Cars and owners

When I went to buy a new car, to replace the aging horse that had served me well, I, like most Americans did not buy it cash down.  To get the loan approved, I had to get my credit checked.

The sales guy came back with the print out.  He had a huge smile on his face.

He sat down on this chair across from me, and slid the paper across and pointed to the credit score.

I asked him what that meant.

I remember his reply even now, almost a year later: "It means you can buy whatever you want at the best rates. That good."

But, of course, the party-pooping General Malaise that I am, I never buy whatever I want. 

Most Americans typically behave the other way around.  Despite their less-than-awesome credit histories, and not saving for the rainy days and years, they buy.  They buy big, and lots of it.  So much so that:

Car debt has risen 75 percent since the Great Recession in 2009, reaching an all-time high of $1.2 trillion, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

This is a worrisome piece of statistic.  It is a danger sign because "car buyers could run into trouble if the economy takes a turn for the worse and their income drops, especially because they’re locking themselves into long-term loans."

Consumers did a similar thing before the Great Recession--they bought homes that they could not really afford, betting that there will not be any downturn in the economy.  And when the economic conditions took a dive, well, you know what happened!

As the global economy seems to be slowing down, one should take a note of this: "More than 7 million Americans are now at least three months delinquent on their auto loan payments, the benchmark for many lenders to trigger a repossession."

Imagine if the economy contracts over the next few months.  Jobs will be cut.  Paychecks will decrease.  But, the payments have to be made.  Or else.

The silver lining, if at all, is this:

The market for car loans is just a fraction of the size of the one for houses. “This isn’t going to be the next 2008,” said R.J. Cross, a policy analyst at the Frontier Group, a research think tank that co-authored the U.S. PIRG report. But these trends still spell trouble for individuals and families, and point to an enlarged economy pumped full of bad loans.

But, seriously, why can't people buy well within their affordable range?  They don't have to be General Malaise, but at least Major Buzzkill or, heck, even Captain Killjoy, right?

"If everyone does a little, we’ll only achieve a little"

I drive a gasoline-powered car.
I fly--domestic and international.
I live in a house that is way big for one person.
I eat almonds from California.
These past few days, I have been cranking up the air-conditioning.

And, oh, I don't use plastic drinking straws, and I recycle paper, bottle, and plastic.

Can you tell me again why recycling and staying away from straws makes me an environmentalist, when my carbon footprint in everything else that I do is humongous?

For years, I have been complaining that we are not pursuing the big-impact issues, and are instead doing merely feel-good things. Like banning plastic straws and plastic bags.  I don't mean to suggest that banning these is a bad idea.  They are much needed.  But, it also does a huge disservice by making people think that banning straws and plastic bags is all that is needed.

If we want to educate conscientious environmental consumers, we should be honest about the scale of the problems and the results of our actions.

Exactly!

We should also remind people that this is a large-scale issue, and pointing fingers at individuals is ineffective.

Effectively, we have accepted individual responsibility for a problem we have little control over. We can swim against this plastic stream with all our might and fail to make much headway. At some point we need to address the source.

On top of that, a much bigger problem:

If environmentalism becomes about vilifying so many of life’s small pleasures and conveniences, I fear it will turn off more people than it rallies to its cause.

Like a neighbor who thinks that being environmental means to walk around with a stink--from not taking showers--and to wear dirty rags.

So, what should be done?

For starters, don't be a dick and blame population growth.  That is atrocious!  Our consumption patterns are the problem, not the numbers of humans born every year.

Go after the producers:

the best way to accelerate significant environmental progress might be to worry less about individual consumption and more about the production side of the equation.

Of course, this is increasingly difficult in this trump era; those in power now and the pro-business maniacs think that every shit that any business does is gold, and that those of us who worry about the long-term impacts on the natural environment are nothing but socialist snowflakes!

Elections have consequences, which the Berniacs did not think through when they went on a hate-Hillary campaign!

We are less than 100 days away from the next major election.  Do whatever you can to vote out these irresponsible scumbags who are robbing from the grandchildren.



ps: The title for this post was a quote in the essay that I have referred to.

Party like there's no tomorrow

The Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms famously asked a bunch of eminent academics at the London School of Economics why nobody noticed the Great Recession before it arrived.

A simple question that all of us regular people have.  Of course, all the economists do was hem and haw and look the other way.  After all, as the joke goes, economists have correctly predicted 7 of the past 4 recessions!

Predicting the next recession is not easy.  It is impossible.  But, hey, I am not an economist; so, it is not like my reputation is on the line or anything ;)  But, I wonder if we are getting closer and closer to the next one.

Four years after the Queen asked that question, she got an answer:

Sujit Kapadia from the Bank's financial services committee gave the Queen three reasons why the crisis happened - one of which was that it was rare event which made it difficult to predict.
He added: "People thought markets were efficient, people thought regulation wasn't necessary. Because the economy was stable there was this growing complacency,"
"Thirdly, people didn't realise just how interconnected the system had become."
The Queen replied: "I suppose, in money terms, it is very difficult to foresee. But people had got a bit lax. Have they?"

The system is even more interconnected compared to a decade ago.  We have in power at the Oval Office, in the Senate, and in the House, maniacs who believe that regulation is unnecessary.  And, we the people have become a tad too complacent. They don't add up well, do they?

