16 to 61: A Reflection on Our Working Life

 

I recently started a position as a retirement analyst with an agency that, among many other services, provides pension benefit calculations for state and county employees anticipating retirement within six months of their application. What was so striking as I forensically parsed through the data to accurately gather every service credit, plan code, accrued leave and fiscal year to determine their average final compensation, is that this information was not a cursory glance at a culmination of employment but a summary of a purposeful career serving their respective organization.

Most of the applicants had reached the required age for full retirement without deductions, which is 62.  I began to think about the decades between the time that we are legally eligible to become licensed to operate a motor vehicle (16) and the age (61) before we become eligible to receive a portion of the soon to be endangered Social Security benefits.

The common narrative concerning our income during retirement is that it will decrease.  While not an optimistic projection, it’s apparently become palatable because of the assumption that your expenses will also decrease or be less than they were during your working career.  So here’s the rub, as I continued to enthusiastically analyze the data to determine the post-work income of these pensioners, I realized that the emphasis on investing a portion of your salary from the time you get your first check until you notify your employer’s HR department of your pending retirement date, seems to have been a casualty of either benign neglect or the cost of “ life be lifeing” eating up the vast majority of people’s earnings.

 According to an article from One Main Financial, the average person spends about 3.3 million dollars in their lifetime. I will qualify these numbers as being predicated on location, income and lifestyle. What I mean is that in many areas of the country you can, by default, be a resident of what is called a VHCOL (Very High Cost of Living) location. 

CATEGORY	Cost
Housing	$1,486,160
Car	$470,000
Children	$467,220
Health Insurance	$290,016
Retirement/401k	$195,754
Renovations	$190,429
Furniture	$61,630
Education	$42,960
Vacations	$118,000
Wedding	$34,000

 

Oddly enough, the article did not include the costs of food. It might be a bit disconcerting to realize that the multi-million-dollar lottery ticket you were hoping for appeared in the form of an annuitized income over the course of your professional career.  So, the question of who wants to be a millionaire has been asked and answered but not necessarily as you anticipated.

The class of 1977 represented one of the largest groups of citizens turning 62 in our nation’s history.  According to the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, only 3.2% of retirees have over one million dollars in their retirement accounts.  There is a plethora of reasons that folks make a declaration of independence from the work force yet are not adequately funded based on conventional rules of thumb like the 70% Rule, which states that you’ll need 70% of your annual pre-retirement income to live “comfortably.”

These guidelines, I assume, factor in variables like the daily battle of what I call the tyranny of now, meaning that while we know we need to put something away for our future selves, old adages like tomorrow’s not promised and the immediate desire to have, experience or consume make the redirection of assets for retirement a dicey proposition.  The other economic reality is that a vast majority of working-class folks’ income is barely keeping up with the invisible tax of inflation so saving and investing is a luxury. 

The four pillars of a middle-class standard of living are: Quality Housing, Reliable Transportation, Nourishing groceries, Adequate Insurance.  Noticeably absent, vacations, and other leisure activities.  The fastest growing segment of the U.S. population is people 85 and older, a segment that is expected to triple by 2060.  Why do I bring this up?  There was a term coined years ago called the Sandwich generation.  These are people who find themselves responsible for their children and directly or in an ancillary way one or both of their parents.  While our nation’s agrarian roots made multi-generational living common, the Industrial Age and its attendant advances like urbanization and transportation shifted this dynamic to become less common.

No one told us when we were teenagers that our superhero parents would one day morph into a geriatric population that required us to make them a part of the financial algorithm that would determine our post-career lives.  Those 45 years of earning, spending, saving and hopefully investing would provide a repository for us to draw from that would allow us as retirees to explore life away from the cubicle, classroom, office or field. From teenager to well-aged teen, we have to navigate financial obligations while simultaneously cultivating and compounding seeds to become ideally multi-generational oaks. 

The projected benefit estimates for people that had dedicated decades to a noble cause gave me pause because even being beneficiaries of a defined benefit plan, an option that has fallen dramatically out of favor in the private sector, they still were going to have to have established other retirement accounts to have a semblance of the standard of living they had before they pondered and ultimately submitted their requests to terminate their employment.   

