The Concept

     Raul Julia.  At the time I knew next to nothing about him, other than he was an award-winning Broadway star.  Then suddenly, I had a chance to see him in a Broadway play on Broadway; it would be the only time I would ever see a play on that famed stretch of New York but no matter, the chance was there and he was performing in a play I'd never heard of, the musical Nine (hint: the play ran 700+ performances and would prove to be much better than the film).  If you've never heard of Nine, it deals with the many alter-egos of a man and his view of the women he loves, or would like to love.  This varies from burly hofbreau German women at a spa, to a studious secretary who never breaks from being prim and proper.  21 women in all (the play was based on a film by director Federico Fellini).  I loved the play, and the music (a month after I watched his performance, Julia would have a stroke and be dead at 54).  Jump now to a local modern dance show, one with narrative, sometimes disturbing music, and dancers in a variety of movements.  Unlike the play, the "message" floated by me with each dance, much as if I were at a modern jazz club and witnessing everyone "getting it"...except me.  After the show (about 30-40 people attended), I asked the main dancer and choreographer what came first...hearing the music then visualizing a dance, or the concept of a dance then piecing everything around that (the concept, she told me).

     You can somewhat visualize that reasoning: you have an idea for a book or a project and then you build upon it until you create the final product.  But jump to music and you find that people such as Leonard Bernstein, even Mozart, wrote their "ideas" down in music, their concept perhaps complete to them, but polished even further once lyrics were added to complete the story for people like me.  Imagine hearing West Side Story start to finish without words, only the music.  That was Bernstein's finished piece, at least in his mind.  The lyrics (as was apparently the case with Mozart's operas) and dancing were something someone else would need to add.  I had to wonder how such a mind thinks...are such "composers" visualizing things in a completely different fashion?  And if so, can they only visualize it to a certain point and no further (Elton John is a classic example, in many cases his "music" coming only after seeing the lyrics from partner Bernie Taupin).  Thus, the haunting opening to the recent book by Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers In the Sky:* To a beloved writer, who, when asked to speak about "women and fiction," sat down by the banks of a river and wondered what the words meant.

     Jumping further, how we concept-ualize our world may be equally limited, even if we don't recognize it.  In the economy after WW II, author Morgan Housel wrote: Many Americans could look around and find not only were they living comfortable lives, they were living lives that were just about as comfortable as those around them whom they compared themselves to.  It's the one thing that distinguishes the 1950s from other eras.  So the comparatively lower wages than those of today felt great because everyone also earned a lower wage too.  The smaller homes felt nice because everyone else lived in smaller homes too.  The lack of health care was acceptable because your neighbors were in the same circumstances...It was the one modern era when there wasn't much social pressure to increase your expectations beyond your income.  Economic growth accrued straight to happiness.  People weren't just better off; they felt better off...Actual circumstances don't make much difference in all these cases.  What generates the emotion is the big gap between expectation and reality.  When you think of it like that, you realize how powerful expectations are.  They can make a celebrity feel miserable and a destitute family feel amazing.  Added a review in BankRate: ...everyone’s unique money habits and beliefs come from their own personal experiences -- including when and where they were born as well as what their parents were like.  For instance, a person who grew up during high inflation or a bad recession may handle money differently from someone who grew up during healthy financial times.  As such, personal background affects how one goes about saving, investing and spending, Housel writes, which can help explain why one person’s choices may seem wrong --or even crazy-- to another.

     And speaking of money, a recent issue of Barron's featured a "roundtable" discussion with many of the top fund advisors, those who control hundreds of billions of dollars and make it their job to do well for their clients in the "market."  Here was one take on the proposed tariffs looming for other countries: Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently calculated that the U.S. stock market suffered a cumulative decline of 11.5% on the 11 days when tariff actions were announced between January 2018 and August 2019.  That equated to a $4.1 trillion loss in market capitalization.  But a quick peek at the market will show an uptick following the election (it was already at record highs) as optimism continues.  Just maybe not with many at the roundtable at Barron's, or Warren Buffet for that matter.  Asked Yahoo Finance, why is Buffet hanging onto cash (about $300 billion) and not reinvesting in stocks?  But big deal, the stock market is for those who have (or think they have) money to play around with...no need to pay down credit cards or mortgages or car loans.  Things, such as crypto, will continue their upward trend.  And here's where Scott Black, the founder of Delphi Management, threw some cold water on the roundtable discussion: Things don't look terrific for the U.S. consumer.  Credit-card debt is at an all-time high at $1.36 trillion.  Student loan debt is $1.74 trillion.  Credit-card defaults are up 50% year over year.  The bottom one-third of U.S. households has zero savings, and more than two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  People don't have money to sustain the economy.

