Easy Come, Easy Go
I put in a bunch of expert witness work in August and September. In fact, I put in a total of 180 hours. In addition to that, I was preparing for and launching my course in Advanced Corporate Finance. I suppose that was another 40 hours of work. In the tradition of the 40-hour work week, those nine weeks would produce a time card of 360 hours. My math tells me that I put in a 61% work effort for those two months. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it is what it is. The outcome of that effort is that I have a bunch of revenue that’s coming in now and over the next month that sort of counts as a windfall. I find myself rubbing my hands together wondering how long it will all last me, as though experience shouldn’t have taught me by now that my money is usually already spent by the time I get it.
Indeed, thanks to a final reconciliation of my Federal and State taxes as well as my real estate taxes for both Ithaca (last time) and San Diego, I am watching half of that money put little wings on and fly out the window. I comfort myself by the reminder that had I not worked a lot those months and reaped that windfall, I would be yet again dipping into my accounts to come up with the money to pay these taxes. The two certainties of life…death and taxes, right? Be happy you’re still alive and be happy you have the wherewithal to pay your taxes and then shut-up and sit down.
Well, I can sit down, but I guess I’ve never learned how to shut-up, so I have more to say about living within one’s means. Way back when, I read the book The Millionaire Next Door. It tells the story of how frugal people use the combination of living within their means and the time value of money to gather and accumulate wealth beyond what most people imagine is possible. The whole idea is that some people surprise you by being far wealthier than they seem, hence the thought they may be right next door to you and you don’t realize it. When I was in business school (this year is technically my 45th reunion year) there were two basic concepts that came through the loudest. They were the time value of money and that you always had to remember to include the cost of taxes in your analysis. That second one is that you only get to count what you can keep, not what you earn. Simple, but true.
The first concept is far more conceptually difficult to grasp. Everyone knows that if they put money in the bank they earn interest on it and that eventually that interest earns interest and so on and so on. But most people don’t recognize the power of that fact. To begin with, growth is natural state. The world operates on the assumption of growth. It is, literally, what makes the world go around. The goal of all economic activity is growth. That’s interesting for several reasons. The amount of growth is as important as its existence. Too much is just as bad as too little. In addition, with growth comes all the great advances AND ills of the world. We understand the notion that trees don’t grow to the sky, but do we really understand the limitations of growth? Unfortunately, we always seemed surprised that when those limits get breached we have to go back to square one and begin again.
Sticking with the tree analogy, foresters know that if trees grow too big and/or too thick they need thinning and sometimes they need to be burned down to begin the growth process all over again. It seems to be a regular battle among conservationists. People want to save the habitat of the spotted owl at all costs, but when the costs get to be the health of the forest itself, the real naturalists say let it burn. Which is better? Which is nature’s way? Should man interfere with nature because he can (nature did give him the ability to think his way into that, after all)? It is a very hard question.
I think of the growth conundrum in terms of humanity. At 7.8 billion souls in a world that supposedly has a natural limit of 8 billion (and that’s with all the help that GMO’s and other advances can give us to produce enough to feed that population) how do we curtail growth? Economists will tell you that without population growth, there is likely to be no economic growth. And with economic stagnation that comes with no growth comes those ills I mentioned. People become more harsh about the realities of life and the humanity index starts to wane in favor of the natural selection index. It is one of the great conundrums of mankind. Why are we afforded the sentiment of grace if we are unable to apply it when it is most necessary? I am forced to say, easy come, easy go.
We all say that life is dear, but I have been in parts of the world where life is actually quite cheap. It is those that are least able to support themselves that are often the most prolific. Nature has made it easy for procreation to take root and it not only doesn’t consider ability to sustain life, it may actually be easier because the maintenance of life is so challenging. Perpetuation of the species is all that nature cares about, the quality of that perpetuation is simply not its concern. The harder it is to sustain life, the more nature wants to throw quantity at the problem in the hopes that a few strong survive to try again for better times. It is one hell of a cycle and is as starkly cruel and ungraceful as I can imagine. But that is, as they say, life.
This makes me think about Betty, who has been with us now for about fourteen months. Everyone knows that Betty is a lucky dog in having found her way to our home. The quality of her life has improved immeasurably. The cost has been to my wallet and Kim’s workday. And still, her glucose monitor keeps telling us that she needs more and more insulin to survive. We could cut her back to kibble rations and perhaps improve it, but we choose not to. We have come to grips with the reality that nature has given Betty only so much time to enjoy life. We have decided that enjoy it she will. She lives to eat and sleep. There is little more other than a few sniffs and cuddles. We will cuddle her, feed her (breakfast, dinner and a whole array of treats during the day), take her on sniffing walks and then let her sleep. One day there will be only sleep and it will be endless. Until then, we are determined to make the quality of her time as happy for her as it can be (except for when we must bathe her).
I do not worry about the inevitability of death or taxes. The later is the price of humanity and the former is the price of life. Easy come, easy go.