Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Last week the program Marketplace on NPR ran a series of stories entitled "The Age of Work". Tuesday night I tuned in during a long car trip and listened to the episode In Tennessee county, an aging population means business opportunity.

"We start today in the middle of a line dancing class," host Kai Ryssdal started, "Because, silly as it might seem, the people in this class are the driving force behind a changing economy."

"You're talking about Boomers," I said back to the radio. "Boomers are the driving force behind a changing economy. And that's not news because Boomers have been the driving force behind pretty much every change in society, politics, and the economy for the past 60 years!!"

Indeed that's the whole gist of not just this episode but the whole series. A social trend is stretching and shifting to accommodate the needs of the Baby Boomer generation. Gosh, where have I heard that before? How about "Everywhere" and "For my entire life."

In this episode the story is about clubs and businesses in small, remote Cumberland County, Tennessee, that are thriving as they serve the needs of a burgeoning retiree population. The program's host and writers picked Cumberland in conjunction with payroll company ADP because ADP's data show it has the highest average age workforce in the US. What's happening today in Cumberland is coming soon to your community, the hosts tell us, like never before in the world has anyone seen things shift to favor the needs of Boomers.

The first business the show spotlights is the one Ryssdal quips about in the opening: a dancing class. It's full of seniors. It's pretty much all seniors. And it's totally crazy how it's so busy... at 9:30am on a Tuesday. Who could possibly want to take a dance lesson at 9:30am on a weekday? the host says in so many words.

"Because they're retired," I said back to the radio. Retirees can take dance lessons at 9:30am on a Tuesday. Especially when they're cheap, like $5 for a full hour if not longer.

"And do you know why it's only retirees there?" I continued. Well, aside from the fact that younger people might be literally barred from attending. Age discrimination is illegal in the US... but only when it discriminates against older people. Telling the young to kick rocks is socially and legally acceptable.

So, aside from having the police called on them and possibly being arrested for disturbing the peace if they make a fuss about wanting to dance, too, why aren't more younger people at this just-$5, 9:30am-on-a-Tuesday dance lesson?

How about, because a) School, and b) Work?

Seriously, how is this considered news. People under 65 are mostly busy with school or work on a Tuesday morning. And of those not in school or paid work, many of the rest are busy with the unpaid work of raising children at home. My mom was a stay-home parent for several years during my childhood, and never once during that period did she have time on a Tuesday morning to join an adult dance lesson at the town's rec center.

Speaking for myself now, as a child-free adult, I would've loved to have an opportunity like inexpensive dance lessons anytime the past 30 years... but again, not on a weekday morning. Dance lessons at 8pm? Sure! But those are rare. And even more rarely just $5.

The cheap classes on everything at the community center are at... drum roll, please... weekday mornings. Nights and weekends the community center is generally closed, locked, and dark. Programs like these have always been offered during the day, because people who teach them and support them by operating the facility only work during the day, making them implicitly only for people who don't have to work during the day. So they've always been implicitly, if not also explicitly, for retirees. And now because Boomers are retirees it's news!

It's been a few months since the last BuzzFeed listicle mis-categorizing everyone over 40 as "Boomers". It's time for another! Earlier this week I read "If You've Done At Least 15 Of These 35 Things, You're 1000% A Boomer"... which I'll note was titled "...You're 1000% Over 65" (emphasis mine) at the time  I first read it. Like the last of these articles I read it shows that Gen Z— the age group that authors who write these fluffy click-bait articles belong to— thinks that anyone who remembers things that were common up through the 1980s must be a Boomer / senior citizen.

Ahem, we kids who were growing up and doing things in the 1980s are called Gen X. And we're in our 40s/50s. And even many older Millennials remember many of the things on this recent list.

