The Better Letter: Save Your Fork
May we all have "Save your fork" moments this week and always.
In a few short hours, my darling bride and I will board an airplane headed east. There we will join our children, their spouses, and their children for Thanksgiving. On Thursday, around the table, we will play the “thankful game” whereby, in turn, each of us will say what we are thankful for. There are no repeats or fooling around allowed and the “game” continues until my much-better-half decides we are sufficiently thankful.
I already am more than sufficiently thankful, in no small measure thanks to her. I also have much I wanna remember.
My parents lived very difficult lives before they found each other. I am beyond thankful that they escaped and made a home life for me that was stable, loving, and safe. I never wondered where my next meal was coming from. Home was always warm and tidy. They had only one high school diploma between them, but I was expected to do well in school and go to college. What they made of themselves – considering where they came from and even accounting for grace – is almost unbelievable.
My fondest memory as a kid is me sitting at the end of the street with my baseball glove, waiting for Dad to get home to play catch. He was often exhausted after a day in the steel mill, but he never said “no.” He was generous with fun, kind words, and affection.
My mother was not. It was hard for her. I don’t know what, if anything, her abusive home life had to do with it, but she was restrained in her affirmations. She did express her love at the table, however.
She loved to cook and was terrific at it. We grew fruit and vegetables in a big backyard garden for eating, freezing, and canning. She made tomato sauce, tomato juice, and preserves.
Thanksgiving was amazing. When the turkey and stuffing were devoured, and my pants unsnapped, she would clear the dishes. As she began, she sweetly offered the three words I most wanted to hear. But not those three words.
“Save your fork,” she said. That meant something great was still to come.
May you hear those words this week and feel the sentiment often. We who can save our forks should be most grateful indeed.
When we realize that our sins and shortcomings abound and our successes are less about us than we tend to think, grace becomes ever more apparent. When we see grace operate, we can’t help but be grateful. And when we are more grateful, perhaps for getting what we need rather than what we deserve, it is easier to offer grace to a needy and lost world — so others can save their forks, too.
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Thank you for reading.
Inflation Nation
On election night, 2016, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, motivated by political animus and disappointment rather than careful analysis, called for “a global recession, with no end in sight.” And, “[i]f the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.” Instead, the economy boomed and, beginning the very next morning, the market rallied and continued to rally until Covid-19 shut things down more than three years later. For the Trump presidency, the S&P 5-00 returned almost 14 percent annually (plus dividends).
Such forecasting folly isn’t a partisan problem, of course. On March 9, 2009, Michael Boskin of Stanford, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush, claimed that President “Obama’s radicalism is killing the Dow.” That exact day marked the market bottom and the nadir of the Great Financial Crisis. It turned out the market was alive and well after all. The Dow made more than 12 percent per year while the S&P 500 returned nearly 14 percent annually (plus dividends) during the Obama presidency.
Many of the more specific criticisms of Mr. Obama’s policies focused on the threat of inflation due to excessive government spending. For example (from January 2, 2009): “hyperinflation is a well-justified fear among Wall Street types and more than a trillion dollars in government spending is more likely to send the economy into overdrive than just about anything else.”
Throughout the Obama presidency, many economic and market-types sounded the alarm over inflation, often with a political motivation. When it didn’t happen, some of them claimed that the books were cooked, that the system was rigged.
Sound familiar?
Today, inflation is at the center of economic and market concern, and (finally) not without good reason. Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the official inflation rate had soared to 6.2 percent in October, the highest level in decades. Some conspiracy-minded analysts insist that the true inflation rate is much higher. Last week, for example, Jordan Peterson tweeted a chart that purports to show the year-over-year inflation rate is almost 15 percent, not 6 percent.
Once again, the conspiracy-mongering cuts across partisan lines. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also tweeted about it.
The “research” they rely upon comes from Shadow Government Statistics, whose longstanding premise (generously) is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics made a series of methodological changes over the years that has led to the systematic understatement of inflation. According to Shadowstats, if you calculate the inflation rate using the earlier methodology, the true inflation rate has been 6 to 8 percentage points higher than the official data indicate for decades.
