SLIM JIM

I got my NC driver's license in August of 1962, one day after my 16th birthday.  It was the most liberating feeling I have probably ever had!  I had wanted my driver's license since I was a small child.  I was obsessed with driving!  The very next month, I would be exiled to a boarding school in another state a couple of hours away.  I would be brutally ripped out of an element that I had prepared my whole life to conquer, only to be thrust into an alien world that would be utterly unimpressed with my careful planning, and no automobiles to use.  I was determined, however, to live as much of my life as possible in the three weeks or so that were left.

I had passed the ubiquitous parallel-parking obstacle in the driver's license test and was thus unleashed on the innocent planet!  My mother had a 1960 Oldsmobile 88 station wagon, one of the largest vehicles ever built!  It also had a very large, powerful V-8 engine!  Therefore, one balmy summer day I was demonstrating for one of my evil friends a major discovery: how to manipulate the "Slim-Jim" Hydramatic transmission in that Olds to make it "get rubber" like a manual-shift!!  It first required mashing the shit out of the accelerator, pushing the car really fast, then taking one's foot completely OFF the accelerator just as the transmission is shifting from a lower gear to a higher gear!  As there is a momentary neutral pause between gears, I then would slam my foot back down on the accelerator and hold it firmly in place!  That would cause the very powerful and big engine to scream loudly in that momentary neutral then, as the next gear catches, the car would lurch forward with a roar and, sometimes, squeal the tires!  It was fantastic!  For some stupid reason, there was only one exhaust pipe on that car, all of its 8 cylinders having to push their burnt fuel gases out a single tailpipe that would make a vicious hissing sound like a jet plane taking off!  It was SO gratifying to my 16-year-old ears!

Well, as an unindicted co-conspirator, I was enjoying these manifestations so much!  My evil friends were horribly bad influences on me; they would encourage the WORST in me!  As we roared down the long straight stretch along the local golf course that day, we were laughing maniacally!  A woman on the golf course asked my MOTHER if that was not her car roaring down the road!  They were out there playing golf, I was showing off most horribly right in front of my mother's eyes!  With her car!  Duh!  Needless to say, when Mom got home, she ate my ass alive!  It was all my friends' fault!

I think I now understand why I was put into boarding school.

BODY-WASH OPERAS

(E-mail sent to several friends recently.)


When I was a kid growing up in NE North Carolina, my parents' house was in some sort of electromagnetic "dead zone" such that we could receive only one TV station out of Norfolk, originally an NBC affiliate that changed, in the mid-1950's, to CBS.  Consequently, whenever I was home sick, there was only a bunch of CBS soap operas to watch on TV, and I would mindlessly stare at the TV screen while they were running as "white noise" for my healing comfort.  The gallons of chicken noodle soup that I consumed were no help.  At an early age I determined that soap operas were utter crap not to be taken seriously, and certainly not to be watched by intelligent people.  Serious actors, however, have said that their time on soap operas was great for their careers, steady work, good pay and intensely serious acting.

The problem with all soap operas, though, especially for one weaned on cowboy or detective drama that was always utterly resolved in less than 30 minutes, is that soap operas were NEVER resolved!  Nothing ever seemed to get finished!

So, fast-forward to the HBO and PBS offerings in the late-20th and early-21st Centuries, and to those of us now addicted to the likes of "The Sopranos," "Tombstone," "Boardwalk Empire," "Game of Thrones," "Downton Abbey" and "Mr. Selfridge."  Most of us fail to recognize that we are addicted to what I would call these "body-wash operas," "body-wash" being just a fancy name for liquid "soap."  The aforesaid dramatic offerings which have garnered large followings are just as unresolved as the "soaps" of the 1950'as and 1960's.  The newer offerings being high-minded or vulgar or murderous or sexually explicit is no excuse.

And, being a scum-sucking hypocrite, I am just as addicted now to these latest offerings as were our predecessors to the early TV "soaps."  So, it was with great sadness that I had to part company last night with Season Two of "Mr. Selfridge," the fictionalized PBS drama about the founding of the great department store in London, "Selfridge's."  When I realized that was the "finale" for Season Two, I felt an emptiness, a loneliness thereafter that might be matched only by the death of a loved pet or even a family member.  What crap!  I embarrass myself!  But, will that prevent me from tuning in Season Three if/when it returns?  I doubt it.