BTW, my score on this list was 20/35. And I'm many years short of being a Boomer. Here are just Five Things from the list of supposed "Boomer" items that virtually all Gen Xers, and most older Millennials, would be familiar with:

1. Have you ever manually cranked a car window up or down?

Manual-crank car windows were common up through the 1980s and into the 1990s. The first car I bought, a new 1991 vehicle, had manual crank windows. Yes, power windows were common by then, too, but in that era economy cars still had manual windows. I recall once getting a rental car in the mid 2000s that still had manual windows. I'll bet most people who are 35+, not just 65+, have cranked a manual window at some point.

3. Have you ever watched television on a TV that had no remote control and just dials?

I recall my parents first got a TV with wireless remote control in about 1985. Prior to that changing the channel— or even adjusting the volume— required walking up to the device and turning a knob. Or pressing a button. Yes, there was a middle ground between turning big, chunky, old-fashioned knobs and modern remote controls. TVs had modern push-button controls on the device for years before buttons on wireless remotes became common.

I used a non-remote TV again in 1992-1993 in college. It was an older TV set one of my housemates got from his parents. It had those chunky, old-fashioned knobs on it... but we rarely used them, because with only one, weak, weeny TV station available via antenna, we left the TV tuned to channel 3 for input from the VCR. Ah, tuning to channel 3 for VCRs and video games. that's another 1980s-ism... that virtually all Gen Xers and older Millennials would remember.

16. Have you ever looked up a phone number in the phone book?

Younger people these days may have trouble imagining a world before everything was online, but it wasn't that long ago. Amazon didn't even open until 1995, and back then it was just a bookstore. It wasn't until the early 2000s that most traditional businesses began to have even a minimal web presence, one where you could at least find their address and store hours. Thus, needing to use a phone book to find phone numbers to call for information— if it wasn't already shown in a yellow pages ad— was a regular thing up through the early 00s.

BTW, I say this as a digital native living in Silicon Valley. Less technical people and those living in less connected areas would've used phone books on the regular for a few more years.

19./20. Have you ever eaten at McDonald's when the food still came in Styrofoam packaging / when smoking was still allowed?

This one's a two-fer. I've grouped these two together because they're both about McDonald's and because they're not subject to any one person's memory. Questions like "When did [Company X] start/stop [doing Y]?" can be answered via simple search. Y'know, by using the web, that thing that people mistakenly believe kids these days excel at because they're online 24/7 while Boomers (and "Boomers") squint their eyes at and act befuddled and call their kids for help?

McDonald's went big with styrofoam containers for sandwiches in the 1980s. They started phasing it out in 1990 due to popular campaigns against non-biodegradable waste. I mention both the stop and start dates here because actual Boomers would remember a time long before styrofoam containers became common. And really it was just a period of <10 years. But yes, we Gen Xers remember that era well, because it's when we were growing up and treasuring those visits to McDonald's with our parents.

As far as smoking in McDonald's, smoking in all restaurants was common up through the 1990s and even into the 21st century. McDonald's banned smoking in restaurants as a corporate policy in 1994 (New York Times article, 1994!) but that only affected company-owned stores. Most stores were franchised. Smoking in restaurants was banned by law in various jurisdictions over the next fifteen years. California banned smoking in restaurants (but not bars) in 1995. New York banned smoking in restaurants in 2003. It wasn't until 2010 that many other states banned smoking in restaurants. Example source: List of smoking bans in the United States (Wikipedia article).

14. Have you ever balanced a checkbook?
Yes, two days ago.

Earlier this week I read yet-another Buzzfeed listicle/quiz for amusement, "There Is No Way Anyone Has Done More Than 25 Of These Things Unless They're Over 65". It's in the same vein as a similar Buzzfeed listicle I read (and wrote about) a few months ago. I suggested Buzzfeed retitle that article as It's Official, Gen Z Thinks Anyone Over 40 Is A Boomer.