Big if true.
But the creator of the chart, Shadowstats founder John Williams, admits that he doesn’t actually re-compute the inflation rate using any earlier methodology. He does something much cruder and more deceptive. Williams starts with the official inflation figure and simply adds a fudge factor that represents his estimate of how much the official CPI understates the true inflation rate. The BLS has changed its methodology over the years, transparently and in ways the vast majority of economists agree make sense. It also provides additional inflation measures. And some economists think CPI understates inflation.
There’s a bigger issue here, as well.
The Shadowstats “adjustment” is way larger than the data warrant. If we were to assume Williams’ premise and actually calculate inflation using the “old” methodologies, rather than using the fudge factor Williams provides, all of the changes in the aggregate have altered the annual inflation rate by just a fraction of a percentage point — not the 6 to 8 percentage points Williams claims. Read the takedown from Full Stack Economics here for details (an earlier takedown by economist Ed Dolan that comes to the same conclusion is here), demonstrating that Williams royally screwed up some simple math.
We can also double-check this conclusion by comparing prices over time. It’s less exact than a broader measurement, but also easier to remember. Shadowstats would have us believe that the annual inflation rate has averaged about 9 percent over the last 21 years. That would mean, through the wonder of compound interest in a different context, prices have risen six-fold since 2000.
Spoiler Alert: They haven’t. When asked to provide examples of goods that were six times more expensive than in 2000, Williams couldn’t offer any. He merely suggested that examples should exist in the “food area.”
The American Farm Bureau has been releasing a survey of the average cost of a classic Thanksgiving feast – what my mother would have called “turkey and all the fixins” (turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, coffee, and milk, all in quantities sufficient to serve a family of 10 with leftovers) – for 36 consecutive years. Every component comes from the “food area.”My family feast as a kid included at least one more vegetable, mashed potatoes, gravy, and apple pie, but the Farm Bureau has a pretty representative meal. This year’s survey, released yesterday, indicates the average cost of the meal for ten this year is $53.31, a $6.41 or 14 percent increase from last year’s average.
Food prices are rising at the highest level in 12 years amid severe droughts and spiking demand from families and restaurant reopenings. Meat, fish, and egg prices are up nearly 12 percent from a year ago — the highest increase since 1979 (other than the early days of the pandemic).
Going out for Thanksgiving will cost a lot more, too. The index for food away from home rose 5.3 percent over the last year. Limited service meals rose 7.1 percent over the last year, and the cost of full service meals rose 5.9 percent, both the largest 12-month increases in the history of the respective series.
So, food prices have made a big jump higher. Still, if Shadowstats is right and today’s prices are six times what they were in 2000, the average Thanksgiving feast in 2000 cost $8.89. In 2000, the average cost of that same meal, as computed by the Farm Bureau, was $30.79.
It’s possible that the Thanksgiving feast components are not representative of all prices or even all food prices. Some representative prices follow (2000 price/ Shadowstats derived price (x6)/ CPI derived price/ Actual price*). These prices readily demonstrate that the Shadowstats “calculation” is wildly wrong. None of the actual prices is remotely close to as high as Shadowstats says they should be. Not gasoline. Not even Harvard.
Fresh eggs (1 dozen): $0.91/$5.46/$1.49/$1.29
White bread (1 pound): $0.93/$5.58/$1.52/$2.49
Sliced bacon (1 pound): $3.03/$18.18/$4.96/$6.99
Round steak (1 pound): $3.24/$19.44/$5.31/$7.99
Potatoes (1 pound): $0.38/$2.28/$0.62/$0.50
Fresh grocery milk (1 gallon): $2.78/$16.68/$4.56/$2.99
Gasoline (1 gallon): $1.51/$9.06/$2.47/$4.29
Cigarettes (per pack): $3.94/$23.64/$6.46/$6.96
Postage (First Class): $0.33/$1.98/$0.54/$0.58
Movie ticket: $5.39/$32.34/$8.83/$14.00
A Lexus 300: $33,005 /$198,030/$54,081/$42,220
Median home (monthly rental): $602/$3,612/$986.41/$1,203
Median home (Chicago): $169,000/$1,014,000/$276,917/$320,000
College (Harvard/annual): $25,739/$154,434/$42,175/$72,357
High tech gear is much cheaper today, obviously, especially when quality is factored in. For example, an average computer in 2000 cost $4,513 ($1,599 for a MacBook at BestBuy today); and a 42” flatscreen television cost $7,499 ($549 for a SONY at BestBuy today).
