The working class buys a mini-split air conditioner for a homeowner in our old town

by philg

Congress and the Biden administration have signed up the working class to pay for the laptop class’s new electric cars ($7,500 each) and also for the gender studies degrees, and attempted degrees, earned by the children of the laptop class (“no one with a federally held loan has had to pay a single dollar in loan payments since President Biden took office”; studentaid.gov).

These programs raise the question “What else can we make a working class renter pay for?”

I was chatting with the owner of a $2 million house in our old town in the Boston suburbs. She had a mini-split air conditioner installed in an accessory apartment that she will be renting out at the fabulously high market rates now due to property owners. I asked her how much it cost. Her response:

$8800. ENTIRE cost rebated by MassSave. Free mini split.

Several of my homeowner friends up in Massachusetts are making huge profits from their rooftop solar systems. The general rate-payers, including the working class renters, have to buy electricity from them at full retail rates or higher, depending on when the systems were installed.

One friend lives in a 12,000-square-foot compound. He installed a solar system in 2016 that, due to subsidies from those who did not own property and/or did not install solar, was completely paid for within 4.7 years. It is now yielding an annual profit of 23 percent of the after-tax-credit 2016 cost.

I get paid double the value of the electric. I get to both use it and sell it after I use it. I know that makes no sense, but Democrats make the rules in MA.

He tried to explain a complex system in which he fake-sells his clean power to companies that want to fake-claim that they use all renewables, but my head was spinning from all of the market distortions.

Perhaps New Jersey runs the same system. Here’s a car with NJ plates (maybe a coronapanic refugee?) that wonders “I don’t know how many freeloaders I can afford??” (If the driver is part of the working class, Joe Biden just added a lot of college graduates to the list with his cancellation of student loan debt!)

Full post, including comments

Rainbow Flagism in Norway

by philg

This was supposed to be the big year for Rainbow Flagism in Norway. Tourists are promised Queer Culture Year 2022:

My 2SLGBTQQIA+ celebration experience got off to a reasonable start. Although I did not notice any rainbow flags in the airport, the underground train station carried an “Oslo PRIDE” backlit billboard:

Once above ground, however, I discovered that the entire city has fewer rainbow flags than a typical white heterosexual suburban town in the Northeast USA. Private initiative in the direction of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community is apparently rare. In fact, I never saw a single private home or automobile displaying the rainbow flag. Here are the only businesses that I observed conforming to the U.S. norm (a restaurant, a bar, and a bookstore with a balloon and umbrella):

As in the U.S., the progression from Christianity to Rainbow Flagism is a short and easy journey. At the downtown cathedral:

The city government itself has painted some benches in a rainbow pattern. King Christian IV of Denmark, the founder of modern Oslo, loved music and dance. Here he is with a bench commemorating his love of Broadway shows:

The Munch museum did not have any rainbow flags, but the bookstore featured the standard Holy Trinity of Victimhood:

I’m not sure if this is desecration of the sacred symbol or not:

If the neighbors aren’t displaying the proper flag, one can wear it:

The Oslo City Museum has an exhibit devoted to Queer Culture Year 2022. A school class for 9th and 10th graders was required to create artistic “queer products”:

A “Gay Kid” is defined as “a boy or a girl who will fall in love with a person of the same sex later on in life.” This statement contains quite a bit of heresy against 2SLGBTQQIA+ dogma. There are only two genders for children? Gender ID and sexual orientation are not fluid?

For completeness, from the adult-oriented content of the exhibit:

The Scandinavian Leather Men sign fails to note the CDC’s Scientific monkeypox-at-the-bathhouse advice: “Leather or latex gear also provides a barrier to skin-to-skin contact; just be sure to change or clean clothes/gear between partners and after use.”

Compared to the Scandinavian Leather Men, how much fun can a heterosexual cisgender man have? Here’s Gustav Vigeland’s example of inner peace achieved via fatherhood:

The Nobel Peace Center bookshop offers some Pride-themed material:

The history museum had an outdoor PRIDE exhibit, but it had been taken down and the only remnants were posters and some books:

(I am confused as to why Frida Kahlo, who became famous after marrying an old guy who was already super famous in her chosen field, is a “hero”. Is her method of getting to the top of the art world something that we think the typical young artist can replicate?)

Where Norway seems most deficient is in restroom labeling. The implication, even in buildings that were completed in 2022, the country’s Queer Culture Year, is that there are only two genders. From the Munch museum (opened 2021):

From the National Museum (opened 2022):

I never saw an “all-gender” or “gender-neutral” restroom.

That’s the report from the world of jet lag. I feel that I am almost accustomed to the time zone here and, naturally, it will be time to get on the Norse Atlantic 787 back to FLL tomorrow.

