So you want to fix Social Security, how about…… merchandising

Yes that is right let’s sell t-shirts with cute sayings about being old and baseball caps saying I’m old, I have medicare with a new spruced up logo.

Why not? It is certainly the American way.

Okay maybe not, but certain people in Congress are wanting to raise the age for full retirement to 70 to help stave off Social Security running low on funds.

Interesting that the very same people who can receive a pension up to 80% of their last salary, (depends on years served, age) and because of their salary as a   Representative they receive higher social security payments than the average person in general receives want to save social security by hurting the people who need it most. 

And think about this; one of the reasons people don’t earn much through their social security is due to lack of wage growth while they were working. So the last 50 or 60 years of slow wage growth and not just relative to the rate of inflation has hurt the social security fund and hindered the amount of benefits people receive when they start taking their social security payments. Did you need another reason to be hissed off that the federal minimum wage is squat ($7.25) and hasn’t changed in how long? (2009)

Yet our elected officials who are paid by your tax dollars are receiving significantly more than the people they are elected to serve with pension funds, yet most Americans do not have a pension from their employer anymore so need social security as a basis for their retirement income. And we are told we have workplace retirement savings plans for us to save which is true, but it helps if we earn enough to save or as all these good politicians will tell us, make the sacrifices to save more. Sounds like a good idea, except heath care costs are growing faster than inflation, housing costs are exploding, so yep we have all this extra money to save. 

And your elected officials also have a savings plan through the Federal government and you guessed it they also receive a “company match” paid by your tax dollars.

So most Americans have suffered through anemic wage growth, high costs that eat into savings rates, and a social security plan that is the ripe to be cut to balance the federal budget. 

And somehow or another these elected officials keep getting re-elected over and over again to the point everyone wants term limits, but won’t discuss the real issue of holding our elected officials accountable to us and representing us. And some of them earn over $100,000 in pension, receive higher than average social security and have a savings plan where money is deposited for them. And the icing on the cake, better healthcare. 

And then there are some that want Wall Street to manage the Social Security Trust fund. Sure, put the people who hoard wealth in charge of the average person’s turnip squeezed life blood. That sounds like it will work…. for them. And they just love supporting decent wages for workers, too. uh…………… Well they should.

Maybe hocking t-shirts and caps is the solution and you can do that until you are 80 if some in Congress have their way.

Yet if you are a regular reader you know that there are other ideas espoused that at least think about you and I.

Well no soap opera trades, but..

The Dallas Mavericks survived the draft and may actually have the start to a better team if not much better. 

Sure they did not receive Clint Capela and apparently because they did want to give up Green and Hardy. I am a bit impressed. 

What they did shoots down the win right now thinking, yet they may not be that far off. If they can sign Kyrie and are able to get a decent veteran for the mid level exception on a couple of years to give all the young players a year to develop and maybe another piece next year, they may be playoff bound this year and a contender in two years. Still some work to be done and free agency is still way too important (what happens when you haven’t drafted decently for ten years except for Luka), yet two good signings and things are looking significantly up. 

Holmes ain’t bad and could be a really good surprise with the change of scenery. We will see. 

The two draft picks are great compliments to a strong foundation so we need the free agency to go well for this foundation to be real championship contenders in those two years. Or if we could trade Hardaway for a decent 3 and d player, even an older veteran to get us through this year then we could really look at adding more youthful potential to give us five years of possible contention starting in two years. I liked Bertans, but that was a good move trading him so maybe lightning can strike twice and we can trade Hardaway or better yet him and JaVale. Could things go so well?

July 1st is not that far away, but as a Mavs fan it will feel like an eternity.

Cheers

Putin, Prigozhin, Russia, I had some serious machiavellian conspiracy theories going then….

Okay, we were all curious as heck as to what was going on with Putin, Prigozhin and Shoigu Saturday morning, was it going to be shoot out at the OK Corral in Moscow, or what?

I had the best conspiracy going and by the time I might be able to put pen to paper the whole thing changed course faster than a hypersonic missile. 

