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Post #2081: Eighty pounds and still a loser.

 

This morning I reached 205 pounds.  In my underwear, admittedly.  But it still counts.  So I’m calling it 80 pounds lost, since September 2023.  BMI is now just under 28.  If I can lose another 20 pounds, I’ll finally make it to the upper limit of “normal” weight.  Something that I honestly never thought I would ever see.

This post summarizes a few more things that I didn’t expect from losing that much weight.

And, while I’m at it, how helpful or not Google’s AI would have been, in dealing with these changes.

They are, in order:

  • My mattress is too hard.
  • My sneakers are too stiff.
  • My balance is much better.
  • My weight loss remains on trend.

My mattress is too hard

Google AI score, 50%.  Good solution, totally wrong reasoning.

I never considered body fat to be part of the overall mattress-comfort equation.  But apparently, this is well-known, at least in the sense that Google’s AI knew about it.

After a couple of months of waking up with numb patches of skin on my hips and thighs, it finally dawned on me that, together, my mattress and I have lost a lot of padding.  And, as if the AI read my mind, the addition of a 2″ memory-foam mattress topper has solved the problem of a too-hard mattress.

That said, the rest of the AI’s “reasoning” was wrong.  The problem has nothing to do with firmness — the tendency of the mattress surface to sink downwards with weight.  The firmness of the mattress is just fine.  And putting a mattress topper on doesn’t affect the firmness, and can’t fix a mattress with the wrong level of firmness for the sleeper.

It’s the level of padding on top of that structure that’s the problem.

I give the AI partial credit on this one.

My sneakers are too stiff

Google AI score, 0%.  (I’d give it a negative if I could).  On this question, Google’s AI hallucinated the reasoning and offered really bad advice.

You expect to buy new clothes when you lose a lot of weight.  And I have, right on down to my underwear.  But I didn’t expect to have to buy new shoes.

For the past couple of decades I’ve worn Nike Air Monarch shoes.  These are plain-Jane sneakers with lots of padding, heavy construction, and very thick soles with the Nike Air technology.

These were, effectively, the perfect shoe for an obese-but-active person.  The thick air-cushioned heel was more-or-less exactly what a fat person needs.

As a bonus, buying new sneakers was a no-brainer, because Nike kept these in production for decades.  I think that’s because Nike has a steady market of devoted wearers consisting of a) heavy people, and b) people who spend a lot of time on their feet, like nurses.

The thick soles were comfortably flexible for my old, 285-pound self.  But at 205, they’re like walking on padded boards.  To the point where it became almost comically difficult to, say, run on a treadmill while wearing them.

Though, to be fair, I don’t think the average purchaser of Nike Air Monarchs does a lot of running.

So, for the first time in two decades, I bought an actual running shoe.  One with lightweight construction and flexible soles.  I’ll never be a graceful runner, but running feels a lot better with a more flexible shoe.  At least I no longer have to hear “slap-slap-slap” as I plod along on a treadmill.

My balance is much better.

Google AI score:  33%.  From what I can tell, the only point it got right is that it’s easier to maintain control when you have less mass.  The rest of it appears to be imaginary.

My balance is vastly better than it was.

To test your static ability to balance, just stand on one foot.  In medical parlance, this is the “single leg stance” test.  Health care providers assume that this measures something about your neurological health.  Eyes open, hands on hips, standing on one foot, if you can’t count to five before you fall over, you’re at enhanced risk of falls.  But if you get past ten seconds, apparently, you’re good to go (reference).

Near as I can tell, at 205 pounds, I can stand on one foot until I get bored.  That was not true of my 285-pound self, to the point where Wii Fit always told me that, physically, I was ancient, because it could sense how much I wobbled around when standing on the Wii Fit scale.  At any rate, I just now stood a minute, on one foot, and while it requires concentration, it seemed like muscle fatigue would set the limit there, not balance per se.

But I think this is entirely explained by physics, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the state of my nervous system or musculature.

First, fat people — or at least those with a lot of belly fat — have a higher center of gravity.  Most of the weight I lost was from the waist up.  That, for the simple reason that I never had much fat on my legs (or arms), typical for “central obesity” in fat males.  And I had a big gut.  This means that my center of gravity is now lower.  That by itself, makes me more stable.  (Apparently, the whole story is more complex, and involves both lowering the center of gravity, and moving it closer to the spine.)

