An Epiphany

It has been several weeks since my initial viewing of the cinematic blockbuster known as Black Panther. As a Marvel comics fan since childhood, the robust response to the first superhero film featuring a black man that was not an alien (Hancock), vampire (Blade) or a spawn of Satan (Spawn) was refreshing and revolutionary. (Ranker comics posted a list of 59 black comic superheroes) Although Black Panther had made cameo appearances in the Avengers sequels, this feature film was something transcendent, seismic in its cultural representation. Wakanda is a fictitious east African nation replete with the geographical topography of both the ancient and modern yet bereft of the endemic visage of abject poverty, turmoil and pestilence that seems to be the singular optics of the "Dark Continent" when transcribed through the lens of most European documentarians.

I had a visceral reaction to the magnificent tapestry of brilliant tribal insignia, markings and garments to denote the cultural diversity of the indigenous people of the nation. Even the representative combat was a departure from the wholesale tribal warfare that has decimated regions of the continent. While YouTube is crowded with a plethora of putative "deep" analogies and interpretations of the film ranging from Hoteps to the rabidly racist, many seem to overshoot the organic response of many who have viewed the first billion dollar movie featuring a predominantly black cast and the first ever black director.

Black Panther's commercial success has annihilated the myopic, unsubstantiated implicit bias that has impeded the green lighting of projects with a different pattern recognition. But at a very granular level this film portrayed an image to the survivors of the Diaspora of a place that was the antithesis of what many have been led to believe about the cradle of civilization. I distinctly recall a segment of the movie "Boyz in the Hood" where two young boys were chopping it up verbally before they were about to throw hands. (fight) One of the insults hurled was,"At least I'm not an African booty scratcher". This was a 90s film but that flash point was reflective of the disdain inculcated for anything associated with a connection to African descent. There was actually a proposal made by Wesley Snipes in the 90s to bring Black Panther to the big screen. There is a serendipity in the over two decades delay for the premiere of this industry-disrupting film. Under the tumultuous political climate that has accompanied the demagoguery of a political dilettante and the realized or failed expectations of the first black President of the United States, King T'Challa, the powerful women of his kingdom and yes Eric Killmonger resonated on an unprecedented level with indigenous Africans and their forced immigrant cousins. The push back from some has been why would black people in this country be galvanized by a fictional character and kingdom.

The first part of my answer would be to have them read Donald Bogle's book," Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films." I would then simply get them to consider the paucity of alternatives that celebrate, although a fictional account, the brilliance, power and majesty of people of color in this country. Selah

 

                                               Before You Get Your Iphone40,  Please Read This

                                                   

If I told you I was a millionaire, would my words become instantly credible?  I have been thinking about how we collectively experience the world through the lens of economics.  You can either section your lifetime into thirds or quarters.  For the first 20-25 years of our existence we are essentially consumers (early childhood, adolescence, teens, early 20s) with no real expectation of contributing to the gross domestic product per capita other than stuff being purchased for us.  An unintended consequence of child labor laws introduced during the Industrial Revolution to mitigate or eliminate the egregious working conditions of minors in factories was a virtual suspension of the demand of children, teenagers to contribute in any meaningful way to the growth of our national economy.  Many of us enter adulthood with only a vicarious understanding of substantive employment that requires responsibility and accountability.

The next third or two quarters of our lives are spent in the “real world” of adulthood or initially extended adolescence (college) to prepare ourselves for a career so that this heavily subsidized, acquired skill set will afford us the means and wherewithal to change the trajectory of our lives as professionals hopefully in our chosen field of endeavor.  According to the Pew Economic Mobility Project, forty percent of kids raised in a family in the top income quintile stay there as adults, and 40% of those born into the lowest quintile remain there.  Only 8% of those raised in the top quintile drop to the lowest quintile as adults.  Unfortunately, most of the sixty percent that don’t remain in the lowest quintile are finding themselves in the hinterlands of the middle-class, an amorphous term that seem to vary based on geographical location.  According to a Rutgers survey based on a nationwide sampling, only 51% of those who have graduated college since 2006 are now employed full time (this is a 2012 article).  Twenty percent are in graduate school.  The rest……….