Anyway my thinking was Prigozhin and Putin were in cohoots all along. Prigozhin complains about the elites screwing up everything and marches on Moscow to show Putin he has the evidence Putin was lied to, Putin eradicates a view people such as Shoigu and now has a way to back out of the Ukraine War without “losing”. Yes wild eyed thinking, but hey why not. Rarely am I this optimistic a tragedy can end this quickly. 

Or why would Prigozhin risk everything on a crazy march to Moscow. There is something we do not know even with Lukashenko’s deal. Or is the answer as simple as Prigozhin has gone bat crazy and needs to be locked up for his own good. Right now, who knows, but we get to love the drama.

The only real problem is people in Ukraine are still dying needlessly.

The obvious Dallas Mavericks quandary

Well the NBA draft is almost here. I am not sure what is the best draft option for the Mavericks, but I do know that by July 10 or much sooner they need to somehow find a new center, new 3 and d player both under thirty and keep Luka, Kyrie, Reggie, Maxi Josh and Jaden. And since they are not going to keep or try to sign Christian Wood maybe just maybe just maybe keep Dwight Powell as the back up center, but if the Mavericks do then they definitely need a solid center that is strong on defense.

No easy task to say the least. Tim Hardaway Jr. is not a high trade asset and even though I like Davis Bertans he is even a less attractive trade target.

Losing any of the above that I mentioned we keep just destroys any depth potential unless the Mavericks make some wild three or four player trade where we get back some players that are at least as good as Maxi or Reggie then they shouldn’t pull that string.

All of us Maverick fans are sweating what Luka may do in a year or two if this offseason doesn’t improve the team. So the Mavericks have one large quandary with a capital Q.

And oh yeah, they have to have a full roster and still try to maintain some cap flexibility. That Q just keeps getting larger and larger.

There are the infamous NBA soap opera rumors the Mavericks are in trade talks with Atlanta for John Collins while one article said the Mavericks want Clint Capela instead of Collins which if you hear the other soap opera rumor the Mavericks may want Williams from the Celtics then a fan can start to have hope, but all this is in the soap opera dreams of the NBA, but something has to happen without losing depth. Yet it is our right as fans to dream, even dreams that have a one percent chance of coming true. Scary but true that Capela and Williams is the closest route to getting what would benefit the Mavericks at the most practical level right now without getting into the wild and wooly fantasy trade ideas. 

Capela and Williams would definitely add some help defensively and if the Mavericks keep Kyrie then you have 60 plus points a night between Luka and Kyrie easy so all you need is the other 6 players in the top of the rotation to average in the low double figures in points each night. Luka and Kyrie are great at assists so that shouldn’t be too hard. Ah yes the fans dreaming comes so easy.

The start of the madness is this Thursday and then carries forward the following week. The Mavericks offseason track record says “don’t get your hopes up” yet again we have the right to dream no matter the size of that capital Q.

Crossed fingers for now. I would say prayers too, but honestly this is only sports and there are much more important worries going on here on planet Earth that need our prayers so sports is for fun and enjoyment and remotes crashing through TV screens and nothing more. 

Cheers

Geez Louise, do we have to talk about 2024?

 Let’s get the obvious over first, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are too old. In fact have of Congress is too old or too tiring.

So what next then? For the Republicans Ron DeSantis has stuck his foot and other assorted body parts in his mouth so often I am surprised he can still walk.

And what exactly would a conservative agenda be in 2024 besides owning the libs and shutting down “woke” (whatever that is) or do we get the infamous tried and true Republican talking points of spend less, tax less which really hasn’t worked for the working and middle class, hence one of the reasons Trump is so popular. Not that he did anything for the vast majority of this country, but he sure talks a mean game.

And yet the Democrats do spend too much and without any accountability to what they are spending. It is one thing to create programs to try and produce results, yet when no one knows exactly what are the goals and expected outcomes without measurable results, why are we spending the money.