Second, I now have a better power-to-weight ratio.  By reducing my fat, the ratio of muscle mass to total weight has risen.  This means that for any given off-balance situation, I’m more likely to be able to bring myself back to an upright position.  (Crudely, 40% more power, reckoned as 285/205=~1.4.  That assumes neither loss nor gain of strength, for the muscles used for balance.)

In any case, it’s not rocket science.  Consider loading a backpack with 80 pounds of bacon, putting that on, and trying to keep your balance.  That was more-or-less the situation when I started on this course back in September 2023, compared to where I am now.

Improved balance is no surprise.  And it required no improvement in nervous system or musculature to achieve it.  It just required taking off the backpack.

My weight loss is on trend.

Google AI score:  100%.  Google simply repeats the conventional wisdom, which is that long term weight loss inevitably proceeds by fits and starts, not smoothy.

If you read about people who’ve lost a lot of weight, all you seem to hear about is how hard it eventually gets, how they plateau, how tough it is to keep the weight off.

For some reason, none of that seems to apply to me.  I have lost weight at a weirdly steady rate of 5 pounds per month.

I can only guess why I’ve had this unusual experience.

  • As I’ve lost weight, I’ve lowered my daily calorie target.
  • I monitor my diet, separately from counting calories.  Simply put, if I don’t wake up hungry, I know I ate too much the day before.
  • I eat a very simplified diet, so “cheating” isn’t really possible.

But at this point, I think that’s mostly due to having an incredibly simplified diet.  This makes it easy to keep track of how much I’ve eaten each day.  And, more importantly, it keeps me away from food that gets me off track or amps up my sense of hunger.

Breakfast is a cup of coffee with a serving of protein powder in it.

After that, I eat five (or so) 300-calorie (or so) meals a day. Typical meals include:

  • A garden salad with a nice high-fat salad dressing.  (Without the salad dressing, my body does not seem to register salad greens as any type of food, hunger-wise).
  • A bowl of frozen berries, topped with “protein pudding” (Jello no-sugar chocolate pudding mix made up using whey protein powder).  Tastes like ice cream, gives you as much protein as a quarter-pound hamburger.
  • A bowl of home-made soup of some sort.
  • Peanut butter sandwich on a “slider roll”.
  • A breaded fish filet on a slider roll.
  • A 300-calorie piece of cheese.

All of that is fine, tasty food.  None of it is stuff that leaves me begging for more.  Some of it is from-scratch cooking, some of it is disgusting mixes of chemicals (no-sugar Jello).  None of it includes a large amount of carbs at one time.

Anyway, after a lifetime of obesity, this is what works for me.  I eat a very limited diet, the upside of which is that I never have to think much about what I eat.  And, after a year-plus of this, it doesn’t even occur to me to eat something outside of that narrow range.

Nor do I crave the foods I used to eat.

Weirdly, it now feels wrong to eat a full meal, as one might at a restaurant, or over the holidays.  And from the standpoint of weight loss, that’s a really good thing.

Interestingly, when I deviate from this — over the holidays, say — it takes me the better part of a week to get back on track.  I think it’s the combination of readily-available calorie-dense foods (e.g., stuffing from the turkey), and a lot of foods rich in simple carbs (e.g., desserts) that disturb blood sugar and insulin levels and set off a fresh bout of hunger a few hours later.

Conclusion:  My diet and my new tastes evolved together.

Here I am, where I thought I’d never be:  Within striking distance of having a “normal” weight.

If I can achieve that, it’ll be for the first time since I went off to college.

I cannot say, exactly, why I’ve finally been able to lose weight.

But in the end, now that I know what it takes, I think that in the past I just under-estimated what it took to undergo sustained weight loss. It more-or-less required a complete revision of lifestyle.  Giving up alcohol was a big part of it.  Giving up refined-carb meals (e.g. spaghetti and meatballs) was part of it.  Finding a convenient fat-free protein source (whey powder) helped.  Giving up all pretense of “normal” eating patterns helped.

But the bottom line is that what and how I eat now bears almost no relation to how I lived in the past.  And, apparently, for me, that’s what it took, to get significant, sustained weight loss.

Let me emphasize how this is not like I’m a different person.  I still find all that stuff appealing.  (“That stuff” being “all those yummy foods I used to eat”.)

Hand me a Dorito right now and I’d snarf that down.  No questions asked (other than those directly related to hygiene.)

But it’s as if I no longer find that stuff compelling.  Or something.

In any case, I never even consider buying a bag of Doritos.

