One last item from me that mentions:

  A friend of mine e-mailed to me a letter-to-the-editor he wrote:

  In the episode “Woody Gets an Election,” from the eleventh season of Cheers, simpleton Woody Boyd receives some advice from Frasier Crane. Frasier suggests that even an awful candidate can receive a meaningful percentage of an election’s votes simply by mouthing empty platitudes, such as “change.” “Say the word ‘change’ a lot,” says Frasier. Embracing this advice, Woody goes on to win the election.

  A tried-and-true technique!

Graffiti Animation By Blu

I came across this video while avoiding homework. Even if you think the actual product is kind of strange, you have to appreciate the creativity that goes into creating something like this. So unusual...


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Reasons To Be Optimistic

It's interesting getting exposure to different writers, political ones, and seeing the perception of the lay audience as opposed to the differing sides. Everything always skews naming anyone a moderate-conservative being extreme right wing. Anyone who actually is very right of center is fascist, and so on.

Anyway, contrary to what you may hear, David Brooks is moderate-conservative. I generally really like where he comes down on issues, and his perspective is different from the Townhall-National Review contingent that I normally follow, so he gives a lot of depth I think to my reading because sometimes I think what I follow may skew too far right.

I don't know why I bothered to bring that all up because I only really wanted to post his most recent article about The Commercial Republic. He talks about the entrepreneurial, can-do spirit of the American people, and how it gets somewhat suppressed during tough economic times, but always seems to prevail in the end. He says in the article:

The U.S. is in one of those pauses today. It has been odd, over the past six months, not to have the gospel of success as part of the normal background music of life. You go about your day, taking in the news and the new movies, books and songs, and only gradually do you become aware that there is an absence. There are no aspirational stories of rags-to-riches success floating around. There are no new how-to-get-rich enthusiasms. There are few magazine covers breathlessly telling readers that some new possibility — biotechnology, nanotechnology — is about to change everything. That part of American culture that stokes ambition and encourages risk has gone silent.

We are now in an astonishingly noncommercial moment. Risk is out of favor. The financial world is abashed. Enterprise is suspended. The public culture is dominated by one downbeat story after another as members of the educated class explore and enjoy the humiliation of the capitalist vulgarians.

Washington is temporarily at the center of the nation’s economic gravity and a noncommercial administration holds sway. This is an administration that has many lawyers and academics but almost no businesspeople in it, let alone self-made entrepreneurs. The president speaks passionately about education and health care reform, but he is strangely aloof from the banking crisis and displays no passion when speaking about commercial drive and success.

But if there is one thing we can be sure of, this pause will not last. The cultural DNA of the past 400 years will not be erased. The pendulum will swing hard. The gospel of success will recapture the imagination.

He writes with a characteristic optimism that I really appreciate.

Today in Forbes, they posted online 20 Reasons for Optimism regarding the economic health of the country. Although I'm pleased about the rebound that's occurring, what is really annoying is that the credit for this will undoubtedly go to the Obama administration, but in reality, none of the measures that they have implemented will have anything to do with the upswing. There just hasn't been any time for any of his measures to take any effect in the time since he took office, and his stimulus package, enormous budget, health-care initiatives, are likely to hinder most of the surge that really should be taking place.

What's the lesson people? Let the market forces correct itself. What should have happened to AIG? They should have let it fail. Now there's no clear plan, and an enormous uproar over the execs getting bonuses, and still no real accountability from anyone about it all. We'll probably just end up pouring more money into the system because we're already so heavily invested in them emerging successfully.

Who here took economics? Sunk cost. Let it go. Let Detroit go too. Unions are awful. I got a future post on unions...

One final thing...if you actually read the Brooks' article, he mentions a Whitman essay called Democratic Vistas. Apparently my concept of "essay" is entirely different from the 19th century version because his is 60 pages long...yikes.

Be blessed y'all.

