Five Contrary Truths I Learned Too Late in My Life. 
If You Are Younger Than 73, You Can Be Five Steps Ahead of Me!

I’ve spent what probably amounts to an unhealthy amount of my spare time trying to figure out why so much of life is difficult or weird or crazy. I’ve spent an equal amount of time trying to figure out how I could get more of what I need (these days, mostly peace of mind) out of what I’ve got (mostly relationships).

I’ve got dozens, if not hundreds, of these thoughts filed away in the recesses of my aging mind. And I keep thinking that some of them might be helpful to one or several of my readers. So, before they flee completely from my cobwebbed memory banks, I thought I’d put them down here in my blog post – perhaps four or five at a time.

These first five are connected in some ways – but whatever connection they have, I’ve already forgotten. So, please take them as individual observations, and decide for yourself if they make sense to you.

1. Equal opportunity and equal treatment under the law are worthy and achievable goals for a civilized society. But believing that equality is a natural or divine law of some kind is foolish and destructive. Equality – true equality – is a rare and momentary anomaly. And that is because the universe, including all its elements, all its forces, and all its creatures, is designed to move relentlessly towards inequality. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is just one of innumerable observations that scientists and philosophers have made about this fact.

2. Equity – the objective of achieving equal outcomes in terms of education, income, scientific or artistic achievement, etc. – is a goal that will always result in communal degradation and can be achieved only by theft and the threat of violence. And even then, it cannot last, because it is based on equality. (See above.)

3. If the universe has any meaning, it is ironic – that life is a joke laughing at itself. All the best art and music is, happily or sadly, acceptingly or in anguish, a recognition of the fundamental irony of life and living.

4. The quality of our lives is largely determined by what we pay attention to. The more we focus our attention outside ourselves, the greater our sense of accomplishment and well-being. The more we focus our attention on ourselves, the greater our unhappiness, including ennui, neuroticism, and depression.

5. Every truth about life has an equal and opposite truth. Including the four above.

Have You Heard of Swatting? It’s Not Good. And It’s Becoming More Common.

Last week, Judge Tanya Chutkan found out what “swatting” means after an anonymous caller told her local police precinct that there was a shooting at her Washington home. Officers arrived at her home shortly thereafter to find that the call was bogus. No shooting had taken place. Two weeks earlier, federal marshals had rushed to special counsel Jack Smith’s home in Maryland where, they found out, there had been no shooting.

Swatting has emerged in recent years as a method of harassing and intimidating public figures,
and political targets have been bipartisan. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claims to have been swatted several times. And in 2022, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who was presiding over the trial of a Jan. 6. rioter, also seems to have been swatted.

The danger with swatting political figures is not just the unnecessary diversion of emergency resources, but the physical risk any confrontation with law enforcement poses to victims and police.

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Yes, Restaurant Prices Are Higher – Considerably Higher!

K and I spent a long weekend in LA at the end of last month visiting Numbers One and Two Sons and their families. Dado (yours truly) was happy to grab the checks when we dined together. There were ten of us – six adults, four children. And we had four meals together – one breakfast, one lunch, and two dinners.

Perhaps it’s a function of my forgetfulness, but each check’s bottom line was higher than I expected. With tip, the breakfast came to $400. The lunch came in a $600. And the dinners were more than $1,000 each.

And we are not talking about Michelin Star restaurants. I’d judge the quality as slightly above middling – i.e., two steps above Applebee’s to four steps below Torrisi.

It seems like just 20 years ago, I was paying $10 to $15 a person for breakfast, $15 to $20 a person for lunch, and $25 to $30 a person for dinner. Am I wrong?

Look, I’m not complaining. I can comfortably afford to spend that kind of money at a restaurant. But what about the 200 million working- and middle-class Americans whose combined median income is less than $80,000 a year?

The Biden administration keeps telling us that the economy is strong and inflation has been whipped. It hasn’t dropped to the much eulogized 2%, but it’s in the 3%s – and that’s something to feel good about.

But polls show that most Americans don’t believe it. And for good reason. The cost of dining out has been rising steadily over the last 10 years – at a rate that exceeds both the CPI (Cost Price Index) and the PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index), the two official measurements of inflation.

There are two reasons for that.

