The following observations are intended to read between the lines on current events. We’re pretty sure you won’t find these comments anywhere in mainstream media. But we challenge you to prove the impossibility of our comments.
- MIDTERM POLLING ERRORS: After all the talk of a “red wave” pollsters are dining on large crows. They know how foolish their predictions were. Here’s what happened: Pollsters traditionally ask a cross section of potential or actual voters for their opinions. That would suggest an age, gender, marital status and locale spread of answers. The problem is that this time around abortion was a dominant issue and many voters–especially women–were adamant that they wanted to preserve their reproductive rights. If the polling had included a larger percentage of female voters the predictions would have been more accurate. But-to do that-would have violated the basic polling process. So the pollsters chose to keep with the traditional process. BAD IDEA!! Now you know.
- GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT: The US economy is faced with inflation and the fear of recession–IF YOU LISTEN TO THE TALKING HEADS OF THE FOX NETWORK. Let’s examine that perspective. We are just now coming out of severe COVID restrictions; the supply chains around the world have been disastrously interrupted. When supply decreases and demand grows we will always have inflation. That’s the most basic economic principle. Inflation is on the way down as we write this post. Second, GDP which is the measure of growth or lack thereof in our economy has a built-in fallacy. The US has slowly but consistently evolved from primarily a manufacturing economy to a service-providing economy. We now buy more than half of all manufactured products from foreign sources (China, and others). Consequently “services” which account for only one third of the GDP cannot fill the void left by the elimination of the manufacturing component of GDP. In addition, the value of services is not easily measured–making it’s contribution to GDP much more arbitrary. In short, GDP is becoming a less relevant measure of our country’s economic growth. We need to address a change here.
- THE TWITTER/MUSK DEBACLE: Make no mistake about–Elon Musk wanted to avoid his purchase of Twitter. Unfortunately his original offer carried a huge penalty if he failed to consummate the deal and his attorneys could find no way out of the deal without him coughing up $1 billion. So he’s putting a positive spin on the deal by championing First Amendment rights. Yea–right. The truth is he wants to hide his rash offer’s consequences and maybe find a business way to make a profit. His first steps are to fire thousands of employees so their salaries pay him back some of his investment. His biggest mistake (his second after the purchase mistake) was to fire the chief executive officers who could have worked with him during any transition. We attribute this failure to Mr. Musk’s brashness–I can do it alone!!! Now he wants to charge $8 for special “blue accounts”–whatever that means. Stay tuned. Musk is desperate to make his mistake work. He is painfully reminiscent of the double down strategy found in the Trump camp. In other words, when you make a mistake–make it worse so you don’t look like you made the first mistake. Now you can see how the GOP got to its present mess.
- LEGALIZING MARIJUANA AS A RECREATIONAL DRUG: Last year 1 of every 8 US deaths for people age 25 to 64 involved or was caused by alcohol. Alcohol is considered a drug. This year 21 states approved the use of MJ as a recreational drug. Do we need to explain how this happened? Do you think it has anything to do with state taxation of MJ company profits? Do you think deaths due to drug impairments will now decrease? Do you think medical costs and their insurance plans will become more affordable? Are you concerned that a population already endangered by distracted drivers will now have access to another hallucinating substance? Will life insurance rates decrease now because we will have fewer unnecessary deaths? And what about the emotional toll and resulting mental strain that open access to MJ will cause? We could go on but we would think you get the message….and remember all this grief and all these costs stem from the state wanting to balance its budget on the heads of those who endanger themselves and everyone they contact while intoxicated. If you’re not upset about this trend YOU’D BETTER SPEAK UP. Maybe someone you care about will be a victim of state greed.
- MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: THE ULTIMATE SQUEEZE PLAY: If you’ve been reading this blog you know how disgusted we are with money flows from advertisers to networks to baseball team owners to players. As this season ends with the World Series a number of player contracts are in the public domain. The salaries are disturbing because they evidence pure greed that begins to separate baseball from the fans that made it the “national pastime”. Examples: nearly $30 of every ticket sold to a New York Mets home game goes to pay the salary of just 3 players, namely Edwin Diaz, Francisco Lindor and Max Scherzer. Another example: $18 of every home ticket at the Los Angeles Angels stadium goes to pay 2 players, Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. There are many more examples. But all this cost is escalating at a time when the average seating capacity of every major league ballpark is rapidly shrinking–meaning fewer tickets can be sold compared to just a few years ago. What’s happening? Ad dollars are escalating. Advertisers are being asked to pay more. This means that games–despite what the Baseball Commissioner says–will get longer (just like pro football games telecasts). The economics–long term–are very disturbing. Example: Joey Votto of the Cincinnati Reds (a small market) will be paid $25 million next year. He’s beyond age 40 and his productive years are history. Last year he missed one-third of the season with injuries. As the overall salary scale engorges across the baseball world and older overpaid players lose productivity–fans will still be paying their salaries. This spiraling down of long term costs vs. productivity will one day cause major grief because every year we price more “average” fans out of the market. Does this sound like the national pastime you grew up with? Are these baseball “heroes” anyone would want to admire? Has baseball lost its way? BTW, the 2022 World Series was the second lowest rated World Series ever. Has baseball passed its peak and a subtle downslide begun?
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