OPINION
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
A5
LAYIN’ IT ON
THE LINE
Steve Kerby
Don’t forget
infl ation when
planning your
retirement
he cumulative eff ects of infl ation
are often ignored by seniors plan-
ning retirement. This oversight can
wreak havoc when you no longer have a
paycheck.
I was asked a question from a member
of our Wallowa community regarding the
diff erence between net income and NET
NET income when business planning.
As an example, if you buy an article to
sell in your retail shop for $5 and sell it for
$10, the diff erence between cost and sales
is your net profi t. But this is not an accu-
rate picture of the success of your busi-
ness. To calculate the exact NET NET
profi t, you must also consider the costs of
running the business, taxes, overhead, rent,
labor, payroll taxes, any pension liabili-
ties, health insurance benefi ts costs, any
interest on loans, and all other business
expenses. When that number is known,
then simple math will determine your NET
NET return. A true and fi nal result, after
more than the obvious subtractions and
allowances.
If you’re like many people, the older
you get, the more you think about eff ec-
tively planning your retirement. There is
no way to be 100% certain how long a per-
son will live after they retire or exactly
how much money they will need, so you
must be aware of some basic principles.
One of these — the certainty of infl a-
tion — is often overlooked by preretir-
ees. It’s only several years into retirement
that seniors sense their money simply isn’t
going as far as they once did and that they
may have underestimated how much they
needed to create their dream retirement.
Many retirement planners preach a
strict gospel of “avoid risk at all costs.”
But, is this truly the advice for those
within 5-10 years of retirement?
What about the impact infl ation has,
not only on your daily purchases and costs
of goods and services but on your retire-
ment savings? Actuarial tables indicate
that someone retiring right now at age 65
might live another 20 years or more. Using
a modest 3% rate of infl ation, your cost of
living could double in under 25 years.
If your fi nancial adviser seems too
intent on protecting your wealth and has
no strategy in mind for achieving growth
that off sets or outpaces infl ation, you may
need to get a second opinion.
Here are a few issues you should dis-
cuss with your advisor as you enter your
fi nancial life’s distribution phase.
Cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) for
Social Security won’t keep pace with infl a-
tion. A major source of retirement funding
for seniors is Social Security.
While Social Security, unlike other
investments, does provide periodic cost of
living increases, these have never managed
to off set infl ation. Many fi nancial experts
believe that the Social Security Adminis-
tration uses benchmarks that underestimate
the actual rate of infl ation. For example,
from 2000-18, the cost of drugs commonly
prescribed for seniors rose 188%. This dra-
matic spike caused the purchasing power
of Social Security to fall by 34%. The les-
son here is that, while Social Security is
an essential piece of your retirement plan,
you cannot expect payouts to keep up with
infl ation.
Investments and savings erode with
infl ation. Like water, infl ation has a slow
but dramatic ability to erode nearly every-
thing it touches.
While the immediate consequences of
infl ation seem minor, over time, the eff ects
compound, impacting every aspect of your
post-work life. To loosen infl ation’s grip
on your fi nances, consider investing in
things other than bonds and CDs, whose
rates of return can be much, much lower
than a conservative 2% infl ation rate.
Infl ation risk is real, and seniors must
account for it when designing their retire-
ment blueprints. Retirees and those about
to retire must actively manage their
fi nances and understand the ramifi cations
of infl ation.
Nominal gains will probably not be
enough to off set infl ation risk. However,
you do have a say in where your wealth
gets invested. Educating yourself on infl a-
tion risk and other factors that threaten
your nest egg is the fi rst step to avoid mak-
ing mistakes with your money from which
you will have no time to recover.
———
As an avid outdoorsman, Joseph and the
Wallowa area have been a big part of Steve
Kerby’s life since 1964. Steve is a Syndi-
cated Columnists member, a national orga-
nization committed to a fully transparent
approach to money management. With over
50 years in the fi nancial services industry,
Steve specializes and focuses on each indi-
vidual client’s goals. Visit stevekerby.retire-
village.com or call 503-936-3535 for more.
T
Censorship is a tool of tyrants
ON LIBERTY
Devin Patton
mericans have enjoyed the benefi ts
of freedom for over 200 years. Our
Founders were wise enough to rec-
ognize that in order to self-govern, the cit-
izens and the press needed the ability to
think independently from government infl u-
ence. The First Amendment to the Consti-
tution protects this value, while censorship
opposes it. If we allow any form of cen-
soring to gain a foothold, power-hungry
authoritarians will use it as a tool to gain
power over our speech and our minds.