Remember that the Boomer generation, aka Baby Boomers, are those born from 1946-1964. The youngest Boomers are turning 60 this year. Yet most people over 40— meaning not just Gen Xers like me, but also older Millennials— have probably done many of the things on the list. I'm years younger than the youngest Boomers and I've done 36 out of the 50, including all 20 of the top 20. Here's my hot take on several of them:

1. Adjusted rabbit ears on a television
I did that into the mid 1990s. My parents and adult relatives pretty much all had cable, but as a college student and grad student, my apartment mates and I didn't want to spend for cable TV. Boomers would remember when cable was $10/mo. We younger generations saw it spiral upwards of $100/mo and had to make decisions.

2. Played Pong in an arcade or at home
Okay, this is more of a late 70s/early 80s thing vs. "common into the 1990s". But I'm pretty sure a large number of Gen Xers get this one. I remember seeing a Pong game in my local Pizza Hut as a kid. But I never played because $0.25 was too spendy for my Boomer/Silent Generation parents.

3. Played pinball in an arcade
Mid 1990s, again. All Gen Xers and older Millennials have probably played pinball. Also, arcades didn't really become a thing until Gen X were adolescents.

4. Video stores with walled-off Adult sections
Video stores were at their peak all the way to 2004. I'm sure literally every Gen Xer and most Millennials remember cruising the aisles at video stores, looking for what to rent. As for the specific trope, though, of a walled-off Adult section.... The last one of those I saw personally was in 1996, but that's because that's the last time I had a membership at a locally owned video rental store instead of a national chain. The national chains deemed X-rated material off-brand and didn't offer it.

5. Kept phone numbers in an address book
Late 1990s. That's when cell phones became common for the average adult to own. Once again, all Gen X and older Millennials.

7. Used/seen a working cigarette vending machine
I recall these being commonplace until the early 1980s, present in every supermarket and drug store, so likely most Gen Xers have seen them. Even after that they were still around, though they disappeared from places like supermarkets and would be found in restaurants and bars into the 21st century.

8. Shopped at a five-and-dime
Dude, inflation. Yesterday's five-and-dime morphed into Dollar stores. ...Where, today, almost everything is more than $1.

13. Done a duck-and-cover drill at school in case of nuclear attack
This is one I actually never did. Dunno if that's because "Hide under your desk because bombs don't affect desks" was phased out by the time I began school, or if it's just that the schools/districts I attended had opted out. OTOH, as a Gen Xer, I was fortunately done with school by the time lockdowns and active shooter drills became a thing.

21. Have you ever balanced a checkbook?
I still do. Does your mom buy your food and clothes?

President Joe Biden has dropped out of the race for the 2024 election. He announced this morning he's ending his run for reelection. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for nomination as the Democratic party candidate.

Biden's move comes after weeks of the mainstream news media writing his political obituary. He showed poorly in the presidential debate on June 27, failing to land any rhetorical hits on Donald Trump and occasionally looking like a deer in the headlights. Nevermind that Biden continued to show a firm grasp on a variety of world events and how government and modern technology actually work, unlike Trump whose frequent rally speeches are ongoing word-salads with lengthy descents into nonsensical rants about things like sharks and the fact that batteries can't be put in a vehicle. (It's surprising Elon Musk endorsed him so strongly days after that.) A few billionaire donors turned against Biden, and "Is this the end?" was all the press could seem to write about for weeks.

The Republican party ultimately got in line behind an election-denying openly racist convicted felon and rapist who fomented a violent insurrection against the US Congress and his own vice president on January 6, 2020. But Biden had a weak debate performance 3½ weeks ago. Yeah, that's totally worse.

Look, I don't think Biden was the best candidate ever. I've written before about the problem of older leaders staying in political leadership long past the point where their political skills are showing to be badly out of date. Was Biden's mind also slipping? I'm not sure, as I don't trust most the publicized claims that it was. Everybody making that claim has ulterior motives. That's not to say they're wrong, just that there's reasonable suspicion about various personal motivations. But for anyone arguing that Biden was no longer mentally qualified, have you looked at the other guy?

