Top 5th Percentile Mobility for the Rich and the Poor.

Stop Pretending You're Not Rich 
New York Times

 The difference between the rich and the poor in the top 19% (excluding the 1%.) collectively referred to in some circles as "Gentry" as in gentrification is significant in ways the above piece totally ignores and significantly affects the mobility of the next 30%. The meritocracy Reeves sneers at is in fact a reality for the poor getting into the Gentry and for the top school-top job nuveau Gentry and is probably a major cause of the rich losing their place there. The top fifth does not rule. They do protect their privilege with the help of those who do. There are major holes in their safety net in both directions. 

 Poor by my definition is an attitude not an amount of income. The poor distinguish between wants and needs and buy wants only when they can afford them from current excess resources. They retain that attitude even when they make it into the Gentry.  Many of the Gentry were poor once, and still live like it other than eating better. They still save something for the next meal that might not be as good. Depression era parents are classic examples for the new gentry. I grew up in a house where "Hide-a-bed Hash" was generic for saving for a luxury purchase.  That Gentry is smart poor people with decent jobs who watch their expenditures, chose their homes carefully and use their mortgage and tax deductions, 401ks, IRAs, and 529s to provide for their future. They may have a low end status car but they drive it to COSTCO from their good school neighborhood which they got to by buying before the kids were school age into a gentrifying neighborhood with bad schools; trading up with low end purchases in upcoming neighborhoods; and building equity. Cheap home prepared meals are their main nourishment (everybody cooks), and thrift stores and their closet their source of clothes. Entertainment is online, TV, reading and home grown music, with music lessons the only luxury. 

 Rich people buy what they want where they want to buy without regard to resources at any income level.  They generally have a relatively high debt to income ratio, and are frequently a couple of paychecks or a major financial setback away from losing their place in the Gentry.   

 I would suggest that your "different Gentry" ie. the good school-good job Gentry is a relatively small part of the Gentry we are talking about.   They grew up feeling rich even though their parents are probably in the poor Gentry or even in the achieving poor in next 30%. This privilege is reinforced especially in the top schools where they mingle as equals with rich kids and the good job gives them the income level to buy directly into the Gentry particularly when both partners (generic) work at high level jobs as most do early in their careers. The Mrs. degree is fairly rare in the top colleges as only driven achievers can get past the glass ceiling in the admissions department.   

  The mortgage deduction provides minimal tax relief for the rich but is a major source of mobility for the working poor. A maxed out mortgage is a debt trap for the rich who can't maintain a rich person's income level as they believe they can.   A 1.1 million dollar house with a million dollar mortgage works only if income stays above $150K. That same house with a conforming mortgage works at $60K. Flipped up several times from a house in a poor but stable neighborhood. This flip up is usually primarily for schools, but works even better for the childless as public school taxes are low in high end developments where private schools are the norm for families with children. At $60K a conforming mortgage deduction reduces taxes significantly. Even if mortgage insurance is needed for the first house.

  If you are at $150K that Yale legacy preference Reeves toots is worth less than a HS All American in any sport or talent and is worth even less if the kid barely meets the academic threshold. Education is the great equalizer in the top 19% and many of the top schools are "need blind" for admissions so that any student qualifying, admittedly a tiny percent of any population, can qualify for entry into the 19% regardless of family income if the field of study is chosen carefully. Only the rich can afford worthless majors. 

Providing for a Sustainable Lower Class in an Economy of Abundance

 A Universal Basic income should be provided for all adults, but not children, which should be designed to cover basic housing, food and recreation needs for a family of 3 split between two adults.

  Jobs are a necessary part of a sustainable lower class. There are many semi-skilled jobs where human interaction is a necessary part of the job: servers, basic care workers, custodians, etc. These jobs would pay enough to justify leaving home and accept the responsibility of showing up for work.  The wage would be incremental to the UBI and thus affordable to employers.  Probably on the order of the current minimum wage.  A 36 hr. work week, 4 10 hour days with breaks would become standard.  Parents could alternate shifts, or work days to provide for parenting needs, or one parent could choose basic income instead of work. 

