Exiting the U.S.A.

A number of readers have expressed interest in exiting the U.S. as a means of avoiding the coming meltdown of The American Dream. Here is the view of one American who moved to New Zealand in 2001.

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When the economy tanks, the number of people who ponder leaving the country increases. Back in the dreary days of the deep 1981-82 recession, I knew people who were discussing moving to Costa Rica--still a favorite fantasy-getaway for well-funded U.S. emigrants.

Recently, Panama has emerged as another Central American destination for those who dumped their McMansions and/or who have pensions. One of my old friends' daughters lives in Panama (married to a Panamanian) and while I haven't visited yet it seems life is good in Panama if you have a few dollars or a job on the Canal.

Life is good, but different. Not just in Central America, but anywhere new, even in America. (I could ask Don E. to describe the culture shock of moving to Maine, and I can report that Hawaii is very different from the U.S. mainland. Iowa is different from California which is different from Texas and so on.)

This photo is of the bakery in the village where my brother lives in the south of France. He has lived abroad, in India and France, for several decades. France remains very popular with that class of Americans who hanker to restore a crumbling chateau--and there remains any number of majestically crumbling chateaus awaiting your ambitions (and millions).

But it is best to set aside the fantasy-invoking idyllic books and understand France (and every region therein) is not at all like the U.S. This appears obvious but the differences keep revealing themselves the longer one lives there.

Here is a photo of a Bangkok teahouse, located in an old district rarely visited by farangs. (That's me in the sunglasses on the right.) Asia is of course quite different from the U.S., and while the excitement of these differences is enthralling and stimulating, forever being an outsider can eventually become wearing.

On the other hand, many expats cannot imagine ever returning the land of their birth, especially if they have married into another culture and language as well as another family.

There are places I could live for an extended time--Paris, Bangkok, Kyoto, Suzhou, to name a few--but to "move away" from the U.S.--no, I cannot. I find myself sympathizing with the Robert Redford character in Three Days of the Condor who, when presented with the option of moving to Europe to escape being assassinated by the C.I.A. pauses and then answers: "I was born in the United States, Joubert. I miss it when I'm away too long."

Joubert (a free-lance assassin/contractor): "A pity."

Redford: "I don't think so."

However, life is an adventure and being an expat has great rewards for those up to the challenge. Here is Michael Reps' commentary on moving to New Zealand, a nation high on many lists as a locale which seems likely to escape the brunt of a Peak Oil/Peak Credit/Peak Everything meltdown.

Leaving the USA, An Insiders Guide

Pssst…Hey you…Yes you……Over here…Shhhh..Be very very quiet, and don’t tell any one, but democracy and capitalism are alive and well. You may not know this but freedom is a human precept, not an American one, and it doesn’t go away the minute you leave American Soil.

I came across Charles Smith’s site during a Google search for the topic “Leaving the USA”. I noticed the absence of advertisements for ammunition reload kits and raccoon jerky recipes for the coming Armageddon so thought to myself, perhaps I won't get flamed for sounding pro-New Zealand with my views about leaving the USA.

On that note let me give you a little background on myself. I do, in fact, know how to reload ammo and make jerky meat, I learned it while a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne and again as a Captain in the USMC. I was born and raised in California where I spent my formative years brow beaten by Catholic Nuns with thick ankles and short fuses in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles. My formal education is a degree in philosophy from Claremont McKenna College.

After the Marines I spent the next 15 years involved in the financial markets where I surmised that the US was heading for a cliffdive economically which ultimately led to me emigrating to New Zealand in July, 2001. Borrowing money to pay for borrowed money simply doesn’t work unless you can import new borrowers at a greater rate than the debt being created.

Now, Just as you see all those wildebeests on the Serengeti scraping their hooves into the dry barren soil in search of water, I direct your attention to another path. Not down deeper into that soil, but off the beaten path to another watering hole. But as I said, don’t make too much noise or a stampede will erupt and as the Zimbabweans I have met are fond of saying to me, “The difference between an immigrant and a refugee is only timing”.

You see, 300,000 people leave the USA every year according to loosely compiled data by the US Census. Interestingly, that number may be set to rise according to a report issues by the Migration Policy Institute. Have a look at this study for further information. America's emigrants.

New Zealand, on the other hand takes in about 40,000 people per year under their various visa schemes. And more Americans are coming. I should know, I help them in for a living with my company.

There is one point of distinction you should know about moving to New Zealand, that is, the difference between the egalitarian and imperialistic undertones of each society. I believe it is these underpinnings that lead to the differences between the two countries. Both whose origins and legal systems go back to Great Britain.

New Zealand is a very egalitarian society of 4 million people. This means that wealth distribution, while not socialistic, is viewed with a healthy scepticism and CEO Salaries in the stratosphere are a hard sell. Everyone’s viewed as entitled to a “fair go”. Also with a land size the area of Colorado this means that crowds are not an issue nor a draining of resources. The “close the door behind” you mentality seen in small provincial towns in the US is non-existent here.

New Zealand is also outward looking as a result of its insignificance on the world stage. New ideas are embraced, and the ambitions of many desire to be tested against the rest of the world. New immigrants wanting to settle in are embraced in stark contrast with the US where new immigrants represent a drain on services.

The US is different in this regard. With 300 million people and only about 20% of the population holding passports, it's more insular in nature. There appears to be stresses in the system now that lead to zero-sum thinking that wealth comes at the expense of someone else’s loss. Just ask anyone who purchased a McMansion in 2006 about what it feels like to hold the proverbial “bag”. The corporate structure is one of scale and multinational exposure where as New Zealand is the land of the family business.

There was an event however, that stuck out in my mind as a moment of this contrast. Back in 2004 an American developer came out here to view real estate development prospects. After seeing so much unused coastal land he was quoted in the paper as saying New Zealand should get rid of those useless sheep and cattle, cut the hills flat and put in thousands of condos. Needless to say, I am certain this chap’s stay here was short lived, and he’s still wondering about how his permits got lost and his visa wasn’t renewed. Remember, 4 million people puts 2 degrees of separation between you and everybody else. It also means the charlatans and hucksters get run off.

