Category — the root of all wealth

Those complaining about the Occupy protests being Class Warfare are right.  Finally, it's turning to a war, with both sides aware that they're fighting it.

Thus far, it's been Class Genocide, with one side pooling their immense resources to safely corral and eradicate the 99% from afar.  By controlling the media, they've managed to keep the people they're attacking — depriving of food, shelter, education and rights — from ever realizing or acknowledging that they're under attack.  Like "safari hunters" who shoot caged lions, with enough money the 1% can make it cheap and easy to pick off their opponents like fish in a barrel.  It's been war-without-ever-leaving-your-mansion, winning without risking so much as a profit-margin. 

Until now.  Now the jig is up, and though they've been under attack for at least a decade already, the 99% are grabbing some weapons and getting ready to make this a real, honest fight.

Of course those who've been winning effortlessly for so long don't like it when their prey starts fighting back, turning the easy massacre into a real battle in which, oh yeah, they're massively outnumbered.  Now they might lose something; now, if they want their protected status and special privileges, they may actually have to pay for them.  It's not nearly as profitable to mug a person to their face as it is to sneak into their house while they're out working two jobs and swipe everything, is it?  When someone is facing you and the deal is open on the table, they might fight back, and they might even win. 

Cowards don't like warfare.  They prefer psyops.  They like missions that involve keeping people too scared and hungry to fight back, and "battles" where you can shoot everyone while they sleep.  But the cowards are in for it, if the 99% have woken up.

I'm not a fan of battles in general.  But Class Warfare beats the heck out of Class Massacre.

Symphony of Science Bundle v1.0.

Remember the “Symphony of Science” videos of yore? There’s a whole album of the author’s work (Josh D. Boswell is his name) available now, and the best part is, it’s pay-what-you-want! Proceeds go towards making more awesome pro-science stuff, so crack the wallet as far as you’re comfortable doing and go get the good stuff!

I had one of those tiny physical moments yesterday that explodes into a psychological OH YEAH DUH … that was a moment, literally an otherwise meaningless moment in the shower, of refocusing.

Life is powerfully, powerfully distracting, especially as you slam into full adulthood and all the filters that kept out various influences are removed.  This isn't oops-too-much-RSS-browsing distraction; this is full-on fight-or-flight-level hardcore psychological distraction.

Some examples:

• Faced with the insecurities of providing for yourself and others, of economic wibbly-wobbliness and the suddenly finite number of years before retirement, you throw yourself into working and saving money (easily 80h/wk, all told)
• Faced with the heady freedom of being allowed to do anything you can legally get away with, you wind up "trying on" hobby after hobby, filling your free-time and emptying your wallet on lessons, equipment, outings, and materials, all for things you'll probably hardly ever do again;
• Faced with the daunting task of raising a child "correctly", you throw yourself into planning activities, events, and lessons into every possible moment, as well as into cooking and cleaning things into an acceptably perfect childhood environment;
• Faced with the sudden relative lessening importance of social activities (what? I'm old enough to party all I want and now partying doesn't mean much anymore??) as well as, for some people, the sudden ease of actually pulling it off (wait, I used to find this scary? ha!), you grab any opportunity to go to a gathering, eating up your evenings and killing your attempts to wake up early and do stuff;
• Overwhelmed by the 80-hour work weeks, the pile of clamoring social engagements, the kids, the house, the classes and outings, you retreat into television for hours or days at a time, often finding yourself too exhausted to even get dressed if you don't absolutely have to.

…And welcome to adulthood.  ;) 

When I was young I thought, of course I'll be a writer, writing comes easy to me and I love it.  But then…was I going to write instead of working and saving money?  Hmm, no.  Write instead of parenting?  No way.  Write instead of going out and doing stuff?  Well, that one was easy when I was a bored and scaredy kid, but this weekend I can literally go to three parties and a SolidWorks design class and free-diving in the ocean if I want — all with people I like. 