It's a Strung Out Day

Not so much in the actual sense of the phrase, but in the mood of the music of the band. I have this one friend and she would say things like, it's a 311 day, Def Leppard, day, etc. I never really thought about days in those terms before until the last couple when I started listening to music more appropriate for my mood. Here are some other days off the top of my head:

• James Taylor- nostalgic, sentimental, folksy
• Ben Harper/Jack Johnson - chill...so chill
• 'N Sync/Backstreet Boys/Kelly Clarkson - sappy, sassy
• Blink 182/Newfound Glory/MxPx/The Ataris - playful, bummed that the girl you like is going to the jock party instead of the skater party you were going to after the football game
• Bon Jovi/Poison/Guns N Roses - feeling youthful (if you're over the age of 25), ready for a party/night-out/karaoke
• Sublime - for porch monkeys, having a barbeque, sippin' on brews

So what does a Strung Out day feel like? Filled with a nervous kind of energy, ready to burst at the seams. Maybe you're upset about something that went wrong, pissed about work, or you're frustrated about your personal life. Perhaps you just finished up your finals and you need something with guitars loud enough to match the release you feel from being done. Maybe even feeling a little militant. It's not necessarily a negative kind of energy; it can go in either direction, negative or positive, so long as the underlying feeling is just looking for some kind of loud, sometimes physical expression. That's what a Strung Out day is for me.

What's really awesome is how not only the tone of music can perfectly capture what you're feeling, but the lyrics of the song also feel like they were written just for what you're currently experiencing. That's what so cool about music. It's poetry, although not quite as precise as the literary form (although sometimes it's one in the same), it also has an accompanying tonal quality that expresses emotion through vibrations reverberating through the air: sound.

The song I never get sick of and that I'm always in the mood for is in the 'video' posted below, Matchbook. These days this song is the perfect marriage of both my feelings and music. Most of the time I just really dig on the song. Strung Out has closed every show that I've ever been to with this same song. And I've been to at least a dozen of their shows. The music is slightly juvenile, but then again, so am I so I guess it's fitting.

Here are the lyrics:

I can see it in your eyes
I can hear it in your voice
the signs are obvious
that all we had has run its course
and I don't mind giving up the upper hand
in this little charade
cuz I've spent too many nights here on the floor
waiting for something inside you to change
don't look back in anger now is all that you can say
cuz angers all I got to keep me warm when you're away
and I know that this is nothing new
but tonight is all I know
disconnect myself from your memory
and never feel anything at all
and all your words and all your actions
don't mean anything to me
cuz I've cut you off
so here we stand and face each other
we've got nothing to say
a flashback to another time
when silence was a welcomed friend
now I'm sorry I can never really say
all the things goin on inside my head
silence is a justified expression of my war
now nothings like it was before

chorus

Don't look back in anger its just a memory
its easy to forget your face
and it's easy to survive in this place
without you without you
I just comb my hair and wash my face
keep straight ahead and keep my pace
just think about nothing, and it will be alright
well I got my friends I got my pen
I got a million distractions to keep me warm
and I all I know is that it will be alright.

My favorite part of the song is right around the 2:42 mark, when the drums usher in this rhythmic guitar cadence and in the live show, the whole audience starts bouncing up and down in tune to the beat. Love it. Live for it.

It's a Strung Out day. What kind of days do you have?

Big Love? Big Deal

That title comes courtesy of Orson Scott Card's article that I have linked below. I'm sure by now all you who are members have heard about the Big Love controversy with the show depicting some scenes from the endowment ceremony that goes on in the temple. I wasn't really going to say much about it because I've gotten a dozen different "can you believe this???" reactions from Facebook groups and various emails and didn't have much to add to the outrage, blah blah blah.

Let's just all settle down. Is it offensive? Yes. Is it unexpected? No. Should we be used to it by now? Probably. I mean, really, is this any worse than all of the fallout following the passage of Proposition 8? Not by a long shot.

