Will we see the effective end to this “ industry”?

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Arnold Donald, the CEO of the world’s largest cruise line, thinks his industry is getting a bad coronavirus rap. COVID-19 hotspots on seven of his now shut-down Carnival cruise ships have left 39 dead. But Donald has been busy insisting that “a cruise ship is not a riskier environment.” His vessels, says Donald, more resemble Central Park: “There’s a lot of natural social distancing.”

Public health experts disagree. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report has concluded that a “closed environment, contact between travelers from many countries, and crew transfers between ships” makes ocean merriment like Carnival’s a predictable setting for “outbreaks of infectious diseases.” Donald himself is predicting that Carnival will come back bigger than ever at the end of June, since “people love cruising.” For CEOs, cruise ships are  certainly rewarding. Donald was paid $11.1 million last year, 723 times the take-home of Carnival’s typical employee. His CEO predecessor, Micky Arison, has a personal fortune of $8.1-billion.

My comment:  Once upon a time I was offered a contract as a singer with a band on a cruise ship.  The look on the face of my mother-in- law-to- be quickly disabused me of the wisdom of the idea!

In those days you had smaller ships and companies like Swan Hellenic, which stressed the history and culture of the ports visited.  The experience was educational. Now the cruise ships, especially those operated by Carnival are gigantic, the food tables groan, passengers eat far too much with too little exercise, and the visits to ports mainly involve the sale of tawdry souvenirs (meals are all on the ships) and do little for the locals.  What the ship do is to pour muck into the oceans and despoil the environment (poor Venice!).  Many people in ports were up in arms well before the virus struck.  I might still be a singer on one of those monsters – shudder!

 

 

Something in common

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Not that long ago, but it feels like a lost age, the Big Worry used to be that there was nothing to talk about over the water cooler any more. Because we watched our own flavour of streamed television and were targeted with personalised ads on Facebook, we in the 21st century had no common cause. Even the little list of events comprising the news was kind of irrelevant. We were never going to have a national conversation again. We wish.  In fact, public debate has not been fracturing but snowballing.

Now we have a giant rolling snowball of ‘mono-news’, a single topic that obliterates all others for years at a time. First Trump, then Brexit, now the pandemic: the water cooler is so busy it needs constant disinfection.”.   (Helen Rumbelow in The Times)

My comment:  One of the (usually dubious) benefits of old age is that you can read a whole newspaper and half an hour later barely remember a single thing you’ve read.  This turns out to be a blessing.  Items that riled you up in the past – the lies, misrepresentations, the political shenanigans, the incomprehensible interpretations of christianity – all are blessedly consigned to an inaccessible part of what used to be a brain.   Of course, you cannot then discuss it all with your wife, but then you usually agree on most things.  Only now such conversations about current affairs are even shorter.  So much better to go for a nice walk in the Spring weather.

A little spotlight on our priorities

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A local opinion poll was taken in our district the other day. It asked which local facilities are you missing most, being locked in at home.  The sample was modest, just under 2000 respondents, but the results were interesting:

Going out to restaurants.                        38%

Getting a haircut or other

personal grooming.                                  12%

Sending kids to school.                             8%

Going to your workplace.                          6%

Visiting your place of worship.                  6%

Going to the gym or fitness center.         15%

Going out to parks and outdoor spaces   11%

Other.                                                            5%

………..So working in the office and praying at church can’t match a meal out or keeping fit.  Sounds reassuringly Epicurean.

Food stamp program: 688,000 excluded

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Over the summer of 2019 the president indicated that his team thought low-income families were getting a too greedy about food.  He announced a new plan designed to exclude hundreds of thousands of people from the food stamp program. This was done last December by tightening  work requirements for able-bodied adults with no dependents, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

Under the old law, able-bodied adults without dependents could receive SNAP benefits for a maximum of three months during a three-year period, unless they were working or enrolled in an education or training program for 80 hours a month.

But states were able to waive this time limit to ensure access to food stamps during the ups and downs of reentering the workforce. Before this rule, counties with an unemployment rate as low as 2.5% were included in waived areas. The new rule, which took effect on April 1st tightened  the criteria for states applying for such waivers, making 6% the minimum unemployment rate for a county to receive a waiver….

