Evidence that our government’s ongoing bastardization of the economy is producing absurd outcomes can we witnessed all around you if only you care to look.

Begin with the first-person anecdotal example I learned of while walking today and encountering a fellow car buff. He told a tale of another classic car he’s bought and the conversation got into the rising prices of such cars, real estate, and all other manner of tangible goods.

During the course of this talk on price inflation, he shared that his wife last year began alternating weeks with another woman on their job. One would work a week, then take the next week off.

Bottom line: This guy’s wife, with all the unemployment add-ons she received for the weeks she didn’t work, ended up making $5,000 more for the year by working half of it, than she’d made working the entire previous year.

If you think this is sustainable long term, or good for the economy, you are gullible indeed.

It produces examples such as a few weeks back, when I had difficulty finding a worker to put up a piece of downspout on my house.

It leads to stories such as the Florida McDonald’s franchisee offering $50 bonuses just for a workers to come in and APPLY for a job. An investing podcast I listened to on today’s walk told of a landscaper who hired 20 or so people and none showed up for the first day of work, preferring to sit home and spend stimulus money.

The problem goes beyond the micro level to the macro-economic. Historically low interest rates have made borrowing easy to purchase cars, houses, whatever, thus increasing the prices of said goods.

Food and energy also have increased in price, a tax on everyone.

More importantly, this easy money has removed an important feedback item from the economy. Where before companies had to have a reason to exist, had to generate profits, now they can borrow their way into continued existence. Eventually they fail, but only after burning up a lot of capital.

That’s money that could have gone to more productive means had economic signals been intact instead of being distorted by governmental money policy.

Investments, too, benefit from loose money. Online brokerage applications see spikes in activity each time more stimulus money hits the banking accounts of its traders. The money often goes into the latest, hottest momentum play, fueling that trend until economic reality intrudes, as it always must in the long run.

Many of these traders aren’t bothering to go to work, preferring to attempt to leverage the stimulus money into riches.

Think of all the goods and services you use in a single day and what you would do if no one was incentivized enough to go to work and make the goods or perform the services.

We all can’t sit home and collect government handouts without the nation collapsing. That’s the harsh reality the socialists don’t bother to mention.

But government pursues this course, and not just in this country. A cynic would argue that whenever we get the raging inflation that accompanies such wild spending, governments, being the massive debtors they are, benefit from paying back those debts in depreciated currency.

Further, if price inflation touches off wage inflation, government benefits there, too, with higher tax revenue from higher income.

Economic growth, and the long-term financial health of the country will be adversely affected, but that’s a problem for down the line. For now it’s spend, spend, spend while you can and just live for today.

I’ve returned to the blog-posting keyboard after taking a two-week hiatus, which I am sure my handful of readers will understand. Or maybe they didn’t notice.

It seems like little has changed since the last post. So much propaganda, hypocrisy and bias; so little time.

We’ll cover some of this with a dose of news and views.

THE NEWS: Nancy Pelosi’s husband showed prescient timing in spending about $1.95 million to acquire Microsoft call options (the right to buy the stock at a fixed price) just ahead of Microsoft landing a government contract that has caused the stock to rise about 11 percent in a short amount of time.

THE VIEWS: You could have knocked me over with a sledgehammer when I read that.

THE NEWS: In yet another Project Veritas expose, a CNN technical director was taped saying his network (The Most Busted Name in Fake News) ran a propaganda campaign designed to get Joe Biden elected and Donald Trump ousted as president.

THE VIEWS: You still got that sledgehammer handy?

THE NEWS: A Texas non-profit recently hired a Biden transition official and soon thereafter landed a $530 million federal contract to manage the inflow of migrant children at the southern border.

THE VIEWS: Sledgehammer, please.

THE NEWS: Portland (Oregon) Police are flirting with the political correct firing squad by declaring a “riot” when protesters set fire to a police association building and an ICE building there, protesting a shooting death in – wait for it – Minnesota. A police chief in Minnesota already has resigned under fire when he labeled a crowd committing vandalism and attempting to injure police a “riot,” incurring the wrath of the woke media members.

THE VIEWS: I’m reminded of the selective language of ice hockey, where our tough guy fighter is an “enforcer” but your team’s tough guy is a “goon.” Cue Gertrude Stein: A riot is a riot is a riot. Call it a clambake, street party, mostly peaceful protest or rave if you like, but in reality it is a riot.

THE NEWS: A Texas police officer was shot multiple times Wednesday morning during a routine traffic stop, but has survived. A suspect has been arrested and also is suspected of murdering a woman in a nearby carjacking. The shooting of the policeman was, according to Associated Press, at least the fourth in Texas in recent weeks.