When I found taiji I thought, oh, THIS is the thing; this is the perfect physical component to my philosophic life, the mental components of which are of course reading and writing.  I love taiji like I've loved few other things; I often think that if I had nothing else but a life of constant taiji, space to write about it, and some pretty trees to look at, that'd be great.

But when to practice?  At home, with the kid bouncing around and things begging to be cleaned?  At work, in the five minutes between meetings?  Making the time to get to class once a week is epic difficult, though I do it, doggedly, but far too often without having practiced at all in the in-between.

And when to write?  I get up around 4:30am, but the writing, it turns out, takes more than just getting up. 
More often than not I surf blearily, drinking coffee and trying to gather my thoughts and the day's plans, until it's time to head out for work.

I never wanted to admit that I couldn't do everything, that I was going to have to say no even if something sounded awesome, involved a really cool person, or I'd never done it before.  But you just can't have everything all at once; if you want that nice retirement plan and health insurance, it's going to cost you big-time, as is the perfect kids' lesson-plan and the clean house and oh yeah, the novel and the black-belt.  There are sacrifices, and some of them really suck.  Welcome to adulthood.

But the important thing is to make these decisions as consciously as possible, I think.

So this weekend, that's what I'm doing — I'm refocusing things.  I'm putting some recurring plans in place, for writing and practice, that will get absolute priority…even from work, and cleaning, and parenting.  (To clarify regarding a common misconception:  no, more parenting is not always better; kids need time and activities to themselves too.  It's just up to the parents to schedule that so that it gives us time as well — and that's no mean feat.)   

This weekend I re-remember what's most important, and I state clearly to myself what I'm willing to bend for (work emergencies?  Sudden opportunities?) and what I'm not.  This weekend I re-invent my Super Picky Schedule to be super picky about the things I want out of life too, not just the things I feel responsible for. 

And there's another element to Refocusing:  The Present.  By acting intentionally rather than responding to pressures (i.e. all the "faced with"s from the list above), you bring your focus into the moment more.  …Make no mistake, this is probably why a lot of people don't do it.  Swimming naked in the Now can be a lot less comfortable than a nice ride in a pre-built boat that just goes where the waves push it.

But this is life.  It's not about being comfortable.  We all get to sleep sooner or later…  ;)

In Michigan as well as elsewhere, I've heard the attempted anti-union argument that "teachers make too much money anyway".  Now, I know a few teachers (experienced, in difficult subjects like science) and they do pretty well, so it's easy to see how some people might find that argument (i.e. "teachers make too much money, so there's something wrong with unions") at least a little convincing.

Thanks to my iFriend zentiger (via kataplexis), today I can kill it dead for good.  Behold, simple high-school math:

Suppose that teachers are making too much money. OK, that's fine. Let's treat them like babysitters, and pay them less than minimum wage. Say, $3/hour. The conversation wandered from there, but I decided to put some numbers on it and see what happens.

Now, teachers don't work full-time; around 180 days a year for around six and a half hours a day. (Lunch? No, you don't get paid for lunch. Or grading. Or planning.) On the other hand, teachers deal with ~30 students at a time, so that's something — your average babysitter deals with one, or maybe two, at a time. Let's call it 1.5.

Now let's do some math. $3/hour/1.5 kids is, shockingly enough, equal to $2/hour/child. And each day is, as we know, 6.5 hours, so it looks like we should have (in a given day), $13/child. Multiply that by the (sadly small estimate of class size) 30 kids each teacher deals with, and we're at $390/day. $390/day * 180 days/year = $70,200/year. That seems like a reasonable introductory salary for a schoolteacher, no? If not, where did I go wrong in my math? I mean, I'm doing this all in my head, so I might have screwed up somewhere.

This result is especially interesting given that, according to salary.com (I don't actually know if this is a good source), the median salary of a high school teacher is $53,558. If that website is accurate, it looks like we're paying our teachers, on average, $20,000 per year less than we'd pay a 14-year-old for the same service. Oh, and the teachers also, y'know, educate our children. So that's a plus.

What the hell, America?

