This and That (2)

I.  In the grocery store the other day I saw 12-packs of cola selling for $3.33.  At the end of the aisle was a big sign announcing 24-packs of the same product for $7.68.  How much critical thinking does it take to figure out that two 12-packs is a much better deal - $6.66 vs. $7.68?  It’s like someone walking up and handing out dollar bills just for paying attention.

II.  Will the day come when no one has a vocabulary larger than 20,000 words, because all other words have been declared by someone or other to be hurtful or offensive?  We will run out of letter-words and have to double up - the N-word, the F-word, the B2-word, the C23-word, etc.

III.  A question that seems to be coming up more frequently:  Is any particular website (or Facebook posting) real, a parody or someone’s idea of a joke?  It’s getting harder and harder to tell them apart.

IV.  Has the news media deteriorated because of the American need to be entertained?  We will no longer stand for the talking heads, so they send reporters to the scene of an incident long after everyone else has moved on, having them stand out in the weather (sometimes in the dark) to tell us about the shooting or collision that happened hours ago.  To keep us from turning back to our smartphones, they must show us more non-news just to keep things everyone interested, to elicit amusement or outrage:  cute pets or wildlife, what’s “trending,” (usually dire) predictions of the future, opinions of non-experts like "the man on the street” or their media colleagues.  Based on what they deliver, I no longer believe they deserve to be referred to as journalists.  Many just do Google searches, pass along press releases, publish leaks, tell us their opinion of celebrity or political Tweets or send cameras to public or weather events.  As one friend put it, “If we could only harness the energy of Walter Cronkite spinning in his grave, our problems would be solved!”

V.  Breakfast is back, rising like a phoenix.  This study reported in an August 17, 2017 article finds that children who skipped breakfast “were missing out on key nutrients which impacted their productivity throughout the day.”  Researchers discovered this after studying the habits and performance of 802 children.

Why the phoenix analogy?  Years ago breakfast was “your most important meal.” As indicated above, it got you off to a good start.  But recently this has been the subject of debate rather than accepted wisdom.  About 6 years ago people began calling it a myth, as here where they come right out and say breakfast is not important.  Others hopped on board the myth bandwagon.  The controversy centered around whether skipping breakfast was good or bad for weight control rather than its effect on overall health or performance.  A 2014 CBS report recommends eating breakfast because previous studies gave conflicting advice, “with some suggesting that eating breakfast can help people lose weight and others finding the opposite.”  This continued conflicting advice is clear from a 2015 headline reading:  “New Study Shows No Signs That Skipping Breakfast Will Make You Gain Weight.”  But an earlier CBS report said it would.

As of today breakfast is good for children, and another study last January said that “skipping breakfast or eating late in the day could raise the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.”  Perhaps the phoenix comparison was a bad one and a ping pong ball is more appropriate.  What’s a mother (or a dieter) to do?!  Pick a side and you can find a study to back you up.

What's Wrong With Peanut Butter?

Our local television news reported a few days ago that some people have started GoFundMe campaigns to pay for children carrying a negative balance in their school lunch account.  This is a noble effort.  But what shocked me was the explanation that those children are fed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead of the hot lunch.  They made it sound like a significant hardship.

The reason I was surprised is that throughout high school, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, not just sometime, all the time – every single day – 720 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  My high school did not have a hot lunch program.  Everyone brought in lunch in a bag, bought something to drink and sat in the combination auditorium, gymnasium and cafeteria (without tables) to eat.  My mother packed the sandwich with a small box of raisins and I bought a carton of milk.  There was not a single time I felt deprived.

I still enjoy peanut butter sandwiches, but today, apparently a peanut butter sandwich for lunch is a tragedy.  Maybe it’s a lack of perspective.

A few years ago I wrote about another local crisis invented by the perspective-challenged.  Children eligible for free school lunch had to depend on a different program in the summer.  A local charity set up a place where the children could meet and receive a free lunch during summer vacation.  The crisis in this case was that they were forced to eat while sitting at picnic tables outside, that is, not in an air-conditioned building.  Perspective might remind us that widely available air conditioning is a very recent convenience.  For thousands of years people survived without it.  Also, some people go on picnics and eat outside in the summertime on purpose!

Finally, on the same day I heard about the peanut butter crisis, our neighborhood website brought another problem.  “There is a cat that's been hit by a car” on one of the neighborhood streets.  “Does anyone know what to do? The kids are going to see it walking to the bus stop.”  Oh, no!  The kids might see a dead cat on the way to school.  One reply suggested that the solution involved a shovel and a garbage bag, but this very sensible advice was rejected as somehow not good enough.  Perhaps it was not showing sufficient respect the to dead cat.  (You can’t make this stuff up.)