I love the church response to the airing of the show because they list a bunch of potentially unflattering recent portrayals of the church, and how nothing came about with any of those other depictions. And then they go on to make their point with Big Love:

Now comes another series of Big Love, and despite earlier assurances from HBO it once again blurs the distinctions between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the show’s fictional non-Mormon characters and their practices. Such things say much more about the insensitivities of writers, producers and TV executives than they say about Latter-day Saints.

If the Church allowed critics and opponents to choose the ground on which its battles are fought, it would risk being distracted from the focus and mission it has pursued successfully for nearly 180 years. Instead, the Church itself will determine its own course as it continues to preach the restored gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world.

And Orson Scott Card (my favorite author for those of you who didn't know) wrote a piece for NRO about it that you can find here. In the article he states:

Most Mormons are seeing the Big Love temple episode in the context of the recent outpouring of hatred and bile from those who most vehemently opposed Proposition 8. Mormons have been targeted for business boycotts; some have lost their jobs because they contributed to the campaign to defend marriage.

The result is that few of us have any desire to act as the worst of our opponents have acted. After someone has boycotted a friend’s business, it makes it a bit harder for you to want to call for a boycott.

By and large, while we’d prefer that everybody handle differences of opinion peacefully, we’d rather be persecuted than be the persecutors. The few times in our history when we have departed from that principle, the results have shamed us for generations. Tolerance works better.

I love that line - better to be persecuted than be the persecutors.

My favorite article on the topic, however, comes from the Big Hollywood blog wherein Pam Meister talks about the Hollywood double standard that comes to religious persecution. Go here for the article. She points out:

HBO, of course, apologized for offending Mormons but defended its use of the ceremony because its depiction is “critical” to the show’s story line. Ah, the quintessential non-apology apology, used frequently by politicians: We’re sorry if we offended anyone, but we’re not going to do anything that will actually rectify the situation. Be sure to tune in, though, and boost our ratings!

What I’m more interested in learning, though, is if there are any shows or movies in the works about the “sacred” rite of female genital mutilation - more kindly known as female circumcision - or “honor killings” in Islam. I’d even settle for a program that just depicts a polygamous Muslim family living somewhere in rural America.

I’ll wait. I have plenty of time.

And then she goes on to list several examples of how Hollywood repeatedly pulls its punches when it comes to Muslims. She also mentions how Scientology is a proctected class when it comes to "entertainment".

I'll bet that nothing really comes about with this episode, and that within a year the show ends up getting canceled. I'm guessing that, or everyone affiliated with the production of the show contracts some rare, but aggressive form of cancer that causes a slow but painful death that ends up being completely genetic and kills all of their future posterity. One of those two sounds reasonable.

Anyway, how prophetic does our good ol' boy Joe Smith sound when he declared:

The standard of truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.

My Favorite Scrubs Episodes

Of course I'm supposed to be working on my thesis right now, so naturally I'm resorting to the blog as my outlet. You know, the usual. Anyway...I love this show more than any other in my entire life. I have my Tivo record episodes and even though I'm sure I've seen all of them several times, I still will watch an episode when I'm about to eat a meal, do some workout routine in my living room, or when I just want to kill 20 minutes.

It only makes sense, then, that I have a number of favorite moments and episodes. These are the first three that come to my mind, and I didn't really mean for these to be such sober ones either, but I guess there is something really memorable about the melancholy.

This one comes from a point when JD just said no to a woman (TCW, for those of you who are big enough fans to know that that refers to) who is just starting to get over the passing of her husband.



In this episode, Jordan's brother has just returned to visit his best friend, Dr. Cox, when they find out that his cancer is no longer in remission. He passes away during the episode. The first time I saw this one I cried.



And this last episode is when Elliot gets engaged to Keith. This one is my favorite episode above all others because it is really funny throughout, but then just so sad at the end. The episode is titled My Cold Shower and all of the guys daydream about what it would be like to be married to Elliot. All the guys experience some sort of sexual frustration and then it would flash to them in a cold shower. They're all funny up until the last one that features JD.

Anyway, this first clip is Turk imagining married life with Elliot...