Speaking of visas, there are several avenues you can use to enter New Zealand. English speaking and being resourceful are your major requirements. The basic premise behind the immigration policy here is one of attempting to add benefit to the economy either through your skill set, small business start up, or passive investor. Required in each of these applications is a police report and medical exam. The medical is more about being a burden on the healthcare system, than anything else so don’t worry if your elbows are on backwards. The easiest way to understand the viability of an emigration is to visit the New Zealand Immigration website. Suffice it to say, it is not a lottery based system but one that has clearly defined guidelines.

All views expressed are those of the author,

Michael Reps, Director
www.Yieldqwest.co.nz

Thank you, Michael, for your first-hand report on a topic many may be considering quite seriously as the U.S. economy and society deteriorates.


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Washing Machines, Free and New

A discussion of washing machines ends up touching on all sorts of issues: quality, efficiency and the abundance of free goods in the U.S.

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Readers checked in with some cogent comments on washing machines which reflect key issues in an economy of tightening money and resources. If you really don't have much spare money or credit, or are just thrifty and need what money you have for other projects, then as noted below an amazing array of goodies are available for free or for very modest sums.

Buying new appliances has one major payoff--much higher efficiency. A "life-cycle" analysis of any device which uses power and water (inputs which cost money) calculates the total savings gained over older less efficient models, which can be quite substantial. But such an analysis should also recognize the energy and material cost of manufacturing the item. An old item which lasts a long time has a lower life-cycle cost than one which breaks down in a year and must be replaced (especially if it cannot be readily repaired.)

This is the ultimate problem with cheap furniture from Ikea and poor-quality stuff from Home Cheapo: it may look nice for a few months before it rusts/pulls apart/breaks, but once it goes to the landfill it's true life-cycle costs were very high: non-renewable resources were invested in an object which had a short-lifespan of actual utility. Maybe the price tag indicated it was "cheap," but how cheap was it when compared to a more costly higher-quality item which lasts five, ten or fifty times longer?

Then there's the issue of repair. Older appliances, autos, lawn mowers, real wood furniture, etc. are typically repairable. Not so many new machines with electronics which fail. The entire device is always dependent on the weakest component. If that component is prone to fail and costly/impossible to replace, then the lifespan of that machine will very likely be far shorter than that of an older, better engineered and better-made equivalent.

How many times have you heard this story? The electronic board on a car goes out and the replacement costs $800 or even $1,200. How much is the car worth? Maybe not much more than the replacement cost of the electronics parts. So the entire vehicle is junked.

Ikea-type particle board furniture looks very nice when first assembled, but once the screws pull out of the particle board then it's impossible to fix without going to a great deal of trouble. Once the super-thin veneer peels off, revealing the particle board underneath, the once-chic item is quickly reduced to shabby junk--perhaps its "natural state" given the poor quality of the materials used in its construction.

These three reader comments each address these issues from a different perspective:

K.K.

Soon after I moved in to my condo (with a laundry room) in SF back in 1998 a friend bought a home in Mill Valley that still had the original "avocado" green Maytag washer and dryer that the original owners of the home bought in 1968.

My friend and his wife bought a fancy ~$1,000 Bosch washer and dryer and gave me the green Maytag washer and dryer for free. A couple years later the dryer stopped getting hot so I slid it out of the laundry room in to my living room (thinking of the comedian who says "If you have ever had a major appliance disassembled in your living room than you might be a redneck") took it apart an replaced the thermostat (for under $6).

The green Maytags were working great when the same friend asked if I wanted to buy his $1,000 Bosch pair for $200 since now that they had kids they were buying a bigger ~$1,500 Maytag "Neptune" combo. I bought the Bosch washer and dryer and gave the old green Maytags away on Craig's List (I had a guy give me a sob story that he lost his job and his wife was pregnant so I gave him the washer and dryer for free).

The fancy front loading Bosch washer and dryer did not get my clothes any cleaner and ended up making my life harder since the super fast spin cycle (to spin out more water and reduce drying time and energy use) set the wrinkles in my clothes and the front loader locks preventing you from tossing in the sock that you spotted on the ground after the cycle stops. The most annoying "feature" was an auto turnoff (again to make the Euro Greens happy) that prevents you from getting things super dry (and makes you leave damp towels hanging around the apartment).

I sold the Bosch washer and dryer for $200 when I moved to Davis and I bought the cheapest GE washer and dryer combo at Lowes (with a 20% off coupon) for just under $600 out the door and they work great. I can't imagine that my clothes would be much cleaner (or dryer) if I paid $1,000 more for a fancy washer dryer set.

Kevin G.

Regarding the replacement of washers and dryers: My family returned from vacation (celebrating our twentieth wedding anniversary, thank you very much!) to discover that our 14-year-old washer was broken (again). We'd known that both it and our 20-year old dryer were not long for this world, so we were already prepared to replace them at the next breakdown.

We chose to spend about $1500 on a new set of high efficiency appliances from GE. They were delivered yesterday, hooked up (no extra charge) and the old ones removed (no extra charge -- and hopefully heading for recycling). My hope is that these, too, will provide us with many, many years of service. A bit expensive? Perhaps -- or perhaps not.

The old model had a giant drum that filled up two three times with water. How much water was that per filling? 20 gallons? 30? However much it was, it was clearly a lot. The new one sips water. I suspect it takes closer to 10 gallons to do the entire load (not just a single cycle). Likewise, the old one was an energy guzzler, where the Energy Guide on the new washer estimates that it will cost us about $11 per year for electricity and gas. Finally, it's high speed spin cycle leaves the clothes more damp than wet, so drying times (and energy consumption) are cut dramatically as well.

