Category Archives: Psychological Musings

Economic Inequality and Supercars

Cars, Psychological Musings

inequality-page25_actualdistribwithlegend-1

First, the unequal wealth and income distribution in the good ol’ United States. As the chart above shows, it is much worse than most people think (my personal experience is that everybody thinks they are middle class, a couple of weeks ago, I have a guy making $500,000 a year complain about Obama wanting to increase his taxes when he is really only middle class). The realty is that somewhere between 1.3 million to 1.4 million households – that is about 1% of the total population – have about 80% to 85% of of the total wealth in the United States.

In term of income, the 1% earns something like 18% to 19% of the entire income earned in the United States. That is a huge amount of money per household and it is pretty hard to spend it all – not being part of it, I can’t say for sure, but how much toothpaste can one person buy? – without buying hyper luxuries like supercars. And that is just for the United States; there are lots of Russian oligarchs and oil-rich Saudis who also might like a supercar. It turns out that the actual pool of people who can afford to pay $2 million  – over even $20 million – for a car is pretty large.

(As an aside, when I went to the McLaren dealer last September where – so far – they don’t have supercars, they told me that most of their buyers paid cash and already had a Ferrari. End aside.)

I do want to point out that I am against this inequitable wealth distribution on general principals, even if it were not bad for the country. But, as bad as it is for the country, it is good for supercars.

La-Ferrari-05

Last week was the Geneva Auto Show and Ferrari, Lamborghini, and McLaren, among other lesser known marquis, used the opportunity to unveil their new supercars. Because this large, hyper-rich, class is relatively new, the concept of supercars is also new, even the name supercar is new. Sure, there have always been high performance cars; cars that are more agile and faster than their litter mates and they have always costed more, but not that much more.

When the Ferrari GTO – as close to a supercar as there was in the early 60’s – was made, it cost about $18,000 compared to about $2,000 for a Chevy. Today that Chevy would be about 8 to 15 times as much at $16,000 to $30,000 and a normal Ferrari is about $225,000. The new LaFerrari, Ferrari’s new supercar shown above – with a 6.3 liter V-12 and and electric booster motor (making it an hybrid, I guess) putting out about 950 horsepower to give it o-60 mph times in under 3.0 seconds and a top speed in excess of 217 mph – has a waiting list of about 700 and the price has not been released (but is expected to be north of $2,000,000).

SWITZERLAND-AUTO-SHOW

Meanwhile, the new Lamborghini supercar, the Venenos, with similar specs – but without the electric, hybrid, motors – will sell for about $3,900,000. (The McLaren seems cheap at only about $1,000,000.) It is easy to say that these are nutty numbers, but the cars are not only selling, people are waiting in line (of course it is a allegorical line, at these prices, the future owners send somebody else to put their name on a list, somewhere).

These cars are called supercars because they truly are staggering capable, stunning to look at, and – relativity – exclusive. But, in the real world, what can anybody do with them. Going 100 miles per hour on any California public road – except, of course, an empty road in the Mojave – is pretty hard for longer than 30 second bursts (and, then, only by risking a major ticket). There are places in Nevada where driving very fast is possible but 200 miles per hour – even there – would be a good case for insanity.

At first, it seems that their only purpose is as wealth indicators – and people who are staggeringly wealthy do need to have some way to differentiate themselves from the hoi polloi – however, I suggest that another, greater purpose, is as eye candy for the rest of us. Even if we never see them in real life, just looking at the pictures and videos of these cars causes wonder and amazement to a geaarhead.

To my eye, the Lambo looks a little too much like the Batmobile and the LaFerrari is – by far – the better looking. The Ferrari, with its F16 fighterjet canopy, looks graceful as well as blindingly fast so I have included a promotional video.

Korea 1964-65 Part 3: the otherside of the fence

Korea, Psychological Musings

Back in Korea, at The Compound, at the aforementioned Enlistedmen’s Club, we had a PX. One of the few benefits of being in the Army are the PX’s. The military didn’t pay much – it probably still doesn’t – and one of the ways they make up for that is by giving us a place to buy stuff cheap. In our case, in Korea at The Compound, the big items were cheap beer and booze (I never saw any wine, but in those days I wasn’t looking for it). On a nice afternoon – maybe Sunday before our traditional steak barbecue – a nice way to pass the day was with an alfresco gathering. The dress rules in The Compound were pretty casual: on duty, we had to wear “appropriate ” uniforms – always fatigues for us  – when off base we had to wear Olive Drab wool uniforms or khaki uniforms. Officially, we were never allowed to wear civilian clothing in Korea but, in The Compound,  sometimes guys did and nobody seemed to care. 

My home – my bunk – in The Compound, was next to the back door of  the Radar and Fire Control Quonset Hut and, outside “my door”, just beyond the perimeter fence,  was a Magpie – Pica pica I found out about 15 minutes ago – nest and its chattering seemed to be mocking me. It seemed to be saying You think the world is inside your fence; the world is really outside, here. And it was. A world that was very different from any I had seen before. While we weren’t – exactly – forbidden to go out into Korea, we certainly were not encouraged and it took me awhile to get there.

