Tuk Tuk

I came across an internet news item the other day. It might affect urban transportation trends. Might, I said.

Well, Tuk-Tuks are small motorcycle vehicles from Asian countries. They are tricycles usually used as cabs and are everywhere – by the thousands! A two seat passenger cab at the rear with a fabric cover to protect riders from rain. The driver sits on a single seat up front at the controls.

Today, Tuk-Tuks have grown to seat four or five. Many of them have changed to electric propulsion to dampen street noise but also to greatly reduce air pollution. With more passenger protection from the elements, the vehicles are migrating to other markets where personal transportation in populated areas are well served by these small vehicles.

I wondered how they might fare in Illinois during the winter. Then my thinking leaped to how fast these things can go and if they could keep up with a 45 mile per hour speed limit on tertiary roadways in suburban locales.

I still don’t know the answers to those questions, but my thinking stopped cold when I learned that pricing of the Tuk-Tuks begins at $17,000 and runs as high as $25,000! I was hoping for a price under $10,000 and was calculating how large the suburban market might be for this form of transportation getting to and from the train station, local shops and visiting friends. Short errands nearby would be perfect for these putt putts. Just not at $20,000. No way. Small cars are available for less than that with highway capabilities, intercity routes, and fully enclosed passenger protection from heat, cold, snow and rain.

Tuk-Tuks are being licensed for manufacture in Western Europe, England and Canada. I doubt they will be introduced to American markets anytime soon mainly due to the price. If large scale manufacturing would take a crack at this form of transportation, it might be likely that price points would fall. Now if they can get the open air passenger compartments enclosed and heated and cooled, we might be in business!

Otherwise the Tuk-Tuks would be tut-tut!

May 25, 2015

Thought for the Day

  

An act of faith is planting flowers before Memorial Day. It could still freeze, don’t you know? Well, I’m planting anyway. Hope you are, too!

Happy plant shopping this weekend!

May 23, 2015

Memorial Day Weekend

Get the white shoes ready! We can wear them this weekend and all throughout summer until Labor Day. At least that’s what my memory dictates. Is it still true? White shoes only from Memorial to Labor Days? Of course white tennis shoes are legitimate year round, but hard leather shoes abide by a different standard.

I doubt the same fashion sense applies to shorts. Those are worn whenever the temperature allows it. Else we would freeze in cool weather and swelter in hot and humid days regardless of the calendar.

At any rate Memorial Day is here once again. This is the weekend – three glorious days – during which we remember all those men and women who lost their lives while defending our nation. Mostly these good people were lost during times of war but in peace time good souls are also lost while in the service of our military. Sometimes they are lost during training exercises, gaining the experience and skill sets they will need during a national crisis or war. But something goes terribly wrong. A training ship founders and sinks, a plane or helicopter malfunctions and lives are lost in the following crash.

So too are lives lost on faux battle skirmishes; a trainee loses his step and falls from an elevated sniper position, or off the side of a ship, or bridge. Maybe training ammo is a bit too powerful and body strikes result in fatal injuries.

Or common auto accidents while on a training mission out of country. The accidents that kill civilians also take lives of military personnel. Living has its risks, too, only much lesser so than military staff.

Lost lives. Disrupted family lives. Anguish of irreplaceable love and attention. Gaps that last and are never filled.

Oh, survivors pick up the pieces and move forward but always changed because of their losses.

All of this does not address the surviving military personnel badly injured, maimed and disabled. They remain with us in altered states attempting a return to a new normal. And the families? They too have their struggle to adapt and move on with the new normal.

Memorial Day recalls the sacrifice made by others for all of us. We owe them a great deal. We owe them our remembrance and appreciation. We continue to benefit from what they gave up for us. We are strangers to them but they paid a dear price for our well being.

Remember this during the weekend. Think of gratitude. Think of your thanks.

Now we can consider summer and its special joys. But only after we remember the others.

May 22, 2015

Bits and Pieces, Again!