Some will say we need a businessman to run the country and by my last statement above you may think I feel that way. Well, no. I do believe that we need to use business tactics when we create new programs to make sure they are achieving desired results, but a person who focuses on running a successful business is too single minded by design to manage competing interests found in politics. Business success and government success are not interchangeable. Yet again applying some business concepts to all the programs the Democrats want to create wouldn't hurt mainly because you can adapt if something is not working. Developing new programs to help the poor or build new infrastructure is beneficial for the country, but if you do not know if they are working or moving a needle then you are wasting money.

All that aside though this is supposed to be about 2024 candidates which the excitement fizzles from the get go. As to be expected the party not in office will have more possible candidates to choose from, while the party in office will circle the wagons around keeping their person in office.

Yet again Biden and Trump are too old, way too old. You do want someone with a bit of experience in their life to be President, but when the combined age of the two front runners is over 150, that is a bit dicey. I do not care that people say they are both able to run and ready to serve, those people are lying.

So again who is there behind Biden and Trump? And yes the Republicans have quite a slew of candidates, but are any of them A) able to beat Trump in the primaries and B) have a real plan to govern? For both parties’ talking points it has gotten old, even older than Biden. And the Democrats have had the same problem for quite a while. There really isn’t a dynamic candidate or group of candidates to make a national splash. Maybe Governor Newsom from California, but he hasn't been tested nationally yet. Sure he has gone to Florida to poke at Governor DeSantis, but that is easy pickings since DeSantis cannot keep his head out of his swamp down there so how viable is Newsom?

Which means can DeSantis make a splash on the national stage? He has achieved some national name recognition, but that is different from making an impact nationally. 

And then there is everyone else, Tim Scott?, Haley?, Pence?, Ryan Binkley??, Ramaswamy?, Christie?, Perry Johnson?, Asa Hutchinson?, Larry Elder?, Doug Burgam and yes I went and dug up a list and I think there are a couple more.

And for the Democrats? Kamala Harris?, Newsom?, anyone else excite you? Which falls under my previous 2020 posts, there is no bench in the Democratic Party? 

And what ever happened to the Forward Party? Much less any other more standard third party like the Libertarians and the Green Party? Will either of these have a candidate that captures the Nation’s attention.

The good and bad news is we are just getting started.

And the one policy that most of us agree on is there is too much money in politics and we need to reign that in faster than I can finish this post.

Cheers

That word better is a bit generalized, but what is the follow up

 And that is difficult to find or define. Better can be taken out of context, but it is not just a generalized term, it is also subject to individual interpretations. What I think is better is completely different from what you think is better.

And then for me to say that society needs to make it “better” is just another monsterous context problem that you as the reader cannot make heads or tails.

So lets switch gears and not define better, but try and find out why we cannot make our society or government better. And there is actually some context for this thought.

It is hard to make something better if you have no control to make your own life better. And for our own society or government to be better we need the personal ability to make our lives better, but yet again if our society or government were better then it would be easier to make our lives better and the circular philosophy begins. So lets take a quote completely out of context to see what we can do.

One of the many complaints I have had over the years is the decline of the middle class in our society. And there are many reasons for this, but I recently came across a different perspective than I normally read.

I have been reading a book called The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate, MD with Daniel Mate.(not finished yet) This book deals mainly with how trauma affects our lives and more specifically our health. The bottom of the cover has this blurb: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. And this is important because it is this (or a) toxic culture that prevent us from being better. And if you throw in that people have experienced trauma that affects their lives, and the book goes into great detail about this aspect, you get an idea of why better is more difficult than we would like it to be. 

So it brings me Chapter 19″From Society to Cell: Uncertainty, Conflict, and Loss of Control. 

“We know that chronic stress, whatever its source, puts the nervous system on edge, distorts the hormonal apparatus, impairs immunity……..” and goes on to start to tie in the stress affecting us individually affects us as a society. And that leads to page 214 (there are footnotes in his book that you are not included in this text).