But that’s been gradual.  A few months into this weight loss, I might stroll the chips aisle at the Safeway occasionally, to pick up something.  But to dole it out. By the countable-small-hundreds of calories.

Later in the process, I’d stroll the aisle and buy nothing.

Now? I never go down that aisle.  Never think to do so.

Never’s a strong word.  Maybe one of those single-serving size bags at the 7-11?  There’s another habit that I’m out of.  Gotta be a couple of years since I visited a 7-11.

My change in diet and … tastes? occurred gradually.  And to some large degree, mutually.

If I’d gone from my previous diet, to how I eat now, in one step, I don’t think I could have stuck with it.

It’s very much that when I gave up my excesses with drink, I gave them up for food as well.

Either that, or I felt so crappy being sober all the time that I didn’t eat as much.

Take your pick.

The only real point here is that I didn’t clean up my act all at once.  I never “went on a diet”.  It’s just that the longer I was on this track, and the more weight I lost, the narrower and more simplified my diet got.

The bottom line is that I didn’t intend to get to this point. Things just kind of evolved.  And what you see above is (so far) the final product of that evolution.

The nice thing is that it’s not my tastes, by my cravings, that have evolved over this diet.  I progressed more-or-less by tossing the worst offenders out of my current eating habits, metabolically speaking.  And then, just vowing to drop the weight and clean my diet up further as I went a long.

I still like all that stuff I used to like.  I just don’t eat it.  And I’m fine with that.

How screwed-up is that?

If all goes well, based on the graph, I’ll achieve “normal” weight sometime late this spring.   We’ll see how it plays out.

Post #2074: Coffee chemistry Christmas, part II: Aeropress.

 

On the path to coffee snobbery, there is no better starting place than Walmart.

That’s where I just bought a made-in-USA Aeropress single-cup coffee maker.

In the end, coffee is all about chemistry.  Chemistry and physics.   Chemistry, and physics, and ruthless efficiency … and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Continue reading Post #2074: Coffee chemistry Christmas, part II: Aeropress.

Post #2047: Bitter disappointment.

 

Bad news and bitter disappointment are no strangers to me, as I get older.

In my darkest moments, I see my entire puny flash of existence as a series of failures.  Permanent and un-fixable.  I can’t turn back the clock.  That knowledge is my constant companion as I age my way to the grave.

But, looking on the bright side, with all that practice, I should be able to take the election results in stride!

And yet, I’m having a hard time doing that.

America.  This is not my country any more. Continue reading Post #2047: Bitter disappointment.

Post #2041: Think of it as evolution in action.

 

I think it’s time to face facts about this whole “internet” thing.

America, as it exists, was not set up to deal with it.  And now our Democracy is failing, and surely looks like it’s going to be replaced by an oligarchy.  With the most recent muscling of the Washington Post into silence being an excellent example.

To be clear, the internet revolution:

1: Has largely turned journalism into a charity.   What’s left of journalism.  In the case of the Post, it’s a private charity.  But in no sense does the Post make enough money to survive on its own.  Particularly, with the current incompetent management.

2:  Has made it almost unimaginably easier and cheaper to spread lies and rumors.

3:  Has spawned entire professional classes whose job it is create attractive disinformation.  So it’s not just random lies and rumors, it’s stuff carefully crafted to be “sticky”.  It’s material developed with considerable expertise, professionally designed to attract and mislead.

4:  Has allowed the crazy to cluster and self-reinforce.  With the help of Jewish space lasers, and Q, and weather control, and … the list seems almost endless, in hindsight.

5:  Reinforces a winner-take-all economy.  Ebay, Amazon, Facebook, and similar are essentially natural monopolies, like electricity.  Just unregulated  The result is an economic and societal landscape dominated by oligarchs, with a concentration of wealth that would have been unimaginable in (say) the post WWII era when America dominated the globe.

6:  Requires a huge Federal budget deficit to support the extreme concentration of income in few hands.  Because the rich have such a low marginal propensity to consume (that is, they spend only a sliver of their income), somebody has to borrow and spent a ton of money every year, or the large net savings of the rich would tank the economy.  (They put the money in the bank, somebody else has to take it out of the bank, or there’s not enough spending to support current income.)  Thus, we’re on an unavoidable path toward bankruptcy, as a country, because the large annual Federal deficit is needed to offset the annual net savings of our collective super-rich, to whom an increasing share of GDP flows.

Or maybe we just like spending money.