My deepest hope is that any of you between these goal post ages are strategically and diligently funding your future. It won’t be crowdfunded, and you don’t get a do over.

                                                               

                                                             

                                                   Of Dreams Past (Passed)

 

Today marks the culmination of approximately nine months of preparation for the transfer of a landmark.  That timeframe could be called a gestational period in which four of them were spent deconstructing my parents' homestead.  This "real estate" property was built by my grandfather, a fact that was always a point of pride as I remember going on the final walkthrough with my father before we occupied it as a family.  These reflections are what has made this process at times gut wrenching as my sisters, and I sifted through fifty plus years of accumulated memories.

From the moment we compelled our mother to realize that living alone in a place where she had spent decades building her life was no longer safe, we began in earnest the daunting task of preparing to sell, at her request, what to us felt like a sacred place.  I am sharing these thoughts because many of my peers are facing similar transitions in which, if we're honest, can be turbulent emotionally and financially if you have not soberly planned or pondered the delicate scaffolding that accompanies this decision.

I asked God for wisdom and compassion.  This process can be traumatic for our parents who had crafted and curated a life in a homestead that shaped our initial sense of society and family. There was an internal conflict wherein I felt with each piece of furniture moved or clothing packed in boxes, I was ripping up roots while simultaneously planting them for the new owners.  As the listing agent, I had to vacillate between my professional obligation to make decisions that made the property the most appealing to potential buyers while ignoring the kid in me who remembers when his dad built the now weather-worn storage shed for his lawn equipment and other tools.  

This long, ranch-style home seemed endless when we first moved in.  As we began to strategically clear each room, at times we had to pause, breathe, reflect and yes mourn.  My parents provided a plethora of wonderful experiences not just for us, but for countless college students, church members and neighbors. Fish fries, Sunday dinners, friends, and neighbors gathering and most of all a purposeful habitation for the Lord’s presence. Each room of the house had its own unique history, including the “Do Not Touch” living room which still looked like it was suspended in time.  We chose to be stewards over this preparation/process because of a sense of sacrality and respect.

Four months later, she stood barren, stripped of her covering of furnishings, books, appliances and my mother’s enormous wardrobe. Her makeover required a new roof, restored front porch, minor landscaping, plumbing and drywall repairs, and fresh coats of paint all of which gave us a glimpse of her former glory. As I finished the administrative requirements to list the house, my finger struggled to press the key to actuate this transaction. Memories began to cascade of what this address meant to me, my sisters but most of all my mother. I wanted to preserve that, “keep it in the family” maintain legacy. Truth is that you must have an astute grasp of what that decision requires financially, and the ancillary responsibilities bereft of the emotions. Having managed a similar transaction showed me in high definition that owning and managing older homes will quickly jar you from the HGTV version of what it entails.

As I walked through what now felt like a cavernous abode, even barren, decades of love caressed me as I walked from room to room to inspect the contractor’s work. I was okay until I glanced at my dad’s empty study and the open space where my mom’s baby grand piano once occupied. The Psalmist and the Berean were no longer here. At that moment, it felt safe to cry a hybrid mixture of mourning and celebration that my sisters and I had honored my parents in preparing their home for a family that I prayed would provide the kind of experiences we were so fortunate to receive.  

                                                         A Tale of Two Hopefuls

In a few weeks, the NFL draft will make instant millionaires of 20-something year-old men that have dreamed, fantasized about suiting up professionally on the gridiron since they were tiny tikes playing Pop Warner football in their respective city leagues. Aside from my concern about how coming into virtual, dynastic wealth after an existential state of middle and lower class sensibilities, this draft provides another layer of comparison and contrast above the legends that have gone before them.

