Bad Decisions: Not Just For Poor Folk!

I've pointed out in previous posts that nearly every article I read about people in horrible financial straits contains obvious hints -- if not outright confirmation -- that colossally bad decision making underlies the problems.

I get the sense, sometimes, that people think I'm picking on poor folk when I do this. That somehow, poor folk are forced into making bad decisions by the immutable facts of their lives and it is somehow bad form to point out that if they had made better decisions, they would have had a better outcome.

Well, today I saw an article in the NY Times written by one of their economics writers about how he has descended into a pit of debt. Reading the article one sees, as always, that his situation is the result of terrifically poor decision making. Perhaps because he is not a middle-class writer trying to tug heart strings about the plight of the poor but rather confessing his own problems, these bad decisions are not concealed and glossed-over the way they tend to be in sob-stories focusing on the poor.

At any rate, I thought I'd just take the moment to point out that if you repeatedly make bad decisions, they will lead you to penury just as surely whether you make $120,000 a year (as the author of this piece does) or $30,000 per year (as the unfortunates in one of my previous posts on the subject did). Sure, you'll probably get to the poorhouse faster on $30K but the fall will seem much more calamitous from $120K.

The other thing to note is the perhaps obvious point that people who make $120,000 are probably less likely to make enough bad decisions to ruin their lives. If they were the types who were relatively incapable of logically forecasting the results of their actions, after all, it's unlikely they would make it through the requirements to get jobs at $120,000. (Education, working-your-way-up, etc.)

I came to the article through Megan McArdle, one of the professional bloggers at The Atlantic. In her post she acknowledges the courage it must take for a professional economics journalist to admit to having fallen into the state he's in and then goes on to talk about how difficult it is to make ends meet as a journalist, particularly b/c you tend to be well-educated and friends with upwardly mobile professionals in industries that pay much better and probably aren't teetering on the verge of extinction.

Of course, she also points out that she finds it "obvious, unembarrassing, and uncontroversial" to admit that her household (with her and her unemployed journalist boyfriend) must cut back. Here we have an example of good decision making. This is why she is unlikely to fall into the truly dire straits in which the NY Times fellow finds himself. If, on the other hand, she found it unremarkable to live on credit card debt while maintaining a lifestyle that neither she nor her boyfriend could afford, then disaster would follow as surely as night follows day. And it would not be the choice of poorly-paying career -- or rather not primarily that choice -- that led them there. It would be the logical end result of the repeated bad decision to not live within their means.

Quote of the Day

George Will on the Obama administration: "The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption."

True.

What 12-year Old Girl's Basketball, TE Lawrence and Computer War Games have in Common

I'm still under the gun with work-related stuff until next Wed., so posting will be fairly nonexistent until then.

I did just want to point out that Gladwell's latest piece in the New Yorker is stupid and approaches self-parody.

I don't have time to go through it point- by-point illustrating its manifold stupidities, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

I'll just tease it by saying that one of his main arguments is that men's college basketball way under-utilizes the full-court press. His primary support for this is that a parent-coach had a lot of success with it in his 12-year old daughter's league.

No, seriously.

Greed apparently not always good

Oliver Stone is looking to make a Wall Street sequel.

As long as we're going with bad ideas, why not follow in the footsteps of the ultimate bad-idea man, George Lucas, and have an entire awful trilogy to crap all over the magnificent creation of your youth?

Wall Street: The Phantom Prosperity
Wall Street: Attack of the CDO's
Wall Street: Revenge of the Socialists

Best part? Shia Labeouf is up for it. You know, I'm a nice guy. I don't wish harm on anyone. But it's really hard not to wish at least some harm on Shia.

And I say this as one who enjoyed the odd Even Stevens episode as a guilty pleasure.

His good movie to bad movie ratio is skewed way to the dark side. This isn't, in and of itself, a reason to wish him harm, of course. There are lots of people who don't make good movies and never have that bother me little to not at all. But his failures tend to involve the steaming wreckage of beloved childhood memories of mine. Yes, Transformers was okay. But the last Indy film was an abomination. (fn1)

Wall Street is a good movie. It encapsulated its time well. I agree that the current financial mess could serve as a good backdrop for a movie. But, Oliver, please. Let some young auteur with a fresh take and feel for the times take a crack at it. Don't try to wedge Gekko into it. Don't ruin what we had with some half-baked cash-in staring that sack of overwhelmed youngster that is Shia.

I leave you with a link to Talking Heads This must be the place, the song playing as Charlie Sheen outfits his new apartment in Wall Street. Good tune, I always smile when it comes up on my iPod.


fn1: South Park had a memorable episode in which the kids are traumatized from having seen Indy getting raped. The rape being, of course, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Which I still haven't seen. And probably won't because while it was fun to watch the Nazis' faces melt when they looked in the Ark in Raiders, I fear that something similar would happen to me upon witnessing Crystal Skull.