But having such a large share of the money, end up in so few hands, produces in the U.S. a political system driven by the desires of the oligarchs.  The fact that the Supreme Court blessed having the rich buy elections (via Citizen’s United) isn’t really the root cause.  It’s just another manifestation of the power of our domestic oligarchs.

Conclusion

People get it wrong, mostly, when they brand Trump a fascist.  Not that his well-documented admiration for Hitler doesn’t put him in that class.  And sure, attacking the news media, promoting a rabidly racist world-view, antisemitism, blaming all our problems on “the enemy within”, those are all straight out of the Mein Kampf playbook.

Hitlererian strategy, minus the Lebensraum.  That pretty much sums up what’s left of the Republican party, at the national level.

But he, like his idol Putin, is an oligarch.  One of a set of super-rich people who want to run the show.  The trappings of fascism are just there to attract the votes, mostly, I think.  Though the racism seems bred to the bone.

And, one way or the other, he has the cooperation of most all the other oligarchs.  Those that aren’t completely on board, he seems to be able to co-opt, or threaten into submission.  And so, because journalism is a charity these days, and the Post exists at the whim of its oligarch-patron, if that patron bends the knee in order not to have its lucrative government space contract threatened, then so does the now-all-but-irrelevant Washington Post.  Because, at root, oligarchs wouldn’t have become oligarchs if they hadn’t had the same central preoccupation — having as much wealth as they possibly can.  So, effectively, once they’ve divided up the pie, they’re all on the same side.

And so, America is in transition to becoming one of the best countries that highly-concentrated-wealth can buy.

I still wonder about how those West Virginia coal miners feel about all the help that Trump never gave them.  I’d bet they’re still going to vote for him.  And that’s about all you need to know, about what kind of a country we’re about to become.

In a world where Rule #4 applies — Yes, they can be that dumb — we simply lack the resiliency to adapt our Democracy to the internet.  Let alone AI.

Our ultra-rich — with the help of the Supreme Court — have now taken advantage of the inability (or maybe unwillingness) of our populace to sort fact from fiction.

Think of it as evolution in action.  We’ve created a world filled with spam, scams, and carefully-crafted lies.  Our population isn’t up to the task of sorting that out.  Even if it wanted to,

So we get the government we deserve.

(N.B., the title is from Oath of Fealty, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.  You might recall Niven from the Ringworld series, if you’re an aging sci-fi fan.)

Post 2028: Shortages in the rear-view mirror.

 

This is a list of prior posts relevant to the current spot shortages of toilet paper.  Just the stuff that seemed on-topic to me.

The first post predates the arrival of coronavirus here and starts with the first pre-pandemic whiff of panic buying (masks, Home Depot).  Most of the rest deal directly or tangentially with pandemic-related shortages.

I toss in a few other shortages, and end wit a post about bank runs.  Because everybody likes a good bank run.  Now and then.  But I have omitted any mention of the great canning lid shortage, which surely deserves a separate list for length considerations alone.

Each image should be a link.

 

Post #535: Answer: Milk, white bread, and kitty litter

Post #543: Genteel panic buying

 

Post #560: Real backpackers don’t use toilet paper: The arithmetic of panic shopping

This next one is the exposition of the economic theory, such as it is.  Call today’s TP shortage just another example of a self-reinforcing irrationality, a.k.a. “Who’s laughing now?”.

The argument is this:  If I’m rational and know where TP comes from, I see no need to stock up.  But thinking ahead, this means that if I do legitimately need to purchase TP in the short term, the stores may be out.  And guess who has toilet paper, in that situation?  (Answer:  All the dummies that panicked.  They have TP and I don’t.  Who’s laughing now, eh?  Rationally, then, I should participate in what I know to be irrational behavior.  Elbow-to-elbow with my fellow shoppers.

 

Post #563: We need a TP FDIC, or, hoarding is a self-fulfilling prophecy

Post #1719: A brief note on the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis, or why sometimes It’s (not) a Wonderful Life.

Post #1720: The Systemic Risk Clause and the FDIC

Back to the pandemic.

Post #568: A wrap-up on grocery shopping, revised

Post #576: Shopping report CORRECTED

Post #724: Coin shortage

I had forgotten how badly the Trump administration fumbled the response to the pandemic.  Kind of glad now that I blogged about it at the time.

Post #816: We actually did have a rational, national plan for mask use?

