Affordability

Democrats, Progressives, and Democratic Socialists will make affordability one of the big issues in the upcoming mid-term elections. None of them seemed to care much about rising prices and inflation during the Biden administration. In 2022, a year after the inauguration of President Biden, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 8.6%. During the same period energy prices increased 34.6%, and groceries jumped 11.9%. In particular, eggs were up 32.2%, chicken 16.6%, milk 15.9%, and even soup was up by 13.9%. 

I remember my shock in 2022 when my heating oil company told me that my oil price would be $6.50 per gallon. Thankfully, this year I have been able to lock in my price at about $4.00 per gallon for the coming season despite the war in Iran. Nevertheless, since the election of President Trump, the news has been full of dire stories about affordability and price inflation.

I started thinking about affordability last year during the baseball World Series. I noticed that, whether in Los Angeles or Toronto, the stands were packed with fans most of whom seemed to be young men. I wondered where they got the money to pay more than $1000 for not even a box seat. I wondered where they also got the money to pay the exorbitant stadium prices for hot dogs, beer and soda.

It was the same thing at the Super Bowl, March Madness, and the NBA finals. I have grandchildren, recent college graduates, who were actually able to attend such events. One even flew from California to San Antonio to watch the Knicks beat the Spurs in the season’s finale.

These events paled in significance to the recent World Cup held at packed venues in the USA, Canada, and Mexico. Millions of people from all over the world paid ridiculous sums to attend. It was not just the tickets, but the travel, hotel, and food that hardly seemed to faze them. One day in my dentist’s office, I could overhear the hygienist, who happened to be from Cape Verde, tell the dentist that she had flown down to Miami for the weekend to watch her team play.

Sporting events are just one way people spend money. Entertainers like Taylor Swift have become some of the richest people in the world giving concerts packed mainly with cheering young women. Another of my grandchildren even flew to Europe for one of Swift’s concerts.

From my own limited viewpoint I can say that many of these people have jobs and choose to spend their earnings on their own entertainment. That’s ok, it's their money. But they don’t seem to have an affordability issue.

Others, I suspect, can ‘t really afford to attend these events, but just use their credit cards. Recent studies indicate that credit card debt is at an all-time high, as is the number of people who are more than three months behind in their card payments.

I knew a young man with a good job who had amassed credit card debt of over $100,000. The interest alone on that debt would have been over $18000 a year or $1500 per month with no way in sight to ever pay off the principal. How could he afford to buy a home, or rent a decent apartment? No wonder he might be concerned about the price of food or gas. His out-of-control spending created his own affordability problem.

Yes, I know that most people do not attend these high-priced events, and that many are having to deal with higher prices for their daily living expenses. There are many ways to deal with higher prices, but I will leave that discussion to another day. Here I would just like to point out that government waste and fraud is a major culprit.

Another of my grandchildren is disabled. He is able to live independently and participates in the SNAP program. One month his SNAP payment was stolen from his bank account by a fraudster. This is just one example of how the massive amounts of government aid that have been meant for the truly poor and needy have been hijacked by fraudsters in recent years.

It is not only taxpayers that have been victimized by fraud but also the needy who never received the funds appropriated to help with their living expenses. They can blame the fraudsters and the politicians who enabled them for their affordability crisis.

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Random Harvest

  

 

Greer Garson and Ronald Colman co-starred in Random Harvest, a 1942 Hollywood film that is one of the great sentimental romance films of all time. Early critics scoffed at the film, but it was an immediate box office success and is now an enduring favorite. Introducing the film on Turner Classic Movies a few years ago, the late Robert Osborne said he loved the film, and guest host Gene Wilder claimed that while it was not the best film he had ever seen, it was still his favorite.

My own experience confirms their opinion. On a couple of occasions, I have presented Random Harvest at my local senior center and the audience, mainly women, loved it. I can watch good films over and over and my wife often balks at watching Random Harvest for the umpteenth time, but once the credits roll, she is all in. Why?

What is there about Randon Harvest that made it MGM’s biggest hit back in 1942, and that still makes it enjoyable today? Based on a 1941 novel by James Hilton, best known for Lost Horizons, and Goodbye Mr. Chips, the screen adaptation seems somewhat implausible. Colman plays a British soldier who has lost his memory due to shell shock during World War I. He was captured by the Germans who included him in a prisoner exchange before the end of the war. He winds up in a mental asylum in an English manufacturing town still with total loss of memory, and hardly able to utter a sentence. He is given the name John Smith.

Implausibly, one night he is able to walk off the asylum in the hubbub arising from the news that the war is over. He gets into town, unaware of what is going on, and is surrounded by a host of cheering revelers. He stumbles into a tobacco shop whose proprietor senses that something is wrong with him and calls the police. Even more implausibly, an attractive young woman, played by Garson, takes pity on him and spirits him away. She is an entertainer in a travelling vaudeville show and takes him under her wing. Her name is Paula and eventually, she nurses him back to health, they fall in love and marry although he still has no memory of his past life. She calls him Smithy.

They proceed to live a normal life. She has a baby and he becomes a writer to the point where a Liverpool newspaper offers him a job. He travels to Liverpool to take the job but suffers a head injury after being hit by a car.  His memory comes back and he remembers that he is the scion of an aristocratic English family. Incredibly, he has no recollection of the last three years with Paula. 

What happens next, I will not describe but just say that the remainder of the film deals with Colman’s return to his family home and business, but still haunted by the gap in his recent memory, and Garson’s determined search for Smithy who has disappeared without a trace.