First, the CPI and the PCE are fake news. They were rigged years ago when creatures at the swamp decided to no longer include the cost of energy and the cost of food in their calculations. And for working- and middle-class Americans, food and energy comprise a much higher percentage of household spending than it does for wealthier Americans.

A second reason is that two-thirds of the cost of running a restaurant is the cost of labor, which has also accelerated greatly since the multi-trillion-dollar COVID giveaway bribe. And that represents two-thirds of the cost of eating in a restaurant, as opposed to eating grocery-store food at home.

For your further amusement, check out this piece by Michael Snyder, the internet’s most prolific producer of End-of-Times predictions, on the inflation history of the Egg McMuffin.

Chart of the Week: What Effect Do Presidents Have Over the US Economy While They Are in Office? 

Sean took the time here to reinforce something I’ve been saying for years: You can’t fairly judge a president’s economic policies by what happens with the economy during his term. And the reason for that should be obvious. First, many economic policies (and especially those with the potential to have the largest impact) do not result in change overnight. Most take years – often four to six years – to produce a measurable effect. Second, a president’s ability to create or affect economic policies is limited. Its impact is considerably more narrow and weaker than the power of the Federal Reserve. And even that is smaller than the impact of the billions of independent decisions made by businesses, entrepreneurs, and consumers on a daily basis. 

If you understand economics on at least a basic level, you recognize the speciousness of judging a president’s economic policies by the state of the economy during his term. But, as Sean proves below, judging a president’s economic policies by the trajectory of the stock market during his term might be even loonier. Because the stock market responds not just to all the economic, business, and monetary decisions discussed above, but also to the algorithms of computer programs and the psychology of individual investors.

I think there is only one thing a president can do during his term that can have an immediate and substantial effect on the economy and the stock market: Declare war. And that is almost always destructive to both. – MF

I recently made the case that historical data, on multiple fronts, suggest that 2024 will be an “up” year for the stock market.

Probably not great. But also probably not terrible.

In response to this point, I received this reply: “Depends if we still have a dementia patient in the oval office or not.”

Now, I have zero love for Biden. But I would be irresponsibly partisan if I believed anything besides the truth:

The market does not care who the president is. 

To prove this point, I found the inflation-adjusted stock returns for each president since 1974.

Over the last 50 years, here are presidential returns from best to worst:

* Clinton: 150.6%
* Obama: 127%
* Trump: 72.9%
* Reagan: 50.1%
* GHW Bush: 30.3%
* Ford: 18.3% (short term)
* Biden: 5.1% (term not yet concluded)
* Carter: -12.8%
* GW Bush: -45.3%

(Again, these are adjusted for inflation so that we get closer to an apples-to-apples comparison, factoring in economic environments.)

But we have to compare their returns to what we should statistically expect.

Here’s what I found: There’s only one person who presided over unusual, outlier returns.

Bill Clinton.

Everyone else? Including George W. Bush? They all land within 1.5 standard deviations from the mean. They’re all “normal returns” that we should reasonably expect if we’re going to invest over four- or eight-year periods.

That means two things:

First off, the president could be good or bad. The president could have amazing economic policies or terrible ones. The president could be demented or not.

I reiterate: The market does not care who the president is.

Secondly, markets only care about three things when it comes to politics: global stability, legislative gridlock, and fiscal stimulus.

“Slick Willie” had those three things in spades.

The economy (and, by extension, the stock market) responds to fiscal policies put in place by Congress, which the president only has marginal control over, and it responds to global economic conditions.

Would we have had such a crazy bull market in the 1990s if the Soviet Bloc hadn’t fallen, opening dozens of new markets at the same time the technology that catalyzes globalization went mainstream? I highly, highly doubt it.

And that’s why Clinton is the only outlier on that list.

The only presidents who come even remotely close to being unusual in terms of inflation-adjusted stock returns – Obama and Trump – also presided over an era of insanely atypical monetary policy. Which proves Mark’s point above in his introduction that the Fed has more power than the president to shape our economic reality.

– Sean MacIntyre

If you want to know how the market tends to perform in an election year in general, click here to check out the one-minute video Sean did on the subject.

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Conspiracy Watch

1. Is Taylor Swift a Psyop? 

In the middle of digging into my neck muscles, G, my massage therapist, said something about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce being some sort of “psyop,” and that, somehow, they were involved in fixing the next Super Bowl, and, somehow, that was going to affect the next elections.