Full post, including comments

A Corvette Z06 order at $90,000 over sticker

by philg

Here’s a new car being sold for $90,000 over sticker. In other words, the dealer gets $100,000 in profit while General Motors accepts perhaps $15,000 in profit.

I still can’t figure out Why aren’t cars (and pinball machines) auctioned as they come out of the factory?

At least the above consumer who signed the deal accepted that vehicle prices are dynamic. Why keep pretending that they’re not?

Separately, who else would love to have a Z06 for trips to Publix?

Related:

Full post, including comments

Building self-esteem in Oslo

by philg

Oslo might not be the best place for building tourist self-esteem. After two days in the city, here are a couple of signs:

Here’s something else bizarre… an important symbol for this city is the tiger:

I also learned that when a counter-serve restaurant offers you “potato with shrimp” that’s exactly what they deliver (for about $20):

I also learned about life in Sweden from the 40ish lady sitting next to me at the opera house (one act of Parsifal, which is more than enough for anyone). She was working as a “priest” (what we would call a “minister”) at a church outside of Stockholm during coronapanic. Her life and church continued without interruption. What about the Swedish limit of 50 for indoor gatherings that was imposed? “It did not apply to churches,” she responded. How many times had she put on a mask during two years of coronapanic in Sweden? “Zero.” Had she purchased a mask? “No.” What about on the Stockholm metro? Wasn’t it suggested? “You could wear a mask if you wanted to,” she replied, “and some people did, but I never did.”

One thing that I hadn’t appreciated about Europe is that China’s continued lockdown has substantially decluttered the demi-continent. 1.4 billion people have been removed from the international tourism pool because a resident of China who comes to Europe to look around would have to endure an onerous 14-day quarantine on returning (not a Massachusetts-style quarantine with daily trips to the “essential” marijuana store!).

Speaking of the opera house, here it is:

Note the ramp for walking up to the roof.

My first impression of Norway is that it is a great argument for the European welfare state form of government… so long as a country has a gushing fountain of oil cash and only a small number of low-skill immigrants so that the per-capita oil money remains significant. It seems as though there are dozens of neighborhoods that are great for hanging out with friends and family. Norwegians are out in pairs and larger groups enjoying the summer weather. Norway is not part of the EU and the country has retained a distinctive culture more so than France, Germany, or the UK. Despite the distinctively Norwegian-ness of everything, a higher percentage of people here speak good English than in a lot of U.S. cities. That means it is perfect for an American tourist wanting to see a European nation.

Full post, including comments

Palm Beach County Library Kids’ Section

by philg

I was on a call with an MIT professor who, after expressing his horror at the post-Roe age in which we somehow live, expressed the belief that the dictatorship of Ron DeSantis has prevented libraries in Florida from stocking the books that Americans should be reading now. I said “DeSantis and the state can say and do whatever they want, but ultimately it is counties that decide what books to buy. If you walk into the kids’ section of our local Palm Beach County library you would see all of the same books featured in all of the same ways as in Lexington, Massachusetts or Newton, MA. You would have to dig deep, for example, to find a book describing the achievements of a white cisgender heterosexual male.”

After voting in the primary (Ron DeSantis and affiliated thugs attempted to suppress my vote by demanding ID, but I thwarted this attempt by bringing my wallet), I took a few photos in our local library. All of these are from the kids/juvenile section.

Would a child get the impression that there was anything less than glorious about the 2SLGBTQQIA+ lifestyle? Not from reading Heather Has Two Mommies, he/she/ze/they wouldn’t.

Is there anything unusual about changing one’s gender or being “genderqueer”? No.

Is it a beautiful thing when members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community kick a soccer ball as expertly as a 14-year-old boy? Yes.

Gender ID can change at any moment, but it turns out that nearly all engineering and scientific advances were made by people with a particular gender ID:

And gender ID of the subject turns out to be a big factor in whether a book will be featured:

The entire world is being destroyed because there are too many humans living the American high-CO2 lifestyle. At the same time, we should expand our population by 200+ million via immigration from low-CO2 countries.

Kids can prep for a lucrative career in the nonprofit sector:

One final way to guarantee being featured by the librarians:

Related:

  • “American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten admitted to sharing a false tweet claiming that certain books were banned in Florida on Sunday.” (Hate Central)
  • “Fact check: Fake list of banned Florida books circulates widely online” (USA Today): “While school districts can ban books through a process created by the new law, Florida has not banned any books at the state level, a spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis told USA TODAY. In fact, several works on the list have been recommended to school districts by the state Department of Education.” [Is it accurate to say that a book was “banned” because a school district no longer promotes it to students and the book remains available at the nearest public library?]
Full post, including comments

When does the vacation home market collapse?

by philg

A combination of inflation and stock market saggage means that Americans aren’t as rich as we thought we were. When we thought that we were crazy rich (2020-2021) and it was illegal to buy a variety of services, such as international travel to most destinations, we loaded up on real estate. Now the collapse is forecast, partly due to sky-high interest rates that the Fed hopes will tame inflation despite the government continuing to borrow and spend $trillions more than is raised via taxation.

