Because You Never Asked

TRICKLE AWAY THEORY

(5/07, Spain)

     I have a friend from childhood who has become my most acerbic critic from the far right. He has appeared in these pages before (see essay “Post Consumer Man”). I’ll call him Jay.

     Jay and I no longer live in close proximity, but we throw haymakers at each other on a regular basis across the internet. He is a true blue, neo-con Yankee fan, while I grew up a plebeian Met fan.

     Jay is an educated type who spent most of his life working in the financial world. He likes to justify the usual pilfering on this planet by resorting to “facts” and figures. For him, the numbers are sacred, and, according to him and his ilk, they are always interpreted in a way that conclusively proves we are all happier than Hugh Hefner with a dose of Viagra. The economic indicators, the gross national product, the percent of debt transposed against the interest rates, the inflation stability infused with venture capital, the housing market floating on top of municipal bonds, real wages holding firm against supply and demand, spending and consumer confidence, the percent of income being saved or regurgitated at the complimentary buffet in Las Vegas --- stuff like that.

     Of course, nobody in their right mind knows what any of that means. Ergo, since Jay and others like him know what it means (or at least they act like they do), they must not be in their right minds. (I’ve had real economists confirm this thought).

     Perhaps the Holiest Commandment having to do with this whole fandango is something that used to be referred to as “Trickle Down Theory”. It’s a simple concept, simple enough for even a humble Met fan to understand. In fact, if understanding anything becomes relevant at all, it’s about as much as “they” want anyone to understand. It is best summed up in the phrase “what’s good for General Motors is good for the country”. More specifically, when those at the top of the economic pyramid are doing well (like mega-billions well), some of this is supposed to “trickle down” to the masses below, and we all end up benefiting.

     “Trickle down” is a phrase heard very little these days, probably because it has become a very hard sell. Even a numerically deficient observer like Post Consumer Man somehow gets the feeling that a lot more wealth has been staying up than trickling down lately. I’m sure Jay in his box seat at Yankee Stadium would dispute this with some index or another, something I’ll refute later on with hard facts and numbers from the real streets of life, a place rarely visited and barely taken into account on the financial pages of the Wall Street Journal.

     One of my old friend’s habitual rants is to castigate the mainstream press, who he sees as a gang of left wing conspirators not too far removed from Pravda, in spite of the fact that these sources of “information” are almost exclusively owned by the guys in the box seats at Yankee Stadium. He seems oblivious to the fact that a huge international media conglomerate actively pushes the agenda of his heroes and their political party, though I must admit, Jay’s heroes and their political party could be pushing the Rupert agenda I’m referring to, and not the old vice versa.

     In any event, Jay frequently sends me material that the “mainstream press” will not divulge, material that refutes the dolt-like status most Americans now attribute to president W., material that proves he’s the best thing since Mickey Mantle. His latest foray into this arena enumerated about 10 of these unknown or underplayed aspects of his accomplishments. Many of them were these numerical economic assertions that prove how happy we all really are, even if we didn’t know it. The heavy hitting clean up hitter in this potent economic lineup is the Stock Market, whose success was being unfairly buried under a barrage of exaggerated bad news from the war we are winning in Iraq.

     Like most people, I’m not quite sure what the numbers at the Stock Market actually represent and how this effects the daily lives of an average citizen, but I do realize the numbers are soaring. (I remind the reader, in continuing with this baseball metaphor, that when Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds were punishing the record books with their home runs, the common good represented by the success of their teams was far less evident.) New records are being broken on an almost daily basis, and, according to Jay’s E-mail, more people than ever have invested in the market, more people are benefiting, yak, yak.

     It is quite possible, in a literal sense, that none of this is a lie. I have no doubt that there is some big money being made off this market boom and by many people. The question is, who is making off with the bulk of it? A modern day Macbeth might wonder what’s rotten on Wall Street when retired CEO’s make off with 250 million dollars worth of severance pay. It’s not unreasonable to assume a lot of that sum has some affiliation with market money. Undoubtedly, some of this money makes its way down to many upper middle class portfolios, providing a nice boost for the mega-consumptive demands of their lifestyles, but it is my educated guess that a large percentage of this money is being made right up there where the trickle supposedly begins.