One of the great concerns about those in the second and third quarters of their lives is the growing menace of indebtedness be it consumer loans like credit cards or the incredulous two trillion dollar nationwide debt in the form of student loans. Only 52% of American families say there were able to save anything in 2010, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance.  The median American family’s net worth fell to $77,300 in 2010 from $126,400 in 2007 (due in large part to the housing bubble implosion), according to the same survey.  That erased nearly two decades of accumulated wealth.   Five of every six American families earn more than their respective parents did, according to the Pew Economic Mobility Project, but adjusted for inflation, the median average hourly wage was lower in 2011 than it was in 2001.  If the average American household is out earning the previous generation, why does the future look so ominous for so many people in the second tier of their lives?  

Wealth accumulation in this country is arcing in a manner that is hyper concentrating into the hands of what I call the uber class. Please understand that this is not an indictment of the investment class or those who have amassed fortunes in the Internet Age.  According to economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, 80% of all income growth from 1980 to 2005 went to the top 1% of wage earners. Although this is a dated statistic, this hyper migration of wealth is continuing at a rapid clip which bodes well for advocates of unfettered capitalism.  However, America is aging, which brings me to my focus on those who find themselves in the third tier or fourth quarter of their lives. Older workers (age 55+) are about to overtake younger workers (age 25-34) for the first time.  We have more people working beyond what used to be the cursory retirement age of 55 because of simple economics.  They don’t have enough saved to transition into what are supposed to be the golden years. That dismal disclosure uncovers an alarming trend that shows that many who started their careers in the second tier or second quarter either never started investing in their retirement or never made enough that consistently placing 5-10% of their income into a retirement account was an option.

According to the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, Americans will inherit 27 trillion dollars over the next four decades.  While that is a staggering amount of wealth/assets to be transferred in the future, a lot of seniors find themselves in dire straits financially after a career of earning less than the national median income.  One of the surging expenses tied to the geriatric community is health care costs.  The U.S. makes up less than 5% of the world’s population, but a third of the world’s spending on pharmaceuticals, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare.  The private sector shift from defined benefit plans (pensions) to defined contribution plans (401ks) has left millions of seniors either underfunded or unfunded (lack of participation) in their putative transition to retirement.  Those 100 dollars a month they might have been encouraged to place in their 401k, 403b or 457 plans seemed to be frivolity at the time it was suggested.  From age 18 to 65 that currency of Ben Franklin could have compounded to become $306,667 assuming a 9% rate of return annually according to an illustration by Schwab.com.  The wealth snowball is inconspicuous, unsexy and flat out boring.  Lotteries have become the fantasy utility for covering the benign neglect that many have engaged in when it comes to planning for their life after a career in the workforce.

I am writing about this because I have witnessed this unfold with a number of colleagues who found their sense of community in the ever shrinking bandwidth known as middle or upper-middle class.  Their lives were anything but pedestrian. They followed the blueprint of college, military or vocational school; raising their families in the suburbs, ascension up the corporate ladder in both the public and private sector and finally peregrinating to the precipice of eligibility for AARP cards.  The dissonance in this journey has been the inordinate amount of unpreparedness for ostensibly 25 or more years of unsubsidized existence.  Certainly their paid for homes and nest eggs mitigate some of the trauma of reduced income.  The Social Security Act of 1935, originally named the Economic Security Act has transubstantiated into something it was never supposed to be.  The vast majority of people reaching age 62, the minimum age eligibility, are blowing through that milestone with almost no resources to sustain them in their post-career life. There is an ominous sign posted in the Capuchin Crypt in Rome.  It says,” As you are, we were.  As we are, you shall be.  It is my hope that the national narrative changes to get millennials to follow a different trajectory before they reach their Iphone40 years.  There is SO MUCH information available in addition to a phalanx of financial tools to get them started in realizing that the future that they want will be shaped by the money habits they embrace or adopt today.

