Morning statistics – Hopeful developments in Southeast Asia and New Zealand – Discouraging news from Eastern Europe and Latin America – Slowdown in easing of restrictions in various states – Reminiscences about the purchase of my home – The all-important monthly mortgage payment — House-buying, then and now – Job security less frequent – Potential diminishment of available jobs – Our legislators removed from these evils – The pious rich man and the rabbi – Nick Cordero – Hungary and gender by birth – Kim Jong-un regrettably still alive – Evening statistics
Today’s statistics as of 7:00 AM — # of cases worldwide: 3,325,620; # of deaths worldwide: 234,485; # of cases U.S.: 1,095,304; # of deaths U.S.: 63,871. China at this point claims to have fewer than 600 active cases. More reliable are the data from South Korea: it has had 10,774 cases to date, with 9,072 recoveries and 248 deaths, leaving 1,454 still active. Of these, 55 are rated critical. Taiwan and Vietnam have both been doing well. Taiwan has had only 429 cases and 6 deaths, with 99 still active. None of the ones still active are rated as critical. Vietnam has had 270 cases and no deaths at all, with 51 still active. Of these, 8 are rated as critical. New Zealand has had 1,479 cases and 19 deaths. There are 208 cases still active, with only 1 rated critical. So there are many bright spots.
Unfortunately none of them are in Europe or North America. There have been significant increases in Russia, Mexico, and Brazil. Eastern Europe has in general been less severely affected by the virus than Western Europe, but the number of new cases in Russia is a troubling sign. In general, the medical care systems of Eastern European nations are more vulnerable than those of the Western European ones. If the virus gains momentum there it will be difficult to contain.
Various states are slowing down on the relaxation of restrictions. California has closed some of the beaches it had previously opened. Governor Newson apparently was contemplating closing all of the beaches but he has limited the closure to the beaches in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Governor Mike DeWine, of Ohio, has announced that the stay-at-home order, scheduled to end today, will be extended; no new date has been given. Dr. Fauci has warned the states planning to re-open to do so slowly, and not to make such an attempt unless they have at least a two-week decline in the number of new cases.
Today is an anniversary for me. On May 1, 1986, I quitted the apartment that I was renting in Reston and moved into the house in which I am living now. On that day my status changed from that of renter to house-owner. Several memories are still fresh from that time. I could relate here, for example, that the actual date of purchase, when the contract was signed, occurred on April 15th but that the previous owners wished to stay in the house two weeks longer. I readily agreed to this proposal, for the arrangement was convenient for me as well; I would be getting full value for the rent payment I had made for April and I would in addition be receiving a rental payment for one half-month. And then, when I first moved in, the house seemed strangely large and half-empty, for the apartment in which I had lived consisted of a bedroom, a living room, and a den, and the number of rooms in the house was greater. And numerous other circumstances linger in my memory – the fact, for instance, that the contract was signed on the same day that income taxes were due, and the complications that ensued because the bank was behindhand in its paperwork, and the manner in which the realtor precipitated matters by calling on one of his golfing friends who was also an official at the bank for assistance, and so on. But the circumstance that pressed most vividly upon my consciousness when the house passed into my hands was the sum still owing on the house: $90,000 in all, which does not sound like a large amount today but which at the time represented nearly three years of salary for me.
Inflation had taken a turn for the worse during the years of the Carter administration and double-digit interest rates on loans were the norm, but the policies of Reagan were bringing the interest rates down. The mortgage rate on which I procured the loan was 10%, which was on the low side for that era. The interest rates continued to fall over the years, and at one point I re-financed the loan, locking in at a rate of 7.25% and at the same time converting my 30-year mortgage to a 15-year one. It was, moreover, a loan without penalties for pre-payment, and I took advantage of that by making additional payments in the early years. The earliest payments of a mortgage have a high proportion of interest to principal, and by pre-paying I was able to eliminate a substantial fraction of the total amount of interest paid on the loan. By the year 2001 the mortgage was payed off entirely.
