71 percent annual inflation rate for umbrella insurance

by philg

Opening the mailbox in our inflation-free economy, I found the following had been forwarded from my mother’s old address in Maryland:

This is a $1 million Maryland-based umbrella policy for mom, whose underlying auto policy was canceled some years ago (my father died in 2021, shortly after receiving the second Pfizer COVID vaccine shot and stopped driving a few years before that). The increase from $133.81 to $228.44 in a year is a 71 percent annual inflation rate.

I canceled the policy because (a) it isn’t valid if the policyholder lacks underlying insurance, (b) I don’t expect mom to do a lot of physical damage with her walker, and (c) $1 million isn’t enough to cover even a tiny fraction of the damages ladled out by juries when a non-physical injury is found (see E. Jean Carroll, for example, who suffered $83 million in damage to her reputation when her veracity was questioned).

In other news from our inflation-free economy… “Nationwide says it’s dropping thousands of pet insurance policies due to inflation” (CNN):

Nationwide Pet, the country’s largest provider of pet insurance, says it is dropping about 100,000 policies between now and next summer to keep up with spiraling costs in vet care.

The move comes as other types of insurance, from homeowners to vehicles, are increasingly becoming harder to obtain for many Americans.

“Inflation in the cost of veterinary care and other factors have led to recent underwriting changes and the withdrawal of some products in some states — difficult actions that are necessary to ensure a financially sustainable future for our pet insurance line of business,” Nationwide said in an announcement last week.

I can’t figure out which 100,000 policies they’d choose to drop. If inflation in vet costs is a nationwide (so to speak) phenomenon, how does it help to pick certain policies to drop and others to keep? By breed? Age of dog?

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Kid perspectives on contracts

by philg

We recently had some windows added to our house. If you live in a northern lockdown state, this might not sound like a big deal: cut out some wood with a reciprocating saw, get a glass module (double pane to save the planet), frame around the glass module, touch up the paint. In the Florida Free State (TM), however, you need to do the following:

  • cut through cinder block and rebar
  • put a lintel above the opening that you just cut so that the house doesn’t fall down
  • pour some new concrete with rebar around the window opening
  • add wood framing just inside the new opening
  • bring in a window company at $3,700+/opening to install an impact-rated window into the wood and concrete with massive screws every 7 inches or so
  • deal with the building inspector multiple times already by this point
  • install new stucco on the concrete that you’ve just poured
  • paint the exterior
  • install new drywall on the interior
  • paint the drywall

The window company said that in pre-Biden times it was possible to find a general contractor to do all of the above (except the window item itself) for $5,000 per opening. We had four openings so it should have cost us about $20,000+ for the general contractor and $14,750 for the windows themselves.

Of course, the old $20,000 is the new $40,000 or maybe $100,000. The window company’s usual partners refused even to look at the project, deeming it too small. Our architect worked with a mid-sized contractor regularly and he quoted $37,250 for his part of the work. A small-time guy who’d done some stuff very reasonably for us in the past quoted $18,000. We’d had huge price discrepancies for some other items at the house, e.g., install a mini-split A/C in the garage so it didn’t occur to us that the $18,000 was a mistake until after we saw how many guys and subcontractors the contractor put on the project and how many weeks it took.

Towards the end of the project, he came back to me and opened by saying that he knew that I owed him only $18,000 because that’s what he quoted. But he had some paperwork to show that the proper cost was closer to $40,000 and explained that he’d made mistakes in preparing the quote, leaving out a lot of concrete work.

I asked out 8- and 10-year-olds what they would have done in the situation. I tried to prepare them for the scenario by asking what if the Honda dealer quoted us $1,000 for new tires and then said they’d made a mistake and asked for $2,000 when the car was completed. They both said that the Honda dealer should be held to the contract. Then I asked them about our specific contractor, whose friendly careful people they’d seen in the house for all four months of the one-month project. They gave the same answer: hold the guy to his bid. I tried to get them to back off from this position by pointing out that the Honda dealer might be worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars while our contractor was just a regular working guy and had a lot of subcontractors to pay, but I couldn’t make them see a distinction.

