A long nap in bed in my office with my new lover, the perfect
7-year-old German shorthaired pointer, Julie. She was found for me
by the GSP Rescue of the De Luz Mountains, brought to me about nine
days ago in Rancho Mirage. Love at first sight.
She is white with little brown spots, beautiful, soft,
furry, loving, enthusiastic, follows me wherever I go. I have loved
all of my GSP’s, and each is special in her own way. But Julie and
I fell in love in a matter of minutes. Now, when I want a peak
experience, I just lower the shades and get in bed with Julie and
my Mozart discs, and I am in heaven. This is it. I don’t need
anything more.
If there are finer beings than German short hairs, I don’t
know what they are. In their eyes is peace.
However, my compulsive little brain refuses to stop
running at fever pitch. For example, two days ago, wifey and I flew
from LAX to Fort Walton Beach, Florida. On the way to Dallas to
change planes, I read through the latest copy of Reason
magazine.
There was a lengthy interview with an economist from the
World Bank by the name of Kirk Hamilton. Dr. Hamilton was referring
to the legendary genius, Adam Smith, and his key work, The
Wealth of Nations. In that work, Dr. Smith explained that the
real wealth of nations did not lie in farmland or minerals or ports
or woodlands or shovel ready construction projects or schools with
Internet connections.
The real riches of a nation were what its citizens carried
around between their ears, in their brains. The real wealth of a
nation was the aggregate knowledge, discipline, creativity, energy,
imagination, and willingness to persevere of its people. That, said
Dr. Hamilton, amounted to about 80 per cent of the wealth of a
great nation like Japan or the USA. This was why the USA was so
much richer than even oil-laden nations like Kuwait or Saudi
Arabia: because our people had so much more going on between their
ears than the people of mineral-rich but mentally undeveloped
nations. In poor Third World countries, Dr. Hamilton noted, there
is little intellectual capital because the people are so uneducated
and (presumably) have such poor work skills. In those countries,
whatever wealth there is consists of minerals or lumber. This is
not enough to make any sizeable nation rich.
This struck me as so true, and so important, that it
compelled a series of thoughts in my febrile brain: if the USA is
as rich as the total number of our people times the average of what
they know and can accomplish, we are in a phase of intense
downgrade of our wealth. I think that’s Dr. Hamilton’s point,
too.
The ordinary American — as far as I can tell — knows so
much less than he did fifty years ago and has such poor work habits
compared with fifty years ago that the average multiplicand of
knowledge/capabilities is a much smaller number than it was in
1961.
This means that the wealth per capita will inevitably
fall. More than the stock market’s fall, more than the bust in
housing, what we are seeing is a collapse in the value of the
knowledge asset in this country.
Some say this is highly concentrated in nonwhite
minorities (who will soon be majorities), but it is taking place
across the board. This is just a much more ignorant people than we
used to be, and this will make us much poorer.
Look out below! Here comes the poor old USA, which used to
have the smartest workers in the world long ago.
On a bridge in Trenton, New Jersey, near the railroad
tracks, there is a faint, long faded sign saying, “Trenton Makes —
The World Takes.” Now, Trenton is a ghost town of slums. Buffalo
used to be one of the manufacturing hubs of the world. Now, it is
an urban nightmare. It’s true all over the country.
The America that we knew as the smartest place on the
planet is gone with the wind.
On the other hand, tonight after my nap, I took my wife to
a drug store near our home in Beverly Hills. At the front door, an
old black man was holding the hands of a shaking old white woman.
“You’ve just got to put it all in the hands of God and try to live
each day,” he said. “Just take it one day at a time.”
“But I’m too sick to take it one day at a time,” the old
women said in between tears.
“You have to trust in the Lord,” the black man said. “Let
me get you an ice cream cone.”
“I’m just so sick,” the woman said.
“Trust in the Lord,” said the black man. “What flavor do
you want?”
I was deeply touched. After all the black man has been
through in this world, he can still often reach levels of
spirituality the most pampered white man cannot touch. Maybe what
he’s been through is the reason why.
A few days ago at the desk at the Watergate East South
Lobby, I could not find my keys — then the desk clerk pointed out
to me that they were in my hand. I was mortified.
“It’s going to be all right, Mister Stein,” she said.
“It’s going to be a fine day.”