My first views were from the inside of the Courier truck on a trip to the Eighth Army Headquarters in Seoul. As an aside, one of my favorite stories is shown in the picture, below. Where we were , in rural Korea, there was no refrigeration and very few trucks (no private ones). Almost every family raised a pig or two and getting the pigs to market was a problem. If the pig was killed before being taken to market, it would start to go bad, in the heat, on the long trip, if it was put on the back of a bicycle, it would squirm too much. So the family would have a tearful going away party for the pig – who was almost a pet and part of the family – and then the drunk farmer would load the passed out pig on the back of his bicycle on take him – or her – to market. Seeing a drunk farmer weaving down the road with a passed out pig strapped to the back of a bike was a fairly common sight. End aside.

Finally, I started walking into – for me – this new World. Often talking somebody else into joining me, but sometimes going alone.

Korea, where we were, was poor. It was the first time I had left California, except for a day trip to Tijuana, and I pretty much thought poor was taking the bus (although I had done alot of hitchhiking during Highschool). This was real poor, dirt roads poor, garbage in the streets and shitting by the side of the road poor. I don’t remember what I expected except it wasn’t downtown Nam Yang above. For a long time my shock hid the reality that everybody was working, that all the kids were in school, that this was a country on the make.

Over time, I began to see the beauty of Korea, and the hard work.

 

At some point – and I don’t remember the circumstances at all – Terry Upman and I volunteered to guest teach a couple of English classes at the local school. I don’t remember being very good at it – although I do remember making the kids laugh – but it opened another gate and I was invited to dinner  in Suwon with a couple of teachers.

I was starting to become an Asiaophile, but I never expected the change that Korea made. From impoverished, war-torn, country to one of the Four Asian Tigers with an average UN Human Development Index – a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, standards of living, and quality of life – that is higher than France or Italy. I didn’t expect this

or this

to turn into this (not my pictures).

I didn’t expect Seoul’s South Gate to go from this

to this (not my picture).

But, maybe, my picture of South Gate in 1964 foreshadows the South Gate of today. In my picture are two buses that look sort of like a VW Micro-bus except that they are four wheel drive for the – then – dirt, and often very muddy, roads and they acted like communal taxis. The buses would hang around at a large parking lot, each bus going to a different, specific, place, when the bus was full of people going to the same place, it would take off. Because the buses were marked in Korean, it was hard to find the bus to Nam Yang, and they were not as comfortable as the Courier truck, I only took them once or twice. But I do remember thinking that they would be great in the US. Imagine how handy it would be to catch a direct bus from San Francisco to – say – Telegraph and University in Berkeley, or Portola Valley, or downtown Fairfield.

Looking at the buses in Seoul, was the first time I saw that the weak sauce of American superiority – in everything – often covers an inability to learn from others. Korea didn’t have that alleged advantage. The next time I saw it was in Japan, when I walked from a train platform directly onto the train without climbing stairs. I see it in subways in Hong Kong and high speed trains in Shanghai; all transportation solutions that would help the Bay Area and California. And it is not just in the public sector, I saw it the last time I got into a General Motors car and noticed the goofy power seat controls so much less intuitive than the seat controls in a Mercedes Benz that almost every European and Asian car has adopted.

Reviewing my slides from Korea has been quietly cathartic (to quote Malcolm Pearson). I am surprised at how much one year has informed my life.

The death of an old Army buddy

Americana, Psychological Musings, Uncategorized

I learned today that Jerry McFetridge died almost a year ago. I knew him as Brit McFetridge when we were together, in the Army – on a HAWK missile site – in Korea during 1963 and, possibly, 1964.  It makes me sad. Much sadder than I would have expected if I had thought about it a couple of hours ago. I am not sure why.

We were next door neighbors while we were in Korea. Next door neighbors in the Army – in this case, at least – means that we had bunk beds next to each other in the Fire Control and Radar Quonset Hut. In those days, individuals were sent to existing units overseas – and in the Korea which was considered a war zone even though nobody was shooting  – and our time in country overlapped. He rotated1 into Korea before me and, therefore, rotated out before me and while we were there together, we were good friends. In the sort of strange way that sometimes happens in a seminar, or the military, or on a sports team when the the only real connection is the shared activity.

Except in this case, we had almost the same interests. According to his obituary, Mr. McFetridge was remembered by friends as a hardworking, loyal and fun-loving man who enjoyed outdoor adventures. He paddled Western river rapids, backpacked along the Pacific Crest Trail and hiked the Annapurna mountains in Nepal. He traveled to Italy and Mexico, and he recently was preparing for a bike trip across Vietnam. I remember him as the guy in the picture above but, of course, he had really become the guy below.

I am not sure how I can miss a guy I haven’t seen in 45 years and who I really don’t know, but I do. It makes me sad. Rest in peace, Britt.
1. Rotated in is Army talk for He went to Korea.