Inflation today really is a big deal. It’s hot, doesn’t seem to be transitory, and hurts poorer people a lot more than richer people. However, the Shadowstats claims are simply crazy.
_______________
* I obtained actual prices from local establishments or from statistical sources. Obviously, they aren’t necessarily representative, but they do offer a decent basis for comparison.
Loss Aversion
Every halfway-decent high school or YMCA basketball player thinks he could have played at a higher level, at least under the right circumstances. I was disabused of that notion at Duke, where I was good friends with a Blue Devil player who became my Moot Court partner (we lost in the semi-finals). He was a 10-minute-per-game guy on a Final Four team whose job was to bang, play defense, and rebound. He rarely shot.
When we would hack around, he could go outside the three-point-line (had it existed then) and knock down ten straight shots without thinking about it.
When I asked why he didn’t shoot in games, he said, “It’s different.” And indeed it is.
A youngster attended Pete Maravich’s basketball camp in the summer of 1977. One day at lunch the Pistol put on a shooting display. Note that he had shot 42 percent from the field for the NBA season just ended.
Maravich had the campers sit along the court. Coaches with ball racks stood on three sides of a half court. Pete began flying around, firing up shots as coaches passed to him. Three basketballs were sometimes in the air at once.
It was an extremely impressive display of shooting acumen.
When Pete finished, he asked, “How many shots did I miss?”
The kids screamed in unison: “Three!”
Then, he asked, “How many shots did I make?”
Total silence.
“Coach J, how many shots did I make?”
“154.”
Pistol Pete paused and said: “See that. You all focused on the negative. Start focusing on the positive.”
P.S. The best basketball players are amazingly good (with ever more impressive analytics to help them keep improving).
Totally Worth It
Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” became a hit on her first holiday album in 1994 and has topped the charts every Yuletide season since. It has been streamed more than 31.5 million times already this year and nearly 683 million times since 2010. Based on average pay rates, Mariah would have made around $1.7 million from streams in 2019, $1.9 million in 2020, and is on track to make even more during the 2021 holiday season. These estimates only account for streams. She also cashes in on album sales, downloads, licensing, and other royalties. Not bad.
This Thanksgiving Pie from the good people at Reese's contains 432 grams of fat. There is some consolation that they suggest you cut it into 48 pieces.
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In a 2019 Gallup/Populace survey, before the pandemic changed the working world, Americans ranked flexibility to set their own work schedules as the 74th most important out of 76 attributes associated with a successful and happy life. Now, after the pandemic popularized remote and hybrid work, it sits at number 2, behind only compensation.
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This is the best thing I saw or read this week. This is the thing I most wish I had written. The most important. The most interesting. The most insane. The most compelling (more here). The most thought-provoking. The most fascinating. The most bizarre. The wisest. The funniest. The coolest. The saddest. The most sensible. The most brazen (inspired by this, I’m sure). The most heinous. The most disgusting. The least surprising (and also disgusting). The most disconcerting. The most dubious. Truth. Crazy-cool baseball technology. This shouldn’t have been a big deal, but it was. The history of “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Please send me your nominees for this space to rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or via Twitter (@rpseawright).
Benediction
Lionel Ritchie will bring us home this week.
The Spotify playlist of TBL music now includes nearly 200 songs and over 14 hours of great music. I urge you to listen … and turn the volume up. Way up.
To those of us prone to wander, to those who are broken, to those who flee and fight in fear – which is every last lost one of us – there is a faith that offers hope. And may love have the last word. Now and forever. Amen.
Thanks for reading.
The Thanksgiving Issue, Number 89 (November 19, 2021)