Ep34 -- No More Pizzaburgers!

 I'm willing to admit that I have a few very minor pet peeves.  Obviously, high atop the list is people who don't use their damn turn signals.  Another big one, as you may have learned last week, is people who don't do what they say they're going to do.  Now of course my wife, my kids, and my old college roommates may disagree. But I think I'm well within the range of normal when it comes to pet peeves.  I don't think I have all that many, and I don't think they negatively impact those around me all that much.  I'm usually pretty careful if I harbor a pet peeve that those around me clearly do not, like for example, I hate waking up in the morning to a kitchen full of dirty dishes. Or to view it more positively, I love waking up to a clean kitchen.  But I get that others in my family might not feel as strongly about it as I do. So it's on me to make sure the kitchen is clean before going to bed.  And I'm cool with that. Really. 

Another big pet peeve of mine is people who sit in their cars with the engines running for no good reason.  If it's sweltering li hot or freezing cold outside, I get it. But if it's a breezy 72, there's absolutely no good reason to leave your engine on. And there are several great reasons not to.  It's unnecessary use of your engine. It still burns gasoline to the tune of up to three-quarters of a gallon per hour. And it burns that gasoline inefficiently, so idling cars can pollute up to twice as much as moving cars.  And this kind of pollution is particularly bad for kids, which is why it drives me nuts to see parents idling outside their kids' schools during drop-offs and pickups. 

Now, I'm sure there's some old geezer out there thinking, but turning your car off and on uses more gas than leaving it idling.  While that may have been true for old cars, I mean really old cars, it's not true for pretty much any car built in this century.  These days, if you're going to be idling for more than about 10 seconds, it's better for the environment to turn the car off.  And you don't need to warm up your car in the winter. Just turn it on and get driving. Assuming, of course you don't live on a freeway onramp and will be doing 65 within seconds of turning on the car. 

All that being said, I always feel really uncomfortable approaching people in their idling cars and asking them to turn off their engines. But I will take advantage of an opportunity to do so if it seems less confrontational. So for example, last week when I was out doing my stair workout, I got to chatting with this old New Yorker with long hair, rainbow headband, and a Kamala Harris shirt on.  And afterward, he was sitting in his car at idle for like 20 minutes.  So I went over to him and I said, "Hey, given that you're clearly a bleeding heart liberal and from New York, I feel I can tell you that you shouldn't leave your car idling. It's bad for the car. It wastes money and it produces a lot of pollution."  And he was like, "Really? I had no idea."  And I believe he meant it. And I'm thinking, how can this guy not know that? But he didn't.  And that got me thinking about all the things we should know and understand as humans living on Earth and citizens of this country, but that we just don't.  And how much of that general ignorance has led us to the situation we're in right now.  So this week, I want to talk about how, what we don't know can hurt us, or at the very least leave us vulnerable to those who don't care if we get hurt. 

Stay tuned.

 I'm Craig Boreth and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about how we all get conned into accepting a manmade culture that's out of sync with our human nature, and how we can fight back and put the kind back into humankind. 

But first a word about a sponsor. 

This week's episode of The Great Ungaslighting is not brought to you by Lowe's department stores.  A couple of weeks ago, the Institute for Policy Studies released their annual Executive Excess report, which focuses on the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay, what they call the "Low Wage 100."  Now it takes some special behavior to stand out among those 100 companies, but Lowe's definitely has, topping the list for the largest stock buyback between 2019 and 2023. 

In case you don't know, a stock buyback is when a company diverts its profits to buy back its own shares, thus decreasing the number of shares available and therefore increasing the value of each individual share.  Now for most of the 20th century stock buybacks were considered to be a form of illegal market manipulation, because, well, they obviously are a form of market manipulation.  But all that changed in 1982 when Ronald Reagan's SEC basically said, nah, it's all good, go for it.  And over those four years from 2019 to 2023, Lowe's really went for it,  buying back its own stock to the tune of $42.6 billion. 

Just to give you a sense of Lowe's finances,  in 2023 their CEO made $18.2 million, which is 557 times the median employee salary of $32,626.  During that same time Lowe's spent only $9 billion on capital expenditures, which are purchases or upgrades of assets like buildings or equipment.  As recently as 2024 Lowe's spent zero on stock buybacks. 

So how much is that 42.6 billion?  Well, if instead of using that profit to buy back its shares and enrich its shareholders, Lowe's had instead distributed that profit among its 285,000 employees,  each worker would have received a bonus of $29,856.  Annually. For five years. 

Just as a side note, you remember the Lowe's CEO's pay for last year, $18.2 million, which is a lot of money and over 550 times more than the median employee salary.  Well, if you were to suggest that his pay should be way less, you'd immediately hear the counterargument that, well, that would only mean a tiny increase in each worker's pay.  But that argument is meant to distract you from the real reason we should dramatically cut CEO pay.  And that's because, in this country, money is power. And once you have enough money and enough power, you can really screw with the system, making sure that your guys get elected and their SEC decides that, you know, we thought about it and stock manipulation just ain't that big a deal. Go for it. 

