Carl from Chicago

Business executive interested in history, economics, taxation and energy policy.

“Two American Families” – and their Legacy

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I recently watched the excellent “Frontline” documentary “Two American Families” which followed two families from 1992 onward in Milwaukee as they struggled to stay middle class. The movie started with the main breadwinners in each family losing solid middle class union jobs and then starting an odyssey of lower wage jobs with no benefits, often during non-standard hours (the night shift).

While the families struggled, I actually was more interested in their children than the parents who were ostensibly the “stars” of the film. As the parents worked (both parents had to join the work force to make up for the lost wages) the children (three from one family, five from the second family) had to look after themselves since they were often left home alone after school.

While in New York City on the subway I came across these billboards which warned (potential?) single mothers very directly that if they had a child out of wedlock they faced a high chance of being a single mother and in poverty. The sign I saw had the quote:

If you finish high school, get a job, and get married before having children, you have a 98 percent chance of not being in poverty

From the results of the documentary, one of the children finished a four year college, and he appeared to be the most successful of the 8 kids they followed up on. Earlier in the documentary they showed him (his name was Keith) in college, struggling to get by and pay tuition bills on a credit card. Keith was not married and did not have children and in interviews stated pretty flatly that he didn’t want to get married and have a child until he was ready to support them. A second child went into the navy and was there for many years, before leaving and then re-enlisting as a private contractor in Afghanistan since he couldn’t find work in Milwaukee. A third kid (a woman) got an associates degree and (miraculously) did not get pregnant, and she was doing OK as a medical biller at a hospital in Milwaukee.

The other children didn’t seem to graduate high school or did and then didn’t go to college. Many of them had multiple children themselves (without getting married) from a variety of different partners. One of them was married (the girl who got an associates’ degree) but she was married to a guy who was out of work.

Each of these children, who were the real legacy of the troubles cited in the documentary, fell right into that concept that if you finish high school, get a job, and get married, you won’t live in poverty. One slight “tweak” to this rule might be to marry a spouse who works themselves or has some capacity to be a positive parent; some of the partners were obviously sulking or already disgruntled at an early age. Nowhere in the documentary did they directly point this out, although it was the central lesson from the film.

Cross posted at LITGM

The End of the PC Era

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There is a lot of discussion going on in the press about the decline of the PC. Per this article by Gartner:

Worldwide PC shipments dropped to 76 million units in the second quarter of 2013, a 10.9 percent decrease from the same period last year, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. This marks the fifth consecutive quarter of declining shipments, which is the longest duration of decline in the PC market’s history.

From my own experience, my PC (which I use for work and applications that I’ve traditionally run on Windows) just gets more and more annoying by the day.

My house has a MacBook Pro, 2 PC’s, an iPhone, an iPad, and a Blackberry (still). The problem is that the PC seems interminable to setup and run, with myriad anti virus upgrades, system upgrades, and the like, and a generally long and painful startup. The perception of the problem is made even worse in that if you don’t run it every day, the updates pile up and it takes even LONGER to get started on the machine.

Meanwhile you just walk up to the MacBook and turn it on, and it’s up. My Macbook is great when you are on wifi and it has smooth typing and a great experience. It also connects to my Samsung TV through Thunderbolt for watching the web up there which is another benefit.

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Efficiency, Effectiveness and Power

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China is a massive force in the global economy. According to Bloomberg,

China is the world’s largest producer of steel. It accounted for 49.18 percent of worldwide crude steel production in May, according to the World Steel Association. Japan, the second-largest producer, accounted for 7.06 percent, the data showed.

And the USA? We are the third largest producer of raw steel, behind Japan, producing less than 15% of what China makes each year.

What does China do with all this steel? It produces a giant, modern nation with an enormous urban infrastructure. I recently bought this excellent book (a few years old, but it was $3.99 / used plus shipping) called “Shanghai: The Architecture of China’s Great Urban Center“. Shanghai has an immense number of skyscrapers – so many that there are debates about the exact count – but the list per Wikipedia shows that Shanghai held the title of world’s tallest skyscraper until beaten by Dubai and there are an immense number of very tall structures in the city, all built in the last 20-25 or so years.

This article in today’s NY Times about a bicycle service that is thriving in Portland, Oregon due to its lower carbon footprint shows the “dream” view of capitalism held by those in the left in the USA.

However, while the bucolic bicyclist delivery driver making his rounds to fair-trade coffee shops seems like a worthy economic topic, it is in fact the opposite of efficiency when compared to the real-world efforts in China which dwarf our physical economy components. The US can compete in services and in software but we are getting blown away in the physical world which China’s steel production and immense cities sprouting from the ground show clearly.

The small-scale craft economies have an absolute place in the world, but there also is room for world-class efficiency which only can come from large-scale investments in steel, construction, and advanced building techniques, which also include time-to-market. The US is losing our ability to compete in these spheres while the Chinese continue to innovate – the evidence of which is all too visible for anyone traveling through their new cities when compared to their US counterparts.

Cross posted at LITGM

Chicagoboyz Cycling Series: Critical Mass (Chicago)

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Last Friday Critical Mass rode in Chicago. I can see it from my balcony in River North – they are traveling Northbound on Lasalle Street. Next time I will try to get down there in person so I can get some of the characters Jonathan talked about down in Florida.

In true Chicago style I don’t have to worry about bicycles because mine was stolen. The hilarious part was that the Chicago police employee actually came and dusted for prints. It definitely wasn’t worth it because you can’t get that messy fingerprint dust off your door jamb or anything else and God knows that no action was taken to find the perpetrators.

Around Key West

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I went to Key West in late February. We go to Key West figuring that it would be the only place in the US that we were guaranteed some hot weather, because it was a long winter here in the Great Midwest. We flew right into Key West and back out (via Hot ‘Lanta) else I would have tried to hook up with Jonathan down in Florida.

I love the Ocean Key bar. It has everything I am looking for in a bar – a bit of a Tiki theme, it looks right out on the ocean, and it is always hot and warm. Highly recommended.

One of my favorite posts (OK it is a bit strange) is on the relative cost of alcohol when I went to Norway. By contrast, you can get by very cheaply on alcohol and reasonably fine dining down in Key West – these happy hour prices were so low I had to snap a picture. Roughly 1/6 the price per equivalent vs. Norway, for what that’s worth.

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