From shwinco.com:

Excerpts from the Notice of Acceptance that is part of the building permit:

(Readers might reasonably wonder what I decided to do. I paid $37,250, which the competitor had quoted, since that was the only reference that I had for a correctly quoted job. It seemed like a fair price for the quality and quantity of work that was done. (Plus, the guys who were sawing concrete blocks and doing other onerous tasks in the Florida heat and humidity will need money to pay off college graduates’ loans transferred by Joe Biden to the general taxpayer.) It wouldn’t be logically consistent, but if the Honda dealer made a mistake and gave me a written quote that they later said was lower than it should have been, I wouldn’t voluntarily pay more.)

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Celebrating Juneteenth here in Portugal

by philg

Portugal so far has been short on what Americans would consider Social Justice. We witnessed one pro-Hamas march on a Lisbon synagogue and the number of participants (about 50) was a tiny percentage of the Lisbon metro area population (nearly 3 million). The pro-Hamas encampment at the University of Coimbra was also poorly attended (and they let a dog walk on the sacred Palestinian flag; see future post). Our almost-9-year-old’s sharp eyes spotted a single rainbow flag, rather faded, above a bar in Lisbon (i.e., that’s one rainbow flag in a 10-day period). At Portugal dos Pequenitos, a theme park of miniature houses and architectural monuments designed to delight children, the Portuguese “voyages of discovery” are presented as great achievements, not as pernicious precursors to slavery and colonization:

Does all of the above mean that I am not participating in Juneteenth? Au contraire, as they say in Lisbon! Today I tried to return a phone call from John Hancock regarding my 90-year-old mom’s insurance. I turned on my Xfinity Mobile SIM ($10 per day of usage, with a meagre 0.5 GB data allotment that one will blow through in less than a day of using Google Maps, uploading a few photos, etc.) and called John Hancock. I spent about 15 minutes dealing with their automated system before an attempt was made to connect me with a human. My reward was a recording: “Our offices are closed today in observance of Juneteenth” (this became a new paid day off for government workers in 2021; see “Biden Signs Law Making Juneteenth a Federal Holiday” (NYT)).

Readers: How did you observe Juneteenth? Were you obstructed in any of your attempts to be productive?

Here’s Joe Biden crediting Black Americans as having “led the march from slavery to freedom”, but weren’t the relevant marches for Juneteenth led by Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman? Is he saying that Grant and Sherman identified as “Black”?

Related:

A video of the “Free Palestine” march on the synagogue in Lisbon that was around the corner from our hotel:

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Replacement theory is false with respect to tourists in NYC

by philg

“Why N.Y.C. Hotel Rooms Are So Expensive Right Now” (NYT, May 25):

The average hotel room rate in the city is $301 a night, a record. A major reason: One of every five hotels is now a shelter, contributing to a shortage of tourist lodging.

In late 2022, as thousands of migrants began to arrive in New York City, city officials scrambled to find places to house them. They quickly found takers: hotels that were still struggling to recover from the pandemic-driven downturn in tourism.

Dozens of hotels, from once-grand facilities to more modest establishments, closed to tourists and began exclusively sheltering migrants, striking multimillion-dollar deals with the city. The humanitarian crisis became the hotel industry’s unexpected lifeline in New York; the hotels became a safe haven for tens of thousands of asylum seekers.

About 65,000 migrants are being sheltered in hotels, tent dormitories and other shelters, in large part because of the city’s legal obligation to provide a bed to anyone who needs one. The city projects it will spend $10 billion over three fiscal years on the migrant crisis.

Low-skill migrants make the U.S. richer economically and culturally, yet it is a “crisis” when more enrichment is happening?

We are informed by the New York Times that Replacement Theory is false, as well as racist. Only a fool could entertain the idea that native-born Americans are being replaced by low-skill immigrants streaming across an open border that is intentionally undefended despite Americans paying nearly $1 trillion/year to fund a military. We are also informed that 20 percent of potential tourists have been replaced by migrants.

From the New York Post:

Who else can profit from low-skill immigration? Government workers! “The Massive Immigration Wave Hitting America’s Classrooms” (Wall Street Journal, May 25):

STOUGHTON, Mass.—Eighth-grader Sandla Desir spoke softly in a classroom recently while reading the Dr. Seuss book, “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish,” aloud in accented English.

The book isn’t typical material for a 13-year-old. But when Sandla started at O’Donnell Middle School in September, the native Haitian Creole speaker could barely read.