What is Alibaba? Or who?

Well it is both. Alibaba is a Chinese company that performs retail/commercial activity similar to Amazon in America. It offers products and services over the internet and sells such for later delivery to the consumer.

Alibaba is also a person or persons. They are the owners and management of the organization. They are controversial because their vision sparked major business activity that excited both the investment and consumer markets. Two problems resulted.

First was overheated stock prices that grew exponentially and then collapsed. Complaints were leveled against the organization and its management team as blame was sought for swings in Alibaba’s stock price.

Second, so many goods in China are thought to be counterfeit. Knockoffs of luxury brands or chic goods become common. High prices were paid for cheap goods. Fraud charges followed.

So Alibaba is rooted in many controversies. Which are accurate reflections of fact and which are not remain as primary topics of discussion in the global community. Time will sort this all out. Meanwhile, buyer beware! All was not smooth with Amazon in their early years, either.

Red Tape Run Amok?

This is the continuing theories of conspiracy in every facet of our lives. Someone is stalking someone else to gain power, notoriety, money or some other thing. One firm attempts to undercut another so they gain market share and stock value. Government ‘partners’ work with a favored supplier to eliminate a competitor. Government regulations are manipulated to provide leverage to accomplish this skullduggery.

Ah! Red tape the problem? Or the fear of conspiracy the primary element? When so many people observe government by pocketbook they lose faith that the main objective of regulation is to protect the common good of the public. Complaints about red tape being an obstacle are often heard. When examined, however, there is another story.

Product safety standards and regulations are in place to protect the public, not the manufacturer or seller. Financial market regulations are there to protect the users of those markets so they get what they expected to get from the representations offered. In such environments crooks and scam artists have a harder time stealing from the unsuspecting. Still such crimes are committed; this circumstance is reason enough for the regulations and more so. Not less.

Setting public policy is difficult. So many players imagine being harmed by policy and regulation. If they would take the time to learn why the policy or regulation is in place, they might better compete fairly in the long run. If they are the honest players they have nothing to fear.

Presidential Candidates

At least in republican circles it appears that all members of the party are running for president in 2016! Every stripe of conservative is represented. Each sort of kook is also running for the ballot. Just think! Every issue you can possibly think of is represented. And for each, the negative perspective is the dominant theme. Anti gay, anti abortion, anti equal marriage, anti religion, anti business, anti regulation, anti, anti, anti.

The Party of NO! is at its game.

Word has it that republicans are so unpopular that they are not attracting new blood to the party sufficient to replace all the party elders who are dying. Well then! Perhaps this is a self limiting problem?

I’d like to think American voters are People of YES! What are the possibilities our nation can pursue for the good of mankind? How well will we all participate in the global community? So much possibility beckons our attention and energy.

It is stunning that republicans have gained a modicum of power simply by saying NO! I wonder what America and the world community would gain if more of us simply responded by saying YES!?

Biker Gangs and Murder

I should add Texas, too! Biker gangs exist throughout America but can you think of any state more prone to this weird development? And with guns, no less. Let’s have a meeting at Twin Peaks restaurant/club and discuss our differences in the restrooms with guns and knives. We’ll just make our point emphatically.

And nine people died. 18 were wounded, many critically. 147 were arrested. Lordy! Only in Texas? I don’t know, but I can’t imagine this taking place in Illinois, New York or Florida. Even California with all that desert acreage. Police powers are well organized there and I doubt the Waco event would repeat in the other jurisdictions. Well, maybe Arkansas and Louisiana, and maybe Alabama and Mississippi, too?

And serious motorcyclists wonder why the public wonders if all bikers aren't the same? And gun controls. Why are bikers operating their cycles fully armed? What’s with that reality?

Enough for one day! These four topics will do nicely.

May 21, 2015

Possibility

There are days and then there are days. Although each has possibility, not all are fruitful. Possibility? What is that, you ask? Well, let me see if I can answer that question.

