tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post3323814153632026016..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Hazard Response: What Went Wrong in Happy Valley?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-56404378042257265032014-09-20T02:27:35.726-07:002014-09-20T02:27:35.726-07:00Many thanks Duncan and Hilton.
A bit dizzy here t...Many thanks Duncan and Hilton.<br /><br />A bit dizzy here too, sans the brave travels, and flinching steadily these days, just in case. More reflex than policy. Meditation loop, closed circuit. Wake me for the wake.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-32544407444717544282014-09-16T17:33:53.572-07:002014-09-16T17:33:53.572-07:00Just got back from China and still dizzy, was ther...Just got back from China and still dizzy, was there for 9/11 with little recognition except on CCTV English. I've fallen behind in reading/viewing your meditations but I hope to catch up soon. This looks stunning.Hiltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04497545378045907642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-89635538479012242912014-09-14T08:16:42.993-07:002014-09-14T08:16:42.993-07:00The poem: it may be only you and Amiri Baraka resp...The poem: it may be only you and Amiri Baraka responded as poets unflinchingly. <br /><br />That deranged turn of foreign policy; we're all living in its wake.Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-22584602451073260692014-09-12T17:41:11.202-07:002014-09-12T17:41:11.202-07:00But of course if you have a lot of money and no ta...But of course if you have a lot of money and no taste you can do anything you want, in this great nation. But should you be wanting to do anything you want? If you and your posse want to wade in swinging haymakers at a snowmobile party, and because you can, you do, will it bring you happiness?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-palin-family-brawl-20140912-story.html" rel="nofollow">Palin gang brawl</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-74197250030929982722014-09-12T16:45:58.119-07:002014-09-12T16:45:58.119-07:00Apropos money and happiness, couldn't help rec...Apropos money and happiness, couldn't help recalling this...<br /><br />__<br /><br />The Perfect Salary for Happiness: $75,000: Robert Frank, Wall Street Journal, 7 September 2010<br /><br />The study, which analyzed Gallup surveys of 450,000 Americans in 2008 and 2009, suggested that there were two forms of happiness: day-to-day contentment (emotional well-being) and overall “life assessment,” which means broader satisfaction with one’s place in the world. While a higher income didn’t have much impact on day-to-day contentment, it did boost people’s “life assessment.”<br /><br />Now we have more details from the study, conducted by the Princeton economist Angus Deaton and famed psychologist Daniel Kahneman. It turns out there is a specific dollar number, or income plateau, after which more money has no measurable effect on day-to-day contentment.<br /><br />The magic income: $75,000 a year. As people earn more money, their day-to-day happiness rises. Until you hit $75,000. After that, it is just more stuff, with no gain in happiness.<br /><br />That doesn’t mean wealthy and ultrawealthy are equally happy. More money does boost people’s life assessment, all the way up the income ladder. People who earned $160,000 a year, for instance, reported more overall satisfaction than people earning $120,000, and so on.<br /><br />“Giving people more income beyond 75K is not going to do much for their daily mood … but it is going to make them feel they have a better life,” Mr. Deaton told the Associated Press.<br /><br />He added that, “As an economist I tend to think money is good for you, and am pleased to find some evidence for that.”<br /><br />The results are fascinating, especially in this conflicted age of materialism. But I wonder how they would differ by region or city. Would $75,000 mark the ultimate day-to-day contentment in such high-cost cities as New York City, Los Angeles or San Francisco? I doubt it. Perhaps the salary number would be lower in South Dakota or Mississippi.<br /><br />What do you think the income threshold would be in your town for maximum day-to-day happiness?<br /><br />__<br /><br />To translate the data scooped (or fabricated) in that particular survey done in 2008-2009 into the context of the present and the prospects of attempting survival in the Once Happy Valley, our helpful WSJ money guru would probably have to be readjusting the Perfect Salary for Happiness upward somewhat.<br /><br />In those designated "high-cost" urban milieux (which, by the by, would include that gentrified patch of ugly Brooklyn waterfront from which the Fall of the Towers is being casually observed by the high-end Happiness Seekers in Mr Hoepker's photo), in one of which as it happens we here are unfortunate to be defensively eking out our final days, the WSJ PSH would have to be closer to $100 K. And good luck finding that in the street.<br /><br />“As an economist I tend to think money is good for you, and am pleased to find some evidence for that.”<br /><br />As a non economist I think money is bad for everybody, and am unhappy to find more evidence of that every time I consider the world in which I live.<br /><br />In any case, it's difficult for me to imagine anyone actually WANTING to live in New York City, even if paid the proverbial "princely sum" to do so.<br /><br />When we escaped New York nearly a half century ago, we ended up in a remote village, on a dirt road, where we got by on $1000 a year, and it was the happiest time of our life.<br /><br />Now in that same no longer quite so remote village, the roads are paved, and it's so costly to gain entry that only the very rich can even begin to think to qualify to live there, happily or not.<br /><br />But then, the matter of whether or not the very rich are happy is no affair of ours, in any case.<br /><br />Currently any vacuous post-adolescent humanoid with computer skills and no awareness of history can "earn" enough money in an hour to buy lunch at a fancied-up waterfront dive like that one in Williamsburg -- or to keep us marginally alive for another miserable month (though the latter would probably not seem a particularly attractive option, mind).TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-24681494028025398872014-09-12T06:33:05.675-07:002014-09-12T06:33:05.675-07:00What a powerful poem, Tom, about the continuing di...What a powerful poem, Tom, about the continuing disaster we like to call “the American way of life”. The pictures too articulate that most clearly.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-81124040732012140842014-09-12T04:38:41.052-07:002014-09-12T04:38:41.052-07:00Tom,
What a harrowing piece. Beautiful. Love what...Tom,<br /><br />What a harrowing piece. Beautiful. Love what the blog is trying to do as well..As for Hazard Response. Here is some by John Updike -<br /><br />"The next morning, I went back to the open vantage from which we had watched the tower so dreadfully slip from sight. The fresh sun shone on the eastward façades, a few boats tentatively moved in the river, the ruins were still sending out smoke, but New York looked glorious."<br /><br />- and to quote a mythical, unhappy resident of happy valley - "how do I maximize my happiness when my wage is minimum "<br /><br />manik sharmahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18055072451804840121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-42621919667662536982014-09-12T03:31:47.297-07:002014-09-12T03:31:47.297-07:00Hazard Response, read by Black Mamba @pō\’ĭ-trē, 2...<a href="http://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/2006/04/26/hazard-response/" rel="nofollow">Hazard Response, read by Black Mamba @pō\’ĭ-trē, 26 April 2006</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com