In the background the cleaning client’s television is tuned to CNBC. Marcus Lemonis, host of The Profit – yet another show where a rich guy is parachuted in to yell at small business owners about their failures – talks about success with country music star Brett Young and his songwriter-cum-golf buddy Tyler Reeve. ‘Five years ago you had nothing,’ Lemonis says with incredulity, as the threesome throw hundred dollar bills on the ground and make bets about who’ll hit the longest drive. Young, the son of a megachurch pastor, recounts the daily grind of playing to packed arenas with considerably less Southern twang than his singing voice - unsurprising once you discover he's actually from Orange County, California. ‘It’s the toughest business,’ Reeve says with a straight face.
I’m older than you. My father, the artist, bought our first ‘tract’ home on the GI Bill. He and my ultimately alcoholic mother had been born in Missouri, the Bible Belt. His father and uncles owned the biggest ‘department’ store in town. My father, an Agnostic, was groomed to work there. On the boat back from the Pacific Theater he decided to become a professional artist and to marry my mother, his high school sweetheart. Somehow, he managed to tell his father, then he and his new bride did something else revolutionary in 1950, they moved to California for him to work as an artist and leave their parents and that State behind. They almost starved. Eventually, he realized that he would have to teach to augment his income. I remember that first house, in Northern California. My mother was a ‘housewife’ and started to drink even more. My father taught all day and worked into the night in his studio (garage.) I was in Elementary School before I realized everyone had a garage and not a studio. All kinds of artists from all races and faiths from Beatniks to classical musicians stopped by. My mother had been a concert-quality violinist. We were always poor, and my mother’s drinking worsened. I have learned a lot and don’t know anything at all. Capitalism has entropy built in. That’s what I think is happening now. Society is breaking down at an ever increasing pace. No one will be spared. Perhaps Millennials are fortunate not to remember the other America. The one that you and I grew up in. They only know chaos — the new normal, and so are OK with that.
OK, you got me; I’ve paid up. This one is a gem. You have made me think again about bin Laden, how he landed the fatal blow on “the West”, and how culpable the Bushbaby was.
I will join you in picking 1988 because I was 35, happily married, and in my dream job in Hong Kong. We had just bought our dream house in rural Suffolk. Of course none of those things lasted a decade.
Your reflections on the billionaires are very sound.
I have noticed that my need to know more about the decline and fall of the Roman Republic is quite widely shared.
"You know what the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is? Approximately a billion dollars." Now that's a great line. My "the-world-has-permanently-changed-and-not-in-a good-way" predates yours by about 20 years. That day in November '68 Richard Nixon was elected president
"Think of it this way. You know what the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is? Approximately a billion dollars" It is probably worth discussing a society of millionaires vs a society with Billionaires. Millionaires reflect the best of American society. They work hard, they are careful with their money, they stay married, they don't have kids out of wedlock, they have skills. There are lots of ways to become a millionaire ( Have a few hit songs, write a best seller, buy a few houses in a growing real estate market, run a small business, get a white collar upper income job and invest steadily, get lucky on a stock play).. It's not easy to become a billionaire. I've known a few. One or two picked up the pieces after enormous crashes but most are hyper-obsessive near autistic types. Many inherited.
I’m older than you. My father, the artist, bought our first ‘tract’ home on the GI Bill. He and my ultimately alcoholic mother had been born in Missouri, the Bible Belt. His father and uncles owned the biggest ‘department’ store in town. My father, an Agnostic, was groomed to work there. On the boat back from the Pacific Theater he decided to become a professional artist and to marry my mother, his high school sweetheart. Somehow, he managed to tell his father, then he and his new bride did something else revolutionary in 1950, they moved to California for him to work as an artist and leave their parents and that State behind. They almost starved. Eventually, he realized that he would have to teach to augment his income. I remember that first house, in Northern California. My mother was a ‘housewife’ and started to drink even more. My father taught all day and worked into the night in his studio (garage.) I was in Elementary School before I realized everyone had a garage and not a studio. All kinds of artists from all races and faiths from Beatniks to classical musicians stopped by. My mother had been a concert-quality violinist. We were always poor, and my mother’s drinking worsened. I have learned a lot and don’t know anything at all. Capitalism has entropy built in. That’s what I think is happening now. Society is breaking down at an ever increasing pace. No one will be spared. Perhaps Millennials are fortunate not to remember the other America. The one that you and I grew up in. They only know chaos — the new normal, and so are OK with that.
OK, you got me; I’ve paid up. This one is a gem. You have made me think again about bin Laden, how he landed the fatal blow on “the West”, and how culpable the Bushbaby was.
I will join you in picking 1988 because I was 35, happily married, and in my dream job in Hong Kong. We had just bought our dream house in rural Suffolk. Of course none of those things lasted a decade.
Your reflections on the billionaires are very sound.
I have noticed that my need to know more about the decline and fall of the Roman Republic is quite widely shared.
Keep it up!
It wouldn't be 1988 for me. The Thatcher years were uniformly grim and the wider world wasn't noticeably better.
"You know what the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is? Approximately a billion dollars." Now that's a great line. My "the-world-has-permanently-changed-and-not-in-a good-way" predates yours by about 20 years. That day in November '68 Richard Nixon was elected president
"Think of it this way. You know what the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is? Approximately a billion dollars" It is probably worth discussing a society of millionaires vs a society with Billionaires. Millionaires reflect the best of American society. They work hard, they are careful with their money, they stay married, they don't have kids out of wedlock, they have skills. There are lots of ways to become a millionaire ( Have a few hit songs, write a best seller, buy a few houses in a growing real estate market, run a small business, get a white collar upper income job and invest steadily, get lucky on a stock play).. It's not easy to become a billionaire. I've known a few. One or two picked up the pieces after enormous crashes but most are hyper-obsessive near autistic types. Many inherited.