As someone who has been involved in the protests in Madison for the past six days, I find the news media coverage of the momentous events in this town to in no way portray the reality of what is going on here. In their attempts to constantly be balanced, the news media seem to have lost all ability to be accurate.

via From the Front Lines in Madison, WI | Common Dreams.

Once again — and I'm sure this will deeply shock everyone — I'm waaaay behind on the polyphasic-related email I've been receiving, so if I owe you an email, it's totally my fault…again. 

In my own defense, I'm adjusting to a crazy hard job during an utterly crazy time at the company; I have a lot of responsibility and a lot to prove; and I have to move across the country in, like, a month.  So add moving and traveling 800 miles every couple weeks to apartment-hunt to 80-hour weeks with nights and weekends and, well, that's me. 

Seriously, I have neglected to email my mom more than once.  Don't feel shunned.  ;)

However, it's fascinating to me that I'm now living the exact pseudo-monophasic modern Western sleep schedule that I've railed about for years.  I stay up too late; I get 4-6 hours most nights; sometimes 7; some weekend day if I can I'll sleep 9 or 10 and feel groggy but oddly refreshed afterwards.  I'm exquisitely dependent on a good dose of daily caffeine; I'm starting to have to fight gravitating towards energy drinks.

I *am* that professional nerd.  And I am the worst sleeper ever; and for the moment, I really can't avoid it.  

The only reason this isn't upsetting in the extreme is that I've determined, for sure, that my job will be cool about letting me get a nap in.  There's still the commute and other details to iron out, but that's promising enough that I'm willing to use it as an excuse to not panic.  I may just be too busy, and too out-and-about-with-no-car, to pull off Uberman; I've accepted that.  But Everyman 3 — one of the great loves of my life — looks very darn likely again in the near future.  

THANK.  GOODNESS.  I hate sleeping and I hate being tired, and I've been doing more of both the last few months than I ever did while I was polyphasic.  Ew ew ew.  …Still, it is a heck of an experiential opportunity, to try the typical, horrible (I-M-increasingly-justified-O) sleep schedule that the typical overworked slob in my socioeconomic arena keeps…I suspect I'll be glad to have learned this, later on.

Before I go, I want to say thank you to everyone who's been emailing me — there have been quite a lot lately! — I do enjoy your stories, questions and comments, even when I can't get back to you promptly.  Thanks so much for taking the time to fill me in.

PD 

Behold!  A list of all the fun stuff I brought back from my latest trip to Boston!  It's rather amazing that I had time to shop, but not only did I, I got to see a part of the city I haven't really explored before (Newberry Street), and get taken to all the places *I* would like to see…this amazing huge computer store called MicroCenter (fate saved my wallet by not having any of the monitor I wanted in stock ;)…a Michigan-quality army surplus store…the most eclectic "comics shop" I have ever seen…the world's coziest bookstore, and nevermind three different places for food.  It turns out my friend who hosted me this time is like the world's best date, heh. 

So yes.  I ran myself almost into a coma most of the week, but I had an intense Thursday night and a lovely Saturday, and got to hang with some of my favorite humans period, so I'm calling that a win.

Anyway, the list!  I offer it in gratitude for all that it implies.  ;)

• 200' of 550 paracord, red & black
• awesome BDU/utility pants (though I was pretty offended that I wore an 'extra small' in them.  I'm not extra small, dammit.)
• 2 p38's
• a tai chi sword to replace mine with the wobbly grip.  I had to get it, because it looks just like mine (which is kind of an odd style), except that instead of being black it's red, and it's both garish and wonderful and I love it.  Also, the army surplus guys had no idea what it was (and were visibly awed by my overpowering female nerdosity — the combination of my deadpool t-shirt and FMA purse almost gave the cashier tremors, ha), so they sold it to me for about half the minimum price they should have.  \o/
• Books:  "Please Kill Me" (a punk-rock history for my boy), "Homework for Grown-Ups", the Opus (Bloom County) full-color compendium, some pr0n, and an awesome book on Oriental Battle Tactics, Weapons and Strategies 1200-1800.  All on sale.  *score*
• The Coolest Pink Frilly Umbrella Ever, for a certain goddess among gradeschoolers
• Little rubber-bandy shapey things that are all popular now, for same
• Assortment of real, brightly-colored, sticky-note tabs for placement on important documents, with big bold arrows and variations on "F*CK THIS" and "DON'T F*CK THIS UP"
• Black aluminum 12-LED ultrabright flashlight for my tactical (yup, milspec–I'm totally one of those nerds now) office laptop bag
• Red aluminum pen-size precision screwdriver multitool for same
• Awesome accessory bag for the MOLLE straps on said tactical office bag (a gift)
• 2 locking d-rings for same (I can hook so much to that bag now, heh)
• Wacom tablet for my boy (also a gift)
• RFID-blocking two-color duct-tape wallet, made just for me right in front of me.  *aw yay*

