On the Button

Two years ago, I wrote about Banksy, the pseudonymous English street artist whose work sells for millions of dollars—indeed, the artist is believed to net $20 million a year for work that is part graffiti and part performance art.

Part of what I wrote was about the incredible high cost of street art and graffiti—that our federal, state, and local governments spend more on cleaning up and removing this unsolicited public art than on all the various artistic endowments, museums, and grants combined.  Graffiti is our most expensive public art program.

Despite this, I love the work by Banksy.  While our politics differ slightly, I admire the satirical humor of the pieces.  I even admire how the artist has managed to remain anonymous—mostly—while earning millions of dollars, publishing books, and holding exhibitions, as well as continuing to create new works of art all over the world. 

That Banksy has managed to remain anonymous for more than 25 years is truly amazing and if you consider that most of his work has been done clandestinely, almost exclusively without the property owners’ permission, and that it has been done in cities with extensive closed circuit television coverage, it is beyond amazing that Banksy’s identity still remains a secret.  On two occasions, part of the performance art was printing large quantities of fake British bank notes (well, technically, they were British Banksy notes) and even though that is against British law, I doubt that MI5 has spent much time trying to find the artist.

There are a lot of theories about Banksy’s secret identity:  just about every art publication has featured at least one theory.  Seven years ago, HBO produced a documentary that claimed Banksy was actually a team of seven women working together.  The leader, it said, was a blonde, who appeared in many of the artworks.  (Since many of the works are in black and white, we’ll just have to take HBO’s word that the woman is a blonde).  You can probably gather all the people who believe this nonsense and fit them inside a Prius.

Seven years ago, the NYPD arrested Richard Pfeiffer almost in the act of creating what was obviously a work by Banksy.  Pfeiffer, a native of Brooklyn, admitted to being an artist and still had the black marker in his possession when arrested.  After six months of investigation, it turned out that Pfeiffer and his fiancé were simply admiring the work and that the marker found in his pocket was not the type used to create the work.  I’m not sure exactly what the criminal charge would have been, anyway, since the owner of the property sold the section of the wall containing the graffiti for six figures.  Malicious Wealth Giving?  Felonious Enrichment?

Ignoring all the nonsensical theories, there is one credible candidate.  Students at London’s Queen Mary University used computer mapping to plot 140 known works, along with a criminology theory called geographic profiling, to determine that Banksy was actually a Bristol street artist named Robin Gunningham.  If you google “Gunningham + Banksy”, you get over 23,000 links….

Actually, I don’t care who Banksy is and I don’t really want to know the truth.  It is kind of like watching Penn and Teller do magic tricks.  I am a huge fan of their shows and I have absolutely no idea how they do that bullet catching trick.   I’m fairly sure that if I were to spend a few minutes on the internet, I could learn exactly how to do that trick….And never be able to enjoy watching them perform it again.  No thanks!  I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to know more about Robin Gunningham, either.

There is, however, one man who we can be pretty sure is not Banksy.  (Well, two, since my artistic talent is so advanced that I can almost draw a straight line with a ruler.)   Until recently, William Gannon was a town counselor in the small English town on Pembroke.  Being a politician was only a part-time job:  Gannon earns his livelihood as an artist, producing murals at playgrounds and hospitals that he freely admits are reminiscent of Banksy’s work. 

Recently, a photo surfaced of Gannon creating a piece of “public art” at a skateboard park in the 1980’s.  The photo clearly shows the artist, with a spray paint can in hand, creating a piece of graffiti similar to those that made Banksy famous a decade later.  Overnight, newspaper and internet stories shouted that the mystery of Banksy’s real identity had at last been solved:  Gannon was Banksy.

Besieged by reporters, art dealers, and people hoping that Banksy would spray paint something, anything, on the sides of their buildings (or on themselves), Gannon found it impossible to continue working as a city counselor, so a few days ago, he resigned to focus on his new project:  Convincing people he is not Banksy.  This should be fairly easy, since Gannon is absolutely not Banksy.  There is documented proof that Gannon was in England at the times when new Banksy artworks were created in North America, in Gaza, and in Australia.  And Pest Control, the public art agents that handle all of the commercial details for Banksy’s art sales, have confirmed that Gannon is not Banksy.

While Gannon might not be Banksy, he has certainly learned a few lessons about profiting from performance art.  Right now, he’s producing buttons stating:  “I am not Banksy.”

