Ungrateful

Here’s an interesting one, and it leaves me curiously conflicted

A millionaire has revealed he refuses to help his struggling parents pay off their mortgage so they can retire because they wouldn’t invest in his fledgling company five years ago.  The unnamed son, believed to be from the UK, explained on Reddit that he started a business in 2015, and his parents refused to invest £100 because they thought it would fail.  However in the last couple of years it’s boomed – but the son, who earns ‘borderline seven figures a year’, remains bitter about his parents’ lack of support.
The son explained he quit his office job, which paid £26,000 a year, in order to start his business in 2015 – when his parents and siblings earned twice or triple what he made.
‘When I opened my business, I asked if they wanted to invest as little as £100 in it, no one did… My entire family thought that my business was going to fail, just like I failed my sixth form,’ he wrote.
However, the company turned out to be a success and the business boomed in 2018 and 2019.
The son wrote: ‘My parents still have around £200,000 in mortgage payments left and are about to retire. Yesterday at a family reunion, my aunt asked why I don’t help them out financially considering I make more in a year than they make in a decade.’
He said he told his aunt he did not want to help because his parents had shown no belief in his venture.
‘I also told her that my parents made more than enough to put aside some money each month towards retirement, but due to their unorganised spending habits they were living pay cheque to pay cheque every month. They were making TRIPLE what I was making when I was an office boy,’ he explained.

Here’s why I’m conflicted.

I myself couldn’t do this to my parents, because parents.  (And if you need me to explain that rationale, you need help.)

On the other hand:  one of my ironclad rules in dealing with people is this:  I never forget an insult, and I never forgive an injury.  I am the world’s best friend to have — I’ll do anything to help a close friend — but screw me over or betray my trust, and there is a good chance that I’ll never speak to you again.

So in that moral context, I can understand  this young guy’s attitude towards people who didn’t help him on his way up, but I can’t forgive it.  And here’s why.

What he seems to have forgotten is that if he’d never have been born, they could probably have paid off their mortgage long before now.  But they had him, raised and nurtured him, and when he’d grown up, they let him go.  All that stuff costs money, lots of it (as any parent knows).

But all that said, I have little sympathy for the parents now, because they had the chance to help their child — for a piffling amount of money — and refused.  The essence of parenthood is to give, and give, and give — sometimes even when you can’t give any more, you still give.  Because it’s your child, that’s why.  Telling him his idea was dumb and he was going to fail (again) was a dick move — and now that he’s turned out for the better, they shouldn’t be surprised by his attitude — because they created it.

He’s angry at them for refusing to support him, and  for insulting him by recalling past failures.  The hurt goes deep, and I quite understand it.  I still couldn’t do what he’s done, because the corollary to being a part of a family is that when you’re an adult, you support your parents — and give, and give, and give — sometimes even when you can’t give anymore.

That’s family, and family is the basic building block of a happy and well-ordered society.

A man stabbed his mother to death, and as she lay dying she saw the knife had turned in his hand and he’d cut himself.  With her last breath she whispered, “Oh my son, bandage thy wound lest thou bleed to death.”

Parenthood.

A Good Pardon

Most presidential pardons rub me up the wrong way (e.g. Bill Clinton’s of Marc Rich) because there always seems to be something sleazy and underhanded about the people involved.

But God-Emperor Trump hasn’t put a foot wrong, and especially so with Michael Milken (who I always thought got a rough deal from the Justice Department).

Indeed, there’s an old saying that “banks only lend to you when you don’t need the money.” Milken understood this truth all too well, having discovered in the 1970s that other than for the bluest of blue-chip businesses, growth financing was exceedingly difficult to come by for the 99% of businesses that weren’t blue chip, or investment grade. Financial institutions operated on the assumption that the present predicted the future. Not so Milken. His research revealed the opposite.
Milken discovered that a corporation’s balance sheet generally measured yesterday, not tomorrow. And so he set about “democratizing” access to capital. Having attended UC Berkeley in the 1960s, Milken had embraced the desire of some within the student body to improve society. He would work tirelessly to change the world for the better too, but as he once put it, “Unlike other crusaders from Berkeley, I have chosen Wall Street as my battleground for improving society because it is here that government institutions and industries are financed.” There are no companies, no jobs, and there is no progress without investment, and Milken would vastly improve the world around him through skillful development of the companies not recognized by traditional banks and investment banks, but that would be greatly enhanced through bespoke finance.