Post #865: Getting ready for a hard winter, 5: Grocery story deja vu

Post #1568: COVID-19 trend to 8/10/2022, now 33 new cases per 100K per day

 

 

 

Post #2012: Week 2 of my readership drought. Apparently, potty mouth was not the problem.

On the plus side, I’m learning a whole lot more about how the Internets work.

On the downside, perhaps Warren Buffet said it best:

"If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy."

The long and the short of it is that Google (search) hates me, as of about two weeks ago.  Likely, this is due to an update in Google’s search algorithm that occurred mid-August.  And not due to anything I have done (lately) to offend Google.

Long may she rule.

More seriously, I have tried to figure out what changed, and

  1. I still have no clue.
  2. I still  have no firm idea of how to get a clue.
  3. In the meantime, I’ve gotten in bed with the Devil.

Speak of the Devil

Bullets 1) and 2) should be self-explanatory.

But before I get to Bullet 3), explain this to me.  When I asked Gencraft’s AI for a picture of “get in bed with the Devil”, it had absolutely no problem spitting out male devils.  Such as the guy on the left up there.  But when I said “get in bed with a lady Devil”, or “female Devil”, I had to put the system in Anime mode to be able to squeak that one picture past the censors.  Every other attempt at a lady Devil in bed got me the spilled-ice-cream-cone-of-death black-and-white graphic at the very top of the post, presumably for being risque.

I do not quite know why that is true.  Yet I am amused by it.

This shares ignorance, but not amusement, with my current situation with Google Search.  I do wonder if Google has somehow inserted some AI-rule-making, which would mean that not even Google itself would know why Google Search no longer finds me.  I think “connectionist garbage” is the term for what you get when you try to dissect an AI to learn what it was thinking.

So, getting in bed with Devil.  By bullet 3) above, I mean, with all due respect to that most gracious of near-monopolies, Google Search, that I installed Google SiteKit as a plug-in for this WordPress-based blog.

What I didn’t realize, when I did that, is that Google was going to insert code into my web pages.  Which, admittedly, and in 20-20 hindsight, was stupid on my part.  Nonetheless, when I went to the top of one of my blog pages and asked my browser to “inspect” the underlying code, I felt just a little unclean to find this, sketched below, as part of the web page you are currently reading:

<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) snippet added by Site Kit -->

<!-- Google Analytics snippet added by Site Kit -->

(See below)

<!-- End Google tag (gtag.js) snippet added by Site Kit -->

Below:  I took out the actual code, above, so as not to offend.

The omitted code starts <script> , and ends with </script>, so, you know, all other things equal, even though I don’t read this computer language, kinda think this might be html? Javascript?  Beats me.  Anyway, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that the thing Google Sitekit inserted is a script. 

And it gives a big ol’ shoutout to Google Tag Manager, and passes some sort of fixed ID, which I guess … ID’s me?  For Google’s purposes.  Yeah, it’s a good thing.  So says Google, so it must be so.

But in addition, or possibly because of some implementation of this Tag-Manager thing, I now have access to Google Search Console.  This turns out to be the place where Google tells you everything that’s wrong with your website.  Of which, I seem to have a bounty.

Anyway, Google Search Console is where I am now learning that:

  • Google appears to have found massive problems with my website,
  • But I can’t quite figure out what the hell Google is talking about.

To be clear, I wrote complex computer programs for all of my professional life.  But now, with this stuff?  Here’s my generic algorithm for trying to look into any dimension of this problem.

START

STEP 0:  Come across a term that I don't understand.

STEP 1:  Look up Google's definition of that term.

STEP 2:  Find a term in that definition that I do not understand.

GOTO STEP 1

END

And that infinite do-loop is where it stands, in terms of the technical side of this inquiry.  Presumably, I’ll make some headway, or I won’t.

A deeper philosophical issue

Do do I care about readership or not?

There were a couple of times in the past when this blog actually served some purpose.  During those times, sure, readership was desired.

But those are now ancient history.  These days, I write this mostly for myself.  So, believe it or not, there are benefits to doing this even if I’m the only reader.

Use 1:  Writing enforces rigorous thinking and fact-checking.  For one thing, I find that being forced to write something out does wonders for getting my thinking straight on an issue.  I’m not the first to say that.  I had an economics professor, JRT Hughes, who put it something like:  “Writing is good because it allows us to check the logical consistency of more than just adjacent sentences.”

Use 2:  Diary, particularly garden diary. For another thing, a blog is a good way to mark events.  That’s been particularly useful for the garden.  But the result is that this blog is part diary.  (Which is guess is the original intent of web log, now blog.)