Each limited edition button is numbered and autographed by the artist who is not Banksy.  To get one, you have to promise that you are not Banksy, either.

Run Like a Business

For years, I have heard my colleagues alternately either yearn for the university to be run like a business or bemoan the fact that it already was.   And although the administrators at Enema U frequently claimed they “were going to run the university on sound business principles”, such claims were always just noise from people who had no idea how a business is run.

There are actually very few people in the university who have run businesses.  This is understandable when you remember that a state university is, despite claims to the contrary, a government agency run by bureaucrats who have little or no experience in the real world.  There are many ways to become a top bureaucrat, but few of them involve competency.

One portion of the university, however, is about to become part of the “business world”, and it appears that no one is noticing.  One element of college football and basketball are about to become semi-capitalist and this is going to drastically change the nature of college athletics:  Male college athletes are going to be paid, and that is going to change everything.

At this point, I’m sure that some readers are yelling, “No, they aren’t going to be paid, they can only profit by selling their likenesses to advertise products.”  True enough, but if you think that will not effectively mean the same thing as regular paychecks, you don’t understand the way college athletics work.  The NCAA already has a slew of rules to make sure that colleges can’t unfairly give benefits to players, and athletic programs have ignored and bypassed those regulations for years.  

Thirty-five years ago, the House of Representatives passed limits on how much a congressman could be paid to deliver a speech, ending a long system of legal bribery whereby a lobbying group could pay the congressman a small fortune to stand up at a rubber chicken dinner and publicly announce, “Thank you.”  Jim Wright, the Speaker of the House promptly wrote a very short book containing a few of his speeches, some attempts at prose, and a little corn-pone humor.  At only 117 pages—many of which contained only one word—it was more of a pamphlet than a book.  Nevertheless, lobbying groups and unions immediately bought the bribe…I mean, book, by the case. 

Booster clubs and donors could easily do the same thing with players, perhaps paying a large sum for the right to use the players' images on goods they never intend to produce in quantity.  Several universities (including Enema U) already have private foundations that quietly subsidize coaching salaries, never, ever releasing that information to the public.  Here in New Mexico, various groups have been fighting for decades to have these ‘secret' foundations open their books for public scrutiny, with little success.  Lawyers representing the players will work out many ways to twist the system into what will effectively be salaries.

Currently, the key to having a winning collegiate football team is to have a great coach.  Since the NCAA does not regulate coaching salaries, a handful of schools can offer million dollar contracts to the dozen or so top coaches capable of all but guaranteeing a winning season.  For every team like Texas A&M, Tennessee, Alabama, or Iowa, there were dozens of schools that couldn’t afford to bid on winning one of a dozen or so top coaches available.  The rules, however, have changed:  There are far more good players available than there were coaches, and there are many combinations of good players that can make up a winning team.

The race to recruit players based on salary will benefit those schools with deep pocket donors.  Top athletes, represented by agents, may well demand salaries competitive with players on NFL teams.  And under the new NCAA rules, students will be able to open negotiations with schools three separate times during four years of eligibility.  After a school spends a small fortune to attract a star player, you can imagine the pressure some faculty members may find themselves subjected to if that amazing quarterback reads at the third grade level.

While there are several public colleges that have the funds to allow them to spend a few million dollars to hire the best coaches, there are far fewer with the kind of uber-rich donors to enable a team to pay the top dollars necessary to build that winning team.  This will create a wider division between the top schools and those schools with more financially modest donors.

While no one knows exactly how and how much this change will shake up college football, there are two obvious questions.  First, how will colleges reconcile the new money spent on male players with Title IX, which mandates equal spending between sports for men and women?  There are no sports for women that can generate the type of high-dollar donations to pay an equivalent amount to female players, meaning that their ‘salaries’ will be much lower.  I’m not exactly sure what the basis of the lawsuits will be, but I’m confident that lawyers will be able to come up with something.

The second question is what to do about a donor who has unlimited resources.  What if a billionaire (say one of those new crypto currency gazillionaires) decides to build an unbeatable team at his alma mater?  We have recently seen just such a person spend billions on what appears to be a whim, so why not build a winning football program for far less money?  The NCAA allows each university 85 full ride scholarships, so if you spent a $1 million apiece to recruit the top players, throw in another $10 million for a coaching staff, you should be able to have an unbeatable team for about a quarter of what a new yacht would cost.