I must admit… although I’ve seen the word in print in the past year or so, I never bothered to find out what “psyop” means. From the context, I took it to mean propaganda. But, since G is one of my three favorite sources of conspiracy theory, I presumed she was seriously alarmed. So I promised myself that I’d consult with my two other favorite conspiracy theorists, my Pilates instructor and my barber.

But before I could do that, I saw this editorial in the WSJ.

I found the WSJ’s piece to be reasonable and even convincing. It is hard for me to take this theory seriously, but I do think the paper’s editorial board missed the target when they suggested that Vivek Ramaswamy believes, as my therapist does, that this “fix” is actually something that is being orchestrated by some left-wing group.

What Ramaswamy says is exactly the opposite of what the left means when they call something a conspiracy theory. It is a much more rational explanation of why people on both sides of the political divide come to believe in things that seem hard to believe in, and why sometimes those things turn out to be true.

I’ve made this same point several times in conversations and even in previous issues. But understanding it requires an IQ above, say, 110, which is well above the average IQ of most journalists and politicians.

2. Ballot stuffing? Just another conspiracy theory? Or the real thing?

If it can happen in Bridgeport, CT, why not elsewhere? Click here.

Trends in Wokeness

1. The Brave Comedy of Malik Elassal 

I’ve said it before. The best comedy is brave, brilliant, and also unifying. This young stand-up is testing himself in all three areas, and he’s doing pretty well. Don’t you think? Click here.

 2. Walls are unnecessary! Except, well, except maybe for…

An example of the sort of deep thinking that is the backbone of Social Justice advocates. Click here.

3. How is this NOT an extreme form of child abuse?

Click here.

4. Finally, some good news… Math may not be intrinsically racist! 

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a pile of NYT issues, you’ve heard about the recent claims that mathematics should be eliminated from grammar school and high school curricula because people of color, as a group, score poorly on math tests. In this case, the proposition is that teachers should not have to prove a base-level understanding of arithmetic.

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1. The Triple Package 

By Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld
352 pages
Originally published Feb. 4, 2014

SL, founder of The Mules (my book club), gave me this book to read. He had recently interviewed Amy Chua on his podcast about multilingualism, and discovered that she has an interest, as I do, in how the beliefs and values of varying cultures can have a huge impact on the successes or failures of its members.

I’m about halfway through The Triple Package but can already recommend it.

In the book, Chua and Rubenfeld (who are husband and wife and professors at Yale Law School) argue that, despite the anti-American vitriol spewing from the teachers and students of America’s best universities these days, the dream of coming to America and becoming successful – in all the most common ways – is still alive and strong.

What I Like About It 

Chua is also the author of a book I read years ago and loved, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, in which she recounts the extremely high expectations she had of her children and the iron-willed way she went about making them successful. Her raw intelligence and willingness to challenge her own beliefs with serious research and undeniable logic… it won me over in that book and again in The Triple Package.

The Triple Package is especially interesting to me because the thesis is remarkably like one I’ve been working on for years. (Working title: “Wealth Culture.”) The idea is that there is an elephant-sized fact that academia refuses to address – which is that the great disparity of outcomes between various ethnic/racial groups that is so often talked about today is not the result of slavery or Jim Crow but of significantly different cultural viewpoints and beliefs that affect every aspect of “success” for those that attempt to pursue The American Dream.

What I Don’t Like So Much 

When my book is finally published, critics will say I got the idea from Ms. Chua.

Critical Reception 

* “Provocative…. If you care at all about the pressures underpinning success and failure, or relish fresh perspectives on how societies really work, you’ll want to read this.” (Sunday Times/UK)

* “A sometimes funny, sometimes academic, and always interesting study of the cultural traits that make some groups outperform others in America.” (National Review Online)

* “[The authors] tiptoe mirthlessly over cultural eggshells yet still manage to stir up controversy.” (The Times/UK)

2. The Juror Who Found Herself Guilty 

By Michael Hall in Texas Monthly
Estimated Read Time: 60 min.

There are hundreds of stories written about wrongly convicted people. Innocent men and women that languished in jail because of bad police work, legal incompetence, or (shockingly commonly) the purposeful withholding of exculpatory evidence.

This is one such story with an interesting twist: In 1990, Estella Ybarra, a juror in a rape case in Texas, was pressured by other members of the jury to send a man to life in prison, despite her near certainty that he was innocent.