So where am I going with all this? I suspect we'll be able to cut our monthly water bill by $10 to $15 per month and our energy costs by $30 per year (guessing big time on that one) due to the new washer. Yearly, let's just call the savings $30 + ($12.50*12) = $180. $800 for the washer divided by $180 = 4.44 years. That's the time the unit needs until it pays for itself completely in energy and water savings. In other words, if the machine last a mere 4 1/2 years it will be essentially FREE to us.

In any case, I just wanted to present you with a different take on the cost and benefits of buying a new washer. I could do a similar analysis on the dryer, but really don't have a clue what the difference in energy consumption between old an new is except that I'm sure it is substantial.

Tree Hugger

Free stuff does exist. It is a little section of Craigslist. That good used washer from Wednesday's entry is easy to replace for the cost of a little time and effort. By watching the ads and answering in a nice and polite form there are probably several chances a week at a good working replacement for the cost of picking it up. When my wife and I moved from Texas to north Virginia, we gave away most of our big furniture and misc. items. We condensed our things to one car and one small-bed Ranger. Later when we had a 3 bedroom place for a while, every room was nicely furnished with free stuff. We got TV's, beds, couches, tables, chairs, a portable convection oven I adore, and dishes, etc.

The cost of moving alone would have been enormous, had we rented a U-Haul, much more still if we paid a moving company like many people do. There would be additional storage costs if a smaller place was chosen. The expensive moving fees are well known by the general population. If people don't give it away they have moving sales. One way or another there is always going to be plenty of stuff available at a fraction of the cost, or dare I say it, Free! (like a scavenger hunt)

Thank you, readers, for your commentaries.

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After the Fall: Agenda Points for Renewing America

"Agenda" sounds like blah-blah-blah, but we have to start somewhere.

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If you assume (as I do) insolvency of the Federal, state and local governments in the U.S. is only a matter of time, then the question becomes: what do we do after the Fall? Just as rough-and-tumble start, here is a short agenda of points to cover:

1. In the big picture, the differences between the Democratic and Republican parties are trivial. Consider:
A. Each stood by while the banking/securities/mortgage industries looted the nation. Neither supported criminal investigations, both support the "too big to fail" ideal.
B. Each has enabled and supported the cartels which exploit and impoverish the citizenry: banking, "healthcare," et al.
C. Each is in thrall to special interests who lavish tens of millions on their campaigns.
D. Each supports a version of the "Savior State" which seeks to save everyone from themselves; "personal responsibility" is an empty phrase unless you don't have a good trial attorney.
E. Each has added trillions of dollars to the national debt, impoverishing future generations should interest rates rise (which they will); each has stood by as $600 billion current account deficits destroy the dollar's value when priced in gold.
F. Each allows graft, greed, corruption, embezzlement and cheating on a vast scale; to the taxpayers, the $200 Pentagon hammer and welfare fraud are essentially equivalent.
G. Each has supported Imperial over-reach as the fundamental foreign policy of the nation.
H. Each hides behind the other as an excuse for why "compromise" waters down "reforms" to just another layer of complexity on an already overly complex system.
I. Each assumes minor policy tweaks (you will now pay $10 more for your Medicare coverage, we're raising the CAFE standards a few miles per gallon, etc.) will miraculously (eventually, we're told) solve deep, structural problems.

In sum, the supposedly vast "partisan" differences between the two status quo parties are 1) fund-raising gimmicks and 2) good entertainment for the "news" (entertainment/circus) media.

I know, I know, this is the status quo and it can't be changed except glacially. Until, of course, the glacier melts.

2. Cheap abundant oil is almost gone. We have 400 years of coal, blah blah blah. Great. Try shoveling it into your car and that 747 aircraft awaiting refueling, etc. Gasify it? Fine, but it won't cost $2.50 a gallon. And please show me the plants which will gasify 20 million gallons of gasoline a day plus millions more of jet fuel, diesel and other distillates. And also show me the rail lines which snake from the coal fields to these wonderful gasification plants.

Clean coal? Nice, but it's not cheap. We have nuclear energy, blah blah blah. Yeah, and Peak Uranium, too. Breeder reactors--maybe. There's something like two in existence. And they make electricity, not jet fuel. So plug the electrical recharger cord in that 747 aircraft and hope somebody discovers super-light cheap batteries which have energy densities equivalent to jet fuel.

And just remember all existing alternative energy sources supply about 3% of global energy consumption.

3. Complacency and fatalism are both traps. Either people blissfully assume some magical "American can-do" will appear and save us from actually having to change anything or they've given up, passively awaiting their fate. Neither is a constructive approach.

4. "Healthcare" is as broken as a body that fell from the Empire State building. The cartels which profit from the current Kafka-esque nightmare of "the world's finest healthcare system" (George Orwell, where are you now that we need an update to 1984?) have a chokehold on the Demopublicans and thus on the pursestrings of the cash-cow government. They will only loosen their grip on the cash-cow when it groans, teeters briefly and then flops to the earth, insolvent and no long able to pay off the cartels.

Instead of looking at other First World "healthcare delivery systems" which are also heading for insolvency, we might benefit from examining how Third World countries supply care to their citizens. That will be more in line with our budget.

5. The U.S. gets $600 billion a year from our hapless trading partners (via the current account deficit) and borrows another $2 trillion from anyone trusting enough to think interest rates will stay low forever. A great cheer arose when it was discovered the profligate U.S. consumer mended his/her ways and started saving again, at the stupendous rate of $680 billion a year.

Oops, except the government includes money allotted to paying off debt in that "savings" number. So maybe Americans are actually stashing much less, say $300 billion a year. But then they're still saving huge sums of money in their 401Ks and IRAs, right? You do mean, of course, all those retirement plans which cash-strapped folks have stopped paying into... but never mind the millions who are jobless, let's reckon another $700 billion is flowing into the coffers of retirement accounts.

Great. That means if every dollar saved in the U.S. was (foolishly) invested in U.S. Treasury bonds, we'd only have to borrow a mere $1 trillion from overseas governments, central banks and investors. Wow, who knew it could be so easy to fund $2 trillion a year in deficit spending?