Use 3:  Generating and sharing novel information, analysis, and DIY.  In addition, I use this blog to document any useful thing I’ve made, or insights that I think I’ve made.  That can be as dumb as yep, I really did patch my driveway by hand, here’s how it went. Mostly these are things where either I’m glad somebody offered some hints on the internet, or where I wish somebody had.

Something as prosaic as the price and availability of canning jar lids.  Or something a little more highbrow and sciency-y.  Microplastic.  PFAs.  Documenting the northward creep of the USDA climate zones.  My Teutonic two-tier testing series (e.g., Post #605) gives me a few “Flowers for Algernon” moments when I re-read it now.  The best intellectual exercises that ample free time and intense boredom can generate.

Use 4:   Biting social commentary.  Well, I’m amused by my own, even if nobody else is.

Of those current uses, all my hits were on 3).  Garden hints are popular, DIY stuff is somewhat popular.  My most popular post ever was on making a cheap heated outdoor faucet cover.  And, to be clear, those are often just as much to make note of what I did or found, than to make advice generally available to random Google-Search-driven strangers.

So … nah, not really.  It’s a kick when I get a lot of hits on some technical article.

But I don’t need that to fuel this blog.  Much.

I will continue to investigate my situation vis-a-vis Google Search — may the very electrons of the internet sing her praises — and if there’s something I can easily fix on this website, I will.

Maybe I’ll finally learn how the internet actually works.

Post #2009: Punished for potty mouth?

 

This blog lost about 2/3rds of its daily visitors, on or about August 20, 2024.  That, against a months-long backdrop of steady daily page views.

“Tarnation”, I muttered, “what in blue blazes happened?”

Hopping horny-toads, what flea-bitten varmint did this?  I’m-a-gonna blow ’em to smithereenies.

I write this blog mostly to amuse myself and a select few friends and relatives.  But almost all of my page views are from strangers who find my how-to/technical information articles via Google.  For example, my most popular post, by far, shows how to make a cheap heated faucet cover to keep exterior faucets from freezing.

And, upon re-reading the last couple of weeks of posts, I think I’ve found the problem.

I’ve been cussin’ too dang much.  (And/or, Google just upped its standards in that area.)

To put that more technically, many savvy observers believe that curse words negative affect your search-engine optimization (SEO).  In theory, that’s not supposed to be true.  In practice, it appears to be true.  And the only thing that stands out about my most recent posts is frequent (but humor-focused) use of swear words.

Google search generates more-or-less all of my referred traffic, so the only plausible explanation for the drop is that something has put me on Google’s bad side.  Upon re-reading my most recent output, the gratuitous curse words stood out as the likely culprit.

An alternative explanation is that Google’s August 2024 update to its search algorithm found something else that it didn’t like about me.  Turns out, quite a few websites saw a big decline in traffic just about the same day mine did.  In theory, if I can cut through the technical barriers, there is a way for me to use the Google Search Console to see if there’s an issue.  But that requires modifying the website and/or the DNS listing, neither of which I particularly want to do.

The lesson is that if our monopoly provider of search services takes a dislike to you, you’re toast.  Whatever Google decides more-or-less determines how the internet runs.

Google giveth, and Google taketh away.

I’ve now gone back and cleaned up the past couple of weeks’ worth of postings.  I’m hoping for the best.

We’ll see if Google can find it in her heart to forgive me.  Whatever it was that I did to offend her.

Post #1992: Minimum wage.

 

This post started off to be a cut-and-dried presentation of the real (inflation-adjusted) value of the Federal minimum wage.

So let me get that punchline out of the way:  $7.25 in January 2009 is the about the same as $10.79 in June 2024 dollars.  So says the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), via their graphically-challenged but zero-nonsense inflation calculator:

So, I’m done.  That $7.25 has been the Federal minimum wage since 2009. No matter how you slice it, that $7.25/hour appears low in real (CPI-adjusted) terms. Compared to … ah, you name it.  But in particular, compared to what it was in 2009, fresh off the last increase in the Federal minimum wage.

But so what.  Again to cut to the chase:  Of late, a lot of states have set their own binding state minimum wage laws.  Nowadays, the majority of states (and overwhelming the majority of employed population) have minimum wage laws that effectively supercede the Federal minimum wage law.