DEAR NFL and NBA

( An open letter to the leagues in light of the pit of financial misery so many players find themselves in after retirement)

I recently watched the Oscar-winning Animated Short executive produced by Kobe Bryant.  It was a brilliant visual rendering of a poem he composed to announce his retirement from the game of basketball. Existentially it gives mere mortals a glimpse at what transcendent athletes meditated on in adolescence before reaching the stratospheric heights of sports superstardom. One line in the film gave me pause and insight into what undergirds the palpable passion of so many who vicariously and actually make a living as a professional athlete.

Kobe said, “From the moment I started rolling my dad’s tube socks; I would shoot an imaginary game winning shot in the Great Western Forum.  I knew one thing was real,… I fell in love with you.  A love so deep I gave you my all; from my mind and body, to my spirit and soul.” This quote more than likely encapsulates the sentiment of the legion of men who have given everything for the mathematically improbable opportunity to catch, throw, run, tackle, kick a football; or dribble, pass, rebound, shoot and dunk a basketball in the two most-watched sports leagues in America.

The average salary during the 2017-2018 NBA season is $5,919,628 with a range of $34,682,550 for Steph Curry to $17,224 for Jerrel Eddie.  If we multiply the average annual salary by the 565 contracts signed during the year, the total compensation for the league’s players comes out to $ 3,344,589,820!!  The actual median salary for the league was $2,441,400 according to the website BasketballReference.com. Statista.com states that the average player’s salary in the NFL was 2.53 million dollars. If we use the metric of a 53 man roster and 32 teams, the total player compensation from the league was $4,290,880,000.

I realize I am grossly oversimplifying the actual income of players that range from undrafted free agents to eminent hall of famers but for the sake of illustration and deconstruction of a widely known trope about athletes and their rags-to-riches back to rags, allow me to not let this devolve into an esoteric legal document with obtuse language. The NFL just recently completed its commodity review- more formerly known as the Combine. These invite-only aspirants of the league showed up for the football underwear Olympics with visions of fame and fortune dancing in their heads.

They were vetted psychologically and physically before the owners begin their backroom negotiations for a futures contract that carries as much inherent risk as any investment available within the free market. The NFL draft day has become must-see television as star college players (still read- commodities) finally get the chance to reap the benefits decoupled from the fraudulent amateurism model that allows college universities and the NCAA to harvest billions of dollars from the exploits of these “student-athletes” – a farcical term when you apply it to the one-and-done model of NCAA basketball prodigies.

This is where my discourse takes a tangential turn.  Bo Diddley said, “You can get ripped off easier by a dude with a pen than you can a dude with a gun.”  NFL contracts are laced with stipulations, clauses, and incentives that make the possibility of earning the full value of a contract sketchy. While first round picks (the golden children) are warranting as much as 50 percent of their contract being guaranteed (the NBA guarantees all of their contracts), after the endorphin rush, family hugs and lifelong realization of a dream, this fairytale seems to disproportionately turn into a Shakespearean tragedy when it comes to the long-term financial future of far too many of these celebrated athletes.

Let’s look at this from a socioeconomic standpoint.  The vast majority of the players drafted into the NBA and NFL have NEVER seen the kind of money they are endowed with in their late teens and early twenties.  I like to refer to sports compensation as the inversion of regular folks.  Sports contracts are front-loaded pensions.  Not only that, the distribution is multiples of what most highly educated professionals will make over a robust career. Herein lies the conundrum in a riddle wrapped in an enigma.  The average 19-22 year old has at best a modicum of understanding about instant riches. Nnamdi Asomugha, an eleven-year veteran of the league, majored in finance at UC Berkeley and still felt he wasn’t prepared to protect his money as a professional athlete.

Dave Ramsey says, “When it comes to money, you will only move at the speed of your understanding.” Even though the league has a mandatory seminar on financial guidance, at a cursory glance their directives, recommendations have been an abysmal failure.  The issue of culpability would be difficult because we are not talking about the guardianship of minors. NFL players’ income is ostensibly a matter of public record. Similar to the reservations some lottery winners have about having their names disclosed; this spectacle of crowning achievement in hoop and gridiron dreams comes with an astonishing dissonance financially. Professional sports have been seen by far too many as the launching pad to change the trajectory of kids who grew up in crime-infested or financially distressed environments.  The NFL and NBA as Beulah land or Canaan has ended up being an oasis in the desert with statistically mass casualties economically.