     There may also be some pension benefits tied up in this market hocus-pocus, but other than that, the direct fruits of the Wall Street boom generally go no lower than the social strata just mentioned. However, if “trickle down” is an authentic reality, all the rest of society should indirectly feel its positive effects; business is good, people are working, there’s some loose change in everyone’s pocket, it’s Saturday night and we’re gonna go party, right?

     And this is where I have a few numbers of my own, not numbers from some financial page that read like hieroglyphics for the average citizen, but numbers from the street, numbers from where we live and breathe, numbers that translate into how the largest portion of us are getting about their lives.

     For better or worse, I’ve spent almost all my working life at a place where those last drops of trickle down are supposed to arrive. It would be difficult to find a lifestyle more easily measured economically than my own. I’ve worked the same job, for the same company, at the same level, with the same hourly work schedule, for more than 25 years. There have been some normal pay raises along the way. In all that time, I’ve only moved twice, from a similar sized apartment to another. For the last 17 years, I’ve taken the same amount of vacation time, at the same time of year, at the same places, with very similar living accommodations each year. The repetitive quality of my annual routine and its minutiae is even measured down to the same day I take off in March to go to a professional tennis tournament. The regularity of all this might seem stultifying to many, but I’m the only one that has to live my life and I’ve been doing this for quite some time now, so maybe I like it. (I’m not sure, but how many of us are?)

     Further adding to the finely measurable aspects of my finances is that I own virtually nothing. The most expensive personal possession I have is my computer (or is it my bicycle?). I don’t even own a car (gasp!). Almost all of my expenses are concentrated in my housing, my nourishment, and the vacation routine set out above. My wealth has existed only in the form of liquid cash all my life, such cash being distributed for many years between the same ho-hum checking account in a local bank (for more, see essay “Your Friendly Banker”) and the same Mutual Fund. The interest rates at the bank have become microscopic, the Mutual Fund gives an interest rate that would have been given at any bank 20 years ago, but has lost share value for the last 5 or 6 years, such that I make almost nothing on it.

     I’m well aware that the laxity with which I conduct my economic affairs does not squeeze the optimal amount of juice from my financial orange. I know, I’m not an adept investor. I’d rather read a good book. As far as I know, this is not a recognizable crime with a statutory sentence in poverty. If Jay and his cronies are going to brag about the booming market and other such artifices, some of this wealth --- not just from an economic standpoint, but from a moral one as well --- should trickle down to where me and tens of million others reside. After all, we’re the ones who prepare his food, transport his goods, clean the planes he travels on, and wipe the seat he sits his ass on during the World Series. Not only that, they are the ones who tell us this should happen!

     OK, here are some figures of my own: this story starts about 17 years ago, when my latest attempt at matrimonial bliss ended after a 4 year run. The few times I’ve lived long periods of cohabitation with a partner have always increased my wealth --- shared housing expenses, etc. By the end of my latest and last such foray, I had somewhere between 35 and 40 thousand dollars. For the next ten years or so, even as a single man sharing no expenses, this stash held fairly steady. I can even remember cracking the 40 thousand plateau. Since then, the tide has begun to slowly go out, slow enough to maintain my annual routine, but enough to make me start thinking about the future. As I write this essay on my beloved island in the Roman Sea, my riches have shrunk to just above 30 thousand dollars.

     There are 3 things I’d like to remind the reader of as I wrap this up: 1) I now make much more money than I did 17 years ago, 2) the place where I live has experienced an economic boom in the last 20 years, and 3) politicians with Jay’s economic point of view (or, more likely, with a personal stake in all this) have grabbed the world by the neck in this period.

     The Jays of the world like to give the rest of us figures that read like some secret code only they can interpret. They do it from the top down. The numbers I’m offering here come from the bottom up, and there is no ambiguity. What Jay calls “trickle down”, is really TRICKLE AWAY THEORY.  

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Email: JerryG@postcman.info