And here is when Elliot finally gets engaged.



You know what really makes each of these clips so poignant is the music that they choose to accompany them. I know that at some points it's not the most appropriate show, but Scrubs has seen me through some tough times in my life. I don't think I've ever watched another show where I've laughed while also feeling so much real emotion as I do when I watch this show. I don't think I'll ever feel so attached to another program.

Here's to you, Scrubs.

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

You all can stop with the emails. Just kidding, nobody has been emailing, but I'm sure you've all been very concerned. Rollin' in my 6-4 is back from its hiatus. Don't worry. Everything is fine. Anyway...lots of stuff to talk about - politics, church, sports, otherwise.

Have some Scrubs for now.

Emotional Depth

I've been meaning to post this video for awhile now. I love it.


I think my favorite part is when Turk's eyes focus off in the distance, "We'll get there...we'll get there."

Interesting Times

Have you seen the movie Miracle? The movie about the 1980 US hockey team that beat the USSR team? Of course being a sports fan, I LOVE that story. Something that the movie does pretty well is set the backdrop of why it was such a big deal for the US to win that game during that time.

The early 1980s were a very difficult time for the US. There was stagflation, unemployment was very high, several percentage points higher then than it is now. The bigger problem might have been how weak the dollar was, which ignited inflation that Paul Volcker had to aggressively curb as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Energy was super expensive. On top of all that, we had just come off some serious foreign policy blunders by the Carter administration. It was a bad time for the United States.

While watching the movie, I wondered to myself what that must have been like to live in an era like that, when pessism is rampant and seemingly for good reason. And I think now that I'm actually living in that time.

The interesting part to me is that I really wonder if these times are really that bad. Unemployment is high, but not as bad as at other points in recent American history, despite what you might hear from all the media outlets. Personally, I haven't been that affected by the downturn, but that's because I'm a student and not a contributing member of society. I know my parents have been feeling it. I don't know though. I kind of think pessimism is a very contagious disease.

There is a dumb story that psychologists tell to illustrate projection and it goes something like this: at work the boss finds out that his company's return is not as big as he expected so while in his fit of anger he yells at his secretary about not having his files organized or something to that effect; upset about how her boss treated her at work, the secretary goes home to her husband later that day and unloads on him for not fixing something like he had said he would; the husband, in turn, still fuming from having his wife nag him about something that he really hasn't had time for yells at his son for not making his bed that morning; unable to voice his frustration and take his anger out on anyone else, the boy kicks the dog on his way back to his room.

The passing along of anger is similar to the ways in which pessimism spreads. Not knowing how else to handle the feelings that we're experiencing, we let it out in myriad other ways - bad attitudes, sour outlooks, etc. - and this hinders our capacity for our best efforts. How often does your best work come when you're feeling upset/angry/frustrated/depressed/pessimistic?

I loved that article I had posted earlier this week by Ben Stein because his perspective in that article belies the attitudes of everyone else that is in the media. In that article, he pointed out a number of other people who had to rise up in spite of how difficult the contemporary circumstances were, his own father being the primary example. If we're serious about being successful, then it requires us to stay hopeful even among the most dire of times, perceived or real. No matter how bad things might sound to you on the whole, most people are still getting by. While unemployment during the Great Depression was at something like 25%, that still means that 75% of everyone were still working. It may not have been under the best circumstances, they may have had meager incomes, but most people were still getting making it.

And the thing about all of this too is that out of the most trying times, we can often find our greatest opportunities. Trials force us to adjust quickly. We need to be very reflexive and adaptive in our response to setbacks, and this method of behavior becomes exaggerated and entirely necessary when difficulties are at their worst. If not, then we simply can't survive, but even then, somehow we almost always do. I guess what it comes down to is at what level you want to emerge after the storm makes its landfall.

