feelin' down

I have been feeling a little down today. Fortunately I found this music video featuring Hugh Laurie of the TV series House. I've been playing it over and over again. It really ministered to me. I hope it will minister to you.

accept nothing less

There is no adequate substitute for Cherrios. There are plenty of substitutes but none come close.

undocumented riches

I came up with a little thought experiment that I would like to try out. Almost 70 years ago, Mexico nationalized its oil industry and created PEMEX. Suppose Mexico decided to give the USA sovereignty over PEMEX. Furthermore, suppose the people of Mexico overwhelmingly supported this. (I know, fat chance, but please stay with me.) The Mexican government might ask we give them back a few bucks a barrel, but otherwise the oil, refineries, pipelines, everything is ours.

Would this be a good thing for the USA?

Of course, this obviously would be a great blessing! It would increase the real wealth, specifically the natural resource wealth, of this country. Accepting the very generous gift would be a real no-brainer. Adam Smith over two hundred and thirty years ago pointed out that a country was wealthy not due to its gold or financial wealth, but rather due to its abundance of resources. He used the shorthand terms land, labor, and capital to refer to a country’s natural, human, and other physical resources.

Until about fifty years ago, the important things needed for economic growth were considered to be natural resources and physical capital (factories, machines, equipment, roads, harbors, etc.). More people just meant other limited resources were divided among more people. Therefore, output and income per person would diminish other things being equal. Fifty years ago places like Hong Kong and South Korea were considered economic basket cases with little or no growth potential. Mainland China had most of its population, hundreds of millions of people, living in abject poverty. Why? Folks thought it was because all three had no resources to speak of, just a lot of people.

Our understanding of economic growth theory is radically different today. Also Hong Kong and South Korea are now developed, industrialized countries. (Having been to Hong Kong, I tell people that it makes any large American city look absolutely Third-World by comparison.). China’s unprecedented economic growth miracle has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of immiserating conditions in just the past two decades. Of course, there is a lot more to economic growth than just having a lot of people, but we can’t go into that now.

It should not be any surprise that the Word of God already had it right:

A large population is a king’s glory,
but without subjects a prince is ruined.
~ Proverbs 14:28 (NIV)

Now back to our thought experiment. The Republic of Mexico is not about to give us their oil. However, we do have something of Mexico’s that is far more valuable: its people.

We are not about to round up 12 million undocumented aliens and send them back to Mexico. It would be, for all practical purposes, impossible. This is a good thing, a very good thing. If we could forcibly repatriate 12 million, we would drastically reduce our nation’s wealth unlike any natural or man-made disaster short of a nuclear holocaust. 12 million generally hard-working, generally socially-conservative people, as well as their children as an investment for our future, make us richer. Accepting this gift should also be a no-brainer.

We have been blessed. It is our nation’s glory.

Thank you.
RB

want to know who will win in '08?

The evidence is in and overwhelming: The best predictor of who will win the presidential nominations and the election is not some expert or opinion poll, but future markets where contracts (bets?) on future events are traded. As mentioned before, it is the wisdom of crowds. The oldest and best known of these markets, the Iowa Electronic Market, has $1 contracts on who will win the nominations and as well as the November election. For example, as I write this, the current price quote for the Democratic WTA (winner take all) contract sells at $0.61 and the Republican WTA contract is $0.39. That means the smart money thinks there is a 61% chance some Democrat will take possession of the White House on January 22nd of 2009. Last September it was even money.

For the Democratic nomination, current price quotes are Clinton $0.49, Obama $0.29, Edwards $0.09, and "others" at $0.12. The Republican current prices are Giuliani $0.22, Romney $0.23, McCain $0.17, while the expensive contract is "others" $0.44.

Looks like maybe Hillary versus a Law & Order candidate?

hurt people hurt people

The above has been going over and over again in my mind for months and especially for the past few days. The following is a collection of non-random thoughts but I don't have the energy to connect them:

Hurt people hurt people.
~ Anonymous

We see things not the way they are but the way we are.
~ Anonymous

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves.
~ Richard Bach

It's not the truth that hurts us but letting go of the lies.
~ Anonymous

The biggest lies, the lies we can never discover on our own, are the lies we believe about ourselves.
~ rb

Hurt people hurt people.
~ Anonymous

However, if you want real insight, you should check this post.

the prodigal's father

I believe the passage in Luke 15:11-32 is misnamed. The story is about the father, not the son. Jesus told the parable so that the listeners, mostly adults, could understand the Father’s heart. In fact, I think to understand the parable you really need to be a father, or at least a parent.