NFL teams recognized this problem years ago, instituting a cap on wages and locking players into multiyear contracts with strict collective bargaining agreements.  College athletics has no such protections, at least not yet.  I’m not sure what all the changes coming to college football will be, but we can be certain that athletic programs are going to spend more money than ever before…and be no more transparent about it than now.

What Really Causes Inflation?

Over the last three days, I have listened to politicians from both political parties spout the rankest nonsense about the causes of inflation.  Among the nuttier ideas were corporate greed, currency speculators, low taxes, high taxes, lack of stimulus, too much stimulus, Putin, Covid, the war in Ukraine, and supply chain issues.  Today, a lawmaker added to the list by saying that a woman’s lack of access to abortion causes inflation.

The late Milton Friedman is probably spinning in his grave.

About the only thing that everyone agrees on is that the Federal Reserve prints too much money, which forces me to point out a few facts:  We can start with the fact that while the Federal Reserve is very powerful and can, indeed, pump more money into—or out of—the economy, it is actually the Treasury Department that prints money.  That doesn’t really matter, since the vast majority of money in our economy does not exist as real paper currency. 

Note.  It might surprise you to learn that 60% of all U.S. currency is held overseas and the majority of that money is in the form of $100 bills.  If you are imagining dictators and drug lords with pallets of plastic wrapped bills….Well, yes. 

Let’s start with the basics:  Inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods.  Consider the following overly tortured scenario:  As you are flying across the Pacific, a looming storm forces the pilot to land on a South Pacific Island to wait until the storm passes.  The islanders refuse to allow anyone to disembark, so you and the rest of the passengers are forced to wait on the plane for hours and hours.  Eventually, to help alleviate hunger, the stewardess gives every passenger the equivalent of $5 in the local currency, enabling each passenger to buy a hamburger from one of the locals who brings the food to the plane.  If there are a hundred passengers and the cook brings an equal number of hamburgers, as you can imagine, the native will realize that he can charge $5 apiece for the burgers.

But what happens if the entrepreneur brings 150 burgers to the plane.  Since he’s unwilling to leave with unsold food, he will more than likely drop the price.  A few people won’t want a burger, a few more will want more than one, and the majority will only want one.  A few enterprising passengers will probably even pool their money and try to buy three burgers for $10.  However the bargaining goes, the price of a burger is likely to drop when more burgers are available.

Consider what would happen if the stewardess had given each passenger the equivalent of $10 in local currency and the burger man had brought only 70 burgers to the planet the price would probably rise rather quickly.  Passengers would pool their money and divide the available food, sending the price for each burger substantially higher than $5 apiece.  This is an example of too much money chasing too few goods.

As Milton Friedman famously said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” 

Sure, corporations are greedy—they are supposed to be greedy.  And if someone is speculating that a commodity will go up in price, someone else is speculating that it will go down and neither bet changes the resulting price.  These actions don’t cause inflation because neither corporations nor speculators are able to print money and increase the supply of money.

Think back to the start of 2020:  While we began the year with a roaring economy, the very real fear of Covid forced a widespread economic shutdown.  When businesses shuttered their doors and employees stayed home, our government began a liberal policy of subsidizing both consumers and businesses.  Calling the massive injection of money into society liberal is an understatement.  During the financial crisis of 2008, the government spent—depending on which numbers you choose to use—between $700 billion and an even $1 trillion.  By comparison, the direct stimulus checks of 2020 and 2021 alone cost more than $2 trillion—twice the amount spent to combat the 2008 financial crisis. 

A tremendous amount of new money was injected into the economy, yet at the same time, Americans were unable to spend it.  As restaurants and businesses shut their doors, the GDP of the United States contracted by 3.5%, in the first such contraction in decades.

Surprisingly, there is a relatively simple formula to figure out how much inflation is likely to occur in an economy:  the Quantity Theory of Money:

In this formula, M=the monetary supply, v=the velocity of money (how many times money changes hands during a year), P=the price level (inflation), and Y_R=the Gross Domestic Product (the value of all goods and services produced in the country during a year).  In the year and a half after the start of the pandemic in 2020, both the velocity of money and the GDP of the country contracted, while the amount of money in the economy increased dramatically.  It doesn’t take a slide rule to see that P (inflation) had to increase to keep pace with the increase in money.