If you don’t understand all this, don’t worry!  Nor do I! The point is that 688,000 of the nation’s poorest and neediest people have been be dropped from SNAP (adapted from an article in Washington Post, 4 December 2019)

My comment:  This posting has to be read in conjunction with tax reductions to long-suffering big companies and the super-rich, even requested bail-outs. To those who have shall be given; to those with little, well, who cares? If they don’t make money, let them be hungry.  Makes you wonder how Christianity ever crushed the rational and decent Epicureans.  But it did, which makes you wonder about human beings.  

When you witness blatant cruelty and inhumanity I suggest that you have a moral right to protest.  This is not party political; it is about human decency.

 

The requirements of success

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“The most misleading idea I picked up at school was that success is the result of intelligence. It’s not: it’s the result of doing things. This seems so obvious now, I can’t believe nobody drummed it into me at school. So I never did an internship or tried to get myself elected to a prestigious student body. I assumed my good grades would transform themselves into a job. I spent three years working in a bookshop.

“When we think we see intellect what we’re really looking at is energy. The really energetic write pushy emails demanding work. They apply for grants, they go to parties, they network. All this stuff is exhausting and a lot of people who do it are ghastly, but it should be more widely taught that life requires this sort of effort.”
(James Marriott ,The Times, London)

My comment:  How right you are, Mr. Marriott!  During my early life I learned that a good degree and excellent reports from a prestigious school and university guaranteed nothing.  Indeed, the better the degree the more suspect you seemed to be (“Don’t want that fellow with the fancy degree coming in and telling us what to do”, or “He’ll quickly get bored here and we’ll have lost time” type of attitude).  Unless you work very hard at it, as Mr. Marriott suggests, you are considered to be suitable for the civil service, maybe (nothing wrong with that, of course, but it narrows the options). This is tough on the introverts for whom networking, parties and selling themselves come hard.   This is where teachings of Epicurus are particularly pertinent –  friends can help where otherwise your curricula vitae can end up on the discard pile.

Stealing from the young in Britain

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Pity the young of this country: their future prosperity and career prospects are being sacrificed in a lockdown primarily designed to save the elderly. That narrative of intergenerational injustice is one we keep hearing. But it’s  nonsense to suggest pensioners will be getting “an unmerited free ride during the country’s slide into recession”. The countless billions with which the Chancellor hopes to safeguard jobs and restore growth will be borrowed at ultra-low interest rates (the official guidance is of long-term Treasury debt being issued with a coupon of 0.3%). And who will buy this debt? Mainly British savers and those British pension funds that are obliged to keep a significant portion of their portfolios in government bonds. If the economy does eventually recover, the younger generation will stand to benefit from all this cheap, long-term borrowing.

But oldies like me? Quite the opposite: it will ensure yet more abysmal returns on our savings. But who’s complaining? In that “spirit of mutual support and solidarity” that the young have so admirably exhibited, “I declare them fully deserving of our fiscal sacrifice”.  (Dominic Lawson, the Sunday Times, London).

My comment:  In Britain the disdain for the old is clear and obvious.  I am old myself and I happen to sympathize with the grievances of the young.  We had ( a generalization) secure jobs, often for working lifetimes.  They have little job security at all, and many have to cope with the disgusting gig economy.  We (most of us) could buy houses at reasonable prices and have seen their value rise exponentially. Few of them can afford to buy in  the over- priced housing market.

We had decent pensions.  They do not, and where they do the pensions are money purchase pensions.  We, if we went to university had government help (all my tuition was paid by the taxpayer!).  They start working lives with huge college debts around their necks.  And the bosses of their colleges pay themselves huge sums.

No wonder there is inter generational disdain.  This situation, similar to that in the US, was created by politicians and greedy company bosses. And the Baby Boomer generation created the worst of it.  No wonder one hears so much grievance .  No wonder the young runners and cyclists pass close by, panting, without masks, making a silent protest about the world we are leaving them?

What a relief! Help for deserving, struggling millionaires.

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Slipped into the recent corona virus relief package was a $170 billion tax cut for the wealthy that will give people earning over $1 million a year an average tax cut of $1.6 million per year.   In 2020 alone, taxpayers will pay $90 billion for this wealth transfer to just 43,000 millionaires, 20 percent more than Congress gave to desperate hospitals and more than triple the money allocated for Coronavirus testing.

What would an Epicurean say about this?