OK, so governments are pouring billions into the public-employee pensions, and life insurance companies are investing in America, etc. etc. so let's add another $500 billion into the savings pot, increasing it to $1.5 trillion (that's being generous to the point of unreality, but let's assume the best).

But realistically, will every dollar actually be invested in a T-bill? So maybe at best some $750 billion (of the total $1.5 trillion) would flow into Treasuries to fund the deficit. That still leaves a $1.25 trillion sum which must be borrowed overseas.

And let's not forget that these poor trading partners are getting $600 billion a year in paper money we give them for the oil, manufactured goods and commodities (i.e. actual real stuff, not paper money) they ship us. That's supposedly "good" because they're forced to recycle all that paper into Treasuries, but perhaps we should wonder if they're tiring of that scam and may want to buy something tangible themselves with that $600 billion a year.

Just a thought.

6. A funny thing happened on the way to unlimited alternative energy. Costs went up throughout the economy. That battery-powered tractor sure is neato, and so is that solar array to power it. But those gizmos weren't exactly free. Neither are the battery-powered trucks to haul the produce to market and bring in the organic fertilizer (itself more costly than the old chemical nitrogen), etc.

It turns out that when cheap oil is gone, so is cheap anything.

That limits what we can do with all the above situations because a terribly ironic paradox comes into play here: just as we need to invest trillions of dollars in creating alternative sources of energy (and ramp up energy conservation), we have to spend ever-larger sums on fossil fuels and interest payments on all that debt we took on keeping the status quo unchanged.

Try not to laugh too hard at the irony. Your healthcare insurance might not cover that condition and you'll have to pay in cash.

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Lagniappe thought on the stock market: You know the drill here--this is not investment advice, it's just the wandering musings of an amateur (please read the HUGE GIANT BIG FAT DISCLAIMER below very carefully).

Now that everyone else is a Bear, too, I'm getting nervous. When the most popular story on Marketwatch is a clarion call to go short/sell because the neckline in a head and shoulders pattern has been broken, I got the urge to go long (and I did, all in today in calls and 2X long ETFs). I'm seeing 10 puts for every call in some ETFs--that means the vast majority of players are betting on a big downturn.

We all know the U.S. economy is in dire straits, and is basically terminally over its head in debt, deficits and unfunded liabilities. But as often noted here, the stock market (contrary to popular opinion) has no connection to the real economy.

A real Bull market likes to crawl up a "wall of worry"--that is, a reserve of Bearish worries, and a Bear market likes to chew through reserves of Bullish hope (the so-called slope of hope). Now that everyone has their eyeballs glued to the broken neckline, and placed their bets via a lopsided put-call ratio on a big downturn, there's basically no Bulls left standing--I mean legitimate analysts, not cheerleaders who are always bullish.

Legendary trader Jesse Livermore observed that the market takes along the fewest possible participants on every profitable ride. When punters have snapped up 10 puts (bets the market will plummet) for every call (bet the market will rise), well, it just doesn't seem likely that the market will reward the 10 and take the money from the one. In every instance I can recall with such lopsided put-call bets, the market takes the money from the 10 and rewards the one contrarian.

Maybe this time it will be different and the herd will reap vast profits. Maybe, but I'm off to the side on this one, watching the herd run headlong into the unknown. Maybe it's about to enter a field of easy gold (i.e. the market crashes, rewarding the herd) or maybe it will run off a cliff (i.e. the market shoots up, wiping out the bearish bets).

We'll see who's right, the millions who are betting on that broken neckline (blah blah blah) or Jesse L. (posted 9 pm PST 7/8/09, so the open of the market on 7/9 is unknown to me.)


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Frugality, "New" and Traditional

"The New Frugality" is getting airplay. Correspondent Dan K. shares his experience in replacing an old broken washing machine.

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Correspondent Dan K. addresses the "new frugality" as he sets out to replace his fritzed washing machine:

Have you looked at the cost of a washer/dryer set lately?

It's Sunday afternoon and the washer is on the fritz. Yeah, it's been having 'issues' for a few years now. First the stupid little tab that is supposed to lock the front-loading door broke off. Who designed that piece of garbage? If you are going to put something on a door that can be hooked and broken off by clothes while loading, at least make it of Delrin or some similar high impact, less breakable plastic. But whatever, we found the door would still stay shut without it so I guess it wasn't all THAT important. After a while the little buzzer that told you the door was not locked died, so it was almost as if it had been designed that way to begin with...

Then the door started to sag. What's up with that? It doesn't weigh much, and the kids certainly haven't been hanging off it. Lord knows the kids wouldn't go NEAR the washer for fear of being put to work in the laundry room.. I mean, can't the manufacturer figure out a way for what looks like a 6-8 lb. door to stay true for 6-8 years? But whatever (again), the thing still seemed to work if you just made sure to push the door closed all the way.

Not long after the the door started to sag, the knob came off. Not one of those simple affairs, this is the kind that acts as a switch. Push in to disconnect the circuit, pull out to start the machine. That made things a bit more interesting, but we worked around it by grabbing the still attached plastic collar and using that to set the cycles. Of course the machine was always in the 'on' mode, but so long as you kept the door open when you chose your cycle, it all seemed to work out fine (sorta). At least you wouldn't hear the machine chunking and grinding to keep up with your hand-spin of the perpetually 'on' settings wheel. Some engineer must have recieved an award for the design of this partiular wheel, with the company knowing it would sell a fortune in replacements some years down the line.

But it didn;t stop there. After several years, the no-longer-locking-and-now-sagging door stopped tripping some sort of internal safety that would tell the washer the door was closed and it was time to get to work. Maybe the thing was just tired and didn't want to work so hard anymore, so like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey it fried it's own internals. Who knows. BUT, we outsmatrted the thing by using a chunk of PVC tube to put a brace against the door when closed. It gave the door that little bit of extra closure to re-engage the switch and allow the washer to work again. Really, all you had to do was peek into the laundry room and you'd see that lovely three feet of plastic pipe wedged between the washer door and the closet door opposite to know the machine was still full of sopping wet clothes.

