The myth of the rich genius

I have written many times before about the strange tendency of people to ascribe qualities of cleverness and depth, even genius, to very wealthy people. This makes the media pay undue attention to the utterances of such people, even on topics that they know nothing about. The examples are too numerous to list. The deference given to them. by the media and the constant presence of acolytes who feed their egos in this way, seem to result in them actually buying into the myth themselves.

Calder McHugh writes about this tendency but be warned that his essay contains spoilers for Glass Onion. The following passage is free from them.

In reality, rich people are no smarter than everyone else; their plans and even downfalls are simple. Peter Thiel is funding artists in New York City and politicians in Arizona because he thinks they’ll influence culture and politics toward his vision of a new right. Neither is going well for him. FTX founder and large political donor Sam Bankman-Fried at some point bought the boy-genius myth that he was selling to everyone else, lost a lot of money and landed himself in court. Musk made an offer for Twitter because he was addicted to the platform and thought it would be good to have an even bigger megaphone and now, his companies and his own brand seem to be in freefall. Donald Trump ran for president so that he could watch himself on cable television more, stumbled backwards into the job, tweeted through it and is now hawking NFTs while he tries to dodge prosecutions. Ye, better known as Kanye West, embraced shocking behavior until it lost him lucrative business deals and, reportedly, billionaire status.

At some point, all of these men accrued enough capital that they found themselves surrounded by people who fanned their egos in the hopes of a kickback. But as they settled into these carefully constructed worlds that were built to reinforce their supposed genius, any creative spark or understanding of business or American culture that helped them in their journey to the top is bound to dim.

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Too early to write epitaphs for the GOP

Despite Republicans winning a majority in the House of Representatives, there has been plenty of unhappiness in the GOP camp because the majority they obtained was much smaller than they expected and they even lost a seat in the Senate. This has resulted in calls for a change in party leadership, with challenges to Kevin McCarthy’s attempt to become speaker and to Ronna McDaniels efforts to be re-elected as the head of the Republican National Committee. Add to that the release of the report of the January 6th committee and their four criminal referrals of Donald Trump. The party leadership is clearly concerned that another erratic Trump run for president would lead to more losses, and their inability to do anything about it for fear of alienating the base that is devoted to him have all led to an image of a party in disarray.
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How should inflation figures be reported?

Inflation has been high recently, not just in the US but in many parts of the world. How inflation is calculated is to take a basket of goods and calculate their cost and see how they change over time. In the US, there are two inflation indices: regular inflation and what is called ‘core inflation’, which omits food and fuel from the basket because those tend to fluctuate more over the short term and thus introduces volatility.

Whichever index you choose, whenever the inflation figures are reported each month in the US, Kevin Drum complains about the fact that it is the year-over-year number that is reported. He says that this gives a misleading picture of whether there is inflation right now and that a month-to-month comparison would be better.
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Not everything is a symbol of one’s political persuasions

We seem to be living in a time when the most mundane actions take on political significance.

Take for example the wearing of masks. Rather than taking it at face value, which is that the wearer may have reduced immunity or is taking a cautious approach to the transmission of infection diseases and is trying to avoid getting infected or infect others, some view it as the wearer making a political statement in support of the vaccination lobby and the medical-pharmaceutical-Fauci axis of evil and against freedom-loving Merkins.

The same thing seems to be happening with Tesla cars where drivers report being harassed by other users, often by people driving big, gas-guzzling, smoke-belching trucks. The animosity seems to not be against Tesla particularly but against people who, by driving an electric vehicle, are seen as signaling that they are concerned about the environment.
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These are the good old days

There has always been a market for nostalgia. Some of it is due to each person, other than those who had traumatic experiences, looking back on their childhoods with rose-tined glasses. Some commentators, especially right wing ones, alarmed by the progressive changes that are taking place in terms of greater equality for marginalized groups, have seized upon that tendency to proclaim that things have deteriorated from some prior golden age. They seem to have fixated on the 1950s as the high point in US history, completely ignoring the fact that it was not a good time time for anyone other than middle-class white cis people.

Currently, there are doomsayers who try to convince the public of this by picking on some cultural features and complaining that people no longer have a work ethic, have become hypersensitive and lost their sense of humor, and that men have become less manly. These fears are reinforced by the echo chambers of social media, and that constant repetition may convince some that these things are really true.