THE VIEWS: It gives you some perspective on the Minnesota shooting, when the man who was shot, accidentally according to the police, suffered his fatal wound while resisting arrest during a routine traffic stop. Cops have a right to be tense.

THE NEWS: A black student at Albion College in Michigan has confessed to writing racist and anti-Semitic graffiti in a dorm stairwell.

THE VIEWS: Can we expect riots – I mean mostly peaceful demonstrations – calling for that guy’s cynical, opportunistic head?

THE NEWS: A 37-year-old co-founder of Black Lives Matter has gone on quite the buying spree, acquiring four high-end homes in the U.S. for $3.2 million.

THE VIEWS: As Bernie Sanders has showed, just because you’re a Marxist doesn’t mean you don’t believe in pampering yourself with expensive real estate. Mum’s the word.

THE NEWS: Former basketball star and current analyst Charles Barkley, who is black, took the occasion of a break in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament coverage to note that politicians are dividing this country along lines of black vs. white or rich vs. poor to maintain their power and money.

THE VIEWS: Predictably, Barkley was roundly criticized by liberals. Just shut up about life and talk about basketball was their message. But we’re supposed to endure endless National Anthem protests at sporting events, Major League Baseball caving to woke interests by relocating the All-Star Game, Black Lives Matter uniform patches and other melding of sports and racial politics.

The overriding flaw in the thinking of those who would have this become handout nation is that eventually people need other people to do work.

No matter how many inflated dollars the government direct deposits into your account, or how much is handed out in the way of other subsidies, it’s all meaningless unless some people continue to do their jobs.

You need truckers delivering goods. You need people stocking grocery shelves. You need policemen, firemen, healthcare workers, utility workers, teachers, child care workers construction workers, military. Etc., etc., etc.

I came face-to-face with the shortage of willing workers in recent days when yet another strong windstorm raced through the area and took the measure of one of the upper-level downspouts on my house.

I live in Southmont Borough, where the sewer Nazis are out and about inspecting for homes who might have storm runoff infiltrating the sewers. That means one can’t chance unchecked water flow near the house’s foundation, lest some of it infiltrate the basement and exit through the floor drain.

This makes downspouts vital and one of mine had its date with gravity Friday of last week. I immediately did some quick internet research and reached out to several “handyman” types, thinking they’d be eager for the work.

I actually spoke to one who answered the phone because his jobs were called off due to the high wind the problems that creates for those working on ladders.

Both that respondent, and a woman who answered the phone at another establishment, were, how shall I say this, disinterested. They would try to take a look next week.

I stressed someone could knock it off in about an hour, tops, and the pieces were intact, just needing to be put back into place and ostensibly better secured with a pop rivet or two.

Apparently they have more work than they can handle. One couldn’t even slip by at the end of the day for a bonus job. But, if that’s the case in my economically depressed area, you’d think others would get into the contracting/handyman business to fill the apparent need.

Or maybe people would rather collect enhanced unemployment, stimulus checks, and other governmental largesse.

The local rag had a story a couple of weeks back about how local small business owners were up against the wall finding people willing to work. One actually had an employee quit once the stimulus money was in his checking account. He’d worry about working down the line, when that ran out, or wasn’t replaced by yet another round of giveaway money.

When Tuesday was slipping away, I tried to reach out to both handyman contacts from the past Friday. They could not be reached. I tried a third, no answer. I tried yet another – number out of service.

My wife found a name on a neighbors message board she frequents and called. The guy actually was interested. I took over talking to him and got a commitment that he’d get back to me today about possibly coming Friday. Great.

Having had a trying day of helping babysit granddaughters, and watching my investment portfolio shrink, I got the Mustang convertible out for a therapeutic cruise, with a stop at a local indoor flea market.

Returning to my car, I was surprised to see a text and missed call on my cell phone. The guy was coming tonight (Tuesday) to do the downspout.

God Bless America! I quickly called him to confirm that was great, I’d be racing home (figuratively speaking, of course) and hopefully it would be as easy as I told him it would be.

The work could have been done by me, if I was about 60 pounds lighter, and not cursed with severe acrophobia. My wife had volunteered to borrow a neighbor’s ladder and do the job, but I didn’t like that idea, either, for safety reasons.

This “handyman” and his worker showed up, went the extra mile in terms of securing the downspout to prevent future unhappiness, and generally were pleasant people.

It occurred to me that the next windstorm might find the house blown away, but the downspout still standing. Quipped the guy on the ladder: In case of an earthquake, stand under this downspout and you’ll be safe.

When I’d talked on the phone originally with the business owner, I lamented how people didn’t want to work, or believed a job wasn’t worthwhile unless it promised five figures.

He’d given me a ballpark figure of about $70 to $100 for my repair. I told him I’d willingly go beyond that just to have the problem fixed.