“It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably and justly, and also without living courageously, temperately and magnanimously, without making friends, and without being philanthropic”.  (Philodemus)

He might also make some pithy comments about blatant corruption. But then the gravy train is the longest surviving train in the world, probably stretching back to the Neanderthals.

Something I don’t think we have been told about

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Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tried to plug a crucial hole in its preparations for a global pandemic, signing a $13.8 million contract with a Pennsylvania manufacturer to create a low-cost, portable, easy-to-use ventilator that could be stockpiled for emergencies.

This past September, with the design of the new Trilogy Evo Universal finally cleared by the Food and Drug Administration, HHS ordered 10,000 of the ventilators for the Strategic National Stockpile at a cost of $3,280 each.

But as the pandemic continues to spread across the globe, there is still not a single Trilogy Evo Universal in the stockpile.

Instead last summer, soon after the FDA’s approval, the Pennsylvania company that designed the device — a subsidiary of the Dutch appliance and technology giant Royal Philips N.V. — began selling two higher-priced commercial versions of the same ventilator around the world.

“We sell to whoever calls,” said a saleswoman at a small medical-supply company on Staten Island that bought 50 Trilogy Evo ventilators from Philips in early March and last week hiked its online price from $12,495 to $17,154. “We have hundreds of orders to fill. I think America didn’t take this seriously at first, and now everyone’s frantic.”

20200330-trilogy_evo_screenshot_cropped-line.jpg

A screenshot obtained by ProPublica of a Trilogy Evo portable ventilator, sold by a medical supply company on Staten Island.

The US government recently invoked the Defense Production Act to compel General Motors to begin mass-producing another company’s ventilator under a federal contract. But neither Trump nor other senior officials made any mention of the Trilogy Evo Universal. Nor did HHS officials explain why they did not force Philips to accelerate delivery of these ventilators earlier this year, when it became clear that the virus was overwhelming medical facilities around the world.

An HHS spokeswoman told ProPublica that Philips had agreed to make the Trilogy Evo Universal ventilator “as soon as possible.” However, a Philips spokesman said the company has no plan to even begin production anytime this year.

Instead, Philips is negotiating with a White House team led by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to build 43,000 more complex and expensive hospital ventilators for Americans stricken by the virus.  (The Guardian, April 2020) 

My comment: Wouldn’t it nice to know exactly what is going on?  Any good conspiracy theorists, with a nose for profiteering, out there?

What, you ask, has this to do with Epicureanism? Nothing, if you don’t believe in making big companies fulfill their obligations.  Nothing, if you agree with profiteering.  And nothing if you reckon it’s o.k standing by while hospitals, desperate for ventilators, have to watch patients die unnecessarily.

This version of capitalism is not fit for purpose.

Epicurus and pleasure

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The idea that life’s objective should be pleasure was greeted with horror by contemporaries, who believed that man’s highest calling was self-sacrifice, self-denial and worship of the Gods, and the Emperor. The early christians regarded pleasure as a form of vice. To them the pursuit of pain triumphed over the pursuit of pleasure. Bravery and death in war was particularly admired – “Dulce et decorum est pro patria morí” – a particularly objectionable point of view, fortunately mostly discarded in the slaughter trenches of the first World War.

By “pleasure” Epicurus did not mean selfish wining and dining and self-indulgence.  In fact he offered his guests bread and waiter, and equated pleasure with good company and enlightening conversation.  He meant a happy life, fun with  good friends, lifelong learning, philosophical discussion, avoiding stress and anxiety and the pursuit on money, power and politics. His was a modest life, lived simply with good conversation.

Living up to the ideals of Epicurus is actually rather difficult, especially the bit about stress and anxiety.  Some are in overload about that, but hopefully working on it.

A tale of social mobility

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When Hashi Mohamed arrived in Britain from Kenya as a nine-year-old Somali refugee, he spoke no English and was grieving the death of his father. Raised in Wembley, he went to a state school where he vividly recalls the headteacher being brutally beaten up. Yet he went on to gain two degrees and now – as a practising barrister – he has written an essential book on social mobility.  His tips for success? A “firm handshake, eye contact. Remembering people’s names; making sure you’re on time.”