“Many people exist at the mercy of forces completely beyond their power to affect let along control. Who knows when the next cyclic recession will strike or when yet another megabusiness will downsize, merge or relocate so that livelihoods are jeopardized with barely a day’s notice. Even prior to COVID-19′s economic ravages, one had become almost inured to news that yet another corporation was declaring masses of employees redundant “High Street Crisis Deepens as 3,150 Staff Lose Jobs in One Week” was a headline in the Guardian in January 2020 a few weeks before the pandemic arrived in Britain” (and currently we can add the AI headlines to adding to our job stresses, my note). “Only months earlier, the New York Times had reported on the deepening insecurity of American families: “The cost of housing, health care and education are consuming ever larger shares of household budgets and have risen faster than incomes. Today’s middle class families are working longer, managing new kinds of stress and shouldering greater financial risks than previous generations did. (13) As the famed anthropologist, researcher and author Wade Davis remarked recently in a broadly circulated Rolling Stone piece, “Though living in a nation that celebrates itself as the wealthiest in history, most Americans live on a high wire, with no safety net to brace a fall(14).  A better blueprint for allostatic overload could not be imagined.” 

So what do this mean to achieving better, interestingly this goes back to my attempt at humor with the circular statement above. In my opinion the three most important aspects of having a successful middle class are the three items mentioned in the New York Times piece from the book. Having good housing, health care and education are the foundations for families to feel secure and then be able to grow. You have heard it many times the backbone of a democracy is a strong middle class and to have a strong middle class you need housing and health care security, then education to grow as a person and be able to contribute even more. If the middle class is struggling with all three then the middle class struggles to be better hence they cannot contribute to the larger better of society. So to make the middle class better hence our country better or our government better, we need to make ourselves better, but here comes the circle, we need the government to be better so we have access or have the ability to access better housing, healthcare and education. 

This blurb from the book is out of context from the whole of the book, yet it helps me to explain some of the challenges we face when I say we need to make things better. 

Like I mentioned I have not read the whole book and there are some aspects of it from talking to others who have finished it that I would not condone, but overall if we are experiencing events that create a sense of trauma in us, (better explained in the book) then how can we go forth as a well rounded human being to overcome what ails us to become better. The book references this as a concern for our overall health, but in the chapter 19 it touches on more of what I pratter on about which is the health of our society or any society for that matter.  

How can I ask you as a fellow citizen to help us make this country better, when we are all affected by traumatic events in our lives that negatively effect how we perceive what is better. A hungry person sees a meal as better, a rich person sees more wealth as better, but for the vast majority of us, what should be our basics in having a strong society have been lost over the years or why I say the middle class is declining. Unfortunately I am not so well read that I have references handy to back me up, however I do feel confident that this topic has voluminous works that would validate some of my points.

I do like this book because it is an interesting read, but also because it hit on something I feel is lost today from a completely different viewpoint. Sure one paragraph on page 214 is not the whole answer, but it alludes to exactly what all of the middle class is feeling right now which is this feeling that something has been taken away from us that we are having a hard time identifying. And if we cannot identify or put our finger on it, we cannot define what would be better. 

Which leads me to say, we need new leadership (new parties) to stop the circular philosophical problem above and help us identify what is needed for better housing, healthcare and education and subsequently help us get there.

Cheers

with both parties being obstinate, wait they always say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but...

This was actually written a couple of weeks ago, but never made it to this platform, but still want to be consistent so adding it now:

 I am really ready to tear a …wait, wait wait, I will try to be nice, 

so we have a debt crisis or a spending crisis or a just a political crisis and no one wants to blink, well the Republicans are a bunch of … trying real hard here and the democrats are just being ….

So what does all this mean?

