The Yardsale

I like going to yard sales sometimes so long that they are on my way somewhere or close to my home and I have a few minutes free. I almost never purchase anything but I always think of the stories about people finding treasures or fantastic deals on things and dream. Of course that never happens to me, all the yard sales I’ve ever been too are typically made up of old and undesirable clothing, trinkets and old electronics priced higher than something newer and better that I can buy down the street at Best Buy. I took my son to one this afternoon down the street and it was typical. Not bad, and the people were nice. They wanted $100 for some amplified speakers that looked at least 30 years old. I paid $30 each for a couple Polk amplified speakers last year in my garage that sound ten times better. And I forgot to mention that yard sales almost always include kid’s meal toys. Never anything good. The proprietors were encouraging me to buy my son some junky McDonald’s happy mean toy. I always feel bad later since they always seem to look at me like I’m mean to my son since I won’t buy him yard sale toys. If only they knew that the floor of my home is at least sixty percent toy. Oh well, one day I’ll find a Kandinsky, or at least a decent old Bridgestone or Schwinn bicycle frame…

Freting China

I don’t understand China completely and to what exactly that country means to the future global economy. I do know that I almost immediately roll my eyes and zone off when someone starts going off on a seemingly endless rant about China and all the horrible things that they mean to us (think Laura Ingraham or Donald trump) and at the same time I cringe a little when some disregard China as nothing much (like a professor of mine).

To me I think China represents, to the United States, almost a perfect US type gossip rag definition of ‘frenemy’. We need them and the proliferation of affordable products I think is an overall good for the country. Certainly it’s not ideal that some things are no longer manufactured here because they are not competitive price-wise but as prices lower citizens benefit because they have more purchasing power. Additionally it is better for the US work force to diversify and to specialize in skills that apply to a broader range of work so that workers are not forced to rely on a single type of labor in a single type of industry.

That doesn’t mean China should be taken lightly. They are an authoritative communist government that holds roughly 1 trillion dollars in US debt by bond meaning they literally own a decent share of the US. Some argue that because more debt is held by US citizens than China it doesn’t matter. Not really. China is a global competitor and our economies are dependent on one another. Holding that much debt allows China even more influence on our economy in addition to trade policy and forces our government to consider Chinese interests when making policy, not good.

On the other hand, China is a rapidly modernizing country that is weighed down by a growing disparity in the relative prosperity of its more than 1.5 trillion residents. Their median income is less than a tenth of ours and the communist government loses credibility as its economy liberalizes. Their citizens are demanding a say and as prosperity spreads their government may lose its totalitarian grip and if not, by becoming more repressive, its economy will likely regress like that of the Soviet Union.

Calling China a ‘trade cheater’ is nothing more than an opinion. China is a sovereign nation and as such establishes trade policies in its own best interests. Those policies may be negative to the US. The answer though is not tariffs because they will only force us to pay more for things and it’s not as if American manufacturing can fill the demand for those products overnight, it’s even possible that a move involving sanctions could lead to a trade war where China could raise necessity prices even further on exports before another source could be found which could sink our economy. And theirs will grow as a result.

Blaming China is an easy crutch for those unwilling to consider the high corporate tax rate and punitive regulatory environment (unless you make solar panels that there is no demand for) afflicting businesses in this country. China isn’t a paper tiger, and it is not exactly an ally but it is also not a boogie man. The United States should reduce corporate taxes and eliminate counterproductive regulation in order to encourage business here. That’s more useful than throwing darts at the other side of the world, although it’s a good idea to keep an eye over there.

Hooray for Gridlock

When political decisions become difficult the system is always the easiest to blame. Like children screaming about not eating happy meals every day, politicians always turn to the system as the reason for why nothing works like they said it would and as the sole reason for why they can’t ‘fix’ things in a way that will completely absolutely work. This tactic is a close cousin to the assertion that when a political ‘fix’ doesn’t work as advertised that the reason was that it was either not implemented by the right people or in the right way.