Those mortgage payments were a kind of riverbank that shaped my life. For other expenditures one could delay payment on them – with a penalty of a certain amount of interest, it is true, and a penalty that I strove to incur as seldom as possible – but that option was always available. But the mortgage payments were a different matter. Those could not be deferred. Every month a portion of my after-tax salary had to be set aside for that purpose. What remained could be devoted to other expenses and even to menus plaisirs – and, indeed, I did not stint myself over the years. But always, always I was conscious of the payment that had to be made at the end of the month. There is nothing unusual about such a mindset; it is, I should imagine, fairly common among householders whose mortgage is not paid off in full and among renters of houses or apartments.
After the mortgage was paid off I became a great deal less conscious of monetary pressures. If there was the prospect, once the mortgage was free and clear, of my being laid off, such a threat no longer seemed as alarming as it previously had been; whatever else might befall me, I would have a place in which to live. In actual fact, matters went well with me. At no point was my career in jeopardy; my skills were always in demand, I lived in comfort, I was able to build up a portfolio; and so matters continued until I elected to retire. I am in a good position now, perhaps even an enviable one. Perfect security of course is not to be expected under any circumstances, but between pensions and yields from investments and eventual Social Security payments, my position is probably as secure as anyone could desire.
I muse upon these circumstances because I am now driven to speculate how the experiences of renters and householders today will differ from mine, particularly during the economic aftermath of a crisis that has already reduced our GNP by 4.8%. My successful outcome was in part the result of careful management, no doubt. I always budgeted for the monthly payment and when the opportunity came to make that payment as little burdensome as possible, I was quick to seize upon it. But part of it was also luck – or more precisely, the national economic conditions that were favorable for leading up to such a result. And there were other factors that worked in my favor. I had a skillset that happened to be in demand, and when I saw opportunities to obtain new skills the organizations for which I worked were happy to supply me with training. Occasionally I fretted about what the future would hold when the project on which I was currently working came to an end, but as time passed it became apparent that a long period of unemployment was unlikely.
So the question arises: How does a young man or woman of the present day, just beginning to make his or her way, grapple with the issue of shelter?
To begin with, inflation rates will undoubtedly go up. Rent and mortgage payments will become higher and they will buy less. Then, too, there is the matter of house prices and their ratio to income. When I went house-hunting the standard advice was to look for a dwelling whose price was 3-4 times one’s annual salary. I do not believe that such a guideline holds true today.
Again, job security will probably become less common. During the period of my own career job security was certainly sporadic enough. Employment in the Government sector was fairly stable. So, too, was the information technology industry in which I worked, at any rate in certain regions. Those who worked in retail were in a more precarious situation. And those whose skillset was more limited always had to contend against the threat of automation.
At this point the problem of the work shortage will become more acute. Jobs in industries such as travel, tourism, hospitality, and so on, will probably be reduced. Restaurants will have a more difficult time making a profit if they are prohibited from placing its customers in close proximity to each other. So will food markets and department stores. Small independent shops will diminish in number as ordering online becomes more common. In short, I do not see how a sufficient amount of income sources will be available for the number of people who need them to obtain housing.
How these evils are to be remedied I do not know. One feature, however, seems clear: we can expect no help whatever from our law-makers. They simply do not have first-hand experience of such matters. The average holdings of the members of our Senate amount to something in the neighborhood of nine-to-ten million dollars. Unless they are unusually empathetic or imaginative, they can have no conception of that all-important monthly payment. Our system, indeed, makes it virtually impossible for persons of moderate income to run for such offices. The only one I know of who was not wealthy in his or her own right during the time of election is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and once she assumed office she has not been a friend to the wage-earners. On the contrary, she has consistently advocated policies that tax them to such a degree that they hardly have any discretionary funds of their own.
There is a story concerning a pious rich man who was questioned by a prominent rabbi about his habits. When the subject of his meals came up, he said that he ate very simply, chiefly upon bread and salt, with water to drink. Whereupon the rabbi turned on him with scorn.
“Why do you not eat meat and drink wine,” he said, “suitable to a man of your position?”
And he continued to assail the man in this fashion until the rich man, in bewilderment, promised faithfully that in future he would eat meat and drink wine.
After the rich man departed, the rabbi’s disciples bombarded the rabbi with questions. Why he had been so severe on the rich man for living simply? What difference did it make whether he ate meat or not? Or if it did, was he not rather to be commended for not indulging his appetites and abstaining from gluttony?
The rabbi heard out all of their questions and comments patiently, and when they were done he gave the following reply.