Some years back when I was living in a very old house (the pride and passion of it!) I’d arise on a Saturday morning and review the list of ‘to do’ items. Lots of things listed: ‘repair front steps & repaint them; scrape back steps, prime and repaint them; review basement stairs to improve flow; is there any chance to do that? [absolutely none!]; determine when to repaint exterior and on what timetable; do one exposure at a time? beginning with which one?; time to replace furnace filters and set for summer suspension; install window air conditioners for summer; and so forth’. The list was long always. The house was 100 years old (now 120) and always in need of attention.

There was more to do than there was money or time needed to do them all. And so I whittled the tasks down to the really big ones and waited for a surge of income making it possible to hire a contractor to do the big tasks.

But there were days when what I decided to do never got done. A good book beckoned. A good movie was replaying on TV. Or the kids wanted to go for a ride and that’s all the excuse I needed to abandon the dreaded list of ‘to dos’! The possibility of tackling a task and removing it from my list was doomed. It remained in place for yet more months.

Possibility. Something to do that would make things better. Ignoring the same only left the possibility idling on the list.

Possibility, of course, pertains to other lists as well. What to do about potable water supplies so scarce in other nations, especially Africa? What about access to affordable health care throughout the world? And access to plentiful education as well. What are the class struggles in other nations and America, too? Are these truly class issues? Or are they made up crises designed to distract us from other pressing issues in need of attention?

Possibility. Potential. Promise.

The three ‘P’s’. They illustrate what could be if we only try. Failing that, they remain but the illustration is absent. No progress. Prosperity is restrained if it exists at all. What could be does not come into being. An opportunity is wasted, ignored.

And we all lose.

Unemployment struggles to abate, personal budgets weary on to cover the basic needs without all hopes fulfilled. The house continues to wear and decay. The car gathers more miles and loses its luster as its used status expands to near antique. Hopes of better days ahead disappear. A generation loses hope. Kids dream dreams that you and I could never imagine.

We Americans think most everything is possible. It is the way we were raised. Well, I suppose there are the families who were born into poverty that don’t dream the same way that the majority of us do. But in the main we grew up in a world where much was possible. In my day, scientific discovery was huge. The space race captured our imagination and dreams went higher than the sky.

Of course the space program uncovered many scientific goodies. We used the new found knowledge to produce new products like computers, cell phones, medical devices small enough to be implanted in the body to monitor and regulate many functions. Life was extended with medical advancements. Dreams were expanded with crazy new ideas to enlarge our ideas for products and services allowed by the ‘new’ sciences. We could now look at problems we could solve by simply applying new knowledge.

Social problems were another thing, but wait! Social problems were often resting at the feet of poverty. Provide more jobs, more manufacturing and the unemployed or lesser employed could raise their standard of income. Expand access to education and the poor could raise themselves out of poverty. Helping hands would lift entire classes out of low income bondage.

It didn’t work out that well. When all was said and done social problems continued. They grew to enormous proportions. Like a cancer large swaths of our population were not lifted up by new discovery and enhanced living standards.

Fixing these problems raised the specter of new, costly social programs paid for by government – our taxes. That prospect caused some people to resist the solutions to the problems. They argued that the fix would take money from them to pay benefits to others. And so the ideological divide was born and gave many a lot to talk about.

From that beginning we attracted users and takers and the political boon of ideological divide and conquer became an entire industry. Built on mankind’s baser instincts this industry was destined to become larger than life itself.

Now in 2015 we see the results of that industry. No politician – citizen servant – can get elected to public office without support from narrow interest groups with large check books. Good thinkers and willing servants are discouraged and left behind. They won’t play the game of the check writers. They disappear from the political scene and leave it to the moneyed residue.

Gridlock is the result because the ‘winners’ among us refuse to lose. The ‘losers’ among us refuse to give the ‘winners’ credit. So stasis results. Equal powers check equal powers. Nothing is gained. Nothing is done.

And possibility is the loser for us all.