There is nothing in the story to help us better understand a son. A kid wants his own way and wants to escape his hometown. He then blows his money and ends up broke, hungry to the point of coveting pig slop. The son finally realizes that he would be better off, that it would be a big step up, if he were one of his dad’s servants. So the kid moves back home.

What’s so surprising about that? Where’s the revelation there?

No surprise. No revelation. The parable is about the father, not the son. Forget about the son or you’ll miss the whole point.

While I’m venting on this topic, we need to remember that this is a fictional account told to illustrate a point. It is a story originating with Jesus, not Disney. We often assume a Hollywood-style, they-all-lived-happily-ever-after type ending. Is there any evidence that the son’s issues with authority, self-will, sexual addiction, self-discipline, or whatever, were resolved? Is there an implication that the son and father had no future, on-going struggles?

No, because the story is not really about the son. It is about the father’s heart.

This is not original with me. I’ve been mulling this over since I heard a talk show on the radio a couple of months ago. When real world prodigals return home it often the beginning of a new round of struggles and conflicts. Are we to have the heart of prodigal’s father? Sure, but often the dealings, the pain, the hurts, are even worse after the return. The time away from the father just delayed the resolution of problems. The return home in no way indicates resolution achieved.

We need to read the word of God so that we can stand on the sure promises of God rather than assuming they reflect the fantasies of Hollywood. I know that there have been many times in my life when I have been disappointed because reality turned out not to be the Hollywood storyline I thought was supposed to happen.

The funny thing is, I often blamed God and not Disney.

Be blessed,
RB

never trust a bookmark

This week I had to wait around my office to see if some summer school classes would have the enrollment to make. (They didn’t.) To pass time, I started looking at some genealogy sites. There went my week! I am too compulsive. There is always one more relative to find. I did find over 60 new ones, but most come at the same time. Digging for hours and finding nothing, then I hit a vein and mine it for all its worth. Hours of nothing, then I get the joy of discovery for a couple of dozen minutes. The find spurs me on to even more hours of prospecting in hopes of another discovery.

Picture Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

I haven’t done this in a couple of years. I had bookmarked a bunch websites with information and possible leads. However, the vast majority of the old links were now dead. So I spent a lot of time trying to rediscover and unearth the information again.

I have learned not to trust bookmarks since sites disappear or move or get reorganized. Solution? I print everything. However, I don’t waste ink and paper, I print to a pdf file using either Adobe Acrobat or the free PrimoPDF. The files are usually small and easy to move and store. Life is simpler and easier now. (I know, you read it all before here.)

Another thing about doing genealogy research on the web is that others have already done the heavy lifting and I just need to find their work. The information can also be downloaded into files standardized for use by almost all genealogy software such as Legacy Family Tree.

My father insisted that Blewett was a Scotch-Irish name. My father was also an Anglophobe. I have traced his entire family to before they came to America. There are zero Irish or Scotch ancestors. In fact, the first Blewett to come to America in his family tree was from Cornwall in SW England. You can’t get any further away from Scotland and still be in England than Cornwall. Fortunately I discovered this unpleasant truth after dad passed away.

All the Blewetts in and from Cornwall, and there are lots of them, are descended from one family. The original Blewett in England was supposedly a Brittany knight who came over with William the Conqueror in 1066. Only recently have people become picky about spelling, so if you ever meet a Blewett, Blewitt, Bluett, Bloet, or Blouet, they are probably my cousins.

Blewett, whatever its original form, is derived from the French for the color blue combined with the French diminutive suffix et. The French meaning also referred to a bluebottle, blue bird, a blue flower or corn flower, or a color of cloth worn at the time.

The stem of the original name also means livid, which is what my father, also a Francophobe, would be if he knew he was descended from an Englishman with a French last name.

Another family tale concerns the Sailors family. Supposedly the first Sailors in Ohio got his name because he was a deserter from Napoleon’s navy. Well, doing some research I found a number of Sailors in Ohio and Indiana descended from German or Swiss Saylors, Seylers, Seilers, and similar names. Sailors is just an Anglicized version. So I thought another interesting family tale bites the dust. However, this week I recorded an ancestor, John F. Sailors, born in Ohio, who for the U.S. Census listed his father as being born in France. His father would have been the right age and there are no Saylors, Seylers, Seilers, etc, from France. So the story is quite likely to be true.