At the same time that this new wave of money entered the economy, the amount of goods and services available to purchase diminished because factories were shut down, employees didn’t go to work, and the supply chain tied itself into knots while ports became jammed with unloaded ships and containers waiting for trucks to deliver the goods to your local stores.  Despite fewer people were working, the savings rate of Americans grew during this time.  Pent up demand for goods increased over time….and then the stores reopened and people began to satisfy their desire to purchase new goods.  If you go back to our analogy of the hungry passengers on the plane, it became a situation where each passenger was starving, had a basket full of money, and the vendor only showed up with two dozen burgers.

During times of inflation, it is the job of the Federal Reserve to adjust monetary policy to lower inflation while attempting to maintain high employment, a goal that is usually mutually exclusive.  Among the tools the Federal Reserve can use to accomplish this is raising the Federal Reserve Rate (the rate the Fed charges banks to borrow money).  Raising the Fed Rate triggers an increase in several interest rates—including home and car loans—resulting in fewer loans being made and effectively lowering the amount of cash circulating in our economy.  Accordingly, the Fed has increased the Fed rate twice in the last few months and predicts that inflation will begin to drop slowly over the next year.

The Federal Reserve always confidently predicts a return to normalcy.  And after every one of its policy failures, it tells us that it has learned from past mistakes and it is better equipped to handle future crises.  The Fed told us it had learned from the mistakes of the Great Depression, from the stagflationary period of the 1974-82, from the collapse of the tech market in 2000, and from the housing collapse of 2008.  This string of failures makes the Fed absolutely positive it can prevent the recession that normally follows periods of high inflation.  Personally, I plan to keep my kitchen pantry well stocked.

The government can do several things to decrease inflation:  It can spend less money, it can stop giving subsidies, and it can raise taxes as these are actions that will decrease the amount of money in the economy.  Forgiving student loans, extending unemployment benefits, increasing welfare programs, and giving cost of living adjustments to those on Social Security are all actions that will raise inflation.  I’m not saying that those aren’t good ideas, but they absolutely will raise inflation.

And what about all those other looney ideas about the cause of inflation that I listed in the first paragraph?  Crazy statements (like those from attention-seeking politicians) tell us nothing about our economy….but they do convey a great deal about the motivations of the speakers (and even more about their low opinion of their listeners’ intelligence).

Commencement Time

It is the end of the spring semester, and campuses everywhere are preparing for Commencement Day, a time when students are forced to spend money to rent a ugly bathrobe and sit in a crowded auditorium with inadequate air conditioning while someone the administration hopes will donate money delivers a boring speech giving advice to students who neither asked for it nor will listen to it.  Neither the proud parents in the stands, the assembled faculty, nor the administration will listen to the speech, either, as it is their job to just sit and smile and wonder who started this stupid tradition.

Over the years at Enema U, I sat through dozens of these ceremonies as I owed countless favors to my department head, a kind man who gave me my start in edjumacation.  The university had three commencement ceremonies a year, and I was invariably asked to attend.  I quickly learned the only way to survive the boredom was to take along a book.  After the faculty were seated at the front of the auditorium, I’d pull out my book, receiving strong looks of disapproval from my colleagues sitting close by.  Long before the speeches were over, however, these same colleagues would whisper, “Don’t turn the page yet!”

Having attended dozens of these ceremonies, I’m an expert on graduation advice.  I should qualify that statement with two caveats, however.  First, while I have been to way too many of these silly proceedings, I’ve never been to one of my own graduation ceremonies, though I had half a dozen opportunities, including one this year.  I finished a degree in art history last year, but the pandemic delayed the ceremony until just a few months ago.  I thought about attending, then I laughed and decided I could just read a book at home.

Secondly, I don’t have a lot of advice for students leaving college, as I haven’t done that yet, myself.  I have no idea what these students should do, personally, I’d suggest they don’t.  Just stay in school forever, it’s working for me.

While I have no idea what college graduates should do, I can offer some advice as to what incoming college students should do.  Let me give some advice, both unrequested and probably useless, to those high school students who intend to go to college this fall.  I was a student for a long time, then spent a couple of decades teaching, and now I’ve been a student again for several years.  Who could possibly know the system better than I?

Here’s how to go to college:

First, don’t go to a college you can’t afford.  Every university, and every department within the university, will look you right in the eyes and tell you that if you graduate from their program, you can easily pay off those hideous student loans they want to saddle you with.  Notice, however, that none of those hucksters will offer to cosign the loan with you.  Ask either the recruiter or your prospective department head what the average starting pay is for their graduates that find work.  If your student loans require more than 10% of what you can reasonably expect to make, that is not a viable major.