If you ask me, Biden should go on National TV and just turn the tables on the far right individuals in Congress, he should propose that the tax rate reduction from Trump for the middle class that is going to expire in a few years be extended, and even reduced a bit more, yet some of that reduction be transferred to the social security deductions in our paycheck, the upper limit of income for the social security deductions be raised; then the employer portion of the deduction remains the same so they don’t shoulder extra burdens (see below), he should re instate part of the upper income limits that was dropped from the aforementioned Trump tax law so maybe it goes up half of what was reduced, and basically sell this as a way to start fixing social security so no need to cut Social Security payments in the Republican plan, increase income via the tax increase on the higher income to help reduce future deficit spending and agree to a work program for people on the other government aid spending programs where there is a graduated lowering of benefits with income, but that the federal minimum wage is also increased (why their half of the payments is not raised) so that the work program is productive for people so they eventually receive benefits for wages below certain thresholds or they are earning enough where they do not need benefits. 

President Biden should go on a hard sell saying his plan bolsters the working and middle class, protects the lower class, but does hold them accountable to make certain efforts, and if we get the minimum wage increased that means more people are potentially adding a small portion to tax revenue and slightly lowers the long term cost.

Also increase the taxes on short term trading for investment companies and hedge funds and similar entities since this trading does not benefit the economy as a whole, but leave long term rates the same to encourage true investment in the economy.

Just a bunch of quick hit ideas I have mentioned in some shape form or fashion before, but the Democrats won’t force the issue and the Republicans won’t listen to common sense so basically we are all back to square one. Yet there are many answers to our current situation that are much better than what is being discussed. 

We have crisis, we have hostage taking, we have headlines, we have economic collapse, yet what we don’t have

 is something better.

We got compromise and no one and everyone cheers.

And that my friends is the problem. It took a compromise of bad ideas to solve a major issue or problem and yet the problem is not solved, just kicked down the road two years and sooner or later another crisis whether real or media driven will make headlines again. 

Do we need to reign in our spending? Yes we do. Do we need to take care of the poor? Yes we do. Does our military need to dominate our budget? No, but we need one. Do we spend too much on healthcare? Yes we do. Are we healthy? Not by a long shot. Can our high school graduates look forward to their future? Yes they do, but not because we are doing them any favors. They have to make their own future in spite of what we have done. And it appears we have left them some tough sailing. Can our high school graduates feel good about their education? Not really and that really falls on society. 

Does anyone feel good about what our government is doing? You can answer that one.

To me, we should and could be doing better, but as long as we accept the crap thrown at us day in and day, better ain’t happening.

We let the fringe, the radicals, the far side of each side dominate what happens to us in society. And even the fringe, the radicals, and the far side of each obtain no benefit from what they do or want or say.

Why is better so hard? Some social scientists will try and tell us an answer or even I will find something or someone to blame. 

We can make better cars or better TVs or better sports teams, but making us better, too much work. Or people tend to think so. 

Is it a matter of common sense? Or is it deep philosophical thinking that will produce the answers? Or should we just turn the planet over to artificial intelligence and let it go? Build robots for the robots until they can build them themselves?

No to either of the above, but we do need to do something different. And what is different? And for some people better is a pejorative term because they would rather complain than find what might actually work. It does take effort to be better or make something better, even a better washer and dryer means something has to be studied, researched, models have to be tested to make sure it is better before selling it. So making government or society better, sheesh, that is some serious work. 

If the human race was an experiment, exactly what is the expected outcome? Or is the expected outcome that we figure all this out on our own?

Whatever the answer, what just happened with the debt limit should not have been the answer. I don’t know if blindly raising the debt limit solves the problem, but blindly accepting a compromised answer is not the answer either.

We are smart people, heck we built smart phones, yet better elude ourselves consistently. There are better answers, but until we decide we really want better,  it will elude us no end. 

On a side note I could think of a thousand ways to have handled that crisis differently and so could you, it is ourselves that prevent us from success. Public policy is just making things better for the public or at least it should be. Why is it so complicated when actual productive answers are written down every day?

Next time you think about the whole of us as humans, as society, as a country, think what you can do for someone else because that is the start of better.  Or am I rephrasing John Kennedy too readily, but hey not such a bad idea if put into practice no matter how phrased or at what level.

Cheers