One thing of interest to me is that the jump from $7.25/hour to $12/hour, in three years, doesn’t seem to have increased Virginia unemployment markedly.  I mean, just at a glance, Virginia’s current unemployment rate is 2.7 percent.  That’s pretty good.  Just sayin.

Finally, nothing is free.  If, in the end, people who eat a lot of fast food ended up paying for that increase in the minimum wage … that’s not a terrible outcome.  We’ve long imposed sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco.  Think of it as one of those.

 

Round up the usual suspects.

Source:  Wikipedia.

I was struck by how much this map resembles just about every other map of America I’ve looked at recently.  With a couple of exceptions (e.g., Florida), it’s very much like every other Dems-vs-Republicans map I’ve seen.  By color, that could easily be a map of state mask mandates during the pandemic.

Well, here, test your prejudices.  If I told you that a handful of states literally have no legislation at all, regarding minimum wages — no mention of the concept in their laws — which states would you guess those are?   If you started in the Alabama/Missisippi/Louisiana area, give yourself an A.

Anyway, coasts versus interior, with a few exceptions.  Florida stands out as unnaturally progressive, given their general bent.  Otherwise, pretty much the usual suspects.

Virginia minimum wage law.

Source:  Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED)

The first punchline is that the Virginia minimum wage remains at $12/hour.  The story appears to this:  In 2020, Virginia raised its minimum wage, but at that time, required another vote for the portion from 2023 to 2025 to take effect. (That cautious approach is typical for Virginia state government, I’d say.)  The  conditionally-scheduled increase from $12 to $15/hour, from 2023 to 2025, was passed by 2024 the legislature, vetoed by the Governor, with veto sustained by the Virginia House.  (Weirdly, I can find virtually no press coverage of the Governor’s veto except this except this write-up from a legal firm).

So it stays at $12.  I have no idea what happens next, if anything.

The details of the Virginia minimum wage law are interesting.

For example, some types of jobs are categorically exempt:  Agricultural workers, as is traditional, but also … golf caddies?  I swear it says so in statute.

And prisoners.  Virginia’s minimum wage law does not apply to prisoners.  Nor does the Federal minimum wage law.  The more I read about prison labor, the less I want to know.  In Virginia, the law at least specifies that the resulting products have to be sold to government and related entities, and not sold on the open market (based on this statute), unless with specific approval of the Governor.

Does the Virginia minimum wage law cover tipped workers, or not?  My short answer is … yeahno.  Yeah, if I got it right, in theory, tipped employees are guaranteed $12/hour in combined wages and tips.  And, in determining the legal minimum hourly wage for a tipped employees, employers can assume enough tips that the legal hourly wage is … $2.13, per the U.S. Department of Labor.   Same as it always was.  (With the understanding that if the employee wants to demonstrate that the combined wage and tip income is habitually below $12/hour, so that the hourly wage paid by the employer should go up, the employee has to retain and show all tips to the employer, to establish the typical hourly tip income.)

The crazy-beyond-crazy sleeper is the definition of “tipped employee”:  A dollar a day.  In tips.  Federal law defines a tipped employee as anyone likely to make $30 or more, per month, in tips.  States just follow suit.

We who live in the era of the tip jar have to wonder just how old that $30/month figure is?  Answer:  In round numbers, that hasn’t been updated in half a century.  I finally tracked that down (California State University Office of the Chancellor, Google Link to pdf), emphasis mine:

 20 As amended by section 3(a) of the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1977, effective January 1, 1978. Prior to January 1, 1978, the dollar amount was $20.

As an economist, I have long viewed the ubiquitous tip jar as rational reaction to the abysmal minimum wage.  Two sides of the same coin, as it were.

But with this mismash of state laws, I no longer understand how to think about the tip jar in retail settings.  I need help.

Dear Kamala:  Please post Federal guidelines on tipping.  TIA.

This request flows from what I see as the unfortunate but true connection from adequacy of the minimum wage to tipping.

Kamala Harris, please threaten to push for a modest raise in the Federal minimum wage.  Currently $7.25, last increased in 2009.

But wait, didn’t I just get through showing that, these days, the Federal minimum wage hardly matters?

Answer:  Yes, that’s why this is a genius idea.  If the Dems are for it, the Republicans must be reflexively against it.  Even if it does almost nothing.

I want to hear the sound of Republicans collectively hocking a loogie on the very idea of a minimum wage.  (As a bonus, perhaps some will go on to heap scorn on child labor laws.)