Dwayne Haskins is being compared, by some pundits, to New England Patriots demi-god Tom Brady.  Of course, throwing one into the rarefied air of Mt. Olympus before you've taken a single snap is the feeding trough for ESPN conjecture and spectator commentary.  The lofty expectations for Haskins-by-some, even in the effervescent hype bubble of Heisman trophy winner Kyler Murray, reminds me of the optics by which I believed Florida State's Jameis Winston was fully capable of rising to.  As a Florida State fan, I saw first hand the transcendent talent he displayed in two of the most successful back-to-back seasons of one of the premier football programs in the nation...at least until recently.

From the first spring practice, until the final snap of the 2013 National Championship against Auburn, Winston was a force of nature on and off the field.  His ebullient personality made him a natural leader and his preternatural ability at the QB position literally led to a kind of messianic sports worship that is all too familiar below the Mason Dixon line. Florida State was absolutely destroying everybody in its wake and for two years they only came close to sniffing defeat once.......due to Jameis' absence from under center.  Therein lies the conundrum.  The dichotomy of uber measurables and intangibles on the field and questionable, head-scratching conduct off of it. The ignominious cloud he brought to the Garnet and Gold made his early departure, even after unprecedented success for the team, imminent and quite frankly welcomed.

This is where the the comparison stops.  Although Dwayne and Jameis are almost identical in their physical dimensions, Haskins enters the league with none of the baggage following an all-time record-setting season for Big 10 quarterbacks. He will also be the first, well maybe after Alex Smith, Urban Meyer field general with a legitimate shot at having a substantial career under center. Sorry Tebow!  Like Jameis, Dwayne is a true pocket passer with a very high football IQ and absolute command of the ever shrinking area his offensive line provides him to do work.  He is god awful slow, which makes his proficiency under center paramount; something I believe that has led to Superman's ( Cam Newton) marginal improvement at passing completion percentage.

In an order of magnitude that matches the history making accomplishment of Doug Williams and what should have been back-to-back Super Bowls for Russell Wilson, I believe Dwayne Haskins can throttle the still dormant, pernicious, racist undertones of putative ineptitude ascribed to blacks at the most coveted position in sports.  He checks all of the boxes: height, intelligence, leadership, ability. It is my hope beyond hope that he lands with a team that can develop him into what truly has the potential to be something special. 

                                                                           
                                                             Through The Years

On December 11th of this year, my wife and I celebrated 25 years of a union that for me has been transformative and instructional.  The institution of marriage has been caricatured to the point that many couples who have considered entering into its sacred bonds are anxious, if not discouraged.

 I have often stated that the primary challenge with a lot of people that decide to get married shortly after meeting each other is that they enter into it in a chemically-altered state. The avalanche of endorphins and the almost Pollyannish view in which some begin this covenant make the inevitable challenges that will present themselves hostile and seismic in the shaking of their love-engorged foundation. When two hearts beat as one, their lives begin as an amalgamation of different ideologies, world views, expectations and life experiences.

Neither of us had been spouses or parents before yet we were embarking on a lifelong pursuit which by default included one and aspirationally would involve the other.  We began as lovers, friends, confidants and partners in building a home, a micro-economy that would serve as the first society our children would ever be exposed to.  At a very organic level, this union was a demonstration of ex nihilo- we were fashioning a life out of the simple belief that our love was immutable and eternal.

Each year would expand our roles, our responsibilities and our sense of self. Within the first two anniversaries we grew from babe and sweetie to the life-changing title of mommy and daddy. As I watched my wife's body transform into this spectacular repository for our child to grow and be nurtured in the safety of her womb, nothing could have prepared me to witness the second greatest miracle in my life-the birth of our first born ( the first being salvation through Christ). Anniversaries are ostensibly chronological milestones. But as I reflect on the one score and five that my wife and I have shared, they really are moments in time in which you can reflect/pause on just how the events-planned and mostly unplanned-have influenced the tapestry that is your life together.

We met as college students.  My sojourn was an expectation, my wife's a departure from the norm. The two became one flesh and and that merging of soul, body and spirit became the foundation for us to evolve into a plethora of other titles, integration into a variety of professional, community and religious circles and ultimately craft the future that we so eagerly sought to explore. We don't tend to use the term matriculation when it comes to marriage. However, in reflecting, that is essentially what Stacy and I have done. We started as child-less, young professionals who quite frankly had to feel our way through the unique dynamic that was to be the Stallworth household.