Rapid technological advances are propelling the U.S. economy into a new paradigm, unemployment is the lowest in decades, corporate debt is rising, inflation is dormant and the expansion is one of the longest on record, even if growth isn’t that hot.
Much of that growth is being driven by consumer spending fueled not by rising income, but by borrowing more and running down savings, which have slumped to historically low levels.
Sound like the U.S. economy today? Yes, it does. It’s also the U.S. economy of July 2000

Yep, American consumers are at it again. Spending the money that we don't have, confident that the boom times will continue forever.

So, for how long can consumers can carry on spending, while saving practically nothing at all?

“The toxic mix of rising interest rates, falling savings, low or falling incomes and high levels of corporate debt is a train crash waiting to happen,” said Ann Pettifor, director at Policy Research in Macroeconomics in London. 

Any other perspectives?

The historically low household savings rate has caught the eye of Bernstein, which is now at least partially reconsidering its positive economic outlook for 2018.
 "A big financial shock — which is a plausible scenario for 2018 — not only would damage the consumption forecast but could end the expansion itself," Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, an economist at Bernstein, wrote in a client note. "For 2018 it remains a core cyclical recession scenario in our coverage."

Always keep in mind that the day before the stock market crash of 1929, an eminent economist of the day, Irving Fisher, made the worst prediction ever:

Source

Your cheatin heart ... is NOxious

It turns out that the "business ethics" of Volkswagen has been educational about yet another oxymoron: "clean diesel."  For that enlightenment, we need to thank the lying, cheating, professionals at the company that Hitler was so excited about ;)

Volkswagen's atrocious business practice might have been merely about selling cars. but that affected way more than customers' wallets alone:

Volkswagen played a leading role in convincing people to accept a technology that in many countries is causing a precipitous decline in air quality for millions of city-dwellers: the diesel engine. Monitoring sites in European cities like London, Stuttgart, Munich, Paris, Milan and Rome have reported high levels of the nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, or soot, that help to create menacing smogs.

You see, diesel is not really "clean"--something we ought to have known on our own!

Diesel exhaust is laden with insidious soot particles, the so-called PM 2.5 (particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns, or one-thirtieth the width of a human hair), which allow carcinogens to penetrate deep into tissues and organs. In other words, a driver who steps on the accelerator of a diesel car may be filling the lungs of nearby pedestrians, cyclists, infants in strollers and other drivers with potentially deadly particulate matter.

The price we are willing to pay for material progress!

It does seem like diesel for cars is now, ahem, exhausted ;)

Diesel trucks and large passenger cars, with their relatively clean exhausts, will doubtless soldier on. But who needs a small diesel? In terms of fuel economy, small turbo-charged petrol engines have all but caught up. The diesel version of the Chevrolet Cruze, for instance, gets 33mpg on the EPA's combined cycle, while the thriftiest petrol version of the same car gets 30mpg—and is a whopping $2,400 cheaper. The small, frugal diesel—upon which Volkswagen placed so much of its hopes for a future of green motoring—looks to have been left for dead by the roadside.

As with everything else, and even though the ethics of customers is no better, a better future depends on we the people:

In the end it may be up to consumers to force change. After all, while climate change caused by carbon dioxide is a somewhat abstract concept, the choking effect of NOx emissions is not just in front of but in their very eyes.

Or, we can always choke ourselves to death, like they do in Delhi even now :(

source

The ugly unethical consumer

The sign said that if I bought one I could buy another of that same for free.  Two for the price of one.

I stood there looking at the colorful packets, for what seemed like an eternity.  I then walked away.

After picking up a few things, I passed by the the same display.  It was too damn tempting.  It has been years since I ate them.  Even now, I can feel the saliva gathering in my mouth as I think about that taste.

I picked up a packet.

And then I did something that killed it all.  I looked at the nutrition label.

I put the packet down.  I checked out.

I reached home and ate a banana instead!

Being a mindful consumer is no fun.

I have blogged in plenty about this mindfulness.  Whether it is about my personal health, or about killing spiders at home, or about recycling or about flying ... the list is endless.  It is tiring, I admit, to always consciously choose something that is "better" than something else that is "worse."  Apparently this is not a typical consumer behavior:

No one wants to knowingly buy products made with child labor or that harm the environment.
But a new study shows that we also don’t want to work too hard to find out whether our favorite products were made ethically. And we really don’t like those good people who make the effort to seek out ethically made goods when we choose not to.

The friend passed along the news item about the research to me.  I wonder if I am supposed to read between the lines there and be less mindful and just live a little! ;)

Researchers have found that a) we’re lazy when it comes to investigating the ethics of our purchases, and b) we resent those who do take the time to research the social and environmental impacts of, say, a six-dollar T-shirt made in Bangladesh, and then opt for a more ethical alternative.

I suppose "ethical consumer" is as much an oxymoron as is "military intelligence" or "social science" ;)

We prefer to be ignorant.  Willfully, intentionally, ignorant.  We work hard to avoid knowing how the sausage is made.

The research findings are shocking statements one after another:

In fact, we denigrate consumers who act more ethically than we do, seeing them as less fashionable and more boring.

And:

Worst of all, seeing others act ethically when we don’t undermines our commitment to pro-social values.

And:

“You choose not to find out if a product is made ethically. Then you harshly judge people who do consider ethical values when buying products. Then that makes you less ethical in the future.”

Seriously? :(

What if the packages had information similar to the nutrition information on the Fritos bag that I put back?

Companies that use ethical practices in producing their products can help by making that information very prominent, right on the packages if possible. People are not going to go to your website to find out your company’s good deeds.

Yeah, right, like that will happen--after all, "business ethics" is an oxymoron!