I spent Sunday afternoon away, then raced home so that I could watch last week's final rerun of "Game of Thrones" (which I had repeatedly missed) at 8 PM on HBO, followed by the two-hour "Mr. Selfridge" finale above-mentioned on PBS.  That was three full hours of narcotic fixation, interrupted only by one most undesirable, annoying phone call.  As PBS does not do "reruns," I had determined to watch "Mr. Selfridge" at 9 PM and postpone my further narcotic satisfaction with the conflicting new episode of "Game of Thrones" until later in the week, since it will rerun almost every night.  Now, with "Mr. Selfridge" gone, I regret I shall have to make do with only "Game of Thrones" until "Boardwalk Empire" and/or "Downton Abbey" start up again.  My life is so empty and meaningless!

For anyone reading this who has managed to avoid these programs, I shall say only that you are doing SOMETHING right!  Stay away!  Do not come close, or you WILL be sucked in, never to be released.  And, DON'T bother to call on Sunday nights!

LIES, DAMNED LIES & STATISTICS!

Many folks are sick by now of reading my diatribes about the pathetic economic malaise that has persisted for years.  I have opined that the lack of spending money and market DEMAND among the hoi polloi is a much bigger factor than taxes laid upon wealthier folks, who are stupidly and dishonestly referred to as "job creators" (so, Spunky, where are the jobs?).  Nothing could be further from the truth, but that bit of conventional "wisdom" has stuck like glue among most politicians, INCLUDING many feckless Dems!  I believe that anyone who is not conversant with basic economic market theory is going to be an abject fool when it comes to forming accurate concepts about how markets really work.  Many Republicans will intentionally distort the operation of market forces and many Dems will simply ignore them.

As I said, I have been pissing and moaning my opinions now for some time, but until now I haven't had much solid data to back my observations up--just my gut reactions, primarily based upon my observations in the record business.  Today, I discovered the US Bureau of Census Median (midpoint) and Mean (avg.) household income stats by region, at: 

https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/

Here are the most recent extractions for 13 years:

Table H-6.  Regions--All Races by Median and Mean Income: 1975 to 2012
(Households as of March of the following year.  Income in current and 2012 CPI-U-RS adjusted dollars (28))
Region and year	Number (thousands)	Median income		Mean income
		Current dollars	2012 dollars	Current dollars	2012 dollars
UNITED STATES
2012	122,459	51,017	51,017	71,274	71,274
2011	121,084	50,054	51,100	69,677	71,133
2010 (37)	119,927	49,276	51,892	67,392	70,970
2009 (36)	117,538	49,777	53,285	67,976	72,767
2008	117,181	50,303	53,644	68,424	72,968
2007	116,783	50,233	55,627	67,609	74,869
2006	116,011	48,201	54,892	66,570	75,810
2005	114,384	46,326	54,486	63,344	74,502
2004 (35)	113,343	44,334	53,891	60,466	73,501
2003	112,000	43,318	54,079	59,067	73,741
2002	111,278	42,409	54,127	57,852	73,837
2001	109,297	42,228	54,766	58,208	75,491
2000 (30)	108,209	41,990	55,987	57,135	76,180

It should be noted that the averages (means) in Table H-6 are much higher than the medians.  This would happen because the averages must take into account those households with really high incomes.  It is the principle illustrated by Bill Gates walking into a roomful of homeless people, and the average per-person income immediately shoots way up, but it will drop just as soon as Bill Gates leaves the room, and the others will remain no better off.  Such averages are almost worthless as data.

The median incomes are better stats for comparison, because a "median" is a true mid-point: half below and half above.  Note, that in a household getting $51,017 annually, if there are two adult earners therein, each is "averaging" only $25K or so!  That ain't chicken-feed!

The measured median household incomes has risen slowly from almost $42K in 2000 to $51K in 2012.  That is an "average" of about 6.9% a year.