And we are back. 

Way back in 1995, center-left political commentator Michael Kinsley wrote a piece in The New Yorker called "The Intellectual Free Lunch."  In it, he talked about a survey from the University of Maryland, which found that 75% of Americans believe the US spends too much on foreign aid and 64% want foreign aid cut.  I'm not sure what's up with that 11% who think we spend too much but don't seem to mind.  The survey then asks how much of the federal budget should go to foreign aid. The median answer was 15%.  Subjects were asked how much would be too little. The median answer was 3%.  The actual amount spent on foreign aid in 1995 was less than 1%.  So the headline of that poll was no doubt 75% of Americans Say Foreign Aid Is Too High.  And I'll bet that nowhere in those articles, except perhaps toward the very end is there a disclaimer that respondents had no freaking idea what they were talking about.  I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, come on, Craig, that was 1995. The internet was in its infancy. Surely after almost 30 years of having all the world's information at our fingertips has made us much more well-informed citizens, right?  To be fair, I'd imagine very few people are actually thinking that and they'd all be right.  So fast forward a couple decades from 1995.  And let's look at a study done by Dan Ariely and Michael Norton, looking at opinions about wealth inequality.  Side note. I know there've been some issues regarding the replicability and validity of Ariely's work, but I'm not so concerned about that when it comes to unmanipulated opinion research like this.  They asked respondents, what percentage of the nation's wealth was held by the top 20%.  They found that on average people thought the top 20% held 60% of the nation's wealth. And it should be around 30%.  The truth was, at least when this research was done a few years ago, the top 20% owned almost 84% of the nation's wealth.  At the other end of the spectrum, respondents thought that the bottom 20% owned 4% of the nation's wealth and that ideally it should own 10%.  The bottom of 20% actually owned one-tenth of 1% of the nation's wealth.  In another question, respondents were asked to select which of two unnamed country's wealth distributions they'd prefer.  Country A, which was actually the United States, but they didn't know it,  showed a bottom 20% holding 0.1% of wealth up to the top  20% holding 84%. 

Country B showed a bottom fifth owning 11%, the next fifth owning 15%, then 18%, then 21%, and the top fifth owning 36%.  Well, guess what?  92% of Americans said they prefer country B, which happens to be Sweden. 

So, and once again I'm sure this is no surprise to anyone paying any attention,  apparently internet access, hasn't delivered the miracle of a fully informed electorate that we were promised way back when.  All it has really done, through the algorithms that feed us particular information along with our own selection biases for things we already believe,  is make us way more polarized. Actually, to be more specific, it has definitely increased our sense of polarization, even though our actual differences may be smaller than we think. 

According to a 2023 study from the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, the more politically engaged you are the greater your misperception about the other party's positions.  I guess you could say this is just an example of the power of political tribalism. But I find it really interesting that the most politically engaged people, who should be the most informed about the other side, are actually the least accurate in their assessments of what the other side actually thinks. 

Okay, so what does this all mean?  I think there are two takeaways. First, you have to take care of your own thinking. That means testing your assumptions, especially on issues that you feel particularly strongly about.  And when you do argue your points, back them up with empirical research. It may not make any difference, depending on who you're talking to. But it's just the right way to argue. 

Second, and related to that last point, your sound well-reasoned arguments may not matter at all.  After all, as I was talking about earlier, a lot of us form very strong opinions based on very little information. And once those opinions are set, at least for those who aren't loyal listeners of this podcast, they tend to stay set regardless of any new information that tries to break in there.  It's like what Stephen Colbert said about George W. Bush at the correspondence dinner back in 2006: 

"He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.  Events can change, this man's beliefs never will."

So, one of the things I really appreciate about doing this podcast is that it has forced me to research and confirm or disconfirm everything that I thought I knew, and look really closely at the politicians that I support.  You might remember a few weeks ago I said that in a weird way I was jealous of Trump's supporters because they have a candidate who says exactly what they want him to say.  And I'm a little jealous because I've never had a political candidate who has done that for me.  Some have come closer than others, but none have really nailed it. So, for example, I think Bernie Sanders came pretty close. 

I mean, He may have been the only American politician ever, who publicly spoke the name Mohammad Mossadegh, former democratically elected prime minister of Iran. If you've never heard of him go to your library right now and check out Stephen Kinzer's book ALL THE SHAH'S MEN. It's a part of American history everyone should know.  

But for my entire life, the politicians I voted for have been hedgers, always trying not to offend anyone and balance themselves between often conflicting viewpoints.  They always end up offering the political equivalent of pizzaburgers, an idea created by political strategist Anat Shankar-Osorio.  A pizzaburger is it kind of spineless compromise.  So, for example, if half your family wants pizza and the other half wants burgers, serving pizza burgers may seem like a compromise, but what you've done is deliver what nobody wants. What real leaders do, according to Shankar-Osorio,  is convince enough people to support pizza or burgers.  