Well, Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee now. I don't think she's the best candidate ever, either. But again, look at the other guy. Harris in 2024!

I have a habit of clicking on Buzzfeed listicles in my newsfeed. They're generally light, vaguely amusing reading, perfect for browsing when I'm sitting down at lunch. Occasionally they're even very insightful, such as the listicle that inspired me to write The Unwritten Rules of Being Poor. But most of the time they're just vaguely insipid. Today, though, I clicked on one that was actively stupid.

"Non-Rich People Are Sharing Subtly Obvious Signs Of Wealth, And Honestly, It's Pretty Eye-Opening" the title blared. "Eye-Opening" isn't the term I'd use to describe it. In fact the whole headline buries the lede. It should be something more like, "Online Randos Mock a Question We Post on Reddit, And We're So Lame We Can't Tell We're Being Mocked."

Here are just a few of the things Buzzfeed included in its list of things of subtle signs you're rich:

• You own a refrigerator with a water dispenser
• You buy new furniture rather than used
• You visit the doctor or dentist for non-emergency health care
• Your mom eats dinner with you instead of pretending she's not hungry because she can't afford enough food for everyone
• Your Crayola Crayons come in one of those boxes with a built-in crayon sharpener
• You have a basketball hoop in the driveway
• You live in a house with stairs
• You can afford a new mattress
• You take a vacation that's not visiting family

I grew up in a working-class family (lower-middle class) and had two-thirds of these. Including a mom who could afford to eat. Because, yeah, that's a sign of wealth. 🙄

There's been quite an uproar in the press over the last several days about a manipulated photo of Princess Kate and her kids. Kensington Palace released the photo a week ago to combat rumors that the Princess of Wales, who's not been seen in public since abdominal surgery, is in ill health or even dead. The picture shows her happy and healthy with her 3 children.

The uproar over this seemingly innocuous photograph arose quickly. Numerous photographers and digital image editors online quickly spotted small artifacts in the picture indicating it had been manipulated— or "photoshopped", as many call it.

In this particular picture all the artifacts are small. There's nothing so obvious here as a person with a third hand (because one was digitally added to the picture) or a curved doorway in the background (where someone "bent" the image, e.g., to make someone look curvier or slimmer). But still, it's become a scandal. "Water-Kate," some are quipping. Everyone from celebrities to even The Onion are bagging on Kate. In fact The Onion offers satirical recommendations from celebrities on how to 'shop better (12 Mar 2024).

Lost in the shuffle amid all the jeering and laughter is the reality of just how common "photoshopping" is in photography.

The term "photoshopping", BTW, refers to Adobe Photoshop, a powerful image manipulation tool published by Adobe. Photoshop has been common in industry for a long time. I started using it personally 30 years ago as a graduate student in 2D/3D computer imaging.

Pretty much all professional images you see online or in print have been processed through Photoshop or a tool like it. A good many image shared by amateurs have been "photoshopped", too. Virtually every image I publish in my blog has been touched up in Photoshop. Does being literally "photoshopped" mean they're all fake?

Just because an image has gone through Photoshop does not mean it is fake. There have been a number of interesting posts about that on X this week by Pete Souza, a respected pro photographer who worked in the Obama whitehouse. Souza took some of the most iconic photos of Obama during his time in office, including the famous photo in the Situation Room of the president and his team receiving live updates of Seal Team Six apprehending Osama Bin Laden. His thoughts are nicely summarized in a recent Buzzfeed article (15 Mar 2024).

As Souza explains, it's pretty much de rigeur for photographers to touch up pics by brightening or darkening, fixing highlights and shadows, and adjusting color balance. BTW, these are all modifications that could be done back in the days of film and paper photography, though they were very time consuming and required more skill than needed today with software like Photoshop. And for decades publishers have, correctly, accepted these alterations as reasonable.