On the theory that “people need to live somewhere” and the U.S. population is being dramatically expanded via low-skill immigration (see “Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S., Driving Population Growth and Change Through 2065” (Pew 2015), I don’t think prices for primary houses will go down in nominal dollars. Perhaps the values will be eroded by inflation, but I will guess that that real (inflation-adjusted) price of a house in 2027 is no more than 10 percent lower than today’s price. Americans are not competent at planning and building infrastructure and therefore new construction to accommodate the migrant-fueled population boom is going to be super expensive (see City rebuilding costs from the Halifax explosion).

On the other hand, an individual person or family does not need two houses. So if there needs to be a real estate collapse, I am thinking that it will happen in the vacation house market.

Arguments in favor of continued high demand for houses in vacation destinations:

  • the laptop class can pretend to work from anywhere
  • demand for ski resort lift tickets has never been higher (Smithsonian)
  • those who support lockdowns, school closures, masks, and vaccine papers checks are voluntarily traveling like crazy now, packing themselves into 100% full airliners, going to theme parks, etc.

Arguments against continued high demand for recently purchased vacation houses:

  • a second property tax bill every year
  • a second set of contractors to beg
  • rising maintenance and utilities prices

We rented a cozy cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains (report). Zillow says that the pre-Biden value of the 1,344 square-foot mansion was $350,000 and that it is currently worth about 725,000 Bidies, down from a peak of 763,000. It actually was sold by the builder, brand new, in August 2019 for $305,000.

We enjoyed being there for a few nights, but is it worth more than a townhouse within commuting distance of a highly paid job in a dynamic city? I don’t see how that is possible in the long run.

Related:

Full post, including comments

Science helps a depressed teenager

by philg

“This Teen Was Prescribed 10 Psychiatric Drugs. She’s Not Alone.” (New York Times, yesterday):

One morning in the fall of 2017, Renae Smith, a high school freshman on Long Island, N.Y., could not get out of bed, overwhelmed at the prospect of going to school. In the following days, her anxiety mounted into despair.

Given the constant doomsaying of the NYT, wouldn’t the above be a sign of mental health, rather than of mental illness? Ms. Smith was informed that the Earth was melting and that her home in Long Island would be reclaimed by the ocean. Ms. Smith was informed that U.S. democracy was at an end and that Donald Trump would be ruling as a dictator indefinitely. Only a fool wouldn’t be anxious and desperate after reading these truths.

Intervention for her depression and anxiety came not from the divine but from the pharmaceutical industry. The following spring, a psychiatrist prescribed Prozac. The medication offered a reprieve from her suffering, but the effect dissipated, so she was prescribed an additional antidepressant, Effexor.

A medication cascade had begun. During 2021, the year she graduated, she was prescribed seven drugs. These included one for seizures and migraines — she experienced neither, but the drug can be also used to stabilize mood — and another to dull the side effects of the other medications, although it is used mainly for schizophrenia. She felt better some days but deeply sad on others.

Her senior yearbook photo shows her smiling broadly, “but I felt terrible that day,” said Ms. Smith, who is now 19 and attends a local community college. “I’ve gotten good at wearing a mask.”

Here’s her list of meds:

Let’s keep in mind that these are the same folks who say that they can tell when it is time for a teenager to transition, via drugs and irreversible surgery, to a different gender ID (from among the 74 recognized by medicine). And their brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in other branches of medicine claim to know when it is time to shut down schools, forbid those who aren’t employed in marijuana stores from going to work, order the general public to wear masks, force people to take experimental drugs, etc.

This story, at least, seems likely to have a happy ending:

Her definition of success has changed. too. Whereas she had once thought about “being a doctor or a lawyer or things like that,” she said, now she works in a plant nursery and is applying to a four-year college with a focus on environmental and wildlife sciences.

“I like working with my hands,” Ms. Smith said. “I don’t want to work at a desk, and that’s what I thought I should be doing.” She added, “I’m not the same person that I was a year ago.”

Full post, including comments

Can Black Americans get a huge discount on property tax?

by philg

“Home Appraised With a Black Owner: $472,000. With a White Owner: $750,000.” (New York Times, August 18):

Last summer, Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, welcomed an appraiser into their house in Baltimore, hoping to take advantage of historically low interest rates and refinance their mortgage.

But 20/20 Valuations, a Maryland appraisal company, put the home’s value at $472,000, and in turn, loanDepot, a mortgage lender, denied the couple a refinance loan.