Note:  I can just hear you asking, “But isn’t the government getting ready to pay off our student loans?” TANSTAAFL.  If you don’t know what that means, look it up.  (Better yet, improve your education and read Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.)  Eventually, even the bloated plutocrats in Washington will realize that if your education doesn’t have enough value for you to pay for it, it doesn’t have enough value for the taxpayers to foot the bill.

As a student, pick a major that with which you can reasonably expect to earn a living.  Those liberal arts degrees are a lot of fun—I should know, I have a handful of them—but there are no pressing needs for more people with degrees in Music Appreciation.  If your prospective department head doesn’t have employment data for recent graduates, that’s probably a good indicator that you should pick a different major. 

Here’s another way to evaluate a major:  How many math courses does your major require?  There is a direct link between future earnings and how much math is required to graduate.  If your major only requires you to take a math course titled “Hooray for Numbers!” and is taught in the Education Department, the average pigeon is far more likely to put a deposit on a new car than you are.

As a student, maybe you can take the required general education courses the first year, but as soon as possible and at least by the second year, you should have a plan that will take you through a degree and into your career.  If the only thing that will make you happy in life is that degree in English Literature, then go ahead and get one, but earn that degree at a university that you can afford and preferably while working to defray the cost.  If you think working while going to school is hard, just wait until you try to earn a living with a degree in Gender Studies.

Far too many bright and capable students have been told their whole lives that they should “do something good with their lives.”  These students come to college, do fairly well, and simply drift through the curriculum, usually winding up majoring in education, sociology, or one of the liberal arts.  These students have no real passion for these fields, they just either find them interesting or fairly easy to finish.  These are the students who end up with high cost degrees, large loans, and little desire to work in those fields.  I’ve lost track of the number of students who worked for a couple of years in either social work or public education, only to quit and look for something more rewarding.

Okay, you’ve picked a major.  Now what?

Pick the right professors.  Sad to say, not every professor in every department is worth a glass of warm spit.  Unless you have absolutely no choice, never take a class from a professor until you find out what the class is going to be like.  Make friends with other students in the department and ask them about their experiences.  Look up the professor’s class schedule and sit in on a class.  And always look up your professor in RateMyProfessors.Com.  The student evaluations at this site are generally far more honest than those done by the department, as the students believe, all too frequently correctly, that those evaluations are not as anonymous as the university claims. 

Upon taking the class, see who turns up to teach it.  If your professor doesn’t show up for the first two weeks, sending either a substitute or a teaching assistant for the first two weeks—drop the course and take it from someone else.  A professor who doesn’t respect the class is unlikely to respect a student, either.

Now, that we have a major and the right professor, what’s next?  Go to class.  Go to every damn class. 

You would not believe the number of students who regularly skip class.  Why students choose to pay for a class and then do not attend has always puzzled me.  I doubt that movie theaters have a problem with patrons buying a ticket and then not sitting down to watch the movie, yet a ticket to a movie is far cheaper than what every single class costs.  Needless to say, if for no other reason than the instructor will notice who regularly attends, students who are present for every class do much better in the course.

Do the required reading.  Most people would be surprised to learn that a significant portion of every class never buys a copy of the required reading.  Campus bookstores know this and usually only order enough copies of the required textbooks for a fraction of the class.  An even larger portion of the class evidently keeps those books under their bed, hoping to absorb magic vibrations from the pages while they sleep, since they certainly never open the books and actually read them.  Read the damn book before the relevant lecture and you will be more than halfway home.

And my last piece of advice is to learn how to take notes, which is a subject that most schools seem not to bother with.  Learn a good note taking system and use it.  I recommend the Cornell Note Taking System, but there are other good systems.   Take notes, then later that same day, type your notes into a computer, adding information from the professor’s PowerPoint slides.  Take a look at the two pages of notes to the right.  Which do you want to study the night before the exam.  Not only will this be easier to use, but by typing them the same day as the class, it reinforces your understanding of the material.  Try and find a study partner in the class who will do the same thing and exchange copies of your notes—sometimes another student will hear something or understand something you didn’t.

That’s it.  Want to go to college?  Pick a good school, a realistic major taught by good professors whose books you read while going to class and taking notes and you will graduate on time and have a decent career. 

Having done all that, if you feel like it, you can even go to that commencement ceremony and hear a boring speech.  I recommend taking a book.