Implausible yes, but the acting puts the film over. I think it safe to say that no one ever spoke like Ronald Colman. Although his good looks made him a silent film star, his voice was a revelation when talkies arrived. In Random Harvest he plays two roles superbly. He plays the mentally handicapped veteran, as well as the aristocratic polished gentleman businessman. 

Colman’s performance was more than matched by Greer Garson, an extremely beautiful, mature actress of great talent. She also plays two roles. First, she is the vivacious, music hall performer who can put over an unforgettable song and dance routine in front of a packed house celebrating the end of the war. Later, she seems perfectly at home playing a sophisticated woman who can eventually travel in the highest rungs of English society. 

Ronald Colman’s performance earned him a well-deserved Best Actor nomination. Greer Garson was not nominated for this role probably because the studio nominated her for her performance in Mrs. Miniver, the story of a courageous British housewife during the dark days of WWII, a role for which she did win the Best Actress award. It is interesting to note that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill credited Mrs. Miniver for building British morale as well as American support for the success of the war effort.  Nevertheless, Mrs. Miniver seems dated today while Randon Harvest endures. Colman and Garson were an incomparable pair.

125 minutes. CC.

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Who Profits?

 

    

 

Years ago when I was in college I disliked business, businessmen, and profit making as much as any modern Democratic Socialist. 

Deep down I must have been jealous since I thought I had so little and they seemed to have so much. Somehow, it never occurred to me that my college education was being completely paid for by a scholarship from my father’s employer, the Bulova Watch Company.

It would take years of life experience for me to understand the value of profits and profit making. Here are some personal anecdotes.

I met my future wife Linda in my senior year at Fordham college. We dated throughout the next year while I took courses for a master’s degree in history at Columbia University, and she completed her last year for a BS degree in Nursing at Cornell’s nursing center in New York city.

By the time she graduated, we began to discuss marriage. I had been offered a job at Cardinal Hayes high school in the Bronx, and a nurse could seemingly get a job almost anywhere. To be Bonafide, I knew that I could not propose without a ring.

So, one day I cashed in the little savings account I had opened in grade school at St. Mary’s in Queens.  Over the years my regular nickel and dime deposits had grown to about $200. I took a subway to Manhattan’s diamond district on East 47^th Street, a street lined with jewelry shops manned by Jewish merchants. 

These guys were notorious and I expected to be overcharged or even cheated. They knew their business and I was totally ignorant.  But what could I do? So I put down my entire life savings to buy a decent looking ring with a small, flawed diamond. 

I suspect that the dealer made at least a 100% profit on the deal, but now I know that I was the one who profited most. Linda loved the ring, and accepted my proposal, and still wears it today, more than 60 years later. She knew instinctively that it was much more than metal or stone, but a sign of my love and commitment, just as I knew that her acceptance was a sign of hers.

We were engaged, but even though I had a job, I was broke. It never occurred to me that in order to leave our parents’ homes, we would need to furnish an apartment. Fortunately, presents from family members helped. In particular, my father offered to pay for a bedroom set.

One day Linda and I went to Mazur Brothers Furniture store, a long-established institution in White Plains not far from her home. A salesman, probably a Mazur, showed us a number of sets, and we settled on a sturdy cherry wood set that included a dresser with a large mirror, a bureau, and a bed with two end tables. I think the total cost was around $800, a large sum back in 1962. 

Once again, I suspected we were being overcharged but Linda liked the set, and that was that. Afterwards, she praised the salesman’s manner and presentation, but I grumbled that he was just out for a commission. Now I realize that while he and Mazur Brothers had profited from the sale, we profited infinitely more.

More than sixty years later, we still use it. The bed may show some wear, but the dresser, bureau, mirror, and end tables look new and still work perfectly. What a deal! Buyer and seller both profited. Even my father profited. He got rid of me and got six grandchildren in the bargain, all of whom loved him.

During our years of married life I can think of countless examples of how transactions turned out to be profitable for all parties concerned. The purchase of four homes profited not only sellers, but banks, insurance companies, real estate brokers, and movers, but we profited the most. That’s the American way, and I love it.

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Note: The image above is the Mazur Brothers storefront back in the 1960s. In searching for it, I came across a short obituary of Joseph G. Mazur, President of the company, who seems to have been quite a man. 

Where I'm From

Here's a guest post, a poem written by my granddaughter Maeve when she was still in Middle School. Now she is about to enter college where I think her observant eyes and writing skill should serve her well.

                  Where I‘m From

                            MHD

 

I’m from the scribbled drawings on the fridge

From the books in piles on the coffee table.

The feeling of their creased spines on my fingertips.

I’m from my grandmother’s kitchen

(Small, homey, it smelled like focaccia)

I am from the constellations,

The Moon,

Like a pearl in a black sea,

Lighting up the night,

I’m from ivory paper and fountain pens,

Their jet black ink dancing across the pages of my notebooks.

I’m from Elvera and Antoinette,

From the “I love you's".

From “Mangia” and “Salute”

I am from playing cards at the kitchen table,

Marking points on a stray notepad.

I’m from Ucci and Gardella,

From ripe cherry tomatoes and steaming chamomile tea

From the ship my great-great grandmother took from Serracapriola to New York

 I’m from the child she lost on the journey,

From the money she saved to get to America.

I am from the letters saved in a box beneath my bed.

Covered in nearly illegible handwriting I had to ask my mother to decipher.

I’m from the words of my relatives,

Whose stories helped me connect with my late family members.

I am from the spirits of my ancestors,

Who suffered for their children to live a better life.

I am from the good and the bad,

The ups and downs of living.

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