What exactly is this nefarious ‘system’ anyway and how is it making life difficult for politicians anyway? It takes many forms, for some it’s the ‘democracy’, and for others it’s the ‘two party system’, and for others it’s the ‘intransigence’ of Republicans. This country isn’t completely a democracy in the strictest of definitions; it’s a representative republic with democratically elected representatives. The ‘two party system’ seems like a pain but any political system is a pain. There is no example of government with more than two dominant parties, such as Great Britain, where the political system is any less messy. Self government is messy and is better than dictatorships; totalitarian governments fool useful idiots into thinking that their governments aren’t messy because they control what is known. Freedom allows people to complain and when government does too much favors are always part of the deal and with a too-big government picking winners and losers the winners want to maintain their status and the losers aren’t going to be happy. Lastly, the technical definition of intransigence is the refusal to moderate a position. Blaming Republicans (or even democrats) is entirely subjective on this count. In many political decisions there is no moderate position. If a person honestly believes that their government absolutely should not be doing something it is not intransigent to refuse to accept the government doing less of something it should not be involved in. For those obsessed with the idea that everything has gray area this doesn’t make any sense but they’re wrong, there are plenty of binary decisions with no middle ground.

The system of government that our country employs was designed to be limited and resistant to change. Blaming the system is nothing more than a crutch for the impatient who don’t really do anything but assume that the government is more insightful than the citizenry. But they neglect the fact that we are a self-governed people and that the government is by, of and for the people. History has reflected the fact that freedom fosters real solutions implemented by free citizens. In that vein, two cheers for gridlock, the less government does the better.

Driving out of my way

What’s grinding my gears today is the tendency of municipalities to make it as difficult as possible to get anywhere. Under the auspices of safety urban planners have conspired to make left turns few and far between and essentially ban the U turn. A couple years ago a convenient left turn from my house to a heavily trafficked street was completely blocked off combined with the banning of U turns 100 yards down requiring drivers to drive away from their intended path to get where they are going. More recently at another point of the same popular road (on the other end of my housing development) those same urban planners went the extra mile to completely block off the possibility of making a left turn onto the road leading to my housing development, leaving alternate paths that add a couple miles to the trip.

Certainly in both instances when traffic is at its peak taking either left, and making a u-turn near those locations is difficult and ill-advised but that’s no reason to completely bar traffic at all times. Because irresponsible drivers do irresponsible things sometimes the rest of us motorists have to suffer. Nannyish urban planners may pat themselves on the back for preventing accidents but all they’re doing is providing a clutch for the careless, patching up one by one points on the road where morons get themselves in trouble while inconveniencing the rest of us and forcing us to waste gas and drive around where we want to go to get there. And it will only get worse. You can block off a road but an idiot will always act accordingly.

A Potential Crisis Averted

There is nothing more comfortable that the interior of my car. It’s easy to keep clean because it’s a smaller space that doesn’t take a lot to clean and I’m not in it a lot and the only thing that I do in it is sit. Over the last couple years I have been able to keep it relatively clean but then I made a potentially horrible mistake. Typically I think ahead when transporting anything that could possibly spill anywhere. And then, on a whim I decided to purchase a growler from a local brewery that makes delicious beer.

Once upon a time I brought a growler from the other side of the country home in my luggage with no problems. That experience no doubt left me unjustly overconfident. I had been thinking of bringing home a growler recently and really should have brought the container that I got from that brewery in Baltimore. It has a ceramic top with a rubber stopper that clamps at the top forming a spill proof seal. But no, I forgot it and received a growler from the brewery with a typical screw top.

I should have known when the server started to wrap the top with roughly a quarter roll of electrical tape. I put it down in the seat of my car and just before I pulled out of the parking lot noticed out of the top of the growler a small trickle of beer starting to exit. Just before that sweet sweet stout could foul the perforations of my Japanese engineered leather passenger seat I grabbed the apparently porous container and placed it on top of my rubber floor mat in the passenger foot well. As the container jostled back and forth the electrical tape failed and what appeared to be a small amount of beer started to drip out. I gingerly took corners and made it the short distance home without making any adjustments.

I figured that the rubber floor mat would catch everything but should have known better as I had to trim it to fit the generic mat into my car. At three points brown puddles of distilled grain had started to seep into my previously virgin carpet. Instead of crying I rushed inside and obtained a roll of paper towels, carpet cleaner and a shop vac. Half an hour of furious clean up later everything looked okay, but it was dark so I couldn’t be sure. A few days later and my car doesn’t smell like beer and the carpet looks alright. I was lucky this time. There’s just nothing worse than something that makes one’s car a little less pristine. I wish I could drape every surface of it with plastic…