(Non Sequitur)

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Ignore Musk the troll, focus on the businesses

Elon Musk clearly loves to be in the news and he does so by making outlandish statements about all manner of random topics in the news whenever he has the chance. Jack Shafer provides many examples of this and says that the media keeps falling for it. This has the added advantage (to Musk) of distracting people from the more serious news of the performances of his businesses, which are not good.

What we should be focusing on are the actual facts. One is that in 2021, the last full year when Twitter was public and thus we knew something about its finances, it had gross revenues of about $5 billion ($4.5 billion from advertising) and made a profit of $221 million. This means that its costs were about $4.8 billion. This was a high point for revenues and one of the few years when it made a profit.

After Twitter borrowed about $13 billion to allow Musk to take it private, that added another $1.5 billion in costs to service the debt, meaning its total operating costs are now $6.5 billion. Furthermore, advertisers dropped out, reducing revenues to about $3 billion. This means that Twitter was on a path to lose $3.5 billion a year, which is unsustainable. Musk has cut staff by almost half but that will save at most about $2 billion, leaving a gap of $1.5 billion to close, while risking core operational functions. This problem of a large negative cash flow is what Musk is faced with.
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The January 6th committee hearings end with criminal referrals for Trump and others

The hearings have just wound up with a unanimous vote to make criminal referrals to the department of justice on four counts:

I. Obstruction of an Official Proceeding (18 U.S.C. § 1512(c))
II. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. § 371
III. Conspiracy to Make a False Statement (18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1001)
IV. “Incite,” “Assist” or “Aid and Comfort” an Insurrection (18 U.S.C. § 2383)

While the department of justice is not obligated to prosecute based on these referrals, they will add to the pressure to do so. These charges all carry length prison sentences if found guilty and Trump in particular would be disqualified from any future federal or state office if found guilty of the insurrection charge.
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Politics, race, and class in West Indies cricket

The game of cricket was invented in England and exported by them to their colonies so that expatriates could continue to play it. But the game fascinated the locals who took to it with such enthusiasm that many of those countries now routinely field stronger teams than England. One of the first colonies where people of color became serious challengers was the West Indies, which is not a single country but a collection of many independent island nations in the Caribbean that banded together to field a single team. For a long time, the administration of the game was in the hands of English expatriates who retained control and appointed the captain of the team and made the selections, even as the dominant players were people of the islands.
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Is 2024 going to be a rerun of 2016?

In the US, there is no such thing as an election season. General elections nominally occur every even year but that is only mostly true for races for national office. State and local elections often occur in odd years as well. Campaigning for the next election begins immediately after one election has ended but that is only open campaigning. Preparations for the subsequent election are usually being laid before any election ends.

So it is unsurprising that there are already many discussions about the 2024 presidential election, even though the predictions that are made just after a mid-term election are usually completely off the mark as to who will actually make it to the finish line two years later. But that does not stop the punditocracy from engaging in endless speculations. This time though, there is actually something concrete to talk about because Donald Trump has already announced that he will run and that has to be taken seriously because he did win in 2016.
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Strikes in the UK

The UK is about to experience a wave of strikes, starting with the nurses unions.

Tens of thousands of nurses across the United Kingdom are set to walk off the job Thursday in what’s been described as the largest-ever strike by National Health Service workers, who said they were forced to act after the government refused to negotiate over pay amid painfully high inflation.

The walkout represents NHS nurses’ first national strike, and it comes as U.K. rail and postal workers are also taking major labor actions in response to falling real pay, meager benefits, and worsening conditions.
…

The RCN [Royal College of Nursing] said a strike became inevitable after U.K. ministers declined every offer to start formal pay negotiations. Earlier this week, [Pat] Cullen [general secretary and chief executive of the RCN] met with Tory Health Secretary Steve Barclay in a last-ditch effort to discuss pay before launching the national strike, but he refused to budge.

“I asked several times to discuss pay and each time we returned to the same thing—that there was no extra money on the table, and that they would not be discussing pay with me,” Cullen said. “I needed to come out of this meeting with something serious to show nursing staff why they should not strike this week. Regrettably, they’re not getting an extra penny.”

Jonathan Pie says that all those striking deserve the increases in wages and benefits and job security they are asking for.

On a personal note, I have great fondness for the British nursing profession. I spent a lot of time as a child in UK hospitals and one of the main things that stands out for me in my memory are the nurses. They were briskly efficient but also kind and caring. I would give them anything they asked for.