Oh, did I forget to mention that the machine seemed to have stopped draining? Yup, it appeared to think once it had run a wash and rinse cycle it was too tired to pump itself out anymore. For a while I would run it thru the spin cycle to get it to pump twice each load and get the clothes at least marginally wrung before they headed off to the dryer that squeaks when it spins. Howeven, I think the washer finally got my number and stopped pumping much of anything as of yesterday.

Well, after all the 'fun times' we have spent together, I am getting the hint that maybe our washer is looking into retirement before all the Social Security money is gone. It has reached the ripe old age of 8 years now, which, having worked like a dog, in dog years would make it somewhere in it's late 50's -- maybe a little young for retirement, but like it's owners certainly getting a little longer in the tooth. So when the spousal unit said "Time to get a new washer", I figured "why not?". Sure we would miss the missing knob, and the plastic pipe would also be retired. And no more sagging door, we could get a hot new model not in need fo a 'face lift' and some 'internal surgery' to keep it healthy.

Hello CraigsList!

Having haunted the aisles of Home Depot for years, ever in search of the copper plumbing fitting, the sheets of drywall, nails for the nailgun, etc. I knew laundry appliances had certainly gone through a facelift in recent years. It was hard to miss the 'designer colors' and the fact they were growing taller like my children. Yet, as sleek as they looked, they never really garnered any attention from me as our trusty ol' washer at home still worked fine -- plastic pipe and all. So why look at a new model? I wasn't going to throw my wife away for getting older, why do the same to my washer? We had 'history' together. Now it looked like our time had come to split up and there was no turning back.

So here I am, letting my fingers do the walking on the 'Net. Did you know you can get matching sets in red,white, and blue (how American -- even if they say LG on the front) as well as green, black and who knows what else. Did you know those 'designer' washer/dryer sets start around $1500 for a 'good" set? WOW. So that got me to thinking...

Does anyone really know, or for that matter care, if my clothes got washed by a $1800 set of laundry machines? Would the neighbors ask me, the man of 'plastic pipe' ingenuity to move if I brought home a new washer (no matching set -- GASP!) that didn't look like it stepped off the pages of Architectural Digest? Would I have to sneak it in at night under cover? Would my clothes tell the other clothes they ran into on the street they had been shaped up at the discount wash center off the kitchen? Or was I just being paranoid about all this?

Then I remembered -- this is the 'newfound age of frugality'! It's cool to be cheap! Saving money is 'in' again, even if it had never been 'out' in our household.

I think I'll see what kind of deal I can get off Craigslist. I am sure someone went a little 'charge-happy' in the last year or two. And the best part is that in today's economy, I can even feel proud of the 'deal' I will get on that "Like New, year old washer" being sold because someone is moving or downsizing. Now if only I could get a new back, and a few joints the same way...

Thank you, Dan. Great writing on a topic every household can relate to. After suffering for years with the recalcitrant ancient washer given to us by elderly neighbors, we broke down (yes, I am ashamed to admit, I bought something new) about five years ago and bought a basic Sears Kenmore front-loader when we received one of those "$75 off your next major purchase" mailers. In my defense, that is the only major item we've bought new in the past five years except cheap Hewlett-Packard PCs and a Samsung TV from Costco to replace ancient models which expired.

Recent items picked up for free off the curb: almost-new 3-gallon propane tank, empty but still valuable, and a large suitcase (with broken pocket zipper, otherwise OK) filled with clean bedding of various sheet sizes.

The flood of slightly used goods available for free or a few dollars is just beginning...


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Junk Fee Revolution: Government Is an Enterprise, Too

As local governments face revenue shortfalls and the consequences of their hiring/wage-benefit largesse of the past decade, they are squeezing the private sector and non-Elite citizenry with huge increases in junk fees.

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Frequent contributor Cheryl A. recently sent in some examples of the sudden proliferation of local-government junk fees and gigantic increases in existing fees. One, an inactive professional license suddenly requires a $70 annual fee to remain inactive (now that's creative--you have to pay to not make any money) and the West Virginia turnpike tolls just leaped from $1.25 to $2.00.

Here in my neck of the woods, our municipal water agency just jacked rates by 8% and BART (regional subway) also just raised their ticket prices again for the second time in three years. (Could it have anything to do with the 24% raises they handed to employees three years ago? Hmm.)

Here's the context: in the bogus "prosperity" of the dot-con era (Internet bubble) and the housing bubble (roughly 1996-2008), local governments hired huge numbers of new employees, far outstripping population growth, and then raised already- generous benefits and wages packages to levels which no private-sector employee could possibly match.

Examples are endless: work five years, get lifetime healthcare coverage. (UCSF and city of San Francisco.) Please find even one private-sector employer which offers that benefit.

Here's another: work half-time for seven years, qualify for a lifetime pension which pays you starting at age 55. (City of Berkeley library.) Please locate even one private-sector employer which offers that benefit.

Local government and its employees are in denial of a simple fact: government is an enterprise which must, like any other, align expenses with revenues. Like a ratchet, local government and its employees seem to believe that increases in wages and benefits are "rights" which can only go up, regardless of the finances of the enterprise (local government).

Is this prudent or even common-sensical? Clearly, it is not. In every enterprise, huge boosts in benefits offered during "prosperity" are subsequently axed to match revenues when revenues plummet. This is especially true in enterprises (like government) in which 70% of all expenses are employee-related.

Local government is attempting to avoid draconian cuts in skyrocketing compensation costs (check out those healthcare and pension costs) by slapping high junk fees on a citizenry struggling to survive. Cheryl sent in the following stories as examples:

Tourists pay price as states jack up taxes to balance budgets:

Taxes on travel are soaring as states and cities target the wallets of tourists and business travelers for new revenue. Hotel taxes, car rental fees and other charges were jacked up in many states in an effort to balance budgets by last week, when the fiscal year started in 46 states.