The thing about that projection story is not just that they all dealt with their anger in poor ways, but that the cycle could have been stopped by any one of them. It only takes one person to say "no" and for an entirely new cycle to emerge. It's like that quote I have at the top of this blog...if you don't like how things are progressing, then all that's required is for you to stand up against it. Easier said than done, of course, but every one of us is still a free agent in deciding which direction we decide to go, no matter how difficult the circumstances.

The Economy, Taxes, and Wealth Redistribution

I'm kind of loving Mark Perry's blog Carpe Diem. A couple of things he posted this week that I thought were quite interesting. This one about the effects of the corporate taxes:

Most people think that corporate income taxes are paid by wealthy, anonymous companies," said Scott Hodge, President of the Tax Foundation. "But as economists have been teaching for years, people bear the burden of corporate taxes, not companies."

Research from the Congressional Budget Office shows that in a global economy where capital is highly mobile but workers can't easily move abroad, workers end up bearing the brunt of corporate taxes. In 2007, Economist William Randolph found that 70% of corporate tax burdens fall on employees through lower wages and productivity, while the remaining 30% fall on company shareholders. A recent Tax Foundation study shows the federal corporate income tax alone collected $370 billion in 2007. That's an average household burden of $3,190 per year - more than the average household spends on restaurant food, gasoline or home electricity in a year.

And then Ben Stein wrote this article earlier this week. I kind of love Ben Stein. He's funny, but the guy is a realist and a conservative and I love that about him. In the article he says:

You have been -- you are now -- bombarded every day with TV shows, radio news, and newspapers telling you of this government support plan and that government support plan and how they are going to rescue you. To which I can only say, when you hear the word ‘government,' in your mind, substitute the words ‘Department of Motor Vehicles.' When was the last time they rescued you? When was the last time they bailed you out of anything at all?

To expect that ‘government' is a fairy godmother who will rescue you from your problems over any long period is just fantasy. Here's the good news: This country will be rescued by each of us doing what we can do in our own individual sphere of action as government works in its sphere of action. There are roughly 142 million men and women in the labor force. Their ingenuity, flexibility, energy, and confidence will make more difference than anything government does on an individual basis -- which is not to take away a thing from the effects of good policy. In the free society, we rescue ourselves.

If you spend the day reading about how bad things are, you will never get out of bed. If you put down the paper and get to work, and then work twice as hard and twice as smart as you used to, and maybe take less pay right up front, you will get ahead. In every economic era, there is always a shortage of talented, creative, well-educated workers. Be one of those workers.

Imagination, hard work, and persistence can conquer any phase of the business cycle. Let other people get depressed by the headlines. Let other people wait around for Mr. Obama to rescue them. You go out and go to work, using every resource of energy and imagination you have. The DMV is not going to bail you out. By and large, and with a few exceptions, you have to bail yourself out. Get to work.

The emphases are my own. I wish Obama were taking more of this kind of approach rather than talking about how "dire" everything is, or that we're in crisis mode, or however else he likes describing the current condition of our country. Seriously...wasn't he elected on a platform of "hope"? Why do I feel like the sky is falling every time he opens his mouth?

And then this was posted in The Corner at NRO. What is the key number to remember? 9625. That was where the DOW was at the night he was elected. The post talks about the idea of wealth redistribution, but not from the perspective of massive tax increases on the rich and giving to the poor, but leveling the playing field altogether by destroying wealth. Here are a couple of key paragraphs:

It's easy to find reasons for the continuation of the equity market sell-off since the inauguration — the Fed shrank its balance sheet and stopped offsetting the credit freeze, devastatingly bad fiscal policies, the accounting system's assertion of nationwide insolvencies (though almost all loans are being paid and banks, households, and insurance companies have huge cash balances), and the four-month technical selling cycle into mid-March graphed in our earlier pieces.

A dark side of the sell-off is the buzz (surely false) that the Administration sees lower equity prices as part of its wealth-redistribution goal. Equity ownership is very progressive (ownership goes up with incomes), so the equity sell-off is rapidly narrowing the wealth gap between rich and poor (and the geographic wealth gap between New York and Washington.)

Just thought those were interesting.