Just as you would expect there to be an enormous difference in expertise between a first year teacher and the 25-year school administrator, my wife and I are very different people than the two that stood before God and over 400 witnesses declaring our love for each other in Bethel AME on December of 1993.  The love- the one constant- has been immutable yet at times incredibly tested.  Actually it has intensified in a way I can't quantify. We have changed physically-my gray hairs are aggressively vanquishing the black, intellectually, ideologically, and yes spiritually-a quantum leap in maturity and growth. I don't know if you are consistently aware of the modicum of change that each year brings.  Certainly we can see and feel the physiological, but the more substantive things like the emotional, spiritual, and worldview follow a different rubric. We have become the enormously proud parents of two incredible adult- well our youngest is 17- daughters and been the beneficiary of the immeasurable joy they have brought into our lives.

We also have become aunts and uncles, nephews, nieces, godparents, play-play parents, administrators, business and home owners, and leaders in a variety of different circles. The years have greatly added...but they have also sadly taken away.  This blog is not your normal Hallmarky reminiscing of a union that has been the greatest gift in my life.  I just wanted to share in a more incandescent way how two people love imperfectly by the grace of God for 25 years.

                                                               
                                                                   The Movement

It was intriguing to read an article highlighting the catharsis experienced by the Asian-American journalist who watched the box-office hit "Crazy Rich Asians."  A lot of her sentiment could easily be cross pollinated to the wildly enthusiastic reactions of African Americans to the global box-office sensation Black Panther.

The existential challenge of constantly being seen as other, foreign, or invisible in a dominant culture was not lost on me as she exquisitely articulated her angst and celebration of seeing an all Asian cast highlight the complexity of the diaspora found in Asians who have acculturated in many different parts of the world.  She spoke of how refreshing it was to see people that looked like her not portrayed as cheap facsimiles that were either caricatured martial arts experts or tragic survivors of despotic driven pogroms.

Similar to W.E.B.Dubois' allusion to a divided soul, she anguished over the challenge to cultivate an identity that is virtuous to one's heritage while not falling into a crevasse in between.  She introduced  a pejorative term-banana- that could be the equivalent of the derisive "oreo"  I remember hearing hurled at black folks who were accused of assimilating or acting white.  Banana meant that you were "yellow" on the outside but white on the inside.  The thing that struck me about this article is that my friends whose families hailed from Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, or Southeast Asia were never this transparent in their assessment of the duality of cultures many experience in Eurocentric countries.

The hegemony of one culture is engendered by default of population dominance and tribalism. The ubiquity of all things European does not beset one who is not consciously made aware of its preeminence until social eruptions like integration or immigration that could irretrievably alter the demographics of the nation become a concern.  The axiom of the United States being a "melting pot" always struck me as politically and culturally naive.  At best we are a heterogeneous mix, more like a salad where each individual ingredient maintains its own identity within the amalgamation.

 Cinema has long been the creative portal to illustrate the human tapestry that shows the state of the union. Hollywood's portrayal as liberal and egalitarian has not translated in the number of projects like Crazy Rich Asians or Black Panther green lighted by executives. Movie making by its very nature is collaborative and "inclusive."  The challenge has been that the lens by which projects are deemed profitable and having global appeal has been suffocatingly limited to an archetype that finds very little intrinsic value in hues, stories, and narratives that are outside the safe spectrum of their myopic sensibilities.

The story of America's rich heritage found within its incredible citizens is gaining bandwidth.  This is not growing as subtext or sidebars.  There is an increased awareness that the pattern recognition of what it means to be American is decoupling from a tired, familiar trope.  That is actually a good thing.

It was always (still is) my belief that the truth was immutable, inelastic, intractable and not subject to the court of public opinion or vacillating social mores.  With that as a premise, I find the term "my truth" problematic and highly subjective as it has gained increased bandwidth in the national narrative of social movements.  If we expunge moral absolutes, then the basis of this statement undulates like the popularity of dance moves.  I had an interesting discussion with my enlightened, intelligent sixteen-year old daughter about the growing concern of allegations being tantamount to guilt within the context of the #ME TOO movement.