“This man,” he said, “is a rich man. If he eats meat and drinks wine, then he will be able to grasp the concept that a poor man may eat bread and drink water to satisfy hunger and thirst. But if he abstains from meat and confines himself to bread and water, even out of motives of piety, he will eventually wind up thinking that the poor ought to eat stones.”
And so it is with the wealthy men and women who sit in the House and the Senate. They are, for the most part, well-intentioned. They earnestly wish to help many in need: the homeless, the refugees fleeing from impoverished countries, the youth driven by the conditions of the ghetto into crime. But in the process they continually absorb greater and greater portions of income from the wage-earners, without reflecting that expenditures that may be a trifling inconvenience for people in their own walk of life can be killing sacrifices for those whose income is far less than their own. Sooner or later they lose sight of that all-important monthly payment for rent or mortgage. Sooner or later they end up thinking that the lower and the middle classes ought to eat stones.
But on to other matters –
Nick Cordero, the Broadway actor who had to have a leg amputated as a result of complications from COVID-19, is not done with his battle with the virus. His lungs have been damaged. Holes have developed in the lungs and they continually fill up with fungus, necessitating periodic cleanings. His prospects for ultimate survival are far from certain. It has to be reiterated: he was relatively young, in good health, and in excellent physical condition before the virus struck. Having no underlying complications may increase the chances of emerging from an attack of the virus unscathed, but it is by no means a guarantee.
Hungary, a nation with a long history of marching under its own banner, is in the process of passing a law that will compel people to use the gender assigned to them at birth on official ID documentation such as passports, drivers’ licenses, etc. As a matter of course, several LGBT and transgender representative groups are up in arms and are calling upon the European Union to put pressure on Hungary to quash the law. I sincerely hope that the European Union will not squander their energies on this folly, especially when they have so much more pressing business at hand. If a man wishes to wear dresses, adorn himself with women’s cosmetics, and admit none but men to his bed, let him indulge these preferences to his heart’s content; but he has no business calling himself a woman. Certain matters are pre-determined at conception. My height, for instance, is slightly under5’8” (172 centimeters). But if I were to hobble about on shoes with heels of 4 inches or more and declare that my mindset has always been that of a tall man, I doubt very much that the six-footers would clasp me to their bosom and embrace me as one of themselves. These so-called “transgender women” are nothing but glorified castrati. Similarly, if a woman takes testosterone supplements, crimps her breasts in the manner that Victorian ladies compressed their waists, and conducts amorous dalliance with other women only, she still is not a man. She is a male impersonator. Salud to you, Hungary, for standing firm on that point. Or should I say egészségére?
Kim Jong-un has apparently been seen again. At least, the North Korean news agency stated that he has just attended the completion of a fertilizer plant north of the capital. There is no independent confirmation of this report, but the stories about his possible botched surgery or his death have become more doubtful. He may even not have undergone any surgical operation at all. President Trump has addressed this issue in his usual statesmanlike fashion; when asked about Kim’s health he growled out, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Today’s statistics as of 8:30 PM — # of cases worldwide: 3,398,473; # of deaths worldwide: 239,448; # of cases U.S.: 1,131,030; # of deaths U.S.: 65,753. Russia has had its highest daily increase and Mikhail Mishustin, the Prime Minister, has been diagnosed with the virus. It now has more cases than China and Iran. The virus is making its way through Brazil. Even though the death toll is relatively low at the moment (less than 7,000 in a country whose population is 211,000,000) the upsurge is high enough to create a shortage of coffins. It is possible that both the incidence of cases and the mortality rate is higher than reported, due to the difficulty of getting accurate data from some of its more remote areas. The actual number of cases may under-reported by as much as a factor of ten. It borders nearly every other country on the continent and its neighbors have been greatly alarmed, especially since Brazil has not imposed any travel restrictions on its citizens going in or out of the country. Ecuador is undergoing similar difficulties; in Guayaquil morgues and cemeteries have been so overwhelmed that some families have had to leave their relatives’ remains exposed on the street. From Venezuela it is almost impossible to obtain reliable data. In all probability the incidence rate and the mortality rate are much higher than reported. At this point most Venezuelans do not have access to a reliable water source, which makes it difficult for them to clean themselves. Chile is issuing “release certificates” to those who have had the virus and have since recovered, even though the WHO says that there is no evidence that having contracted the virus once confers immunity.