Paid In Full. Or Not.

Thinkin of a master plan /
Cuz ain't nuthin but sweat inside my hand /
So I dig into my pocket, all my money is spent /
So I dig deeper but still comin up with lint

Spending money that isn't yours, that you can't back, and you don't have: Not a good idea, right? Yet, it seems on the large scale many didn't realize this seemingly simple premise. Mortgages owed to banks, those mortgages in turn swapped up by other institutions to collect debt and sell it as a commodity. Eventually, the mortgages turned out to be too large for many John Doe's britches. Problem is, the debt others saw as an asset thus became a liability. And thus went Wall Street as we know it. Not that I knew it well, or claim to understand economics; but, I try. Like many other subjects, I want to understand the way world may [or may not] work.

NYT bloggers Freakonomics recently brought in two economists to discuss the causes behind the problems on Wall Street and how it got this bad. Your basic mixture of Wall Street greed and a scheme that spirals out of control [credit default swaps being this generation's junk bonds].

What is odd to me is what has occurred because of this crisis: the government not just bailing out big business [for there certainly nothing new there], but literally buying big business. That would seemingly go against so-called free-market/laissez-faire economics that supposedly won out in the latter half of the 20th century and thus far in the 21st century. American taxpayers became owners of Bear Stearns a few months ago; more recently, they became owners of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the duo of mortgage giants. Now the government and its citizen shareholders also own AIG, the world's largest insurance corporation. Much of Wall Street has become [hopefully, and most likely, temporarily] nationalized.

Inalienable Rights

Thomas Jefferson decided John Locke's rights of man were perhaps a little too dismal sounding, that every man had the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property." Jefferson changed the last world--the pursuit of happiness sounds a lot better start for a nation than does 'mere' property. And yet, what is this pursuit? Is the pursuit of happiness just a nicer way of saying pursuit of property? Is it 'merely' the right for anyone to pursue (nearly) any vocation or means to a life? Or is there something more to it, they can not be measured materialistically, or at least be solely described by what one does to feed a family?

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot?"

Some think we are too obsessed with staying content with our lot. There is something to be said for the best art (in whatever media) coming from some form of pain or struggle; life is not always sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows (although that is a great song). To a point, that argument is moot; every person, no matter how rich or poor, talented or average, knows ups and downs--elation and depression, pain and happiness, the good and the bad. Individuality comes into play with how we handle our failures--and equally our successes. We can dwell on the failures so that they eat us away, or we can acknowledge what went wrong and know better for the future--this is true learning. We can bask in the successes so long as to forget what got us in there in the first place, and either fall back down because we forgot how to succeed, or worse---become removed, distant and aloof so as forget what the game was in the first place.

Liberty seems easy to define, for freedom and independence comes in many forms; in movement, in love, in work, in the little decisions we make that form a day, a month, a year, a life.

Life follows a similar path. Family, friends, fiances; such forms the basis of family and friendship. Work allows us to eat and succeed, drives us in whatever vocation we choose; sustains us and allows us to live. Rules of a society also protect life so that it may be sustained.

Happiness seems the most elusive, or at least the least obvious of three 'inalienable rights' of which Jefferson wrote. You could go back to Locke, and state merely that this is speaking of the accumulation of property--being paid for our work, and what we choose to do with compensation, the right of a person to build a life of one's own. Perhaps it is more than just the mere pursuit of property; perhaps there is another happiness, that certainly includes the pursuit of property within it's definition, but certainly does not fully explain whatever that search may be.

Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot. - Pirkei Avos 4:1

I Choo-Choo-Choose You

Marge: Homer, is this the way you pictured married life?

Homer: Yup, pretty much. Except we drove around in a van solving mysteries.



Two years out of college, it seems many classmates are either getting married or making plans to.

What is marriage? One philosopher takes a look.

Sweet Fat and Sparkling Sky

Earth shows it skin (for that is the part in which we live; the mantle being the inner organs, if you will) off in many forms of beauty; I have been lucky enough to see the Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon, the Rockies, the Sierra, and the California Coast. Those are all 'permanent' (at least in our era) geological features (besides the Great Barrier Reef, which is made up of many living things). Perhaps the most unique natural phenomenon is that of the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis; the Northern and Southern Lights. For many years these strange, mostly polar dances of light across the night sky remained a mystery for ages. While, like most of human knowledge, much remains to be discovered, scientists have reportedly found "the trigger" to those strange, surreal, and yet beautiful phenonemon. I hope to see it someday.















There are few things as American as a good, ol' fashioned bottle of Coca-Cola. Certainly there aren't many things that Atlanta identifies with more. Perhaps the Braves, Rhett Butler, or the Georgia Peach. All those, however, are arguable. American's favorite soft-drink, however, is really not. While a global symbol of America, Coke is also very adaptive to wherever one finds it. One of the enjoyments of visiting Coca-Cola World are the beverages from around the world, which are (of course) all products of this most American of companies. Also, corn, for whatever reason, is not allowed for Ashkenazic (i.e., European) Jews to eat during Passover. Thus, regular Coke is not Kosher for Passover; it must be made special for the holiday using cane sugar, instead of corn syrup. Trust me, it the real sugar tastes much better.