The ACLU defi nes censorship as “the
suppression of words, images or ideas that
are ‘off ensive,’” and notes that censorship
can be carried out by both governments
and private organizations. We are familiar
with the atrocities of the 20th century that
resulted from government censorship.
After securing victory and ending the
Russian Civil War in the early 1900s, the
Bolsheviks signed the “Decree on Press”
to prohibit the publishing of any “bour-
geois” articles that were critical of the new
government.
In 1930s Germany, the Nazi Party
strictly enforced censorship to promote the
circulation of propaganda that celebrated
their ethnic superiority and simultaneously
dehumanized the Jewish people.
We know now that millions of Soviet
citizens were sent to prison work camps
known as gulags for speaking out against
A
the government, and of course the unchal-
lenged Nazi propaganda played a sig-
nifi cant role in the events that led to the
Holocaust.
Currently, the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) is reportedly operating modern con-
centration camps housing Uyghur Muslims
in the Xinjiang Province. The CCP denies
their existence, insisting that they are reed-
ucation schools to combat “extremism”
and to inspire loyalty to the party. Few peo-
ple truly know what is happening in China
because the CCP has such a tight grip on
the fl ow of information.
In America, the current threat of cen-
sorship isn’t coming from the federal gov-
ernment. Instead, major tech companies
are using their power to limit our access
to information. A 2019 Pew Research poll
found that over half of Americans report
getting news from social media plat-
forms. As our sources for news and ideas
grow less diverse and less reliable, our
thoughts and conversations begin to shrink
in breadth and depth as well. When we see
infl uential organizations and political fi g-
ures chastised or even banned from social
media, it becomes diffi cult to maintain the
courage to speak up and speak out against
the “Twitter mob.” Self-censorship is a par-
ticularly dangerous form of censorship
because it not only limits the number of
ideas in the marketplace, but it also makes
people fearful to ask questions.
When we stop learning, we stop grow-
ing. Additionally, we also see social media
platforms like Twitter performing obvi-
ous acts of speech suppression by block-
ing user accounts or removing content
they deem a violation of their policies. A
highly publicized instance of this took place
in October of 2020, when the New York
Post was locked out of its own account for
their investigative news article on Hunter
Biden’s laptop. In this case, Twitter cited
a violation of its policy against sharing
hacked materials, but the reality is that
Twitter and other platforms have the liberty
to shape their policies however they like
and place restrictions on any type of speech
that is in violation of such a policy. Numer-
ous other individuals have fallen victim to
Twitter’s arbitrary censorship policies, and
it is alarming that so many Americans are
relying on social media platforms like this
for their news. They are receiving curated
news feeds formulated by tech executives,
and it is infl uencing their perceptions, for
better or worse.
Social media and other large compa-
nies engaging in the restriction of free
speech are able to rationalize their actions
by claiming that an individual’s right to
expression ends when their speech causes
off ense to others. However, the only ethi-
cal way to combat off ensive (or even dan-
gerous) speech is not by silencing it, but by
engaging with it in open debate. Even the
ACLU agrees: “these private censorship
campaigns are best countered by groups
and individuals speaking out and organizing
in defense of the threatened expression.”
Instead of working to silence our oppo-
sition, we should seek to engage with peo-
ple whose views we fi nd challenging, and
we must not fail to challenge speech sup-
pression, even the suppression of speech
we abhor. Censorship is nothing more
than mental slavery and it has no place in
a nation founded on principles of freedom
and justice for all.
———
Devin Patton is a third-generation
Wallowa County native whose pastimes
include the study of ag economics, history
and free thought.
To meat or not to meat?
WRITERS ON
THE RANGE
Allen Best
ushback against a “meatless day”
proclaimed by Colorado Gov.
Jared Polis last month was predict-
ably vigorous. It was part of the “war on
rural Colorado,” said a state senator who
runs a cattle-feeding operation. Twen-
ty-six of Colorado’s 64 counties adopted
“meat-in” proclamations. Governors from
the adjoining states of Wyoming and
Nebraska even gleefully designated an
“eat-meat” day.