So yeah.  I had a great and crazy week; and I'm sorry it didn't leave me with much to write about here, but still…great and crazy!  That's worth something! 

May you all get one too!  ;)

P.S. I don't have a camera right now – I realize that could have made this post a lot more fun – but I should soon, and then, I promise, fun of some kind will ensue.  *wink*

Maybe Homeowners Wouldn't Strategically Default If Lenders Cooperated

Will a Human at B of A Please Modify My $160,000-Underwater Mortgage

Blatantly Racist Subprime Loans

Slothful Loan Modifiers Earn More Money When You're Delinquent

Bank Told Homeowner to Skip Payments, Then Foreclosed

Asymmetrical Norms: Why Homeowners Aren't Walking Away

Rich Investors "Walk Away" from $5 Billion Mortgage

…I just wanted to put up those articles (from The Consumerist, all relatively recent), and weigh in with my Hi-I-Was-A-Foreclosure-Prevention-Counselor-In-Recession-Central opinion…mostly because I would feel really bad if I left the field (which I have) without ever saying it really, really loudly:

THE MAJORITY OF FORECLOSURES COULD HAVE BEEN EASILY PREVENTED BY THE BANKS MAKING EVEN A TINY AMOUNT OF EFFORT TO STOP THEM.

THAT EFFORT IS NOT THERE.  FROM ANY OF THE BIG, BAILED-OUT BANKS.  STORIES LIKE THE ONES ABOVE ARE THE NORM, AND LAZY OR SHADY HOMEOWNERS WALKING AWAY IS ALMOST 100% A BANK-CREATED FICTION.  (Please don't be surprised that huge mega-banks can influence the media in this country.  I will have to punch you.)

DO YOUR PART and STOP HELPING TO SPREAD THE LIES.  THE BANKS CAUSED THIS PROBLEM BY ALLOWING THEIR OWN PROFESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES TO SELL UNSUSTAINABLE LOANS, AND THEY ARE PERPETUATING IT BY FAILING TO TAKE EVEN THE MOST BASIC STEPS TO TRY AND HELP HONEST FAMILIES WHO WANT TO PAY (often who want to pay on exorbitant terms that they really should walk away from) MAKE REASONABLE MODIFICATIONS TO THEIR LOANS.

I saw it; hundreds of times.  I met maybe five–maybe?–actually stupid homeowners, and one shady jerk, in three years of counseling; but I lost track of the number of times I personally witnessed:

• banks telling people they needed to miss payments before they could receive help; then foreclosing once the payments were missed;
• banks setting deadlines and then forcing people to miss them, and then foreclosing;
• banks "losing" paperwork over and over again, and refusing to extend deadlines because of it;
• banks offering "help" in the form of a modification that raised the homeowner's payments, often also making their loan terms worse (and how many sad, sad times homeowners accepted that modification, assuming that since they'd asked for help, they'd get it, and not wanting to be "rude" by reading the fine print and demanding a better deal) — and then foreclosing if the modification isn't accepted, or if it is and the new, higher payments can't be made.

I'm counting on you, Internet.  Don't let this whole foreclosure mess go down in history as a problem with consumers:   That was NEVER true.

Thank you.

(Bonus Happy Link:  Americans for Fairness in Lending)

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.  To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, "It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be." 