As a husband, father, brother, nephew, uncle, cousin to incredible women and young ladies, I have a less than zero tolerance for inappropriate or violent behavior-verbal or physical-directed towards women! What has become very troubling is that now the hint, allegation, intimation of boorish, crude or aggressive behavior by a man transmogrifies into something resembling the prolific serial assault of Harvey Weinstein, the catalyst behind the movement.  Let me be clear, our patrician culture has without question fostered the behaviors that not only engendered predatory conduct, but I have personally seen the direct impact to women who have been the recipient of this sadistic "boys will be boys" axiom.

However, there seems to be in this glacial swing of the pendulum, a propensity to look past the same abuse of authority that spawned this national uproar. This movement has ignited a conflagration of which no one seems to be concerned about the possibility of collateral damage.  My daughter began to voice a concern about unsubstantiated claims by women not only gaining traction, but even after losing credibility still being given a shelf life that ultimately proved ruinous to the innocent.  My daughter wasn't giving a Stepford wife response as if the accusation against powerful men was without merit.  Somehow, in this new zeitgeist, improbity can not be attached to the accuser.

It seems that the new script singularly affords truth to be the sole domain of the accuser.  The presumption of innocence, a cornerstone of our legal system, seems to be withering on the judicial vine.  There is an old adage that says, ' the abused tend to become abusers."  Unfortunately, there seems to be a dangerous precedent emerging as the scaffolding for the old construct that devalued and subjugated women to this doleful, sexual misconduct without recourse is being torn down. The cautionary tale is what will this much needed shift yield as the voiceless and the powerless are given a platform to change this troubling trend.

                                                             The New Normal

Years ago I posited the ramifications of people's thoughts being audible.  While we have not developed telepathy, the ubiquity of cellular towers has allowed our digital appendages ((smartphones) to create platforms by which all of our mental meanderings or machinations, no matter how mean-spirited, can spill out like a tsunami as tweets, posts, blogs and hi-def pictures.  Our bandwidth has expanded beyond the daily atrocities of murder, mayhem, and geopolitical tragedies to include a drastic reconfiguration of the now very subjective term normal.

Maybe we have misdiagnosed normal all along.  Greek historian Herodotus wrote,'The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing." The Age of Enlightenment was supposed to be the epiphany, the birth of consciousness of rational men and women in control of their own destinies.  The Age of Science purportedly expunged the reliance on superstition, god(s) and religion.  The Promethean promise of progress as humanity dismantled the shackles of ignorance would usher in a Utopian construct by which the endemic challenges of the human condition would be superseded by new insights and technology.

Well............

Few could have imagined that the pace of technological advances could have accelerated the opening of what is essentially Pandora's Box. We have this strange dichotomy of good and evil, which have always co-mingled, battling for dominance not just in the public square, but in the hyper loops of social media platforms.  Bill Gates is fond of quoting statistics from one of his favorite researchers that empirically demonstrate that things are getting better using the metrics of global poverty, average life span, access to healthcare, clean water and reduction of hunger.  Yet with the calculus that created all of these innovations, we can't create an algorithm that explains the surging spiritual drift in our culture. To what do we attribute this current malaise that seems to be ushering in an apparently rhetorical question: what kind of world do we live in?

If we constrict our focus to the natural at the expense of the spiritual, we limit solutions to merely heritage, biology, sociology, politics and economics. Christ summarized the issue with this simple pronouncement, "It's a heart issue."  Russian philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky said,"Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he can not find anything to depend upon either within or outside of himself."Christ expanded his narrative by saying in Mark 7:1," It is not what goes into your body that defiles you, you are defiled by what comes from your heart." (New Living Translation)

The new narrative of our nation, a hodge podge of moral relativism, New Ageism, secular humanism and atheism is not a reflection of new modalities of enlightenment.  It's just symptomatic of  the heart disease we have suffered with since humanity's fall.  This new normal is neither.