Millions of migrants, most seeking asylum, have crossed the border in recent years and have been allowed to settle in the U.S. until a federal immigration judge decides their fate, a process that can take years. Among the record numbers, federal data suggest, are as many as one million children who have arrived with their families or on their own since 2021.

Districts are faced with the need for additional teachers and staff who can teach English … Adding the 90 shelter students has cost Stoughton, which teaches a total of 3,740 students, at least $500,000 for increased staff and busing costs. The state said it has reimbursed nearly all of that money. … The most immediate upfront costs this year were hiring five new staff members, including two teachers, and contracting for a bus to shuttle students to and from the hotel shelters, Baeta said. The district has gone from seven to 17 English-as-a-second-language teachers in the past five years.

Related:

  • “Yes, Immigration Hurts American Workers” (Politico 2016), in which Harvard economists find that the main effect of low-skill immigration is to transfer $500 billion/year (pre-Biden money) from the American working class to elite Americans, e.g., the kinds of folks who own hotels in New York City
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Palm Beach County Public Library during this Pride

by philg

We are informed by the New York Times and CNN that Governor Ron DeSantis has banned books that promote the 2SLGBTQQIA+ lifestyle. Here’s a photo taken this Pride at the local branch of the Palm Beach County Library system:

A couple of close-ups:

A potentially disturbing twist on Love is Love… the Pride books are right next to books regarding human-animal love:

Separately, I found what looks like it might be a great book celebrating women in aviation:

(about Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg)

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Europe is rich in migrants, so why isn’t it rich?

by philg

“Europe Has Fallen Behind the U.S. and China. Can It Catch Up?” (New York Times, June 5):

Europe’s share of the global economy is shrinking, and fears are deepening that the continent can no longer keep up with the United States and China. … Beijing and Washington are funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into expanding their own semiconductor, alternative energy and electric car industries, and upending the world’s free trade regime

The secret to wealth is government spending and European governments aren’t big enough.

Private investment lags as well. Large corporations, for example, invested 60 percent less in 2022 than their American counterparts, and grew at two-thirds the pace, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute. As for per-capita income, it is on average 27 percent lower than in the United States. And productivity growth is slower than other major economies, while energy prices are much higher.

The journalists ask us to contemplate an unimaginable horrible scenario:

Imagine if every state in America had national sovereignty and there were only limited federal power to raise money to fund things like the military.

In other words, imagine if the U.S. Constitution were followed and the federal government’s powers were limited to those spelled out in the document.

The news isn’t all bad:

For more than a decade, Europe has been falling behind on several measures of competitiveness, including capital investments, research and development, and productivity growth. But it is a world leader in reducing emissions, limiting income inequality and expanding social mobility, according to McKinsey.

Europe could be leading the leaders in leading even more if governments would hire leading consultants at McKinsey more frequently. Speaking of leaders, the leaders in journalism don’t ask what seems like an obvious question: Science proves that low-skill immigrants make societies rich. Europe is rich in low-skill immigrants, while China is impoverished in low-skill immigrants. “China has the smallest number of international migrants of any major country in the world. Compare its 0.1% of immigrants with near 14% in the U.S. and 18% in Germany.” (Texas A&M, which also notes that immigrants are “very productive”). Shouldn’t Europe’s economic growth be higher than in the U.S. and China?

The NYT article doesn’t mention immigration, except to point out that only a “far-right” political party could question the wisdom of open borders.

Separately, I wonder what would happen if we subtracted out NVIDIA, Facebook, Apple, Google, and Microsoft from the U.S. economy. Maybe without Big Tech, the U.S. and Europe would be roughly comparable.

Speaking of the U.S. economy, here’s a chart from zerohedge showing that the number of native-born workers in the U.S. is unchanged compared to 2018:

To find the promised economic enrichment from the presence of migrants we would have to look at the extent to which real wages for the native-born have increased. If we adjust for inflation under the old formula, real wages are likely lower than in 2018. That’s certainly true here in Palm Beach County, Florida.

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Thanks to fathers, our failed Mercedes is back on the road

by philg

Happy Father’s Day to those who celebrate.