Warning: Slow Traffic Ahead

I've got some work-related stuff that'll be keeping me pretty occupied for the next month or so, just to explain the slow posting of late and to come.

Of course, if I have any more run-ins with prostitutes, you kind people will be the first to know.

Also, to my anonymous debate partner in the AIG-bonus post, I've seen your latest and will respond but, sadly, that will be slow as well.

Prostitutes Redux OR Stories from the Recession

I was awoken at 3:00 this morning by a loud fight taking place outside my building. Now, living in midtown Manhattan I do not expect pastoral silence for my slumbers. Pretty regularly, we get boisterous revellers (read: drunken bar-goers) caterwauling their way down the block but this did not sound like the type of noise typical of my neighborhood.

What I heard was what sounded like one woman loudly screaming at someone to "get out of the car!" Along with plenty of cursing and the like.

Much as Father does in the celebrated poem Twas the Night Before Christmas, I sprang from the bed, flew to the window in a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash(fn1) to see what was the matter...

Instead of a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, however, what appeared to my wondering eye was two African American prostitutes and a drunken white businessman.(fn2) They were having quite the argument in and around an SUV parked directly across the street from my apartment.

How nice.

From what I could gather of the fight, the two hookers must have picked up the john to do their business in the SUV and at some point (impossible to tell when during the proceedings it might have happened) the man refused to pay. This had understandably upset the prostitutes terribly and they were demanding that he get out of the car so they could leave. It was hard to make out what the man was saying, as unlike the ladies he wasn't screaming at the top of his lungs, so I'm not quite sure what his argument was, except perhaps "I'm a drunken idiot who wants to have an argument."

How can I be sure they were prostitutes? Because at one point, after they had apparently drawn the man's ire by asking him loudly, "If you're a millionaire, where is your money? Where are your friends? How come you're walking down the street at night alone??" To which he responded (audibly, for the first time), "I'm going to take down your license plate number!" Whereupon one prostitute replied, displaying admirable logic, "Go ahead! I'm a prostitute! What you gonna do with a license plate number??"(fn3)

There were also a number of asides to the ladies by what I can only assume was one or the other's daughter in the vein of "Let it go, Mom, let's just leave!" Sensible advice but predictably slow to be heeded by prostitutes who would take their daughter with them to turn tricks.(fn4)

At any rate, eventually the prostitutes tired of haranguing the drunken lout and managed to extricate their car enough from his inebriated grasp to peel out and away.

The disheveled, suited man then took a moment to survey the surrounding buildings and, as my head was perched in front of my still mostly-closed blinds, caught sight of me. He looked dead straight at me and then slowly extended to me a middle-finger salute -- a gesture I would have though more appropriate coming from me whom he had awoken. I shook my head slowly and then withdrew for a moment. He began to stagger off down the street and back to bed I went.

It took me an hour to fall asleep again. I wish I'd called the cops (there's a station two blocks away) when I first heard the noise. It would have given me great joy to have had that man thrown in jail, though that probably wouldn't have happened.

So prostitutes again. In my neighborhood again. I was a bit groggy and at a much further distance this time, but I have to say this pair was much less appealing in both appearance and -- most certainly -- demeanor than the one who propositioned me from an SUV some months back.

I can't help but think the increasing prevalence and apparent rising disregard for stealth is somewhat related to desperation brought on by the worsening economic conditions. But maybe I've just been reading too many sob-stories in the Times.

fn1: Well, drew the Venetian blinds, things have changed since Victorian times...

fn2: My sig. other informs me that the man was British. I do not recollect this but, if true, it would lend an additional sad air to the fall of that once great people. She also says there was a significant part of the fight during which one of the women was yelling about being pregnant. I also do not remember that. Ah, how interesting to see how people's recollection of an event can differ! This is why eye-witness testimony is not the gold-standard that you might think it would be and why circumstantial evidence, though it sounds much inferior, can actually be sig. more persuasive.

fn3: This exchange immediately followed an amusing comment by one of the prostitutes to the effect of "I"m a real New Yorker! You must be from Jersey or somewhere!" Ah yes, a status fight between a prostitute and her john. I'm reminded of the tag line from the first (which lamentably was not also the last) Alien vs. Predator movie: "Whoever wins... we lose."

fn4: Perhaps they had confused this with the child-friendly version of "trick-or-treat" or perhaps the daughter was deemed to be of age to start an apprenticeship, who knows.

Mythbusters Cranks the Awesome up to 11

Video of the Mythbusters team smashing a steel plate into a car at 700 miles per hour.

Just in case the probably-faked Italian meter-maid humping video from earlier didn't do it for you.