Here's a recent example of a pizzaburger.  My uncle-in-law posted the response to a tweet from Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg on Facebook about a week ago. Now I like Pete Buttigieg . I think he's a really smart guy who obviously knows how to expose the Fox News con with merciless precision. But this particular tweet said:  

" There are 14 million union workers in America who have fought hard for strong employer-provided health benefits.  Medicare for all who want it protects their plans and union members freedom to choose the coverage that's best for them."  

Now, this seems like a pro-union message. After all, what union supporter could possibly be against something that unions fought hard for?  But something just doesn't feel right in this tweet. It feels like there's a lot going on in those few words and I can't quite wrap my head around what it's all actually saying.  And that is a huge red flag that there's something going on there, that I'm not going to be too happy with.  And luckily for me, the Organizing Director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Service Employees International Union, Eric Strobel, responded directly to Buttigieg on Twitter. He tweeted: "Union chief negotiator here. This is absolutely wrong.  Medicare for all would free up bargaining power for wages and the common good and it would protect union members against a bad employer pulling healthcare during a strike. Medicare for all is a gift to the labor movement."  

And it suddenly became clear to me what felt so off in Buttigieg's original tweet.  Sure union members fought for good healthcare, but they were really fighting for the best possible option in a pretty crappy system,  meaning one that's very expensive and doesn't deliver particularly good results, and is controlled by their employer.  What they really want is the pizza of single-payer healthcare, access to which is not controlled by their employer.  But Buttigieg is worried that arguing for pizza will upset the private health insurance industry, which wants burgers.  So he has fallen into the pizzaburger trap. Although in this case, Buttigieg has definitely hued closer to the insurer side since doing a sort of half-assed Medicare for all who want it is very unlikely to find the huge number of members needed to make it competitive with private plans.  And if employer-provided private plans decide someone is too high risk, that means Medicare for all who want it will end up taking on too many high-risk members and will become way too expensive, which will be the "proof" for enough people that public insurance never works.  

So, what do we do given the reality we're stuck with?  Well in Anand Giridharadas's  2022 book, THE PERSUADERS, he talks about Shankar-Osorio's work and so much of it is really useful as we're here now, mired in the middle of an all-consuming presidential campaign.  Here are just a few ideas to keep in mind and to work to persuade your representatives and the candidates you support that they should use.  First of all using, the pizzaburger metaphor, it's worth noting that a centrist isn't someone who loves pizzaburgers. It's someone who hasn't made up their mind if they want pizza or a burger.  So demand that your leaders do a better job of convincing centrists that your approach is the best.  

Next, don't be afraid to make bold claims that may seem, at least from a democratic standpoint, too liberal.  And let the far, far right scream all they want about them. The more exposure, the better.  I mean, look at Kamala Harris, she's been kind of caving to big-money interests and shifting toward the right of Biden on some important issues. And yet they're still calling her comrade Kamala, and a communist and a socialist and all that crap.  If they're going to call you a socialist, then give them some specific democratic socialist policies to scream about. I mean get Fox News hosts yelling about how the crazy left wants to give free vocational education to everyone in America. The more they say it, the more likely it is to be heard by someone who might change their mind about it. And in a weird way, the more normal it becomes.  

And really importantly, Shankar-Osorio says the enemy of the left isn't the right. It's cynicism. It's the idea that nothing can be done to stop the march toward authoritarianism, and the Democrats aren't offering a positive agenda to counter it.  

And one of the big ways to do that. Is to show what the world would look like if those positive outcomes had been achieved.  I recently found an interesting take on this in an interview in the Buddhist journal, tricycle with Rebecca Solnit.  She's talking about the climate crisis and how it's framed as if we currently live in an era of abundance. But that we'll need to give it all up and live in austerity if we're to solve this crisis. But she says, flip that on its head.  What are the things that we're currently austere in that we could have in abundance in an environmentally sustainable world?  She says, "Look at the ways that we are austere in meaning, purpose, hope, social connection, justice. We're impoverished in clean air, clean water, healthy topsoil, in the survival of so many species, and the health of the ocean.  We either feel it as a kind of moral injury or we experience a kind of moral numbing.  We can look forward to an age of abundance in these qualities we're currently austere in."  

So Secretary Buttigieg and frankly, anyone who wants to lead us toward a more humane, cohesive society.  I suggest you stop trying to convince us all to accept pizzaburgers and use your finely honed skills of persuasion to make a positive case for the best path forward, one that recognizes the equal value of all of us, strengthens the connections between us, and protects the single ecosystem we all share.  

Well, that's it for this week. Please share this episode with at least one person who you think might also enjoy it. And until next time, be kind to yourself, cut each other some slack, and use your damn turn signal.