Dr. Connolly said he knew why: He, his wife and three children, aged 15, 12 and 9, are Black. A professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Connolly is an expert on redlining and the legacy of white supremacy in American cities, and much of his research focuses on the role of race in the housing market.

Months after that first appraisal, the couple applied for another refinance loan, removed family photos and had a white male colleague — another Johns Hopkins professor — stand in for them. The second appraiser valued the house at $750,000.

The industry standard, in other words, if we are to believe the Newspaper of Science, is to apply a 37 percent discount to a Black-occupied house.

An appraised-low house is a curse if you’re the typical spend-like-a-drug-dealer American and want to pull the last dollar of home equity out to spend on bling. But an appraised-low house is a blessing if you’re faced with paying the annual property tax bill.

I’m wondering what this means for sharing out the property tax burden in the U.S. Wouldn’t most members of the laptop class eagerly grab their one Black friend to stand in for them when the local tax assessor comes buy to set the house’s value for property tax purposes? Let’s consider the appraisal discrepancy that affected Dr. Connolly, M.D., above: $278,000. At Baltimore’s 2.25 percent property tax rate, a subtraction of $278,000 in assessed value would save $62,550 over a 10-year period.

Here’s some new construction near the Stuart, Florida airport, maybe evidence that someone managed the PPP and other coronarelief programs correctly. I’m betting that he/she/ze/they would pay good money to a Black family willing to move in for a couple of hours while Martin County’s assessors try to figure out how much to hit them for.

Full post, including comments

A glimpse into the world of Ivy League humanities

by philg

A very loose companion to my own “Women in Science” piece (“Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why any young American would do it.”)… an article by an English professor who was fired (“denied tenure”) at Yale:

what disgusted me the most was not the intellectual corruption. It was the careerism. It was the sense that all of this—all the posturing, all the position-taking—was nothing more than a professional game. The goal was advancement, not truth. The worst mistake was to think for yourself. People said things that they obviously didn’t believe, or wouldn’t have believed if they had bothered to subject them to the test of their own experience—that language is incapable of making meaning, that the self is a construct—but that the climate forced them to avow. Students stuck their fingers in the air to see which way the theoretical winds were blowing, designing their dissertations to catch the swell of the latest trend.

I managed to publish a couple of articles and get some decent recommendations from professors over 50, and when I ventured on the job market, the year I finished my degree, I was offered interviews at five institutions (out of the 20 to which I applied). Four were lower-tier places—Auburn, the University of Montana, Georgia State, and Cal State Los Angeles—and the fifth was Yale. The explanation of this strange assortment is that Yale’s was still a very conservative department—meaning, it was still run by people who shared my intellectual values. Being able to write, for example, was not considered a liability.

After nine years in graduate school, uncertain the entire time about my future, I had been granted a new lease on my professional life. Given Yale’s generous 10-year timeline, plus leaves of absence in the fourth and seventh years, I should’ve been able to make it work: publish, get another job, make it to Castle Tenure.

For those getting ready to pony up tuition, room, and board at a research university:

The problem with spending time with students, or on students, or writing book reviews or essays, is that none of those activities do anything for you professionally. Academics are rewarded for one thing and one thing only: research. Scholarly publication. Nothing else counts; anything else is a step toward professional suicide.

After he can’t get tenure at Yale?

… 39 schools and 46 applications. Prestigious universities, public and private; non-prestigious universities, public and private; Canadian universities; liberal arts colleges. Institutions in the Northeast, the Midwest, the South, the West, and north of the border; schools urban, suburban, and rural. I would’ve gone just about anywhere. But with all that work and all that hope, I got a total of five interviews, two callbacks (the final stage in the hiring process), and zero offers.

At this point he’s presumably mid-40s, a time when an intelligent hard-working person is reaching the zenith of his/her/zir/their career prestige, and unemployable within his field.

I recommend this essay if you know anyone who is considering investing in a Ph.D.!

Finally, this seems like a good time for me to remind everyone that the cafeteria staff at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh needs to remind the academic geniuses that pecan pie contains nuts:

Full post, including comments

Meet in Oslo next week?

by philg

Oslo, Norway is the only nonstop European destination reachable from FLL (not too far from Jupiter, Florida where we moved). I’ll be on the ground Monday through Thursday next week (August 29-Sept 1) and would be delighted to meet any readers (just email philg@mit.edu).

Our 7-year-old suggested to a COVID-concerned friend that he “dress up like Dr. Fauci” and hand out N95 masks to fellow passengers on commercial airline flights. I may try this if it seems that there are diseased deplorables on the Norse Atlantic 787.

Once on the ground, I will be joining the “national celebration” of all things 2SLGBTQQIA+:

Full post, including comments