Read the rest of the piece to get the whole story.

Conflicted

I read this news piece

Airlines Face Loss of Up to $30 Billion in Revenues in Wake of Coronavirus

….and I find myself torn between two emotions:

and

In the first place, I hate all airlines without regard to race, class, religion, nationality or gender.  [25,000 reasons omitted for brevity]

Secondly (according to the article), most of the losses are supposed to befall the Chinese airlines, but considering that they’re owned engines, wings and tails by the loathsome Commie Chinese government, who cares?

Of course, people are going to think that this disruption will mean lower fares and/or less-crowded flights for the rest of us… [pause for scornful laughter] …but the airlines will simply cancel most of their flights, cram the remaining planes to the brim and then (you heard it here first) raise their fares to make up for lost revenue.  You see, international  travel may feel an impact, especially for those fools who inexplicably visit China all the time, but most U.S. airlines get the bulk of their revenue from domestic flights (i.e. corporate passengers who are largely immune to fare increases anyway).  (And you can ignore bullshit articles like this one — I tested the claims, and couldn’t find ONE.)

I know that in a Black Swan scenario, the people most likely to be hurt are people like myself, but at the same time there’s something awfully appealing about watching corporations getting shafted by random events, kinda like what they do to us on a daily basis…

Great Moments In Bad Timing

Given how the Corona virus thing has completely knocked the pleasure-cruise industry off the shelf, one would think that this is a bad time to launch a new one, yes?

Step forward Sir Richard of Branson:

On the bright side, every dollar this Left tool drops into nonsense like this is one less dollar for the dozens of Lefty causes his company supports.

Even before the emergence of passenger liners as floating pox-palaces, you wouldn’t have got me on one of them at gunpoint.  Now… uh huh.  Hot needles, meet scrotum.

Unconcerned

Here’s something so outside my range of interest that I had never even thought of it.

Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg’s campaign to make people feel “flight shame” if they travel by plane has led to the reduction of bookings in her native Sweden. Now the U.S. airline industry is worried that the trend could take hold in this country.

“Flight shame”?  Let’s talk about this for a moment.

Every day I take people to the airport — most are going away on business, while others are jetting off to places like Aruba, Hawaii and Europe for their dream vacation, or else are taking their kids to a Disney Vergnügungslager  in California or Florida.  Others are going to visit family in far-off cities or countries (in some cases family whom they’ve not seen for years), while others still are proud grandparents off to annoy their children and spoil the grandchildren to death (as is their duty).

Does this sound like a bunch of people who would be “shamed” into foregoing their flights, all because some adolescent twerp thinks they shouldn’t be doing them?

Now I can see a couple of cases where there might be some kind of pullback on travel:  a corporation, for example, buys into the climate shame mantra, and as a form of virtue-signaling tells their employees to cut back — unless, of course, such an activity would have a serious impact on their bottom line, in which case… uh huh, you guessed it.  (“Yeah, boss, XYZ MegaCorp has canceled their million-dollar account with us because they haven’t seen any of our reps in a year…”)

Tell me that  wouldn’t set the stoat among the rabbits.

Another group who might be shamed into reducing their travel would be the International Backpack ‘N Sandals Set, who would otherwise be off to Explore Other Cultures And Enrich Their Lives, or do the eco-tourist thing [gag].  Quite frankly, this could only be A Good Thing in that normal people such as me would not have to sit for the following six hours next to someone who smells like a badger (and the male  travelers of this ilk are even worse).  Also, all those exotic eco-destinations would either go out of business (unemployment!) or have to raise their rates to compensate for the drop-off, making their business model affordable only to the extremely wealthy.

I can’t see Val d’Isère, Monaco or Kitzbühel losing much business, by the way:  the rich always carve out exceptions for themselves;  or else they just don’t care, nor do they buy into the eco-shaming, or both.  (About now, Mr. Free Market’s ears should be burning.)