Coke got a lot of negative publicity in the early 80s with their "new Coke" formula. They announced they were switching back, and it has been "Coca-Cola Classic" since. However, it underwent a change around that time that was very different from it's own origins. Before that time, Coke got it's sweetness from good, ol' fashioned cane sugar: sucrose. Since, it has been sweetened by a corn product, high-fructose corn syrup. To say that this syrup, HFCS, is found is nearly every food product today in this country is not an understatement. Whenever anything needs to be sweetened, HFCS has been the way to go, at least recently. This, of course, has nothing to with taste, but cost. Corn syrup is significantly cheaper than real sugar; and who can blame someone, some company for trying to cut costs when it comes to somethign as simple as just trying to make things sweeter? However, it is not so simple. HFCS is cheap because corn is an American product, and we prop up our farmers with enormous subsidies; perhaps only France is comparable in terms of artificially propping up their farm industry. So, support American products, right? Well, it's not that simple. First of all, HFCS is worse for you than the cane sugar product, sucrose. Second, if we ever decide to cut back tariffs, imported sucrose could make things cheaper, and (slightly) healthier than HFCS (which has certainly gotten a lot of flak recently). This reaches even to energy issues, too; Brazilian ethanol is cheaper made than American, as it is a product of cane sugar, as opposed to corn. High tariffs and artificial subsidies prop up the American corn industry; thus, Americans become fat off of HFCS, quite literally.

In His Grave, Malthus Rolls Over

Baby Bust?

In many countries throughout the world, both rich and poor, religious and secular, birth rates are falling to historic lows--well below the rate to replace a population. Why is this occurring? What, if anything, should be done about it? Many reasons are given, and even more solutions are offered.

Numerous times since Malthus appeared on the world stage in the 18th century, fears about overpopulation and this planet not being able to support it's inhabitants have sprouted up. Perhaps those can partly explain various dystopian works related to great calamities that wipe out nearly all of mankind; works such as 12 Monkeys, where 99% of humans are wiped out by a mysterious plague; Children Of Men, where reproduction suddenly becomes impossible; or George Lucas' THX 1138, where someone unknown occurrence has forced humanity underground, and Robert Duvall struggles to reach the surface to see the sun. Each of these works were stoking fears of a drastically depopulated world, that current conditions can not possibly handle the seemingly inevitable overpopulated Earth, and that some calamity is imminent.

Many of those fears, stoked time and time again but perhaps most notably and recently in the 1970s, were of an exponentially growing human population, especially in developing nations. Since then, however, birth rates have fall drastically, well below replacement level in many nations, but especially Western and Southern Europe and Japan. Even India, where high birth rates stoked population explosion like nowhere else on Earth (after all, it is the 2nd most populous nation), has seen falling birth rates recently. Perhaps a new fear (or at least one we haven't seen in quite a long time) is depopulation--that world population numbers will soon fall. That's not exactly as big of a problem as Malthusian fears of an overpopulated, unsustainable planet, but it does lead to some serious demographic problems. Fewer and fewer workers to pay for more and more senior citizens eligible for social security, is just one example.

Malthus and various dystopias stoked fears of an overpopulated world. Certainly there are no current fears of an underpopulated one, but birth rates are falling in many countries--and well below replacement level.

Wealthier societies can often mean lonelier ones--who wants to become rich when you can't enjoy the spoils of it? Such societal changes have massive cultural effects. Where 'traditional' cultures have often been rural and marriage usually arranged at quite a young age, population shifts have seen huge movements in peoples from the countryside to the cities--the US has seen this occur rather gradually in it's nearly 250-year history, while China has seen this occur quite drastically in the last 25 years (the single largest mass migration in the history of the human species), and India is beginning to feel the effects of now (see Fareed Zakaria's excellent book The Post-American World, or any of a few recent works by Thomas Friedman).

One explanation is that of birth control--that the revolutionary spreading of contraceptives from the 1960s onwards have caused couples to put off children. However, the lowest birthrates in Europe are in more 'traditional countries'--the Catholic, Mediterranean nations of southern Europe. Another is that marriage is becoming an older, less common institution.

From the face of it, falling population does not seem a real serious problem--certainly not as much as the opposite. However, there are some serious demographic issues surrounding it. That lies in supporting the growing ranks of the retired: How will these various nations, with more and more retirees and fewer and fewer workers, be able to support their retirees? In this country, the question is how to fund Social Security. Certainly SSI will be a difficult issue in the (very-near) future; but the US is not as bad off as others--we have (almost) always done a very a good job at integrating immigrants. Europe has not, with many xenophobic fears of a 'Muslim' Europe. Also interesting to note is that while 9/11 was perpetrated by foreign terrorists who came into this country (on legal student visas), the attacks in both Madrid and London were committed by Al Qaeda wannabes, so-called 'homegrown' terrorists disillusioneed by a society that would not accept them in.

So, what's the point. What does the future look like? Will it be some dystopic combination of persecuted immigrant groups, high wire fences, minimal civil liberties, and wanton destruction? Will it come in a more natural form, man being overcome by some kind of virus or natural calamity? Our fears are stoked by there possibilities. The real future, however, will be much more difficult; as we have to solve problems of diminishing resources and increasing energy use; of fewer works to pay for more retirees; of a world where underpopulation could actually be the future. With that possibility, we are a long way from Malthus.

Brooklyn's King James?

Lebron James' contract is up in 2010. Jay-Z is part-owner of the New Jersey Nets. The Nets are moving to Brooklyn; the deal is complicated and is one of the most controversial projects Brooklyn has ever seen, but the arena designed by superstar architect Frank Gehry will likely be built, and possibly by 2010.

King James' lists NY as his favorite city. His favorite borough? Brooklyn.

Parenting Sees Shifting Gender Roles

Group of stay-at-home dads in NYC gets together for breakfast nearly every morning.

Some couples see nearly equal chores and parenting roles.