Afterward, Polis’ press aides pointed
to the hundreds of do-good proclamations
the governor issues each year, and the
governor quickly declared his beef brisket
the rival of any in Colorado.
But this proclamation diff ered from
those affi rming truck drivers, bat aware-
ness and breakfast burritos. It called for
broad change. Using the language of a
“MeatOut” Day proclamation written by
an animal rights group, his statement cited
the benefi ts of a plant-based diet in reduc-
ing our carbon footprint, preserving eco-
systems and preventing animal cruelty.
It also noted the growing alternatives to
meat, dairy and eggs.
In the 1880s, when my great-grand-
parents homesteaded in eastern Colorado,
they grazed cattle on the short-grass prai-
rie. Ranchers still do. Once off the range,
though, our beef production is best under-
stood as an industrial process. The foun-
dation is grain.
In his book How to Avoid a Climate
Disaster, Bill Gates explains the mod-
P
ern pyramid of protein: A chicken eats 2
calories’ worth of grain to give us 1 cal-
orie of poultry. For cattle, it’s 6 calories
of feed to produce 1 calorie of beef. I’ve
stood in rows of corn tassels 12 feet high
at maturity, the growth boosted by luxuri-
ant applications of fertilizer. I’ve pinched
my nose while driving past feedlots large
enough for 80,000 or more head. I’ve
heard the bellow of cows minutes away
from the knife at slaughterhouses.
Denver no longer has slaughterhouses
but still prides itself on its livestock her-
itage. The annual Western Stock Show
puts cowboy hats in high-end restaurants
and strip joints alike. Cattle represent 50%
of Colorado’s $7 billion agriculture econ-
omy, and livestock altogether 70%. After
Polis’ proclamation, livestock producers
debated boycotting Denver’s Stock Show
for other venues — perhaps Oklahoma.
Even a legislator from one of metro
Denver’s poorer neighborhoods objected
to Polis’ proclamation, pointing out that
nutritious vegetarian options aren’t avail-
able to many of her constituents.
But it’s not just low-income areas that
lack meal choices. Fast-food franchises
in big cities and small towns all cater to
the lowest-common denominator, their
high-volume enterprises predicated on
cheap meat, especially beef. The conse-
quences are that we now have bulbous
bellies and too many heart attacks. We
struggle to live with restraint.
The meaty issue here is not about meat
vs. no-meat. Rather, it’s about scale and
processes. What have we sacrifi ced in
pursuit of volume?
Credit the ranchers who graze cattle
holistically in an attempt to replicate the
once-vast herds of bison. But also note
that grass-fed beef needs buyers. Most
holistically raised cows get further fat-
tened on grain. That’s where the market
is.
There’s also the looming issue of cows
contributing to climate change, as highly
polluting methane comes out of both ends
of cattle. Gates, always the technologist,
insists that innovation can reduce the car-
bon output of agriculture by reducing our
yen for real beef. He put his money where
my mouth is by investing in a vegetarian
product called the Impossible Burger. Last
week I had one. It fooled me. I thought it
was beef.
Meanwhile, the urban-rural divide
remains starkly real and evident in vot-
ing and development patterns. While cit-
ies struggle to contain their growth, many
small towns struggle to hang on. Iron-
ically, the economies of most of these
at-risk rural towns are premised on indus-
trial-scale agriculture.
Rural Colorado never has liked Polis,
a savvy businessman from the exurbs of
Boulder who favors market solutions. He
had barely warmed his gubernatorial seat
when handmade signs began showing up
on rural country roads asking “Why does
Polis hate …” You fi ll in the blank.
This meatless proclamation was tone-
deaf. It could have narrowly affi rmed
meatless alternatives rather than decried
meat. Denial and anger will not prevail,
though. I’m reminded of when coal pro-
ducers, 10 and 15 years ago, were fi ghting
the future of renewables instead of fi gur-
ing out their place in the world to come.
Though most of us may continue to eat
beef, some of us have already begun to
shift away. Polis was perhaps the unwit-
ting messenger of that truth — that cows
in the West are no longer sacred.
———
Allen Best contributes to Writers on the
Range, writersontherange.org, an inde-
pendent nonprofi t dedicated to spurring
lively conversation about the West. He
writes about energy and water in Big Piv-
ots, his e-magazine.