Returning to the article:  it’s all very well for, say, Sweden  to experience a drop-off in air travel — there are many other ways to get from Sweden to other countries in Europe — but then again, all those countries are only a couple hundred miles apart.  However, the U.S. is not Scandinavia, nor even Europe:  I have to drive a couple hundred miles just to get out  of Texas, for instance, and further than that just to reach any other major city like Houston or San Antonio, still in Texas.

Finally, of course, we have the well-known hypocrisy of these holier-than-thou Greens, who think nothing of hopping on board a private Gulfstream just to attend a conference where they can scold other  people for burning fossil fuels and destroyiiiiing the planet.  Little Greta’s last scolding-trip to the New World, for instance, used more energy in total than a hundred and eighty families flying to Disney World for a week each*.

All that said:  if this foolishness does come to pass, what would be the reaction of the airlines to a sudden (and perhaps permanent) drop in passenger count?  We all know the answer to that:  discounted fares and “bundled” vacation packages to attract those lost customers back — with the concomitant drop in their balance sheets’ profit lines.

And wait till Delta/American/United discover that eco-fuel costs three times more than avgas, with a similar effect on their precious bottom line.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.


*I just made that figure up — kinda like the Greens do in all their Doomsday predictions.

Blacktops

Anyone who’s ever worked in the restaurant business will know exactly what the title of this post means.

Basically, it’s a denigrating [sic]  term that waiters (of all races, by the way) use as shorthand to describe a table of Black customers.  What “blacktop” means is that the servers are highly unlikely to get a tip from that seating.

Black people don’t tip.  (As always, that may not be 100% accurate but, as the bookies say, it’s the way to bet.)

Insty brings it home with this post, and I, as a two-year veteran of Ubering with well over two thousand trips driven, can attest to his friend’s conclusion.  (And bear in mind that about 80% of my annual business comes exclusively from taking executives to the two Dallas-area airports, which means that mostly, the tips are going to be part of the expense account.)

As a one-time statistician, I unconsciously collect data from my own experiences, and I’m going to present Kim’s Hierarchy Of Tipping (in an Uber context) and digging into my experience, here are the percentages of people who tip, by category.

  • White men:  70% — close to 90% of my tip revenue comes from White men, of all socio-economic classes
  • Chinese / Japanese men:  50% — but it’s a tiny number, so the actual revenue is insignificant
  • White women:  25% — and their tips are much smaller than the mens’, and younger women hardly tip at all
  • Indian men:  5% — and that only from the few Indian guys I pick up on a regular basis
  • Older Black men:   5% — if they’re executives, otherwise 0%
  • Younger Black men:  0% — unless  they’re in food service i.e. waiters (see below), in which case it’s about 2%
  • Indian / Black / Chinese women:  0% — I think one  Indian woman once gave me a $2 tip (on a $40 fare).
  • Young White guys, mostly waiters, cooks and bartenders:  close to 100%;  why?  because they understand the value of tipping.  When a young guy tips me $3 on a $4 fare, I know what that represents, and it has nothing to do with percentages.

Here’s the thing:  tipping your service provider isn’t just about the money, although that is important.  What tipping does show that you the customer value  what I as your service provider has given you, and it gives me an incentive to keep providing a good service.

I’ll spell it out from my own perspective.  I get up at about 3.15am and log in to Uber at about 3.45am, working until about 9am.  I provide a courteous, smooth, knowledgeable and (sometimes) entertaining trip, every time.  There’s free water on offer, a phone charger if needed, and I even load and unload my customers’ suitcases.  If a customer has forgotten something like a phone or passport, I stop the clock and turn the car around to fetch it.  I monitor the traffic reports so I can take a different route to avoid congestion.  I keep my car spotless (inside — on DFW roads, I’d have to wash the outside twice a day to keep it as clean).  And on that topic:  it’s not some cab company’s heap that I’m inviting you into, it’s my own personal car.

If I published the compliments that a few (maybe 80 or so) customers have left on my profile over the past two years, you’d think I’d made them all up.  (“Best Uber ride ever!”  and “Great conversation!” are the most common.)  I don’t provide good service;  I provide fantastic  service.

Yet very few people tip.  My tip percentage of total net income is 4.74% (and that is a hard number, because it’s Tax Time).  About a third of what a waiter makes.

And I have to tell you all that if one day I decide to chuck it all in, it’s because excluding White men, people in general are ungrateful assholes.