It Concentrates his Mind Wonderfully

Billionaire Ron Shaich founded Panera
Bread (Abramsom/Getty/WSJ)

If New Year's resolutions haven't been effective, try thinking of yourself on your deathbed. Ron Shaich refers to these envisionings as "premortems." [bold added]

It’s a habit that began as a response to the death of his parents in the 1990s. His mother was at peace with herself when she died, he says. But his father was “racked with regret and remorse” about decisions he made and the opportunities he missed. What he took away from their experiences was the last lesson that his parents would teach him—and the most profound of them all.

Don’t wait until the end to decide if you are proud of your life. Do it before it’s too late. Do it while you can still do something about it.

“I realized that the time to be having that review was not in the ninth inning with two outs,” he told me. “It was in the seventh inning, the fifth inning and third inning.”

Ron Shaich did not invent the term:

In business, the concept of the premortem was coined by cognitive psychologist Gary Klein, and the late Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman called it “a brilliant idea.” The goal is to identify all the potential sources of failure on a project to improve the chances of success—to imagine how and why things might go wrong instead of explaining after they have gone wrong. “So that the project can be improved,” as Klein once put it, “rather than autopsied.

A premortem can focus the mind better than composing yet another list of resolutions.

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.--Samuel Johnson

California's High Home Prices in the 1970's

California home prices achieved separation
from the rest of the U.S. in the 1970's (psmag)

One aspect of Jimmy Carter's Presidency of which I was unaware:

Carter’s presidency was No. 1 for California home-price gains

During Carter’s four years in the Oval Office, California home prices jumped 90%, as measured by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. No presidential term since Carter’s has produced a larger California home-price surge.

High housing prices are not unequivocally good; they benefit sellers but hurt buyers, and with sizable numbers on both sides politicians should try to cater to both (e.g., lower taxes on capital gains, faster permitting).

In California during Jimmy Carter's term, the State government was a huge beneficiary of the runup in home prices. Property taxes were ad valorem, i.e. based on the market value of homes, and had increased dramatically. There were numerous widely accepted anecdotes (though extrapolation would be unreliable because sellers did not have to disclose their motivation) of fixed-income seniors who were forced to sell their homes due to property tax increases. State legislators made no move either to lower taxes or rebate surpluses. The stage was set for Proposition 13.

From the State Board of Equalization's 2018 California Property Tax - An Overview:

On June 6, 1978, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 13, a property tax limitation initiative. This amendment to California’s Constitution was the taxpayers’ collective response to dramatic increases in property taxes and a growing state revenue surplus of nearly $5 billion. Proposition 13 rolled back most local real property, or real estate, assessments to 1975 market value levels, limited the property tax rate to 1 percent plus the rate necessary to fund local voter-approved bonded indebtedness, and limited future property tax increases.

The home-price increases during the term of President Carter are an interesting phenomenon but are historically important because they spawned a nationwide taxpayer revolt that still echoes in the politics of today.

Happy New Year: Just Roll With It

(David Moyers art)

I've often made New Year's resolutions--you know, the usual goals to spend less, lose weight, read more books, etc.--but that list is predicated upon the New Year being "normal." Sometimes events take charge--a death in the family, a corporate layoff, a house fire, getting a scholarship at a top college, winning the lottery (good things happen too)--that upend all the priorities.

In 2024 I had to learn once again that nature and other people had far more to say about how the year went than me, myself, and I.

In the New Year stuff will happen, so just roll with it.