We think we live in a democracy. We do not. We live in a republic fueled by money not ideas. Such a system avoids education and science. Facts are made up and bandied about as though they actually mean something. Our public discussions – yes, even our elections – are meaningless exercise of futility. Power and countervailing power checkmate each other. And those parties are happy. The ‘other’ is not allowed to rule. They have protected their ideological argument for another day, another time they just might win.

Possibility. It is our hope that things will be better, improved, healthier. Without possibility we are impoverished of hope.

How long will the majority of us allow this to continue? When will we realize that we are trashing our own future.

Governance is all about managing the common good of the body politic. It should not be about stasis of political bankers. Or ideology. We have tried big government and small government. And both were found wanting. Something else must be found that works.

Perhaps solving problems that negatively affect people is the answer? When will we get back to this discussion and exploration of possibility?

Will you join the march for possibility?

May 20, 2015

20 Million Left Behind

 

Howard R. Gold claims the U.S. economy has left behind 20 million Americans. In a recent article published in MarketWatch, he thoughtfully chronicles changes in the American workplace, how they happened, what their immediate effect was, and how their long range result took shape. When a plant closes things happen to the worker, to his family, to his household, neighborhood and probably to his entire community.

 

In a vibrant economy furloughed workers are re-employed at another plant or industry. The household remains economically viable. So does the community. And the life of the family continues to prepare the next generation for education, careers and independent lives that matter.

 

The opposite is true in an economy stripped of its vibrancy. The primary breadwinner is reduced to humiliation and a feeling of worthlessness. Children in the household witness the personal degradation of their parent and wonder what is in store for them. As the household misses rent or mortgage payments, a move is planned to less costly quarters. At the bottom of this process homelessness beckons with all of its trappings and horrors.

 

Worse, younger generations witness the decay of their lives and wonder how they will fare in a new world that does not care for them or their families. Education to move them out of this chaos is less accessible to them. Local schools suffer declines in budget, enrollment and worsening facilities. Scholarship is the first to go in the schools. Thus graduation rates plummet and poor kids become poor adults.

 

When industries move production overseas to reduce product costs and improve their competitive pricing, jobs are lost here at home. They may come back, but how soon? When the industry learns it is more cost effective to retain local manufacturing? When they learn that a vibrant American economy produces not only its own products, but also its own mass market of consumers? There is a quid pro quo to such business decisions. There are hidden costs to deduct from the surface benefits they once ached for. One of those costs is the social cost now borne by government agencies to care for the people left behind, abandoned by an unthinking business strategy.

 

Like minimum wage laws. Whole classes of workers earn so little they need food stamps, rent subsidies and medical care vouchers to survive. It is in our interest that they do survive well enough to raise themselves out of poverty and raise a new generation of kids that can do the same. Poverty is regenerating if left unaided. But it needs more than just aid; needs education, nurture and motivation to birth a generation out of their bonds of poverty.

 

Mr. Gold documents what happens when greedy, profit motive businesses forget their employees. Short term tactical thinking creates long term strategic issues in the society on the whole. Those issues must be grappled with and solved. Better handled if we all are doing our share to minimize the problem in the first place, and solve it in the second place.

 

Overseas production facilities are not more competitive. They are just cheaper. Eventually that cheap factor exacts its price.

 

Read Howard Gold’s article shown below. If you have an issue with his data, please contact him directly, not me! I’m involved in this discussion because of the larger issue and the public policy challenges that caused the problem in the first place and will need retooling to solve in the second place.

 

Happy Reading!!

Howard R. Gold is a MarketWatch columnist and founder and editor of GoldenEgg Investing, which offers free market commentary and simple, low-cost, low-risk retirement investing plans. Follow him on Twitter @howardrgold.

Tony, who is currently living at a shelter run by the Bethesda Project, pauses during dinner on October 22, 2014 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The program for homeless men is run by the Bethesda Project which serves…

Last month, when Baltimore was burning after a young African-American man died in police custody (six officers were subsequently charged), I did a Google search to find what David Simon thought about it.