Will We Ever Learn

Sigh............Roseanne Barr, the shock comedienne who mildly resuscitated her moribund career with a revival of her once popular eponymous show has again suffered from the recurring foot-in-mouth disease that seems to have led to her earlier professional demise.  From her "parody" of the national anthem to her dysfunctional relationship with her ex-husband Tom Arnold, she seems to possess an uncanny ability to reverberate controversy at seemingly every turn.  Her latest premeditated stupidity on Twitter, a virtual dumping ground for 280 characters of vitriol followed by the tired apology of I'm sorry in a tweet, has left an indelible digital footprint that garnered a swift and fatal blow to her already toxic bandwidth on network television.

Conservatives will most certainly defend her repugnant comparison of Valerie Jarrett as resembling the progeny of the Muslim Brotherhood and a simian as a bad joke in poor taste conflated to silence the paucity of Hollywood actors that serve as an advocate for their Twitterer-in-Chief.  What will again be lost in the diatribe of cultural wars is a dissonance that allows this kind of rabidly racist banter to still have traction in the new millineum. Racism in pockets of America is so imbued in the fabric of our nation that we can't seem to recognize how it has permeated the policies, practices and perceptions of the people who sacrosanctly declare themselves exceptional because they are American and of European descent. On November 24th, 1859, Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favored Races In the Struggle For Life."   This pseudo-scientific publication is credited with being the foundation for evolutionary biology. What it also birthed are horrific ideological permutations in the form of Social Darwinism and Eugenics and the hegemony of racial superiority-more specifically of the Anglo-Saxon breed commonly known as white supremacy.

This mutant ideation buttressed the savagery that accompanied chattel slavery; the de facto economic engine that ushered this former British colony into a global industrial power.  Everything from the biblical justification for slavery, black codes, eugenics, Jim Crow and the bastardly publication featured in this blog was spawned from the egregious belief that races of color were not just inferior, but genetically and innately subordinate- which by the way is the antithetical view promulgated by the Bible!  Porch monkey, baboon, ape, and other disparaging adjectives have been hurled at black folks probably since the first forced immigrants got here in Jamestown off of a Dutch ship. The implicit bias that still allows centuries-old ideologies to lie dormant in the hearts and minds of its supposedly informed citizens of this decade should not only be a tired trope, but an indictment to the myth that we have ever been a post-racial country.  Any redress of grievances by blacks of the tentacles of this social carcinogen in the form of policies, procedures, and practices of an organization are still summarily dismissed or spun into a hijacked narrative featuring the derisive moniker "playing the race card."

So let's just call a spade a spade.  What has made this country great is its ability for introspection.  The edicts of its sacred parchments and pledges declare liberty and justice for all and the inalienable rights of its citizens to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Yet we are still chronicling Fortune 500 companies having to shut down to have "inclusivity" training and police chiefs walking back the conduct of police officers caught on video engaging in extrajudicial conduct.  We have a sitting President who purposefully engendered an anachronistic tribalism and racist jingoism ( "Go back to Africa") that would have made ol' racist stalwarts like Birmingham, Alabama Sheriff Bull Connor grin from ear to ear.  The problem is that the past is STILL NOT PROLOGUE or PAST.  The question is, how much of that toxin are you willing to settle with today and in the future!

                                         

                                                 Made in the Image and Likeness of God

I have been pondering, more accurately commiserating over the elastic social mores, the undulating morality of our culture in which the ribald, profane and straight up wicked lifestyles can seamlessly intertwine with the sacred.  One of the unintended consequences of “tolerance” or moral relativism is that it pasteurizes, homogenizes and dilutes the sacrality of the righteous standards of the Bible-God’s immutable, inerrant, infallible word. Some of us in the body of Christ are so thirsty for the acceptance of the lost that we continue to create “seeker-friendly” environments that expunge any element that would bring conviction or condemnation to people bound by sin.  Oh yeah, the “s” word!  Despite Romans 3:23 clear declaration that,” all have sinned and come short of the glory of God”, and the Jeremiah 17:9 edict ,”The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it”, we continue to capitulate the myth that man is intrinsically good and in an effort to spare people’s feelings refuse to emphatically articulate the dreaded disease we were all born with….. a SIN nature.