A Sports Illustrated feature in 2009 cites a terrifying statistic for both sports.  By the time NBA players have been retired for two years, 78 percent have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness and divorce. Within 5 years of retirement, 60 percent are BROKE.  The NFL statistics are just as grim.  Five years after retirement, 78 percent of former players have gone bankrupt or are under financial distress because of joblessness (football has defined their very existence) or divorce.  We can compound this egregious statistic by adding the ominous possibility of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) being a part of their future medical history-a diagnosis tantamount to a progressive diminution of cognition and physical impairment.  A recent article by ESPN chronicles the angst of Chris Bosh, often cited as an erudite player, as he struggles to transition into the unfamiliar tapestry of diminished fame and the cold turkey withdrawals from the opiate of acceptance, recognition and adulation that professional sports brings.  He opines that “I have millions of dollars and I don’t know finance!” Even more transparently he admits that he sees guys spending all of their money trying to capture all of the trappings that went with their time in the league- a never ending search for that feeling that you once had, and it can cost you.”

The question, which seems rhetorical, is how can this well documented cycle of athletes blowing through 100 million dollars in salary get shuttered? Between the parasitic relationships, the egregious financial advice from credible and shady advisors, the pull and expectation of family and friends and the almost expected ostentatious displays of wealth and conspicuous consumption that accompany riches, this dark prologue that follows the Horatio Alger beginning of most of these athletes can no longer just be a cautionary tale.

        A TALE OF OPTICS
         (What Do You See)







At first glance, you may say I see a sprinter and a quarterback.  That perspective unfortunately would be deemed delusional when it comes to the anachronistic culture of the National Football League; the largest commodities broker in the country. The young man on the left is Troy Apke, a fleet-footed safety from Penn State University.  On the right is the electric, Heisman trophy winning, University of Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson.

I am going to regurgitate some of the hyperbole used to describe Lamar: "freakishly athletic, dynamic open field runner, game-breaking speed."  The NFL has stubbornly held on to an archetype of the field general; a position usually deemed to be the face of the franchise.  The so-called standard metrics for this position are: tall ( 6'5" ideally), pocket passer ( read slow) and erudite.  Since I referred to this league as a commodities broker, I will use this analogy to explain the algorithm to support this skewed lens of what a quarterback should be.  A classic pocket passer is going to execute the vast majority of his plays from the putative safety of the protective cocoon the offensive line provides.  From a longevity and efficiency standpoint, the analytics point to a higher rate of pass completions and less bone-jarring hits (sacks) from the defense.

Conversely, athletic, tuck-and-run type quarterbacks who dash at the first sign of turbulence have a shorter shelf-life and statistically seem to be less efficient outside of the pocket in addition to being subjected to potentially season-ending tackles from 250 pound linebackers closing with extreme prejudice.  The quarterbacks for the college football national champs from 2013, 2015 and 2017 all, except maybe Jameis Winston, ( he was also a Heisman trophy winner and the first pick overall in the draft) fall into the specious metrics that have general managers subjugating them into alternative positions-usually wide receivers. The 32 teams in the NFL are replete with dozens of backup quarterbacks who on paper fit the antiquated mold of what a next level passer should be. There seems to be a propensity to "develop" these projects because intrinsic value seems to be ascribed to them predicated on the so-called measurables and intangibles.

While I fully understand that this position carries a weighted measure in the league because of the immediate impact of a credible talent, their is a latent, almost mendacious attitude when it comes to developing college football stars who happen to be a diversion from the hard template that usually looks like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning; the later of which by the way had an egregious rookie season.

Troy Apke made headlines when he ran the fastest time for all the Combine invitees at the position of safety.  His time was so exceptional that football deity Deion Sanders exclaimed, "man, that dude can really run!"  What was really intimated by that statement was " that dude is really fast for a white boy!  In psychology the term used for optics that are familiar to an individual is pattern recognition. Under the divisive, dystopic narrative that has become American politics lies an insidious element of the social cancer that continues to metastasize.  One of its derivatives is eugenics, a byproduct of social Darwinism that also spawned unfortunate forms of prejudice like implicit bias and negative attribution.  Just as Lamar Jackson's freakish athleticism is a common form of prose used by sports commentators, Troy's "exceptional" display of speed fell outside of the norm reference for a white dude playing defense.