When people see that peanut butter and jelly is not good enough for a school lunch, that eating outside is not good enough for a free lunch program and that a shovel and a bag are not good enough for a dead cat (not to mention the potential trauma from seeing a dead cat on the way to school), I conclude that maybe life is not tough enough.  When these kinds of issues creep into the crisis category we perhaps don’t appreciate how good we have it and have lost perspective about what a real crisis looks like.

Testing Our Critical Thinking

At least once a day, though we may not even realize it, our critical thinking is tested.  I received this in an email from a friend who participates in a weekly walking group at a local nature center.  It’s good exercise and a pleasant time, but one of the participants wanted to let us know about additional benefits.

The article attached to the email was about something called forest bathing, and it tells how walking in the woods can be healthy, in fact, healthier than walking down a city sidewalk.  The headline tells us:  “A Retreat To Nature Can Boost Immunity And Mood.”

But forest bathing is more than just walking in the woods and enjoying the natural surroundings.  The outing in the article was led by a Certified Forest Therapy Guide.  It is the guide’s job to encourage participants to “slow down and become immersed in the natural environment” and to help them “tune in to the smells, textures, tastes and sights of the forest.”  The guide leads them through exercises to help them isolate each of these senses to take in the unique sights, sounds and smells.

It’s clearly not like hiking, because the forest bathers have no particular destination.  It’s a slow, mindful walk, akin to walking meditation practiced at some yoga retreats.  The emphasis is on the present moment, rather than on plans or worries.

After describing the experience, they list the health benefits.  The practice began in Japan where one study showed that walking in a forest environment “led to more significant reductions in blood pressure and certain stress hormones” than walking the same distance in the city.  I followed the link and found that this study had only 16 participants – was that 8 in each group (a test group and a control group)?  If so, that is an extremely small sample size; if not, it's not really an experiment. (And always remember that linked does not mean causes.)

They cite other “preliminary” studies as well.  One referred to as a “small study” and another with no mention of sample size or the experimental design, but both touting benefits of being in close proximity to trees or enjoying certain scents of the forest.

Now comes the worrisome part.  Apparently we are not able to get these benefits on our own.  The Association of Nature & Forest Therapy is training and certifying Forest Therapy guides to help.  Using this rather sparse scientific justification and an unsupported assertion that “work-related stress accounts for up to $190 billion in health care costs each [year],” their representative makes a leap of faith that forest bathing should be part of every doctor’s toolkit and covered by health insurance – "It's my hope that the health care system will include [forest therapy] into the range of services they reimburse for.”

Now I don’t doubt that taking a nice quiet leisurely walk in the woods, being sensitive to and appreciating the natural surroundings is surely healthier and more relaxing than walking down a crowded city sidewalk.  That’s a no-brainer.  But do you need a coach to benefit from it, do you need to pay and should insurance be involved?

The whole thing begins to sound like the case of therapeutic touch, which has no scientific basis, but for which insurance companies reimburse hospitals.  It reminds me of the company that sells scooters to the elderly with the sales pitch, “if Medicare doesn’t pay for yours, it’s free.”  The forest bathing business (and it is a business) wants to slide into that category enjoyed by some other health-related businesses – “your insurance will cover most or all of the cost.”  We’ve heard the sales pitches over and over and should know deep down that when no one is paying, no one is caring how much it cost and no one is concerned about abuse or true quality.  Patients get placebo benefits and the therapists get insurance money.  Our health costs rise and everyone wonders why.

Homeowner's Insurance - a Different Perspective

About the middle of April there was an isolated hailstorm in the neighborhood.  A few miles away was nothing, but on my block and in the immediate surrounding area houses and cars suffered some damage.  The hail tore window screens, chipped and cracked vinyl siding and (supposedly) damaged roofs.

I looked at the damage to my house and decided I could repair six screens myself, and with the help of a friend I repaired the siding damage with leftover siding from the matching shed that the previous owner built in the backyard.  The roof looked OK.  Total cost was about $30.

Over the next three months, however, driving through the neighborhood was like walking down the aisles of a home improvement show.  On well over half the lawns were signs from a dozen or more siding and roofing companies.  The hammering went on constantly, even on weekends.  The siding color on at least half of the houses in my subdivision has changed since Easter.  (Many of them are less than 10 years old.)

Everyone understands the typical thought process: “I paid all that money every year to the insurance company and now it’s time to get some back.”