Part of my diatribe is based upon the recent release of a “gospel” album by the west coast rap legend Snoop Dogg. The urban street poet’s offering has been gulped with an enthusiasm that mimics the purple, cyanide-laced Kool-Aid of the Jim Jones followers. Your rebuttal may be that the content was palatable, beats were on point and it was more than a pedestrian effort by a secular artist to do something positive.  You get no argument on any of those points.  However, there is a growing bandwidth of tolerance for duplicitousness or a dichotomy between lifestyle and art. I happen to have the misfortune of being asked to listen to Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr’s( Snoop's government name) response to the egregious tirade of one lost soul known as Kanye West.  The expletives projectile vomited from his mouth reminded me of this strange fire that we have gotten so comfortable with.

“Everybody cusses” is the refrain I often hear or worse; “God knows my heart and I am a work in progress”.  Psalm 84:2 says, “My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”  Psalm 119:11 says, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”  Ephesians 2:10 says,”For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” II Cor 5:17 says, If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature : old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”  Gal 5:22-23 says,” But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentles and SELF CONTROL!”

What is being lost in translation is that GOD IS HOLY above all things.  His spirit, the incorruptible seed, that indwells us at the moment of salvation, comes with a promise.  John 15:7 says, “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”  What that DOES NOT means is a laundry list of material acquisitions. Verse 8 of that chapter says, “ This is to my Father’s glory that you bear much fruit.”  That promise declares that He will respond to every longing for personal righteousness; a process like human growth takes time and is gradual. We seem to more and more celebrate people who either have rotting fruit, a twig of a vine or the similitude of godliness( having a form of godliness but denying the power therof).  WE ARE the salt and light.  Jesus said in John 12:32, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.”  The evidence of the power of salvation, the actual indwelling of the spirit of God, is a TRANSFORMED LIFE, not snippets of goodness, accepting an invite to a gospel function or recording with so-called gospel artists.  We have become afraid to demonstrate the immutable characteristics of God, His holiness and His righteousness.  The Great Commission was to go and make disciples- spread His teachings to the nations through the spoken and demonstrated Word.  Catering to secularism, moral relativism and flat out wickedness not only is an exercise in futility, it exacerbates the effort of those who understand that to live for Christ is counter cultural and antithetical to Aleister Crowley’s destructive edict to “ Do what thou wilt.” Run tell that!

The Elephant in the Room (Black Republicans)

                                           
                                            Confessions of a Conservative

   
Three years ago, I was asked by a graduating senior from Florida A&M University's School of Journalism and Graphic Design to participate in a documentary featuring what can best be described as a UFO sighting in the South-a black Republican.  I was intrigued to see how this query would unfold as the enthusiastic and talented journalism students set up their equipment to begin recording the ideations of a black man who had pledged allegiance to a party that had for all intents and purposes-this was well before the jingoistic nationalism that followed Trump-had become the bane of society in the minds of many in the black community.

I was not given any prompts and had no real template to follow other than responding to prepared questions that purportedly would shed light on "turncoats" like me.  The filming was done in a beautiful, downtown park with wonderful vistas of the city.  Unfortunately, our start time was at the precipice of the cool morning air being usurped by the toasty, early afternoon sun that seemed to raise the ambient temperature at least 10-15 degrees.  "All of my life I had to fight"....oops, wrong monologue.  I am the progeny of a college professor and a student of the Bible.  Education, or the intrinsic desire to teach, inform, enlighten has been modeled to me for as long as I can remember. Perris began his question with what felt like a genuine desire to dig beneath the acrimonious veneer ascribed to so many who dared to be identified as conservative and have melanin in their skin.

