Some People Will Protest Anything!

This story was so “out there” I had to check to make sure it was not a spoof from the Onion or other satirical website, but sure enough reputable sources like NPR and the Boston Globe confirm that a small group protesting against the hanging of Renoir paintings gathered in front of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts last week.

When they so eloquently say, “Renoir Sucks” and “God Hates Renoir,” they refer to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, born in 1841, a French Impressionist painter.  They don’t object because his work was obscene or anti-American.  They just don’t like it and think as a painter he “is the most overrated artist east, west, north and south of the river Seine.”  Apparently his trees don’t look enough like trees (or something).  Last spring, the leader started an Internet petition urging the President to "remove all of the literally awful Renoir paintings hanging in the National Gallery in Washington DC."  It has been taken down for lack of support.

When looking for a cause in an attempt to shine the spotlight on himself and gather a following, is this the best someone could come up with?

I shouldn’t even care about this except that it reminded me of one more group that tries to manipulate us and gets away with it more often than is reasonable.  It is not the news media and politicians that I highlighted last time.  This time it’s the art critics.

(So much passes for art these days, as it is extoled by self-proclaimed artists and the professional critics that this deception could be the topic of an entire book, not just a short on-line essay – and it probably has been.  In the interest of space, I will stick to one contrasting example in the visual arts.)

See this short video titled:  A Visual Odyssey: Christopher Wool.  This is also a serious piece (not satire) from a reputable site featuring two critics lovingly describing the artist as a “hero of our generation” with a work filled with “complexities and ambiguities.”  They just go on and on pulling our leg about how he uses yellow as a “non-color” to accentuate his black and white painting.  (It’s enough to make you roll your eyes until it hurts!)

See one example of his work at the left.  Nothing here is even identifiable as a tree, bears the slightest resemblance to anything in nature, and looks like little more than an accident.  The critics, of course, would dismiss my opinion as that of one who just didn’t have the capacity or training to “understand” such a masterpiece.  And so goes the con, but how many people get drawn into these Emperor's-New-Clothes scenarios.

See this gallery of Wool's work and compare to a gallery of Renoir at the bottom of the Wikipedia page and judge for yourself who, if anyone, should be protested against.

When is a Dollar Not a Dollar?

Last week was the 35^th anniversary of the release of the videogame Pac-man.  In terms of computer technology this is practically ancient history, but at the time guiding the little yellow circle with the pie-wedge mouth around the screen eating up the dots while avoiding the four ghosts in pursuit for 25 cents per shot became a big hit.  It even spawned a sequel game, Ms. Pac-man.

At first glance the natural reaction might be:  why should we even care about the anniversary of an archaic videogame except to make those of us who remember it feel even older.  This USA Today article put a spin on the news that should be of interest to everyone and will help to explain why so many times in the past I have emphasized the need for good decision-making.

“Had you dropped 25 cents into a brokerage account on May 22, 1980 – rather than in that oh-so-alluring Pac-Mac coin slot – that quarter would have been worth $1,818.27 (in 2015 dollars) had you bought and held the best stock in the Standard & Poor’s 500 instead.”  Of course, the chance of identifying and investing in exactly the right stock is easy to talk about in retrospect but is extremely small in reality.  Nonetheless, they go on to say that a quarter invested in a fairly broad index of stocks, a mutual fund representing the S&P 500, would be worth $4.88 today.  They also remind us that avid players rarely stopped at one game and, perhaps over the course of the year might easily have dropped $100, one quarter at a time, into the Pac-man slot.  That $100 would have grown to almost $2000 over those 35 years.

This is all very interesting from a hypothetical standpoint, especially if you were not a videogame fan and perhaps weren’t even born when Pac-man debuted.  To me the power of the story has nothing to do with videogames, it has to do with the idea of wise and foolish spending that I have emphasized over and over in these 400+ essays emphasizing how we often create our own money problems by our choices and behaviors.

The common example used by financial planners is the daily or weekly stop for the expensive cup of fancy coffee.  Cut that out or at least cut back, they say, and your financial future will be much brighter.  But that’s only a handy example, an easily identifiable substitute for all the other decisions we make.  I cannot even count the number of times I’ve pointed out that spending money on products, pills and various unproven remedies, cures and so-called healthier options may actually harm your health, but even if they are totally safe, it still is a waste of money.  The list is long, but includes:  dietary supplements, GMO avoidance, organic foods, other food fads and exotic fruits and berries, bottled water instead of tap water, fad diets that promise results without effort, performance bracelets, products marked up in price based on the use of the positive or negative “trigger words” (green, natural, all-natural, antioxidants, ancient wisdom, holistic, sustainable, gluten-free, probiotic, vitamin-rich, chemical-free, low testosterone, mercury, MSG, r-BGH, Omega-3, quantum mechanics, carbon dioxide, etc.) to entice or scare with no science behind the claims.  Furthermore, every time a company redoes it's formula or menu or is forced to reprint labels due to "popular sentiment," the costs of these adjustments will be passed on to us, the consumers.

From the information above, a penny saved is not a penny earned.  A dollar saved and prudently invested over 35 years is almost $20 earned!  Likewise each dollar wasted on unproven products based on vague or even false claims is almost $20 unavailable in retirement.  This is not a one-time waste; it adds up from week to week and year to year.  Remember, the bottled water industry alone is almost $11 billion; supplements were at $32 billion in 2012 and projected to grow to $60 billion by 2021.  Think of how much better off we would all be if those funds were growing in IRAs and 401(k)s instead.