Simon, a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, was the creator and show runner of “The Wire,” which ran for five seasons on HBO and which Entertainment Weekly called the greatest television show ever. It was a brilliant narrative of the struggle for survival in a violent, drug-riddled Baltimore neighborhood much like the one that went up in flames.

In my search, I came across an interview Simon did with Bill Moyers a few years ago in which he declared: “ ‘The Wire’ was not a story about America; it’s about the America that got left behind. … These really are the excess people in America. Our economy doesn’t need them — we don’t need 10% or 15% of our population.”

Have 10% to 15% of the U.S. population really been left behind? I contacted Simon at his website to ask where he got the number, but he didn’t get back to me. So I did my own calculations, and he’s actually not too far off.

With a little help from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the famous monthly jobs reports, I added up several categories of the unemployed, the underemployed and people on some form of public assistance.

My conclusion: About 20 million Americans, roughly 10% of adults of working age, have at best marginal ties with the U.S. economy. I excluded the elderly, because most of them are retired and getting Social Security, and children, whose lives and futures are often collateral damage in the economic struggles of their parents. Here’s how it adds up:

• 2.5 million are among the long-term unemployed, which the Labor Department defines as being out of work and actively seeking work for 27 weeks or more. That’s less than half what it was in 2009, but it’s still high.

• 6.6 million Americans are working part-time for economic reasons but would prefer to work full time.

• Another 2.1 million are marginally attached to the labor force, according to the Labor Department. That means they are “not in the labor force [but] want and are available for work, and … have looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.”

• Nearly 5 million adults from age 18-64 are collecting Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits, which go to people who can’t work because of various disabilities.

• Almost 1 million adults receive public assistance from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and General Assistance (GA), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Those are temporary cash payments with some work requirements that replaced the old welfare system under welfare reform.

• In 2013, 3.3 million Americans earned the federal minimum wage or less, according to the Pew Research Center. If you think they haven’t been left behind, try living on $7.25 an hour.

Grand total: 20.4 million adults. Now, there is some overlap, and Labor Department figures are for people from 16 to 64, while the other stats cover those from 18 up. But those caveats aside, 20 million is a reasonable ballpark number — and a disturbing one.

What’s behind it? It’s complicated. But obviously there’s been a confluence of macro factors cited by both liberal and conservative thinkers, from globalization and outsourcing to technological advances to family breakdown, drugs, lingering racism, terrible schools, failed government programs (Sandtown-Winchester, where Freddie Gray was arrested, got $130 million in private and public aid, to little effect), and growing dependency on government. It’s hard to tease out which was most important.

But if I had to pick one, it would be the decline of decent-paying manufacturing jobs. That happened first in urban centers like Baltimore, which lost hundreds of thousands of such jobs even before the 2000s. That’s when 5.7 million manufacturing jobs vaporized in what IndustryWeek called “the worst decade for manufacturing employment in the Republic’s history.”

When breadwinner jobs disappear, families break down, kids are adrift, and desperation takes hold.

Fifty years ago, the sadly prophetic Moynihan Report captured the early stages of the breakdown of urban African-American families. Now, more than 70% of African-American children are born out of wedlock. But whites are catching up. Since 1980, their out-of-wedlock birth rate has tripled to almost 30% as the same economic chickens come home to roost.

Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point plant in Baltimore produced the steel that went into girders for the Golden Gate Bridge. The shuttered facility symbolizes so many once-great industrial enterprises that lifted Americans of all backgrounds into the middle class. Those jobs aren’t coming back. Until we find something to replace them, more and more people will be left behind.

A Day in the Life Of…

I’m 72 years old. Male. Gay. Retired. Caucasian American. I've had dreams to accomplish and satisfied several of them. I have an understanding of life and possibility that I want to share with others. Just how is yet to be learned.