 Upward mobility would be provided by supervisory positions and skilled work as the employee qualifies for them.  The "minimum acceptable wage" would establish a wage floor and time commitment for all productive work. Any skilled job would be paid at competitive rates

  Medical care, education, and basic transportation needs should be part of package for both basic income and employed citizens. Medical care would be on the HMO model with a small copay for illness or injury to encourage a healthy lifestyle. Basic transportation needs would be met by no cost automated ride share in urban areas, and low cost interurban Hyperloop™.

Taxation could be income based if politically necessary, but ideally all taxes would be consumption based with a progressive value added tax.

UBI and Creators

TL;DR Want to create something? UBI is your trust fund.

Creativity is a fundamental drive for humans once they get beyond subsistence.  Cave people drew on the walls of the cave, ordinary pots and pans became works of art in ancient and indigenous cultures.  The key to success for an artisan or an entrepreneur is being able to fail without consequences to one's family.  A trust fund is the traditional back up for them, but that limits the pool of creative and risk taking to rich people.  Imagine the creative surge if anyone with a dream could pursue it.  

UBI vs Welfare

TL;DR  Welfare doesn't work? UBI helps poor communities without huge bureaucratic costs.

If everyone had an adequate but not comfortable living stipend, for example basic Social Security for all adults, the current administrative hassles of welfare and unemployment programs could be eliminated.   Checks would arrive monthly whether the person needed them or not.  Those with income would pay into the SS trust on all income over the stipend, those without other income for whatever reason would stimulate jobs in their communities which would pay into the fund. 

Suggested Life Celebration for J'Carlin

N.B. This post is referenced as part of my Advanced Directive which has not been needed yet (8/22/23.)  It was a hurry-up job under the gun of some grim medical procedures.  Not surviving was a real possibility and I almost didn’t.  However I beat the odds and am still around stirring things up as possible.

Any confusion as to time frame of the celebration is regretted.  For the moment at some time in the future:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As people gather play the Second movement of Bruch's third violin concerto (Arcado by preference) to include sister Janet as part of the celebration.  Encourage the who, what composer, etc speculation. No spoilers from those in the know.  After the third movement resolves the second, someone should tell the story of Janet and I having to leave home frustrated at that point and Janet calling her friend at the radio station for the ID of the out of print vinyl.  J'Carlin kept a long vigil till the CD set we just listened to was reissued ADD.

No podium speeches, but encourage everyone to tell a neighbor a story about J'Carlin that was important for them.  

After a bit of chatter have some music breaks including the Intuit and Kyrie from the Faure Requiem, the Bogoroditse from Rachmaninoff Vespers, and "Don't Stand by my Grave and Weep" from Rob Paterson's Eternal Reflections  If a choir I have been a member of would like to organize a celebratory group for the Faure and Rachmaninoff I would request that the usual gig fee be paid to the director and accompanist.  If Kevin and Alex would sing Amazing Grace for their usual gig fee it would be nice.   A reading from "Thinking on the blue roads" would be nice.  http://jcarlinbl.blogspot.com/  Kevin might read his post #4 from https://jcarlinsv.blogspot.com/2015/11/one-person-religion.html  he speaks for both of us.  Order and breaks ad lib.

When the food and drinks start someone should start a musical wine glass chorus in Celebration of Dorothy's 80th.  That should get enough stories started to make everyone enjoy the party.

I would like to continue Janet's tradition of distributing my compost to people who will take them to meaningful places and compost a wildflower.  Including the Mist trail at Yosemite. If possible near  a small bonfire in the Desolation Wilderness and the John Muir Trail. Also some dropped into the Mississippi from a bridge in Minneapolis to join Mom, Dad Janet, and anyone else who might care to join us.  

In lieu of flowers, a donation to any park conservancy, Redwood preservation non-profit,  or open space preserve would be appreciated.

A note on the "J'"  Until I left home for college I was nicknamed Joe which I never appreciated.  At Stanford I never mentioned the nickname and became known by my birth name.  Relatives and friends who knew me before tried diligently to change, but some version of Joe always came first.  Jo-Carlin, Je-Carlin, or J-Carlin.  Eventually I adopted J'Carlin as a nom-de-plume to protect my politically correct business persona. 


Note: Blog is CC3 If anyone wants to us this as a template for a Life Celebration modify at will.  