Sunday is generally a sacred day of rest/family here in Portugal, but two dads teamed up to get our failed rental 2024 Mercedes E 300de back on the road. I hope that no fathers were implicated in the engineering of this useless machine. It’s a five-seat car that can barely hold luggage for two people because most of what should be the trunk is taken up by a hybrid battery (impossible for a rental customer to charge because a special card has to be set up with a Portuguese tax ID and bank account).

In its 13,000th kilometer of life the machine suffered an all-systems meltdown and refused to start, claiming that the 12V battery was exhausted. Two dads came out to deal with the problem. One, a tow truck operator and one a restaurant chef who was working on a Sunday. Jumping the car didn’t help and the tow truck guy’s voltmeter showed 12V on the battery. With these two guys putting their heads together plus a phone call to another dad, the car was resurrected via a dramatic reset involving tools applied to an under-hood connector. We limped away without CarPlay, navigation, or the new European speed nanny.

Here’s to the dads who work Sundays and holidays to make life better for their families!

(The tow truck guy waved away a 20 euro tip (this is enough for a sit-down meal for two here). We ate at the restaurant last night and for an early lunch today while waiting for the tow truck.)

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Maskachusetts Democrats try to understand their new neighbors

by philg

A Massachusetts Democrat’s Facebook post earlier this month (the woman who’d repeatedly expressed alarm regarding climate change was about to board a transoceanic flight, apparently; she’d also previously posted in favor of masks and was about to share a confined space with more than 300 potentially infected humans):

Some comments from fellow Democrats:

  • Migrant crisis [it is a “crisis” when the U.S. is being enriched at a faster pace than under the hated dictator Trump]
  • More mistreatment of immigrants. … [and then after a rare hater who snuck into the exchange points out that “They came here illegally”] Artificially preventing the incorporation of this latest wave of Americans into our fully American diaspora, as is the obviously racist purpose of this outrageous policy we are here witnessing, fully ignores the hard won history of all our (?) ancestors who have, and will continue, to make this nation a better (not worse) place because of their efforts, and abilities. If that’s “mansplaining” then please understand the actual truth delivered by this enlightened man! … I am, however, most interested in the opponents of Democracy, itself, and how they must be squirming in regards to the overwhelming election of Mexico’s first female president, who also happens to be its first Jewish president
  • [response to the above] super exciting to see her elected! She is also an ecologist!! This can only be good for Mexico and the world.
  • shameful
  • Wow. I didn’t know about this. How awful for these families!

For reference, the new president of Mexico, referred to above:

Related:

  • “Worried about coronavirus while having sex? Wear a mask, says a new study” (CNN, June 2020, about a study done in Massachusetts (at Harvard Medical School!)): “…it appears that all forms of in-person sexual contact carry risk for transmission of the virus,” said Dr. Jack Turban, study lead author and resident at Harvard Medical School, where he studies the mental health of transgender youth.
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Ideas for fun family activities in Wisconsin before or after EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”)?

by philg

The plan for this year is to fly commercial into ORD (nonstop from PBI), rent a car, and do some stuff before or after EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”). We have some constraints…

  • one family member is 8 years old and, therefore, lacks an adult level of patience
  • one family member lacks a Democrat adult level of tolerance for crime and disorder and, therefore, refuses to set foot in Chicago (my default choice, e.g., Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium)
  • one family member objects to long drives so we don’t want to go too far off route (it’s about 2.5 hours from ORD to Oshkosh if one proceeds direct (through Milwaukee) and 3.25 hours through Madison, WI)
  • everyone in the family likes the outdoors
  • the before/after time will be on weekends, when some things might be closed

One of my early ideas was Devil’s Lake State Park, SW of Oshkosh. However, the same government that informs us that we’re doomed without population growth via open borders also tells us that one must get to this park at dawn in order to be allowed in:

Are the Wisconsin Dells and Baraboo plausible outdoor destinations that are also practical on weekends given the rapidly growing population of our country and constant number of nice places to visit?

What about Milwaukee? I know the art museum (good for 1.5 hours max with our kids). There is a Harley-Davidson museum (do they sell “Better Your Sister in a Whorehouse than Your Brother on a Honda” T-shirts? If not, I question the authenticity). The city will be somewhat jammed on the weekend after Oshkosh due to an airshow(!) so we’d see Milwaukee on the way in. Perhaps the Pabst Mansion as well as the museums? How is the “Historic Third Ward”?

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