Yes, reaching my age is sobering. There are limits to life. I cannot physically do what I used to do – walk, stand, jump, run – and all of that for hours on end! Climbing stairs is now very unpleasant; I avoid this activity entirely if possible. I still awake early and do a lot of ‘work’ before breakfast. Then I either do more work, or pick up a book and read until I slip blissfully into a nap. Afterwards I might do an errand, write some more, or eat lunch.

After lunch more reading or writing, then another nap! Being retired has good moments! At the end of the day we watch TV – usually marathon sessions of Netflix spooled TV series! And then to bed between 8:30 and 9 pm.

I know this doesn't sound exciting to most of you. To me it sounds just fine!

Other things of course occupy my time. Such as AA meetings. These gatherings are important, more so than attending a church service. Those not in AA probably wonder why I would feel this way, or any of my fellow AA colleagues. Here’s a little glimpse of why I think these sessions are important.

First, the gathering is mostly of people we have come to know. Occasionally a new person visits or joins our group. There is no formal entry requirement. If you wish to be with us, then you are OK to do so. Second, before the meeting gets started we catch up with each other, joke and share moments of camaraderie rarely felt in other gatherings of friends. Here we are pretty honest with one another. We are not in hiding or pretending to be something we are not.

Third, we nurture each other’s honesty to set the stage for sharing what’s on our minds. This is the business end of our gathering – to build an environment of freedom to say what is important to the person and unburden the inner self. Doing this builds a connection with others. We are not alone.

Fourth, building an authentic connection with others helps us become sober, be sober and remain so. If sobriety is well grounded in some of the attendees, their presence helps them help others become so. This is the primary outcome of AA and why it is so successful.

Fifth, AA fellowship is often deeper, more honest, and heartfelt than church fellowship. I attend two of these meetings each week, and a service meeting with teens also weekly making three AA meetings per week.

In addition I am active in my church. We attend weekly services, often participate in seasonal extra church services during advent and lent. I volunteer singing liturgy for the congregation, join choir duties when possible, and help plan worship services well in advance. I read scripture frequently as well and the pastor asks me to join in sermon related vignettes to enlarge the sermon’s message, lesson.

In other activities, I write this blog daily, Monday through Friday. Saturday is a ‘thought for the day’ item; Sunday I take off. The blog is now three and a half years old and I’ve published 1200 essays so far. That accounts for well over 700,000 words.

From this I intend to pull together a book if anyone is interested in such content. The process of writing a book is daunting and I do a little work on it each day.

I recently stepped away from being the managing editor of the local paper I helped cofound seven years ago. That has freed up time and focus for the blog and book.

A year ago I joined SCORE – the national Service Corps Of Retired Executives. A volunteer adjunct to the Small Business Administration (Federal Department of Commerce), our mission is to help small businesses form or to assist small businesses grow to a higher plane of operation. Our services are free and we mentor in small teams to enrich the small business persons succeed. SCORE has more than 11,000 mentors who helped start thousands of small businesses in 2014 creating over 47,000 new jobs. SCORE is now 50 years old and one of the best kept secrets in the business world!

I could easily spend 40 or 60 hours a week with SCORE. With discipline I manage to spend about 10 hours per week.

So, that’s a brief summation of how I spend my time. It is interesting and motivating so time flies quickly.

I also sprinkle in visits with the families of my daughter and son. They include two granddaughters and one grandson. These are the bright lights of the future and give me hope and pleasure.

Along the way we cram in visits to doctors, medical labs and drug stores. How we ever did this before retirement is beyond our imagination, but then we didn’t have as many ailments then, either!

I’d hazard a guess that this stage of my life is one of communing with community. One learns much of the inner richness of the community by participating in it. The learning grows rapidly if time is taken to drink in the workings of community. There are many lessons in listening and absorbing their messages. The lessons are invaluable teachers of the facts of life. They help me be me, and better.

Not a bad life to live each day! Each day tends to be better than the previous one. One can only imagine where this may lead!

May 18, 2015