Where publishers drawn the line on "Photoshopping" pics is adding, removing, or changing content from the image. Well, some publishers do that. In photojournalism it's not okay to remove an unwanted person from an image or edit the subject to make them look taller, slimmer, or curvier. In advertising, though... well, it's pretty much the rule that parts of the image have been faked to sell better.

In my own pics I do all of the things Souza talks about as normal. I adjust brightness levels and color curves. I also sharpen virtually all of my pics. That's because I keep in-camera sharpening set low as I don't particularly like it. Moreover, I apply sharpening anyway after resizing pics for online.

I also occasionally do the things Souza describes as no-nos for photojournalism: I edit out, or alter the shape of, people in the pics! I did that in one of the pics I shared earlier today from our hike at Flag Hill. Hawk was in one of the pics, a small figure in a wide shot, and her appearance was both distracting and unflattering. Since she was a small element of the pic I was able to edit her out pretty easily— by knowing what to do with Photoshop— and we both agreed the pic was better as a result.

Well, well, well, my iPhone news reader app is once again watching what I'm reading and trying to give me just more of the same. After I clicked on, I dunno, maybe two articles about Costco in the past week, now it's showing me "Costco" as a news topic:



There are seven articles, all about Costco— and all indeed with similar file photos atop the stories— under this news heading, with the option (via tapping "...") to fetch more.

And no, Costco doesn't replace Pizza. My newsreader still shows me "Pizza" as a news topic from that time 4 years ago when I read a few articles on pizza in the same week. 🙄

I saw an interesting article in my newsfeed earlier this week. It's "Are You Richer Than You Think? A Surprising Number Of People Consider Themselves 'Poor' But They're Actually In The Top 10% Of Earners" (Yahoo Finance, 20 Feb 2024). Well, the headline was interesting. The question posed by the article is interesting. But, alas, the article itself was fairly unenlightening. The author didn't have much to say, and half of what she did say was inaccurate as it embedded and reinforced common misunderstandings.

I've remarked before about the generally poor quality of articles in the general media about wealth and finance. An online wag years ago explained, "Imagine that every feature article you read was written by a lowly paid twenty-something with a liberal arts degree." He's not really wrong. Even though the author of this article claims to have "written about personal finance and investment for the past 13 years in a variety of publications"— I'm going to assume that doesn't include her high school student newspaper so she's older than her 20s— the level of the content fits the stereotype.

So here's how I'd answer the question posed by the article. And no, I don't mean the question literally in the title, "Are you richer than you think?" I mean the more interesting question it really poses: Why do many high earners think of themselves as poor?

Five Things:

1) First off, wealth and income are not the same thing. I've written about this before. It's a common misunderstanding to conflate the two. Wealth is like how much water you have in your bucket, income is how fast the spigot is pouring water into it. Over time a gushing spigot (high income) will fill the bucket (generate wealth), but that's A) over time, and B) depends on your expenses. Imagine that bucket you're pouring water into also has water being taken out on the regular. What's being taken out is to pay for housing, food, utilities, health care, transportation, student loans, etc.

2) The earning threshold of $175,000 used in the story is not particularly high. Yes, is small town America it's a lot, but not in costly cities like New York and San Francisco. And BTW, most of the people who earn such high incomes? They earn it because they're in costly cities like New York and San Francisco. Articles like this never seem to acknowledge that major regional cost-of-living differences are a thing.

3) So, what's $175k in HCOL areas like SF? From living here for many years I can tell you it's not "wealthy". Unless you already have significant wealth, an income of $175k lets you afford a middle class lifestyle. If you're earning $175k here and supporting only yourself you're comfortable, not wealthy. Like, you're not going to be able to buy a detached 3-bedroom house on that salary alone, but you could definitely buy a condo. And if you've got to support a family on $175k you're not even particularly comfortable. You'd be tenuously middle class, probably close to living paycheck to paycheck... and not because you're spending extravagantly on fancy cars and travel and luxury goods, but because the basics of housing, food, health care, transportation, etc., are freakin' expensive.