My favorite news story this year…so far

Americana, Around home, Psychological Musings

The Palo Alto Daily Post reported that an Albanian couple and their daughter were arrested for shop lifting from – at? – the Nordstrom store in the Stanford Shopping Center. Apparently, when they were apprehended leaving the store, they tried to throw the merchandize back into the store and then they ran in different directions.

I know almost nothing about Albania except where it roughly is and that, over the last half century, a goodly number of Albanians have migrated to the – then – Serbian province of Kosovo (which always seemed to me as a place to migrate from). In my imagination, Albania is a poor country that looks like the picture above with the natives dressing in well-worn Western European clothing – much like people in the Caucuses – rather than colorful peasant clothing like Guatemalan huipiles. In 2011, Albania was named as a great travel destination by the Lonely Planet, so maybe it really looks like the picture below.

Either way, the the Barjaba family, of whom the patriarch is the chief executive of the Socialist Party of Albania and the Dean of the School of Political Sciences at the Mediterranean University of Albania, were engaged in a little informal wealth redistribution while visiting Palo Alto – which has to be richer than anyplace in Albania – to see their daughter who is at Stanford taking graduate courses in Democracy and The Rule of Law.

 

A thought on New Year predictions

Americana, Psychological Musings, Uncategorized

 

Predictions are almost always based on logic and the future is almost always outside the logic box of the present. In very late 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and, in retaliation, in even later 1979 or early 1980, then President, Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would boycott the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.

At the time, I thought that it was a bad move on Carter’s part and have come to think even less of it as I look back. In 1980, the Olympics were advertised as being about the amateur joy of Sport and one of the – alleged – differences between the Soviet Union and the United States was that our athletes were independent amateurs and the Soviets were state sponsored professionals. How could the President tell them to stay home? But he did; and they did. I still think that the boycott made us look petty and powerless.  It was a childish, If you are going to invade Afghanistan, I’m taking my toy and going home (when the team wasn’t even – theoretically – the President’s toy).

More importantly to my argument here, I also thought that it was a bad precedent. The next Summer Games would be in Los Angeles and it seemed to me that the Soviets would probably return the favor by boycotting our Olympic fifteen minutes of fame. After that, would come the Olympics in Seoul, an American client state, which would not even allow the North Koreans, a Soviet client state,  into the country  so the Soviets would most likely pull out of that Olympics. This was less than twenty years after Khrushchev had – reportedly – banged his shoe on the lectern at the UN, saying We will bury you. and the Cold War was still going strong. Of course. none of this happened. None of this came even close to happening and I realized how weak my chain of logic was.

By the 1992 Olympics, the Soviet Union no longer existed, something that had never occurred to me (or the CIA, I might add).

In the 1950s, General Electric starting building their Appliance Park in Kentucky and by the 1980s, it was the largest production facility in the world; bigger than FoxCom. But, during the late 1990s and the oughts, GE shipped production overseas leaving much of the Appliance Park empty. A couple of years ago, there were rumors that the Appliance Park was being put up for sale, but nobody wanted it because everybody was shipping production overseas as fast as possible. The experts were writing about the almost universal job flight to some cheap, offshore, factory. We lamented that, with the loss of manufacturing jobs, went the machinery and the collective memory needed to compete for future production.

Then a funny thing happened, Jeff Immelt, GE’s CEO, started to actually look at the numbers. The costs of sending production offshore were more than expected, the cost of bringing the produced items back is increasing with the increasing cost of oil, and the problems turn out to be more extensive than projected (what a surprise). It began to look like it might be slightly cheaper to manufacture some high-end stuff here, so GE brought back the production of a high-end water heater. It turned out that, because we have lost alot of our production ability, the water heater, as designed, was too complicated to build in the USA. But the engineers, the designers, were right next door and they could walk over and talk to the – probably few remaining – production guys. They could work back and forth, making the water heater simpler, easier, to build. While they were at it, they redesigned the production line.

In the end, General Electric was able to drop the sales price of the water heater by about $300, form about $1600 to $1299 and – probably – make more money. As a bonus, the quality of the water heater has gone up and GE was able to cut their inventory because it is so much easier to ship from Kentucky than China. Now GE is bringing back some manufacturing capacity from Mexico and I just read General Motors is bring back the production of the new Camaro from Canada.

None of this was projected – say five years ago – when jobs were  being shipped overseas like crazy and we were all worried that we would end up not actually making anything. The problem with projecting the future is that we almost always project the present out into that future void and, often, that is not what happens. Back when Jimmy Carter protested the Soviet intervention to basically protect the pro-Soviet Norther Alliance, nobody would have believed that – some twenty years later – we would be in Afghanistan arming, training, and protecting the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. The unknown future is often ironic.

In an asides, one of my favorite movies is Personal Best which is about a group of women competitors vying for berths on the 1980 U.S. Olympics team which did not go to Moscow.