More to the point, I want that collective Republican “patooey” to be heard clearly by 20-something working stiffs, particularly in the four battleground states circled above.  I don’t think anything could sharpen up the difference between the Dems and Republicans any more.

Secondarily, it would be fun to see the hoops many Republican governors would have to jump through to lambaste the lefty-libs for this notion, in those cases where their own state minimum wages are well in excess of the current Federal level.  Such states include Florida and South Dakota.

Fun, for much the same reason that watching Jeopardy! is like watching the Supreme Court.  We all know the answer.  All the art is in carefully phrasing the question that gives you that answer.

Plus, raising the Federal minimum a bit might help some of the lowest-paid.

You never know.

Stranger things have happened.

It’s up to the Congress anyhow.  So if the House is against you, you can blame them if nothing happens on this front.

Vice-President Harris, while you’re at it.

Howsabout taking a look at the Fair Labor Standards Act.

I mean, a dollar a day?  That’s in your law.  It’s how you define a tipped employee.  As documented above, that figure dates to 1977 legislation.  No huge exaggeration to say that it’s now a half-century out-of-date.  (N.B., per the BLS inflation calculator, $30 in 1977 is the equivalent of more than $160 today.)

Where you find one dusty old cobweb-covered provision, you’re apt to find many.

Haven’t you heard grumblings abut “wage theft”, from the masses?  I think this whole accounting-for-tips-of-tipped-employees thing is a source of grievances,  Wouldn’t it be nice to show some concern for what amounts to a common grievance of the poorly-paid?  That’s not to say that each such grievance is justified, but at a minimum to acknowledge that it is a grievance.

Or do you feel that the current system works well for such people, and nothing needs to change?  Or even, more narrowly, nothing in that law needs to change.

Or something else entirely.  Can’t rule that out.

Conclusion:  Why do the Heathen Rage?  Dead ends.

Best guess, many of them are not well off, and nothing about that looks like it’s going to change.

That’s my view of the root cause of disaffected youth.  In any case, I keep reading that The Youth are Disaffected.

And I keep meaning to look up that word.

Disaffected:  Dissatisfied with the people in authority and no longer willing to support them.  Per Google.  I think the nuance is more “indifference to what happens”, rather than those of the more active “burn it all down” persuasion.

My guess is that much of that, in electorate Youth (typically defined as 18-25 sometimes 18-29), comes from people who are (or perceive that they are) in dead ends.  Dead end job, dead end society, dead end politics. From that mindset, thing’s aren’t great now, there’s no obvious path by which they can get better, so there’s not much in it for them, for preserving the current system.

Not that all dead ends are remediable.  For goods and some services, American labor is in head-to-head competition with (e.g.) much lower-paid Chinese labor.  I don’t expect Amazon to be dominated by U.S.-made products any time soon.

So a bit of disaffection is warranted.  Google “disappearance of the U.S. middle class”, and you’ll get the drift.

Toss in some global warming, for sure. The Youth are screwed, the only questions are how much and how soon.  As a country we appear deadlocked on doing much about either.

Ponder retirement in their shoes.  Lifetime savings from working near the minimum wage?  Get real.  Top that off by looking at likely Social Security benefits 40 years from now.  Under no circumstances ponder Medicare.

Finally, purely based on anecdote, I think the prevalence of sub-middle-class -end jobs in America today is why The Youth really resent well-to-do geezers who won’t retire.  To them, old people who have made their fortunes, but continue to work, aren’t inspiring examples of living life to the fullest.  They are clogs in the pipeline of upward mobility.

“Boomer”.  An epithet used by The Youth in place of “old person, please do us a favor and die soon”.

And yet, even if there are some valid reason to see the world as full of nothing but dead ends, we really can’t afford to have the disaffected determine the election.

My feeling, FWIW, is that the arrow of time points in one direction.  You can’t steer a car by looking in the rear view mirror. Or fill in your favorite metaphor.

There is no way to go back to the future.  At best you can try to face forward as you stumble into it.  I just have to say the phrase “national climate policy”, and my choice is made.  With the idea being that some (Dems) beats none (Republicans).  And both beat pretending that climate change isn’t a threat, and using that as pretext for promoting greater use of fossil fuels (Republicans).

Drill, baby, drill.  As national climate policy, that’s a flunk.

So, Harris it is.  She’s got my vote.  I hope she’s up to the task.  The sooner she goes beyond criticizing Trump, and actually puts something useful on the table, the better.

I think there’s no better place to start than policies directly affecting low-wage workers.