The fog has finally lifted. We had rain overnight. The temperature is still mild, especially for the end of November but that is expected to change starting tomorrow. The last forecast I saw, yesterday, predicted possible snow over the weekend. I think the four pots I cleaned out yesterday will be the last work outside unless it gets dry enough to sweep up leaves.
A couple of days ago Treasury Secretary Bessent appeared on one of the Sunday current affairs talk shows and tried again to convince people that they aren't really experiencing inflation. He is an economist and was relying on the idea that people generally don't know that the technical definition of inflation doesn't actually refer to prices. When people talk about inflation they us the term colloquially to refer to increasing prices for everyday items. Bessent is still trying to gaslight us into thinking we don't know what is happening in our lives.
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Sunny so far today. We didn't get any noticeable precipitation yesterday. The next front should be moving in later this afternoon which the weather people say should drop significant snow, perhaps as much as a foot. I brought the snow shovel out of the shed and put it in an accessible corner of the patio and the sidewalk deicer which is in the house by the door. I turned off the TV news early today. I can't stand listening to Trump, Vance or Hegseth. They spew so much shit that you can fertilize every farm field in the country for a century.
We watched the Chicago and the Macy's Thanksgiving Parades followed by the Weather Channel's coverage of the winter storm marching through the northern tier of the country. The two parades were quite a contrast. Chicago highlighted local culture, or cultures, and local talent. Macy was a slicker production which would have told you very little about the people inhabiting the city. Chicago's production featured performers from local ethnic organizations which keep their music, dance and other art alive. Macy's focused on popular entertainment with several hip-hop artists, one of the stars of WICKED FOR GOOD, and other nationally popular artists. On the whole I preferred the Chicago parade.
This NBC article has some interesting aspects. The author(s) say that attitudes toward higher education changed significantly starting about 20 years ago. My own attitudes changed slowly starting ten years before that. For the so-called GREATEST GENERATION a four-year degree was worthwhile. Many of them used the G.I. Bill to fund their educations. And those funds were available for both college and trade schools. My father used his to learn to maintain semi-truck engines though he soon found he preferred to drive rather working as a mechanic. All of the professors in the classes I took were Veterans and earned at least their bachelor's degrees through the V.A. A theme that ran through the article was that the respondents thought a college degree was too expensive for what people got was because students were not taught skill that would have prepared them for the labor market. I will ask a different question: could college programs have prepared students for modern work. I would say that they couldn't and don't for all too many students. They were geared for the economy of the 1950s not the economy of the 1980s or any time since. The economy has changed drastically and rapidly and the colleges haven't been good at turning on a dime to meet new needs. One could also ask if a lot of the programs should be offered in a college at all.
Bill Astore at BRACING VIEWS provides a good piece our military spending for your post-Thanksgiving reading: GUNS AS BUTTER. Economists often talk to the general public (or their intro ECON students) in terms of "guns vs. butter." But Astore notes that for the significant part of our economy guns are butter; spending on guns (and everything associated with them) are the butter of the military and its associated industries. And that sector is soaking up so much of the budget it limits the public access to butter (health care, food, education etc.).
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