To give context to my position, I gleaned from the history of the two parties and their duplicitous relationship with the descendants of the Diaspora.  If you actually get a chance to watch the video, I was pleasantly surprised that most of the content is derived from the historical and current information I shared with the journalist in training.  I could see that they were intrigued at the fact that I could talk in detail about not just the history of the Republican party, but articulate why the mass exodus of blacks from a party that assiduously advocated for the right of former slaves to fully engage in the inalienable rights of the venerated Republic.  The political climate today, in the Age of Trump, has denigrated black conservatives to the level of social pariahs or caricatures.  It becomes exhausting trying to extrapolate the difference between being a member of the GOP and supporting the caustic, demagoguery of a political dilettante.

There is a distinct ideological dichotomy between sycophants that blindly support the petulant, digital sophistry of a movement that usurped the party of Lincoln.  I am not a party-at-all-cost type of dude.  I was very verbal about my distaste for the way so-called Conservatives tolerated, condoned, engendered the toxic, nationalistic banter that led to the ascension of this President. He is the antithesis of Barack Obama.  For some, that is all that was needed, independent of the uber-liberal agenda he promulgated.  I am still conservative, just don't for a hot second believe that the putrid ideations attached to this iteration of the Republican party represent me!

                                                                       
                                                                      7:01 P.M.

Yesterday, the nation-in part- paused, reflected with a somewhat reverent solemnity to mark 50 years to the day that an assassin's bullet silenced the arbiter of peace, the drum major for justice whose eloquent, muscular prose and Gandhian inspired non-violent protest called out a nation's hypocrisy when it came to the inalienable rights for all of its citizens espoused in its venerated parchments known as the Constitution.

I couldn't help but reflect on the similitude of 1968 and 2018, a full half century of glacial progress on some issues and tectonic shifts in others.  The nation's report card, the bounced check that Dr. King noted during the tumultuous era of the Civil Rights movement needs to be updated, critiqued, reviewed and digitized.  The algorithm often referenced to denote the progress of blacks in this country is a comparative analysis of their collective socioeconomic position to that of whites.  I have always found that metric inherently flawed and contextually problematic.  The 260 years of arrested development of survivors of the Diaspora make evaluations of economic, social, and political currency difficult to extrapolate.  The collective net worth of all African Americans is still less than two percent of the nation's overall wealth even though we comprise 12 percent of the population.  A microcosm of this wealth inequality is found in a glimpse at the list of American billionaires (563) and the wealth they control ( 2.8 TRILLION). According to Forbes most recent publication, only 3 on that list are black. In fact, the top 3 men on the list's combined net worth exceeds that of all 42 million blacks COMBINED!

The past 50 years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of blacks holding office at the local, state and federal level, including the highest office in the land.  However, this political capital has for the most part only served to enrich the lives of those holding office because the collective socioeconomic status of their constituents has at best seen marginal improvements mostly in the form of services rendered versus material gains in employment and the amassing of wealth. The carceral state-the American prison system-has become a robust private enterprise generating billions in revenue for private shareholders.  It has re-purposed itself from the old Jim Crow era peonage model into a convict labor leasing supply chain producing products consumed globally.  The population driving this business model is disproportionately black men who as products of economically distressed communities ( read-hood) replete with under funded schools and marginal, substantive employment opportunities, represent the de facto raw material for this targeted labor class.

The ascension of a political dilettante effusively spewing race-tinged demagoguery exposed the myth that the state of race relations in the post-millennial age, especially after having Barack Obama as POTUS- dismantled the racist shackles that besmirched this nation's history.  This country has waged  wars on: poverty, crime, and drugs.  The one demographic caught in the cross hairs of ALL three have been primarily people of color with overwhelmingly negative outcomes.  Are blacks in this country better off than the day Dr. King was murdered?  Unequivocally, yes!  We are better off financially, educationally, socially and politically.  But the metrics to evaluate this amelioration is at times fuzzy.  You have to measure the progress of blacks in the aggregate, not just point out that black females are the most well educated group when conversely their average net worth is a micro fraction of white women.  We have a presence in every industrial and economic sector of this great nation but the tribalism that has spawned over the past year is a reminder that in the mind of some "Amuricans"  we will always be seen as visitors, infringers, and parasitic agitators of the anachronistic status quo.

Yet, I still dream!

                                                                    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.