A couple of things occurred to me.  First I assume the actions of my neighbors will raise my insurance premiums regardless of whether I filed a claim and regardless of whether they have the same insurance company.  Insurance companies are driven by risk of future claims as much as by today’s claims.

Second, this seems very much out of sync with the history of property insurance as I understand it.

Back in colonial times, and even more recently in the rural areas, when someone had a loss the community would often work together to fix it.  If a barn burned down, neighbors would have a barn-raising event where everyone would pitch in.  Wikipedia explains these events were particularly common in 18^th- and 19^th-century America.  If a family was in distress, finding a job too big to manage alone, the problem was solved by “enlisting members of the community, unpaid, to assist in the building of their neighbors' barns. Because each member was entitled to recruit others for help, the favor would eventually return to each participant.”  That was the custom.

Soon in the cities this practice faded away, but people still needed protection from destructive acts of nature.  Insurance took the place of community action.  Companies administered the insurance by collecting from everyone and distributing the money to those in need.  That change replaced the act of contributing tools and labor toward the erection of a new barn with an insurance payment.

No one in those 18^th century communities would imagine thinking, “Great, my barn is burning.  Now I can get paid back for all the times I had to raise someone else’s barn.”  This would be a very silly reaction.  Weird as it may sound, seen from this perspective, paying premiums to an insurance company is not a cost of owning a house, but an act of helping your neighbors and contributing to the community.

Sure the insurance companies haven’t done much to instill this kind of attitude.  They always act like the reluctant neighbor that doesn’t want to pitch in.  But this attitude may be healthier than resenting the annual premium payment and rejoicing when some major or minor disaster brings the opportunity for monetary revenge.

Anticipating Panic About Tax Reform

I noticed in passing a sense of panic among a number of people over the proposed GOP tax reform plan.  I went on line to try to find the source of the information and found articles from January and April of this year and from August 2016 (based on campaign promises), but nothing about a current proposed plan.  I finally tracked down the source of the information, a local newsletter with no references cited.

The newsletter was consistent with those older sources, warning of the loss of itemized deductions and personal exemptions as the standard deduction is raised to $24,000 from the 2016 level of $12,600.  The tone was the same.  Loss of those deductions (medical expenses, state income and property taxes, home mortgage interest, gifts to charity, casualty and theft losses, and some job expenses) would be a hardship on the middle class.  This got me thinking about taxes and deductions.

Several references told me that 45% of households pay no income taxes at all.  These are typically those who don’t earn enough (not the rich using loopholes).  Their attitude should be, “Reform away; we don’t care!”

Another source tells that only about 30% of filers use the itemized deduction.  That means that only about one in six households has any stake in the outcome of this debate.  And most of those are in the upper income range.  As this graph shows the 30% average becomes 60% for those above 75k, almost 80% for those in the 100k to 200k earnings range and almost 95% for those households making over 200k per year.  The number who shouldn’t care increases to 5 out of 6.

Next let’s look again at itemized deductions vs. the standard deduction for a sample lower income family.  Remember, itemizing only starts to matter once you hit the standard deduction, because that is what you get anyway without doing anything or keeping any records.  On top of that, medical expenses don’t count until you have spent 10% of income.

For a household making $68,000 per year, approximately 20% above average, under the old plan they would subtract $12,600 and $4050 for each exemption (use $12,150 assuming a family of 3) and pay 15% of the remaining $43,250.  Under the new plan they would subtract $24,000 and pay at only 12% of the remaining $44,000.  How high would their itemized deductions have to be under today’s system to pay the same amount?

Surprisingly the answer is $32,800 (plus $6,800 more if the medical bills are used to qualify) in itemized deductions!  That’s an unusually high number of deductions for a fairly modest income.  It’s logical to conclude that any low to middle income family hurt by this would be a rare exception.

So what we are left with is speculation on what the proposal would look like and typical exaggeration about how many it would hurt and how severely.  From this cursory overview it seems the ones who would be most affected are those who buy big, expensive houses or who give to charity as a tax strategy rather than out of generosity or those unfortunates with very high medical expenses.

The problem is that I doubt anyone will look at it even this thoroughly.  Instead the parties will fight back and forth expressing shock and outrage (more outrage!) at the “rhetoric” of the other side.

Think of how easy it would be for someone to post a simple spreadsheet form on line and let each family calculate the difference between any new proposal and the current system.  This way after filling in a few numbers, everyone would know approximately where they stood without the breathless hyperbole and political spin.  Does anyone want to bet we see this kind of critical thinking scenario instead of the usual anxious generalizations about hurting the middle class or favoring the rich?