It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor.  Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold.  No such tales are told by the American poor.  They mock themselves and glorify their betters.  The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question:  "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"  There will also be an American flag no larger than a child's hand–glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue.  Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money.  They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves.  This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.

–monograph by Howard W. Campbell, Jr., discussing the behavior of American prisoners in German camps in WWII.*

*as quoted in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five or, The Childrens' Crusade which if you haven't read, you really really oughtta.  It's amazing.  ;)

7 lies we tell ourselves about money | I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

I like the "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" blog, for several reasons:

• It defines "rich" as the balance between financial independence and lifestyle freedom that works for you
• It's competently and clearly written, and well-organized
• It focuses on non-sensationalist tips that really work, changing things you can actually control, making decisions that will improve your whole life (not just your pocketbook), and being conscious of your problems and "Knowing Thyself" as essential steps towards forging financial solutions.

And if you were only ever going to read one post on finance, or on that blog, I would probably recommend the "7 Lies We Tell Ourselves" one.  Not only does it list seven fantastic "Know Thyself" jumping-off points, but by reading them in in this format, you should learn what it is that you need to focus on about finances, whether it's planning or investing or working on behavioral fixes. That method — to pin down what your individual weakness is, and address it realistically — is the fastest way *I* can think of to effect good change.

I have one complaint about the article, however:  In Tip #1, they discuss negotiating for a salary. 

Negotiating a salary is a good idea, and it's a good idea to learn how exactly to do it, because it can make you a lot of money without changing anything else about what you're doing, and how to do it is not really obvious to most people.  So not only am I glad Ramit mentions it in this article; I think his including a video with detailed instructions for negotiating a salary is a great lagniappe.

However, as a former financial counselor and a frugal person, I've seen videos and other instructions of this type quite often, and this one makes one of the common mistakes that makes me go yyyrrrrrggggggghhhhAAAAAAAAAYOUIDIOTS! and foam rabidly all over my keyboard.  (It's not pretty.)

The mistake?

The woman in the video (and it is almost always a woman who says this, even when the material isn't explicitly aimed at women) just has to point out that women make less money than men, and that women are not very good negotiators ("by nature" is assumed even if not said) and often aren't shown how to do it…so obviously, you know, that leads to the completely logical conclusion that if women were better negotiators, we wouldn't have such a problem with wage disparity.

::FACEPALM::

Of course, it's no accident that the woman in this video is younger than me, recently graduated from Stanford and got 60K/yr at her last, poorly-negotiated job.  So if I, or someone else, were to say to her, "YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.  LET'S TELL ALL THE WOMEN WHO WORK AT WAL-MART TO NEGOTIATE BETTER SALARIES, AND MAYBE WAL-MART WILL AGREE TO PAY THEM THE SAME AS MEN," I'm sure she would be genuinely shocked to ponder that, for the vast majority of women, being fresh out of Stanford and needing to pull better than 60K out of your next round of "recruiter" interviews is not, in fact, the main problem.

(Note:  It may be that Ramit's audience for his blog is simply this group, of very-upper-middle-class rather-clueless young-ish people…but he doesn't explicitly narrow his advice to them, or say anything to that effect that I'm aware of.  And for the most part, I think his advice is very good no matter where you are on the economic treadmill.)

I'm not saying that salary-negotiating advice would not be useful to lower-income women, not at all.  But be serious — if most women in this country tried "negotiating" a salary at the kind of jobs they work (which are more often low-wage or crappy to begin with), they simply wouldn't get hired.  It's actually been shown quite clearly that just demanding wage parity can get you fired.

Now, if MOST of the women in this country suddenly demanded parity, that would probably change something — I imagine we're too much of the workforce now, for society to tolerate a general strike.  But we have families to feed, too; and one stereotype that is correct is that most women would rather suffer some indignity or lack than put their childrens' food supply in danger.  So Wal-Mart can probably rest easy on that one.

The next woman in a hundred-dollar suit to tell me that "if we were better negotiators…" though, is getting foamed on.  Ugh!