4) Even people who've amassed some degree of wealth from saving and investing over time may feel their wealth is at risk. In the US one of the big hobgoblins of middle class wealth is medical bills. A severe long-term illness can not only knock out much or all of a family's income but it can drain tens of thousands of dollars, even $100,000, per year, even with insurance. And BTW the cost of that insurance has skyrocketed in the past few years. So we're all paying a lot more for health care, even when we're not sick.

5) Finally, there's the conundrum of upwards comparisons. People tend to compare themselves to those who have even more. Yes, this the go-to explanation of pretty much every article nowadays about wealth and happiness, including the one linked to in this blog. Yes, it's also a very real thing— but it's not the #1 thing. I mean, here I'm calling it #5 on a list of 5. It's simply absurd to act like this one thing explains the whole situation and ignore the very valid items #1-4 I've explained here.

Thanksgiving Travelog #12
Camp Hill, PA - Sat, 25 Nov 2023. 11am.

Yesterday I quipped that Black Friday 2023 was no worse than Medium-Gray. It turns out I wasn't the only one who arrived at that opinion— although the colorful turn of phrase remains uniquely mine, AFAICT. Various news articles in financial and mainstream media noted the same thing.

"Shoppers are tired out; Black Friday deals started last weekend," some explained. "Shoppers are choosy and not seeing great bargains," others opined.

I see both from my own POV. Though I'd note that Black Friday deals actually started before last weekend. Stores were decked out for Christmas sales over a week before Halloween. My email has been full of "pre-Black Friday" sale spam since at least mid-November. And sales while we were out visiting various stores yesterday were hit-or-miss. Some seemed like just the normal level of everyday discounting. Bigger-than-usual deals were mostly the kind that have been available for at least a week. Truly door-buster deals, where current-model electronics are on sale for, like, half price, were extremely few. In fact, I saw just one. And I'm kicking myself now for not scooping it up! 🤣

Senator Diane Feinstein passed away today. She was aged 90.

Feinstein had been an icon in politics for decades. She was the oldest member of the Senate, the longest-serving female senator and the longest-serving senator from California. But her political career and reputation as a trailblazer for women in politics started long before her first Senate victory in 1992.

In 1969 Feinstein won election to the San Francisco Board of County Supervisors. Journalists in the media at the time were disgusting with the sexist tropes they promulgated. They wrote about wondering "who wears the pants" in her family and asked her then-husband if he felt "humbled or intimidated" by her success. (To his credit, Dr. Feinstein responded that he felt neither.) But what journos missed with their sexist sneering and offensive questions was that the people of San Francisco had elected her. They were not representing the people of San Francisco with their reporting, they were representing a biased minority.

Nine years after that Feinstein became Mayor of San Francisco under grim circumstances. On November 27, 1978, Mayor George Moscone and and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated— by a fellow county supervisor, no less. The duty fell to Feinstein, who by then was President of the Board, to announce the sad news on the steps of City Hall. As board president she became acting mayor, and a week later the board appointed her to finish Moscone's term. She later was reelected mayor twice.

Two things define Feinstein's long political career: persistence and bipartisanship. While working her way up through politics starting in the 1960s she doggedly pursued her duties and aspirations, not letting insults or roadblocks deter her. She not only endured countless slights along the way but bounced back from several lost elections. She lost her first bid to become a county supervisor, she ran and lost a race for mayor (before later becoming mayor by appointment and then winning reelection), and she ran and lost a race for governor. Despite people opposing her for her politics (though she was always a centrist Democrat) and her gender she remained steadfast in reaching across the aisle to find political consensus. As one of her contemporaries said many years ago, ironically thinking it was an insult more than a compliment, "Diane wasn't in politics, she was in government." We need more politicians like that today.