Popular tourist destinations were hit especially hard. Among places where taxes rose:

•Hawaii. The hotel room tax increased from 7.25% to 8.25% on Wednesday and will rise to 9.25% in July 2010.

•Nevada. The room tax will increase up to 3 percentage points, to a maximum of 12%. In Las Vegas, the hotel tax jumps from 9% to 12%. Reno's tax was already 12% and is not scheduled to change.

•New Hampshire. The tax on rooms and restaurant meals rose from 8% to 9% and was extended to include recreational vehicles at campgrounds.

•Massachusetts. Cities were given authority to raise the hotel tax from 4% to 6%, in addition to the state tax of 5.7%. Taxes on eating out will rise from 5% to 6.25% statewide, plus another 0.75% if cities choose.

•New York City. The city, which raised its hotel tax March 1 to 14.25%, not counting other fees, will start charging more for Internet reservations.

"You couldn't pick a worse time to make it more expensive to rent a hotel room," says Mark Woodworth, executive vice president of PKF Hospitality Research in Atlanta. Hotel occupancy this year will be at its lowest level — 55.5% — since his company started keeping track in 1936, Woodworth says.

Cities, states tack on more user fees

State and local governments are turning to user fees to raise quick cash — from increases on hunting licenses to fees for enrolling in the Little League. One town is considering charging accident victims who need to be extricated from their cars. As cities and states struggle with sinking property values and declining sales tax revenue, many see raising fees as more acceptable to voters than increasing income taxes and sales taxes, said Bert Waisanen, a fiscal analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Money from the federal stimulus package will bolster some parts of states' budgets, but it won't be enough to close the gaps, said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. "The stimulus favors education and health care," Pattison said. "Other parts of the budget are going to be disproportionately hit, like parks and recreation."

Colorado lawmakers, who cannot raise taxes without a statewide vote, this month raised fees for car registrations and rental cars to help meet a $600 million shortfall.

"There has been a blizzard of fees," said Colorado Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, a Republican who favors cutting the budget instead of raising revenue. "The state is balancing its budget by knocking the budgets of families … out of balance."

House Speaker Terrance Carroll, a Democrat, said the state already has cut $300 million from the budget. "The common good requires certain sacrifice," he said. "The vast majority of people understand why it's important."

Seven Questions for Mr. Carroll:

1. How much did Colorado state legislators cut from their own salaries, medical benefits, retirement benefits, per diem expenses, state vehicles provided, staff expenses, and all other forms of reimbursement and compensation?

I suspect the answer, if total compensation and bennies are used as the baseline, is between 0% and 5%.

2. How many employees did the State of Colorado add in the years 1999 - 2008? What was the percentage increase, compared to the increase in state population?

I suspect the answer will be employees were added at twice the rate of actual population increase. Thus a 3% rise in population, 6% more state employees, etc.

3. Starting with total compensation (salaries plus total benefits value), what is the average pay cut imposed on state employees?

4. How much did total compensation (especially pension benefits/contributions) paid to state employees rise in the period 1999-2008? How does this increase compare to the inflation rate in the same time frame?

I suspect the answer, if total compensation and bennies are used as the baseline, is that total compensation increased at twice the rate of inflation.

5. How much, in dollars and as a percentage of total state tax revenues in 1999, did tax revenues rise in the period 1999-2008? How does that compare to inflation in that period?

Surprise: I suspect the answer, if total tax and fees revenues are used as the baseline, is that taxes/fees revenues rose at twice the rate of inflation, thus inflation rose a total of 20% and total taxes rose 40% above the total collected in 1999.

6. If government is an enterprise with revenues and expenses like any other, then why shouldn't expenses be cut by 30% to match a 30% decline in revenues? Exactly what exempts government employees, contractors and recipients of benefits from the notion that when revenues fall, then expenses must be trimmed in parallel fashion?

Thus if local government added large numbers of employees during "prosperity" then the number of employees should be pared back to what it was before "prosperity."

If government employees were granted raises in wages and benefits during "prosperity" (in quotations because it was always a visibly bogus prosperity based on debt and irresponsible lending/spending) then as revenues fall by 30%, so too should employee compensation be trimmed by an equal percentage.

I am occasionally accused of union-bashing or public-employee bashing whenever I point out what can be easily verified: that private employees have on average been losing ground for decades, while public employees (at least in California) have been granted huge increases in total compensation--the cost of their healthcare and pension benefits are ballooning at guaranteed-to-bankrupt rates.

This is all easily verifiable. In my city of residence, city contributions to employee pensions leaped from $2.8 million to $15 million in the span of two years: Scale Invariance: Is Your Neighborhood Sliding into Recession? (February 6, 2007)

In fiscal year 2005, $15 million of Berkeley’s $115 million general fund will pay for contributions to the California Public Employees System (PERS). Last year, the city spent $8 million on retirement benefits. The year before, the city spent only $2.8 million.

A lot of that money is going to cover stock market losses, but a good chunk will pay for improved pension benefits to Berkeley’s growing ranks of retirees who threaten to strangle the city’s general fund for the foreseeable future.

“Basically they’ve given away the store,” said Ron Roach of the California Taxpayers Association, one of the few groups to oppose the higher pension plan. For local police and firefighters the bill meant they could now retire at age 50 with a pension that equaled three percent times their years of service—75 percent of his or her highest yearly salary, for instance, for an officer who retires at age 50 after spending 25 years on the force. Subsequently the state passed a law allowing police and firefighters to receive a pension as high as 90 percent of their highest annual salary. (source: Berkeley Daily Planet)

What's Different Now (July 12, 2007)

And please don't tell me how underpaid everyone is; there are plenty of schoolteachers and police officers in my extended family, and $65,000 for 9 months work is not underpaid. Low-skill clerks at UCSF (University of California at San Francisco) make $45,000 a year; that's also not "low paid." They get their medical benefits for life after a mere 5 years of employment, as do all employees of the City of San Francisco.

Uh, can you spell "government bankruptcy"?