Almost three decades later, she decided to right her wrong.

Click here.

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Griselda 

A six-part Netflix miniseries
Directed by Andrés Baiz
Starring (and co-produced by) Sofia Vergara
Premiered Jan. 25, 2024

Watch Time: 1 hr. per episode

Griselda is a biographical crime series dramatizing the true story of Griselda Blanco, who began her life as a prostitute in Colombia and eventually led one of the most profitable cocaine cartels in the US.

What I Liked About It 

The story: Amazing!

The plot: Fast-paced, non-stop, suspenseful, and believable.

The costumes: Vintage 1980s Miami. The wardrobes alone are worth the watch.

The star: All of the actors are strong in this series, but Sofia Vergara, someone I think of as a superb comedic actress, creates a character every bit as scary and seductive as Hannibal Lecter.

Critical Reception 

Griselda has gotten generally positive reviews from critics, with particular praise for Vergara’s performance.

* “The former ‘Modern Family’ star goes full Pacino-in-Scarface mode and delivers a robust, screen-rattling, suitably over-the top performance in the blood-soaked series… that plays like an extended B-movie.” (Chicago Sun-Times)

* “Hugely enjoyable, well-paced, and gorgeous to look at throughout.” (The Guardian)

* “Those who enjoyed Narcos and Sons of Anarchy will find plenty here to entertain them on the surface, but in terms of larger social commentary or insights on the state of Latinidad, it’s an empty vessel.” (RogerEbert.com)

You can watch the trailer here.

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Quick Bites: Ka-Ching!… Pant! Pant!… Splish-Splash!… OMIGOD!

* Intriguing: First Costco… then Walmart. Why have these major retailers suddenly begun selling gold? Click here.

* Weird: It’s not your imagination. 2023 was the hottest year since scientists began tracking global temperatures 173 years ago. 2023 saw global average temperatures of 14.98 degrees Celsius (58.96 Fahrenheit). That is 0.6 degrees Celsius (2.6 Fahrenheit) warmer than the average global temperature over the last 30 years. It is also about 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.5 Fahrenheit) warmer than global averages in the 50 pre-industrial years prior to 1900.

Adorable: Capybaras taking a relaxing bath at a Japanese zoo. Click here.

* Impressive: I know. You’ve seen clips like this from me before. You get it. And, yeah, they look staged. So why do I keep including them in my blog posts? I have no excuse except I’m thinking that if I can’t get enough of them some of my readers may feel the same way. So click here to watch a nine-year-old violinist blow everyone away.

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From James Clear: 

“You should always be rooting for the people you know. Not only because you may need their support tomorrow, but also because it feels good to celebrate something. Celebration can rescue your day – even if it is someone else’s victory. Envy will ruin your day – even if you’re actually winning.”

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From DG: Suing the COVID Makers

“As you can see from this article, it looks like people are suing the drug companies over the COVID vaccines in the UK. I remember you saying they couldn’t do this in the US, but it does raise another question about how dangerous they are.”

From LM: AWAI Needs You! 

“I recommend that you have AWAI send out a few of your articles each year or each month to the AWAI subscribers so we all can discover MarkFord.net sooner rather than later. I was an early subscriber to Early to Rise and early buyer of your Michael Masterson and AWAI books, and I joined Circle of Success around 2016. But it took me until 2024 to discover MarkFord.net! I learned of this site only through a link at the bottom of your article on goals that Craig Ballantyne recommended in his email.”

My Response: I can’t disagree with you! I Think every success-oriented business should be featuring my essays! The world would be much better, in my humble opinion, with more Mark Ford in it!

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Is your car being eaten by a rodent? 

This was sent to me to share with you by GM, a regular reader and contributor, who said this happened to his VW…

“Until the mid-1980s, cars were made from metal, glass, and plastic, which was made from petroleum. Then, in Europe, regulations were passed making car manufacturers responsible for the vehicles they made ‘from the cradle to the grave’ – i.e., from the time it is made to the time it is retired from service and disassembled so that the materials can be easily recycled. In response, European manufacturers began to replace whatever materials they could with recyclable materials.

“It sounded like a great idea. Nobody objected to it. But there was one thing they didn’t count on: Those eco-friendly materials can be pretty tasty.”

Click here.

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