He tells the 22 people to whom he acts as a mentor to avoid slang such as “innit” and “izzit” – but his methods aren’t always welcomed. “I’ve been criticised for my approach, on the basis that all I am doing is making the case for the status quo.” But those who tell young people not to change are fostering an “equally dangerous idea: that you can go up against the system and win, that you can somehow do it entirely on your terms”. He has himself settled on a mid point. “I’m an insider, but still with an outsider’s gaze”.  ( Sathnam Sanghera, The Times, 18 January 2020)

My comment:     Isn’t “Remember the firm handshake, the eye contact, people’s names, and making sure you’re on time” what every good Dad tells his children?  It certainly was what my own father impressed upon me, even if I do have a total empty hole in my brain where name storage should reside.  The real truth is that this man is very smart, very ambitious, a good lawyer – and a supporter of the status quo. You have to admire his get-up-and-go in a foreign country.

A bit of trivia to occupy the mind

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The original handshake

To The Times

You report that handshaking can be traced back at least to the Ancient Greeks. In fact, it is of Zoroastrian origin. On Nemrut Dag, in the Taurus mountains in Turkey, there is a rock carving from the time of King Antiochus I, in the first century BC, showing the assembly of the gods in which Antiochus is invested with kingship. The sign of the transference of divine power from god to his earthly representative is the shaking of hands. This is just one of several ways in which this ancient and largely forgotten religion has shaped our conventions and beliefs.  (Dominic Kirkham, Manchester, The Week 18 April 2020)

My comment:  Now, suddenly, we cannot shake hands at all.  It seems unnatural.  Shaking someone’s hand is an act of acceptance, welcome and good manners.

I remember my father impressing on me the importance of a firm, manly handshake, which, he thought, told the other person volumes about you as an individual – and a potential employee. That went with a smile, of course, whereas a glum look and a flaccid, sweaty hand did not impress, nor did it’s owner get the job.

1.2 billion dollars couldn’t do it

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”Michael Bloomberg spent $1.2 billion on his failed presidential bid making it the most expensive in history, according to campaign finance filings.

”Bloomberg self-funded his 104-day attempt to secure the Democratic nomination, but only one primary contest: the tiny territory of American Samoa. Arguably, He entered the contest too late. He was not on the ballot in the first four Democratic state contests, and staked his fortune on Super Tuesday on March 3 when 14 states and one territory held their votes. But he failed to record any first or second places in states on Super Tuesday, coming third in seven and fourth in seven others. He suspended his campaign the next day but still paid $176 million for staffing, advertising and other costs last month, according to his filing with the Federal Election Commission.

”Mr Bloomberg, 78, was crushed by the resurgence of Joe Biden, the former vice-president, who looked down and out after the first two votes in Iowa and New Hampshire but staged a remarkable comeback to become the presumptive nominee.  Mr Biden, 77, has so far spent $76 million on his presidential campaign, less than one fifteenth of Mr Bloomberg’s splurge and all raised from donors.

”The Bloomberg campaign spend compares with the $969 million Hillary Clinton spent in 2016 and Trumps spend of $531 million on his run. He appeared ill prepared for his first television debate on February 19 when he responded weakly to attacks from Elizabeth Warren, 70, a senator from Massachusetts.

“Mr Bloomberg lured many experienced Democratic activists to work for his campaign and two class action lawsuits were launched by former staff claiming that he had promised to pay them until November’s election but had cut them off without the money they expected, leaving them without healthcare insurance.”(an edited version of an article from The Times, London today,m

My take: Reassuring really.  At least it isn’t so easy to buy the presidency. The emphasis on money raised is obscene.  There should be public funding for elections – a set amount, and you are disqualified if you cheat.  This would put the emphasis on ideas, character and policies and reduce the corruption we see as big donors with no experience in governing are “rewarded” with government posts and ambassadorships.  And yet most people seem to support this unsupportable systems d are governed accordingly.

 

A refreshing story

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Shake Shack is returning a $10 million federal loan after the Paycheck Protection Program that was meant to help small businesses ran put of money in less than two weeks of operation. The burger chain and other large businesses were able to get the money because the program covers any company with fewer than 500 workers in a single location.

“Few, if any restaurants in America employ more than 500 people per location,” Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti is quoted as saying. “That meant that Shake Shack — with roughly 45 employees per restaurant — could and should apply to protect as many of our employees’ jobs as possible.”

But now, the New York-based company will “immediately return the entire $10 million PPP loan received last week to the SBA so that those restaurants who need it most can get it now,” Garutti said.