The following table shows the percentage shares of aggregate income distribution by brackets.  The 5 fifths listed add up to 100%:

4 to 5.
Table H-2.  Share of Aggregate Income Received by Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Households, All Races:  1967 to 2012 (Households as of March of the following year) Year Number (thousands) Shares of aggregate income Lowest fifth Second fifth Third fifth Fourth fifth Highest fifth Top 5 percent
2012	122,459	3.2	8.3	14.4	23.0	51.0	22.3
2011	121,084	3.2	8.4	14.3	23.0	51.1	22.3
2010 (37)	119,927	3.3	8.5	14.6	23.4	50.3	21.3
2009 (36)	117,538	3.4	8.6	14.6	23.2	50.3	21.7
2008	117,181	3.4	8.6	14.7	23.3	50.0	21.5
2007	116,783	3.4	8.7	14.8	23.4	49.7	21.2
2006	116,011	3.4	8.6	14.5	22.9	50.5	22.3
2005	114,384	3.4	8.6	14.6	23.0	50.4	22.2
2004 (35)	113,343	3.4	8.7	14.7	23.2	50.1	21.8
2003	112,000	3.4	8.7	14.8	23.4	49.8	21.4
2002	111,278	3.5	8.8	14.8	23.3	49.7	21.7
2001	109,297	3.5	8.7	14.6	23.0	50.1	22.4
2000 (30)	108,209	3.6	8.9	14.8	23.0	49.8	22.1

Note that the higher the income bracket, the larger the share.  The top 5% share of 22.3% is included in the 51% of the "highest fifth."  So, the top 5% has 22.3% of that nut, and the other 15% have the remaining 28.7%; thus, 49% of the remaining aggregate income is shared among 80% of US households!

The following table shows the actual average incomes shared by each fifth of the households.  The top fifth's average is almost $182K, yet the top 5% within that bracket average $318K!  That means the other 95% of that highest 20% of households pull down that top 5% figure to "only" $182K!   One should compare these numbers with the median household income (Table H-6) for 2012 of $51,017 which, as one can see, hits within the "third fifth" bracket below.  The following table also shows that 40% of US households received less than $30K gross last year, while the top 5% got over $318K.

Table H-3.  Mean Household Income Received by Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent, All Races:  1967 to 2012
(Households as of March of the following year.  Income in current and 2012 CPI-U-RS adjusted dollars (29))
Year	Lowest fifth	Second fifth	Third fifth	Fourth fifth	Highest fifth	Top 5 percent
Current Dollars
2012	11,490	29,696	51,179	82,098	181,905	318,052
2011	11,239	29,204	49,842	80,080	178,020	311,444
2010 (37)	10,994	28,532	49,167	78,877	169,391	287,201
2009 (36)	11,552	29,257	49,534	78,694	170,844	295,388
2008	11,656	29,517	50,132	79,760	171,057	294,709
2007	11,551	29,442	49,968	79,111	167,971	287,191
2006	11,352	28,777	48,223	76,329	168,170	297,405
2005	10,655	27,357	46,301	72,825	159,583	281,155
2004 (35)	10,244	26,212	44,411	70,026	151,438	263,896
2003	9,996	25,678	43,588	68,994	147,078	253,239
2002	9,990	25,400	42,802	67,326	143,743	251,010
2001	10,136	25,468	42,629	66,839	145,970	260,464
2000 (30)	10,157	25,361	42,233	65,653	142,269	252,400

These numbers clearly demonstrate my repeated observations that the bulk of the population is losing spending money to the wealthier classes who simply don't spend much money.  That lack of SPENDING is clearly responsible for our economic malaise for the past several years!

The recently reported rise in the stock markets is irrelevant to these numbers because most US households have NOTHING to do with the stock markets!

The OBVIOUS solution is to "redistribute" some of that wealth imbalance through the power of taxation to funnel more spending money to the less wealthy households.

NOT because the wealthy should be punished!  But because their investments and the economy generally will degrade further over the long term if the bulk of the ordinary people do not have spending money!

As I have said many, many times, there is NO SUCH THING as a "supply-side" market--ALL markets are DEMAND-DRIVEN!  It should be obvious that there must be a demand for things before a market for sellers of those things will exist!

So, you can decide for yourself if any of this makes any difference.  I must confess my knowledge and appreciation of late English Prime Minister Benjamin D'Israeli's overriding observation about there being 3 kinds of lies:  Lies, DAMNED lies and Statistics!