7. How do you think the citizenry feels when parking meter fines jump to $35 or more, and other parking fines (parking even for a minute in a no-parking zones, double-parking for a few minutes to answer a phone call, etc.) jump to over $50, while minor moving violations (not coming to a complete stop at a deserted intersection, being 6 MPH over the speed limit, etc.) cost hundreds of dollars? Do you believe they feel this is "democracy in action" and "necessary sacrifice" or simply extortion to protect your gargantuan pension?

How do you think they feel as the debt/layoffs noose tightens around their neck to get a $35 parking ticket, a $15 "fee" to enter a county/state park, $150 for the planning/building department to glance at their plans, never mind if the department actually issues the citizen a permit--that costs thousands of dollars more--on top of the property taxes, sales taxes, phone taxes, internet access taxes and income taxes they already pay local government? Do you really think the "sacrifice" of paying junk fees on top of all the other taxes endears the citizenry to your immense healthcare benefits and staggeringly costly pension benefits?

In Survival+: Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation, I posit the emergence of a "high-caste" class of public employees and corporate technocrats who are protected by their service to the State/Plutocracy (two sides of the same coin).

Like any Elite, local government is protecting its own income via extortion (pay or you don't get any service) and by nickel-and-diming "the little people," i.e. all of us who are not protected by membership in the "upper caste."

What the upper caste and local government politicos don't yet grasp is the rage their extortion racket will unleash. I have gone on record predicting that the junk-fee game will absolutely backfire on local government, which will find its revenues plummeting even faster than expected.

Here is another simple fact to consider: we don't have to opt into any service but water and electricity. Yes, you can increase the junk fees on those and we will have to pay the extortion, but as for the rest:

1. Raise hotel tax: stay with relatives, camp or don't travel.

2. Raise turnpike fees: choose backroad alternative routes.

3. Raise subway fares: Share rides, carpool, bicycle, stop going to events in the city.

4. Raise sales tax: buy stuff at swap meets, garage sales, barter, trade.

5. Raise fishing license: fish on private lakes or stop fishing.

6. Raise rental car fees: slash employee travel to zero, teleconference; borrow relatives' car, take the bus, don't travel.

7. Raise fee for inactive license: cancel license, exit the profession, close down your side business (it's not making money anyway).

8. Raise parking meter fines to $40: stop shopping in that city. Refuse to go there for any reason.

And so on. It's called "opting out." If you don't think it's already happening, you're not paying attention.

I can only hope that voters will awaken and vote out every incumbent of every party. Not that I have much hope of this, but it would be a start.

How will the revolution start? By opting out. By that I mean opting out of everything which is a rip-off: private university fees, pro sports "seat licenses" and all the rest, all the way down the line to fishing licenses. Some will opt out by choice, some by way of protest, and others because they no longer have the money to pay the fees and ticket prices.

Lagniappe thought: As the inflation/deflation debate rages unabated, perhaps it would be instructive to turn to a simpler question: the cost of living as measured in purchasing power of our currency (in the U.S., the dollar, but the question is equally valid for the Aussie dollar, the Canadian dollar, the euro, the pound, the RMB, the yen, etc.)

If we consider the cumulative costs of junk fees, extortionate increases in fees, licenses, sales taxes, etc., then we have to conclude that these increases substantially increase the cost of living for non-Elites. This is how the cost of living can rise even in macro-deflationary times.


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Patents, Complexity, Marginal Returns: Hello, Devolution

Increasing layers of complexity act as a hidden tax on the economy. As costs rise and returns become increasingly marginal, the system collapses or devolves.

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Frequent contributor Michael Goodfellow and I have been discussing innovation and patents, and it seems clear U.S. patent law is another example of why the U.S. economy and government are about to undergo devolution.

Take any working system and then add layer upon layer of additional complexity--all in the name of "fixing" or "reforming" it. There are thousands of examples of this process in the U.S. economy, but let's take patent law because it's hidden from most people's view even as it influences economy-wide business decisions and costs.

As the costs and liabilities of the patent process rise (including, of course, defending one's enterprise from flagrantly spurious lawsuits and what amounts to extortion), then the costs of doing business in the U.S. also rise--with zero additional benefit to offset the expense. As the legal costs of defending and obtaining patents increase, the system doesn't get more efficient or fair; if anything, it gets slower and less fair.

In this way, the entire infrastructure of patent law acts as an economy-wide tax. The same can be said of healthcare, public employee benefits, and many other entrenched systems with runaway costs. The end result is a high-cost economy which cannot be reformed due to the immense political power of those benefitting from the overly complex, ever-higher-costs, ever-lower-returns system.

As the benefits resulting from the system diminish and its costs keep rising, then the only choice left to those not in the parasitic Elites being enriched by the Status Quo is to opt out, sell out, go underground or move one's enterprise offshore. That is devolution writ large.

I think you'll find Michael's commentary very interesting, as it explains how the present U.S. patent system is actually stalling/hindering innovation:

I think you need to compare the time to develop a product vs. the time to reverse engineer it, and the sales lifetime of the product. Then be aware that copyright and patent are two very different things. I'm all in favor of limited copyright, but patents are already a big negative, and getting worse.

If you have something like a cute t-shirt design that can be copied instantly, you are right that without copyright protection, you aren't going to be able to hold your market. The price will drop to manufacturing cost, and you'll lose out to the knockoffs. If copyrights are enforced, you might have a chance. Still, if your shirt is a cute kitten with a slogan, someone else can use a different kitten picture and a similar slogan, and never violate copyright. Stuff like that is just a very opportunistic market. It's really all about marketing and supply chain (for all the shirts), not about content.

If it's a fashion item, there's a more substantial reverse engineering, and a longer production cycle, so the original would have the market to itself for longer. Also, since fashion dates quickly, the useful lifetime of the product is shorter. So it's not clear to me that the knockoff could really capture a huge percentage of the market. The original producer can also drop prices as the item ages in the market, and keep down the amount of revenue that the knockoff can capture.