Shake Shack employs nearly 8,000 people at its 189 U.S. restaurants, but only around 45 in each location. Its revenue for the first quarter of 2020 was $143 million, reflecting a sharp drop in same-store sales compared to March of 2019. The company, which has $104 million in cash and liquid assets, says it has secured other loans to cover the money that would have come from the SBA.

As Garutti  called the system “extremely confusing.”.  Listing ways to improve the system, Garutti said the government should begin with adding more money.”It’s inexcusable to leave restaurants out because no one told them to get in line by the time the funding dried up,” he said.

The PPP system should also link each restaurant to a local bank, he said, adding, “Too many restaurants have been left out of the program simply because they lacked a pre-existing banking or loan relationship.”

Noting the different COVID-19 peak times and infection rates that are being seen in different parts of the U.S., Garutti said a better plan would be to require businesses to rehire a percentage of their employees within six months of when their local economies are finally reopened.

Other high-profile loan recipients range from Ruth’s Chris Steak House to Potbelly Sandwich Shop.  But many independently owned businesses said they were left out after the relief program hit its $349 billion cap late last week.

Most of the PPP loans (74%) were for less than $150,000, according to the Small Business Administration.  But that represents only 17% of the total money disbursed through the program. Nearly 28% of the money was awarded to companies seeking loans of $2 million or more.(Why? they wouldn’t be small businesses.  Ed)

The food service and accommodation industry accounted for roughly 9% of all approved PPP funds — $30.5 billion. The leading sector was construction (13%), which accounted for some $45 billion.   (Copyright 2020 NPR.  20 April 2020)

My comment:  Bad homework, but then one expects help to be given to the big battalions.  At least some people have a sense of decency.

Background of a famous dispute (and murder)

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Analysis of the ice in an Alpine glacier has shed unexpected light on the murder of Thomas Becket, Henry II’s “turbulent priest”, 900 years ago. Scientists from the University of Nottingham have been tracking historical levels of airborne pollution by analysing the chemicals that were trapped in layers of ice as the Colle Gnifetti glacier, near Zermatt, formed. Atmospheric modelling suggests that during the 12th century, many of the chemicals deposited in the ice drifted over from northern England – a centre of mining and smelting at that time.

They found that in the period running up to Becket’s murder in 1170, levels of lead in the air dipped significantly – the result, they suggest, of England’s bureaucracy (which was largely run by the clergy) being paralysed during Henry’s dispute with the Archbishop of Canterbury. A decade later, there was a spike in pollution, as the penitent Henry built monasteries and churches, which needed large amounts of lead for roofing, to atone for Becket’s death. Chief researcher Prof Christopher Loveluck described the discovery of these correlations as an “X marks the spot” moment.(The Week, 

Relevance to Epicureanism?  None whatsoever.  But as an historian I thought it might be of interest – the side effect of national politics. Oh, and, I might add, a sidelight into how deeply political, powerful and threatening to the government the church was perceived to be in medieval days when an archbishop (in reality a courtier posing as a champion of the church) could challenge a king.

 

Epicurus would be aghast

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Between 1980 and 2018, research shows, the tax obligations of America’s billionaires, measured as a percentage of their wealth, have fallen 79 percent. Since last year at this time, the ranks of U.S. billionaires have increased from 607 to 614, their collective wealth from $3.111 to $3.229 trillion.

We have here in the United States today a tremendous amount of unevenly distributed wealth. This uneven distribution has left us with precious few resources for the public investments, in everything from hospitals, to the struggling postal service, to the medical medial research we need to keep us safe.  (Inequality.org)

My comment: When you see the millions of people now unemployed (and the government unable to get the unemployment benefit to them); when you see the lack of investment in hospital equipment and unpreparedness for a pandemic; when you see totally inadequate testing and the funds for the support of small businesses run out almost in days …..  then maybe, just maybe those for whom “government is the enemy” will begin to think about funding government properly, supporting decent healthcare for everyone, hiring good people instead of political cronies, and stop funneling millions to those who already have millions. In short grudgingly taking government seriously as a vital part of modern life and treating human being decently, like governments should.

I believe Epicurus, were he alive today, would say “Amen” or the Greek equivalent. It’s a matter of decency, consideration, thoughtfulness, humanity, decent treatment of the sick and poor……..(whoops! isn’t that what Christianity is supposed to be about?!).