The picture of Troy winning a sprint featured in this blog would be seen by some as an anomaly.  In fact, there are so-called schools of thought that believe that fast twitch fibers are the exclusive physical attribute of black athletes therefore Troy Apke's performance is simply an aberration, a hiccup in the natural order.  The mosaic of sports has been a powerful platform to address many of the systemic challenges incongruent with the venerated decrees we promulgate to under gird our democracy.  Yet even within that tapestry, there still exist this benighted notion that only certain types of people possess the capacity to do certain things in the field of play and God knows other professions.  Yeah, even in 2018.

                                                         THE THREE-COMMA CLUB

According to the March release of Forbes magazine, there are now 2,208 billionaires from 72 countries and territories with a combined net worth of 9.1 TRILLION dollars (an average of 4.1 billion). At times, I feel like this list glamorizes a demographic that has been called everything from oligarchs to plutocrats building their fortunes in: pipelines, chemicals, fertilizer, software, textiles, apps, wedding dresses and cryptocurrency to name a few. The 20 richest, headed by the first chronicled centibillionaire-Amazon founder Jeff Bezos- are worth an astonishing 1.2 TRILLION dollars, a sum roughly equivalent to the annual economic output of Mexico.

I have been reading this annual report for at least the past 20 years and have focused on the myriad ways these citizens of Richistan have amassed their fortunes.  Some of the categories seem mundane in that the average person wouldn’t probably conjure up the thought of cement, diapers, Legos, or fasteners as a source of immense wealth. The amazing thing about this compilation of the uber wealthy is that they have built their empires on things that are ubiquitous and a bit arcane.  I have often scanned offices in a corporate setting or a beautifully furnished home and began to inventory the number of industries represented within that space.  The big ballers on this list have established a sizeable market presence in the fabric of our lives.  We, the ordinary people, are the sole source of their fortunes!  Through consumerism, materialism and necessity, global markets have been established by extracting rare minerals from the earth to create the raw materials for everything from wired communities to the building materials for our homes, appliances, cars, boats, clothing and an endless array of technology gadgets.

 This expansive list of the categories in which ushered them into this exclusive financial stratosphere touches virtually every aspect of our lives.  It includes: banking, construction, beverages,(spirits) cleaning products, real estate, pharmaceuticals, oil, biotech, shipping, consumer goods, movies, pig breeding, ( yeah, that’s what’s I said) cruise ships, hotels, retail, seafood, meat processing, software, auto dealers, casinos, medical equipment, paints, airlines, cable television, semiconductors, Campbell soup, flavorings, perfume, luxury goods, restaurants, hair products, tequila, payroll services, furniture, lotteries, tires, prosthetics, used cars, frozen foods,  

prosthetics, U-Haul, drones, package delivery, cheese, healthcare services, mobile payments, trucking, tobacco, fishing, sports apparel, employment agency, bakeries, online retail, drugstores, travel, blinds, chewing gum, TV broadcasting, online games, auto loans, web hosting, security services, dental implants, nutrition and wellness, insurance, printing, shoes, touch screens, auto parts, hygiene products, cosmetics, flooring, orange juice, supermarkets, hardware stores, auto repair, detergents, truck stops, hair care products, and soft drinks,

The basic mantra of a capitalistic, free market business environment is this: find a need and meet it.  The vast majority of individuals that made the list were not those that catered to the wealthy in the form of private equity, hedge funds and luxury goods. They made their fortunes by creating a market for regular folks.  The 80 different categories across 20 industries listed in the previous paragraph represent the bulk of industries in which they created enough market penetration to amass multi-generational wealth.  The interesting thing is that most of the nouveau super rich hit these meteoric heights through innovations in e-commerce, social media and the inertia of technology.  However, traditional industries are still providing opportunities for the creation of passports to the exclusive enclave of Richistan.