     So here's a concept: deport illegal immigrants.  And the U.S. is far from alone in facing this crisis as people flee wars and violence in their own countries, or perhaps only hope for a better life in another country.  Wrote Bloomberg back in May of 2024: Thirteen economies across the developed world were in per-capita recessions at the end of last year, according to exclusive analysis by Bloomberg Economics.  While there are other factors, housing shortages and associated cost-of-living strains are a common thread.  For decades, the rapid inflow of migrants helped countries including Canada, Australia and the UK stave off the demographic drag from aging populations and falling birth rates.  That’s now breaking down because the surge of arrivals since borders reopened after the pandemic is running headlong into a chronic shortage of the homes needed to accommodate them.  A later issue updated the issue, asking, where do such immigrants work and in what fields?  And what trades will be affected with such millions now facing deportation?  For one, picture the number of homes and apartments now being rented or perhaps even purchased by such workers; that income to landlords and mortgage companies will now disappear.  Which sounds great as more places will "open up" to everyone else...or will they (see above and credit bills).  Will such a surplus of homes and apartments drive down prices since inventory will suddenly flip and prove plentiful?  But then if you felt that immigrants were only doing the grunt work in agricultural fields, you'd be wrong.  Wrote the NAHB:  The concentration of immigrants is particularly high in construction trades essential for home building, such as plasterers and stucco masons, drywall/ceiling tile installers (61%), roofers (52%), painters (51%), carpet/floor/tile installers (45%).  Agricultural workers were nearly 8 percentage points behind plaster & stucco workers in jobs held by immigrants, wrote Bloomberg again.

     Added another piece in Bloomberg: Immigrants have been key to US innovation.  Despite them making up only 16% of the country's inventors, immigrants have been responsible for more than a third of the new patents registered in the US in the past three decades, according to National Bureau of Economic Research economists.  Their contributions are especially evident in the technology, medical and chemical industries, the study found...For the US immigrant population, educational attainment closely tracks country of origin.  About half of Mexican immigrants haven't finished high school, and only one in ten has a bachelor's degree.  On the other hand, nearly three in four South Asian immigrants went to college, as well as half of those from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and East Asia.  Then came this interesting statistic: Democratic President Barack Obama faced criticism from immigration rights groups --some of which dubbed him "deporter-in-chief"-- for his own track record.  US immigration authorities deported more people during each of Obama's two terms in office than they did in Trump's first term.  But wait, are all of these studies and articles talking about legal or illegal immigrants...or both?  And how do the researchers tell the difference?  Do they ask for documentation, and if they do, is it from the individual workers or from the employer; and how much can they verify such responses to be true...or false?

     The issue here isn't whether illegal immigration, and how it's being viewed and handled by different administrations, is right or wrong, but rather that --as with most "concepts--" there is much more to the story (several in the new Administration are pushing for exempting many such immigrants with H-IB and other such visas, something Trump has used to staff his Mar-a-Lago facility, wrote The New Yorker years ago): seeding the skies, nuclear power, sterilizing mosquitoes, deep-sea mining, old-growth logging, tariffs on foreign countries,* and more (even those seeking a trip to Mars) are festered with far-reaching consequences if done too hastily.  On a smaller more personal scale, imagine the excitement of remodeling a small bathroom, only to discover that changing fixtures and plumbing and selecting new tile or paint, suddenly turns your quick fix into a rather lengthy project.  It can become overwhelming.  We are awash in data wrote Oliver Burkeman in his book, Meditations for Mortals: By 1999, researchers estimated, the quantity of data generated worldwide came to at least 1.5 billion gigabytes.  The 2024 estimate is 147 trillion gigabytes (emphasis mine).  Much of it isn't in the form of published content, of course, but plenty is -- and by comparison, according to one amateur back-of-the-envelope calculation, the entire Library of Alexandria contained around 12 gigabytes.  Part of the musical Nine was the song Getting Tall: Learning more, knowing less, simple words, tenderness...part of getting tall.  Said composer Maury Yeston, creating and composing a play is much like preparing food: you can put your heart and time into it but until it is actually served and eaten, you won't know how it's received.  But the concept, the premise, is there...

     There was a time long ago when things were both together and also equally fragmented (and a quick myth-buster on the chain email making the rounds: Hoover, Truman and Eisenhower never ordered mass deportations, wrote FactCheck).  But Richard Nixon did play the piano on the Jack Parr show, nearly 8 years before he became President (his quote: "The Republicans don't want another piano player in the White House").  He not only later awarded Duke Ellington the Medal of Freedom, but invited him to the White House to celebrate Pat Nixon's birthday, with both Nixon and Duke playing piano and dancing well past midnight.  That was a time when our country recognized and was captivated by the history of slavery in our country -- over half the country watched the final episode of Alex Haley's Roots, making it the third most-watched final episode in television history.  Who knew? The pendulum of history sways back and forth and each of us have ideas and imaginations, whether that comes from a composer or a President.  As Abraham Lincoln famously said in his Gettysburg Address: ...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.  What a concept...

*A good explanation of how world powers shift throughout history (Britain, Russia, the US, and now China) came from a piece in The New York Review.  And on a different note for those far too young to remember (even me), Jack Parr preceeded Johnny Carson as a talk-show host.   And finally, I've received a few suggestions about these posts -- too long, too morbid, too impersonal, too something else.  How do you feel?  Let me know, or don't...either way, I'll understand.