Be blessed!
RB

financial manana

Years ago, my pastor came back from a visit to Mexico with a very important language lesson: The dictionary definition for manana may be tomorrow but in actual use it means not today.

Everyone has weaknesses and issues but what amazes me is that these weaknesses usually exhibit themselves in how people handle finances. For some it is overspending; for others acting before they think. With me, it is procrastination. It is not what I do, so much, as what I don’t do that I should.

My financial problem, also a general personal problem, is what I call my manana things. Things I don’t do, my not today tasks.

One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.
~ Proverbs 18:9 (NIV)

A basic, common sense concept in economics is opportunity cost. Whenever you make a decision, the cost is what you decide not to do. Here’s real world example. I knew last fall that I should transfer from our savings account all but a small amount into a money market mutual fund (MMF). It takes 20 minutes to do this on the internet; the MMF company will send me free checks to draw on the account; and it pays four or five percentage points higher in interest. It was a no-brainer. It was also a manana thing: no big deal if not today.

However, by deciding manana, then manana again and again, waiting six months to set up an account, I gave up a few hundred dollars in interest. My slacker behavior was the twin brother of wasting, or destroying, enough to support a number of youths on their summer missions trips.

That’s right. I’m living proof of the truth of Proverbs 18:9.

I know of a couple in another community who signed up and paid for the materials for Financial Peace University, but never got around to going to the course either time it was offered by their church. When they finally sought individual help, their financial coach ended up having them do what they would have done earlier if they took FPU. They do have a sizable emergency fund in a bank account but not in a MMF. They have destroyed hundreds of dollars in potential interest payments. They have substantial investments in low-yielding assets and have lost thousands of dollars in potential yields in the past several months. In fact, they have lost at least a thousand since canceling an appointment to reallocate their wealth. They had a very good reason for canceling but the problem is that it became their manana thing to meet again to reallocate.

Doing nothing is really deciding not to do something. There is a cost. As for me and other slackers, we can take no comfort in manana. We are brothers of those who destroy.

Be blessed!
RB

trail mix, cheese curls, tater tots and pigs

A handful of banana chips, yogurt-covered raisins, dried papaya and cashews sounds like a tasty afternoon snack. Some people get a pretty good price per pound on trail mix if they buy the one-ton box.

Monday’s Wall Street Journal had a front-page article explaining how farmers are feeding their pigs trail mix, cheese curls, tater tots, broken cookies and other surplus products from food processors. Why? Federal legislation requiring bioethanol use in gasoline has caused the price of corn to double. One farmer saves $8 per ton on feed costs switching away from corn. This works out to $40,000 per year saved. Plus, the pigs like sweets (1).

Corn farmers are ecstatic about doubling prices but other farmers raising chickens, turkeys, heifers, and pigs, as well as those who milk cows and anyone in the food processing industry, are not pleased (2).

This past year there were demonstrations in Mexico protesting the steep rise in the price of tortillas, a local food staple. Of course, the cause was the rise in the world price of corn caused by the U.S. ethanol-from-corn fetish. What is so crazy about this is that ethanol from corn produces only 1.3 times the energy it costs to produce. Sugar cane produces ethanol with as much as 10 times the energy used to produce it (3).

Unfortunately we don’t grow much cane in Iowa.

I study economic development. As I often tell my students, few nations in the world are rich enough to get away with such insane policies.

Is this a great country or what?

Be blessed.
RB


Notes:
(1) “With Corn Prices Rising, Pigs Switch to Fatty Snacks,” The Wall Street Journal, 21 May 2007, p. A1.
(2) “Ethanol's Bitter Taste,” The Wall Street Journal, 18 May 2007, p. A16.
(3) “Twisted Economics of Ethanol,” The Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2007, p. B14.

economist quick quip

From the Washington Post:

Perry Day Quick, 61, a senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisors during the Carter and Reagan administrations, died...May 1 at his home in Washington.

Asked how he could serve such different administrations as those of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, Dr. Quick said Democrats and Republicans generally treated sound economic advice the same way: by ignoring it.