Just Do It - The Story of the ORVR Canister.

In October of 1968 General Motors had a major problem.  At the beginning of the 1970 model year, roughly September 1969, California was requiring all vehicles to have an onboard recovery for fuel vapors displaced from refueling and from evaporation while the vehicle was sitting in the sun, both of which were significant contributors to the infamous LA smog. While there were several technical solutions to the problem all had several drawbacks.  The preferred solution was a coffee can filled with activated charcoal with several ports for the gas tank, the fuel management system and other needs.  Unfortunately hot fuel vapors ate up the coffee can in short order.  A stainless steel coffee can with arc welded ports survived the hell under the hood but ate up the profits on each car.

A creative engineer at GM's Rochester Products named Jack Castellana, the inventor of the pop out cigarette lighter and the trademark small, secure GM car key used from 1960s to the invention of the chipped key, read about a heat and chemical resistant structural plastic manufactured by DuPont that he thought might be a cost effective solution to making a canister for the system.  He went to his local DuPont technical consultant who you know as J'Carlin to see if this new plastic had what it took to hold hot fuel vapor in hell, and if it could be manufactured into the elegant but complex shape required.  The short answer was technically yes, but practically there was no way to produce it in the required volume by summer of 1969.  Just the lead time on the huge injection molding machines that would be needed was several years.  And tool design and manufacture took many more months than we had.  Jack's reply was give me the technical solution and let me worry about the practical aspects.

Neither GM nor DuPont were happy about the risk involved in committing to the project but permitted preliminary design and testing to proceed without committing to production.  But GM had a huge cost driver, and DuPont had huge excess capacity in nylon production, so both Jack and I got tacit approval to proceed with the preliminary work with the proviso that it would be nice but it won't happen.  HEAR THIS you are both spinning your wheels IT WON'T FLY.

Jack asked me if I were sure I could solve the technical issues involved in production by summer 69?  I assured him that they were not trivial but known solutions existed.  He basically told me I would have to solve them as he and his boss were going to take on GM and have the plastic canister in production for the 70 model year. My immediate boss took a liberal view of "preliminary design and testing" and as long as I did not neglect my other clients, I could spend the time and money needed to support the GM project. 

Once the mockups proved themselves on the Arizona test tracks, my first technical problem was to teach a zinc die casting tool builder to build a nylon mold.  None of the nylon tool builders would take a chance on the intricate design details.  Once I explained the forces involved in molding nylon they decided they could do the job if I would help with the plastic design necessities.  We did fine except that I forgot to tell them nylon and cooling water don't mix.  This is taken for granted in plastic tool building, but I didn't know that for zinc a little bit of water overflow helps cool off everything including the moldings.  After a frantic night of rebuilding the cooling for the tool, the first shot the next day at a friendly nylon molder was perfect, all three parts of the three piece canister.  I still have that shot as a souvenir of my part of the project.  The friendly nylon molder was kept very busy on pre-production test canisters to prove the system and not incidentally the right formulation for the nylon.  It didn't take long for Jack and his boss to get their atta-boys we knew you could do it and move into production mode.  Unsurprisingly GM was able to cut into that two year line for production molding machinery to meet the model year deadline.

For my reward I got to write the material spec for GM and a nice promotion as well as the atta-boy.  I am still mad at GM for taking out the line in the spec. that the container for the nylon had to have a Z on it for the Zytel brand name DuPont used, but I got everything else including some proprietary additives and a salt and pepper mix to insure the additives were in the ultimately black molding.   After a few career building moves I was back to work at another nylon supplier and at a trade show I asked a friend who worked for a supplier of HDPE to GM about the canister. He said a high percent was grandfathered to DuPont, and the rest of them were competing for the remainder.  He also commented that he would sure like to have a word with the SOB that wrote that spec.  As he appeared to be non-violent I invited him to talk away.  That night at the bar, when he heard that the project from inquiry to production was done in 10 months, he admitted that I had earned my SOB the hard way.

The other reward was that Delco ended up supplying ORVR canister systems to the other manufacturers and most US and many foreign cars used it.  It wasn't too long before "Where is the smog" became a common tourist question in LA.  I have to admit that it is nice to see the mountains from Azusa all day long, and know that I had a part in making it happen.