For something like the iPhone, the reverse engineering time is more substantial. You have to do a similar ID, write similar software, get prototypes debugged, etc. The iPhone has a lot of appeal due to its links to the App store and to iTunes, which Apple controls, and which depend on the device running the Apple OS. So it's going to be very hard for a knockoff to compete with it. Without patent protection, you'd see more of that kind of thing -- links to internet services controlled by the manufacturer. Other products like printers that know to take only ink cartridges from the manufacturer, are similar protection-via-engineering, not patent.

For something like Microsoft Windows, copyright is more than sufficient. No other company could afford to develop a knockoff, and nothing but an exact knockoff would run all the Windows software. It's taken the Linux community years to finally get some Windows emulation software to run applications properly. High-end server software still won't run under those emulation packages, because the Microsoft API is just endless (and poorly documented, and squirrelly.)

Plus people forget the downside of patents. Not only do you have patent trolls extorting money out of companies, based on ridiculously broad patents (and just wait till China and India start playing THAT game...), but any patent litigation costs a fortune and takes years. I think the current estimate is over $1 million per litigant, and I read about cases that drag on for 5-10 years. That's a nightmare to a company on the receiving end of a lawsuit. And as TechDirt is at pains to point out, most patent suits never allege actual theft of an idea. It's almost universally independently developed, because the Patent Office will approve ridiculously trivial patents.

See this item, for example, of a patent you've definitely violated yourself: Infamous Niro JPEG Patent Smacked Down Again:

Since then the patent has been asserted against a wide range of organizations, including some resort in Florida and the Green Bay Packers. Niro appears to claim that any site using a JPEG image violates the patent. Not only that, but in cases where the patent has been asserted, Niro has been known to go for something of a sympathy play, by noting that the inventors (or the widow of one inventor) named on the patent are "old and feeble"

It's being slowly cleaned up by the courts, but if a guy like that had targeted you, you'd have had no alternative but to fold, since you can't afford even a trivial lawsuit.

And this one on patent protection money: Intuit Pays $120 Million 'Don't Sue Us' Tax To Intellectual Ventures:

While it hasn't sued anyone, Myhrvold has made clear that's always an option. The company has remained incredibly secret, but it has somehow convinced some big companies to pay hundreds of millions to Intellectual Ventures (IV). Due to the secrecy, the details aren't clear -- and some of the deals apparently are a mix of "licensing" and an equity investment. But, still, the numbers are stunning. The latest, as pointed out by Stephen Kinsella is that Intuit has apparently paid $120 million to IV. For what? The right not to get sued.

Think about that for a second. This is a pure dead weight net loss to society. It's $120 million that Intuit could have put towards further innovating, or to pay off investors via a dividend. Instead, it goes towards nothing productive, in terms of actually creating new products. It will now likely be used to buy up more patents so that IV can get similar black hole money grabs from other companies, as well. It's like a black hole where real innovation goes to die.

The bottom line for me is that the patent system does not scale. It sort of worked when patents only affected a small range of industries. They immediately became a problem in software and biotech. Even then, at least people sort of understood the rules of the game. There was a disincentive to really be aggressive with lawsuits, since you could be a victim of someone else's suit. But when that game goes multinational, and the Chinese are "just playing by the rules", it will become open warfare.

The realistic alternative to patents is trade secrets and employment agreements, with technical hacks such as encryption and DRM to prevent complete reverse engineering. I think that does scale, and though it will be annoying, won't have the bad effects on innovation that the current system has.

My own software efforts, for example, are almost certainly illegal. My proposed system covers so many areas of UI, software development, online gaming, etc., that it would be a miracle if it didn't violate someone's patent. Even if I cared about that, there's no way I could do it right. There are thousands of patents, each with dozens of claims, all written to be as obscure and general as they could get away with. Even if you reviewed them all, without being a lawyer, you'd have no idea what would really be a violation. And it would take years to do it right. Then if you did go to market anyway, secure in the knowledge that you'd done all you could to be legal, you could still get sued, and the costs would bankrupt you.

So my attitude is, if the rules have been changed to make it impossible for you to win, why play by the rules?

Exactly--thank you, Michael. The way I would envision devolution occurring in patent law is twofold: one, everything takes even longer to resolve, and thus the eventual ruling becomes ever more meaningless (a company could fold in 10 years waiting for a ruling or appeal), and two, enterprises will simply start ignoring the judgments and rulings as enforcement degrades.

Get sued by a patent troll? Do nothing. If the troll wins in court, Just declare bankruptcy (or simply shutter the business and move away) and start the same enterprise elsewhere overseas where U.S. courts have no jurisdiction and cross-legal claims are tied up in bureaucracy.

U.S. firms are relocating to Ireland and Switzerland to avoid unfair U.S. corporate taxes (your competitors may pay near-zero rates while you foolishly pay 35% U.S. tax rates--the highest in the world; how long can you survive that imbalance?) but there may be other reasons, too--such as dodging U.S.-based patent trolls.

When extortion passes for "playing by the rules" and gaming the system earns more than actually innovating (or working productively), then the game is rigged. The only companies able to defend spurious lawsuits (and there is no mechanism to throw out spurious suits--that's what the entire process is designed to eventually do, at stupendous expense) are ones throwing off billions of dollars in profits like pharmaceutical and tech giants (Apple and IBM).

I am not knowledgeable enough in patent law to recommend reforms; but I can state that any reform which just adds additional layers of complexity and thus cost is not a reform; it is merely furthering an increasingly onerous status quo tax on the remaining productive economy.

Yes, "the garage inventor" patent owner may occasionally win a big settlement from a multinational, but please show me the statistics which reveal this to be a common event. It sounds more like the PR spouted by patent trolls to mask their parasitic nature than an assertion based on court statistics.

Lagniappe thought: Everything, even patent law, is dependent on oil remaining $100 or less per barrel. When oil is $300/barrel, even the legal system will be revealed as unsustainable. Courts are funded by tax revenues, and as those collapse then the court system will necessarily devolve, too.


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