When all was said and done, I happily paid him $120 – not bad for two guys and an hour of work. It is one hell of a lot more than the proposed $15-an-hour minimum wage

Yet as time passes, fewer and fewer people are willing to perform such jobs – or any jobs, for that matter.

You might not think that’s a problem now. Trust me, you will.

A few days back my daily walk turned into a head-shaking experience when I talked with a long-time acquaintance.

It was a sunny day and he was occupying a lawn chair in his driveway when I waved and called out. He came over to join me for a brief conversation about world events, an interaction that turned into a COVID-19 debate.

Unexpectedly, the discussion devolved into facts (me) vs. feelings (him) with his bottom line: “You read too much.”

This indictment of researching a subject, coming from a guy whose job was as an educator, pretty much floored me.

Well, I’m still reading, including today, when zerohedge.com had a story on a study showing COVID-19 media reports in the United States had been overwhelming negative, to the tune of 87 percent. By way of comparison, that study found 51 percent of stories outside the U.S. falling into the negative category.

No doubt traditional leftist apologists will try to impugn these messengers. But that’s going to be difficult because the researchers are from Dartmouth College and Brown University, two Ivy League institutions that are generally on the left end of the political spectrum.

The story on the study is replete with examples of how the media put a negative slant on even positive developments in fighting COVID-19 and how such things sowed misinformation among the populace.

This misinformation seems to have found fertile ground in the mind of the man I spoke with during that walk.

It’s heartening that some academics have found what I anecdotally recognized — the slant being put on news. It’s disheartening that so many sheep won’t bother to consider the evidence and instead cling to their media-fed fears and misinformation.

Such media bias and agendas is pretty apparent across the board, but often is harder to quantify than with the COVID-19 example.

Inciting racial tensions and political divides is another media favorite, one that backfired when some rushed to social media to bash white guys in the wake of last week’s Colorado mass shooting. The man arrested in the case, is not white, but Syrian.

In a surprising bit of responsibility, USA Today has fired its “race and inclusion” editor for hitting Twitter with her screeds about it always being white men pulling the trigger in mass shootings. After the fact, she deleted the tweets, but that ship had sailed.

I’m sure this fired editor won’t be out of work long. There always seem to be radical outlets eager to give succor to such extreme types, as long as their extreme leanings are to the left.

That seems to be the reason for existence of too many media outlets, deconstructing this country.

But even before it became public knowledge that the alleged Colorado shooter was not a white guy, only an idiot (Kamala Harris’ niece included) would have jumped on their digital soap boxes to proclaim mass shooters “always” are white guys, or words to that effect.

According to statista.com, there have been 121 mass shootings in the United States from 1982 through developments this month.

Sixty-six of those shooters (54 percent) have been white, which is a little more than one-half, well short of “always.” Twenty-one of the shooters have been black (17 percent) and 10 Hispanic (8 percent).

The shootings don’t comport with the racial breakdown of the population, as cited in that statista report. It referred to 61 percent of this country’s population as white and about 14 percent black.

This means the social justice warriors should be on their Twitter and Facebook accounts, or in front of microphones, proclaiming that whites are UNDERREPRESENTED statistically among mass shooters and blacks are OVERREPRESENTED.

That doesn’t fit the narrative, the agenda, so they’ll just ignore it.

But there I go again, arguing that statistics – facts – should carry the day vs. feelings, emotions and media-fed, irrational fears. How retro of me.

Behold the hypocrisy of left-wing politicians and their lapdog media members as they react to a pair of mass shootings in recent weeks.

Both of these pathetically flawed groups rushed to highlight that the man identified as the Atlanta shooter was white and a Southern Baptist, and obviously hated Asians.

Robert Aaron Long, the alleged Georgia killer, is reported to have told police he is addicted to sex and killed to remove temptation. The man appears to be mentally troubled.

Yet those pushing an agenda kept hammering on his race, his religion, and the fact his victims were mostly Asians and/or women.

In Colorado earlier this week, 10 people were killed and information on the alleged shooter has been slow to leak out. But that didn’t prevent an all-star cast of bigots from rushing to social media outlets to proclaim it was yet more violence from an angry white man.

Among that group was the niece of Kamala Harris, our de facto president as Joe Biden totters toward complete incoherence.

“Violent white men are the greatest terrorist threat in our country,” read a tweet from the Harris niece, as reported in the New York Post and elsewhere.

But wait, according to court records the man charged with the Colorado mass killing is Syrian-born, and named Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa.

Whoops. Not white.

Meena Harris, the misinformed niece whose previous claim to fame was helping spearhead the movement to get Dr. Seuss books canceled for alleged racism, did the only right thing and deleted her erroneous tweet, then gave a half-baked, doubly lame rationalization.

Meena (Mean?) “made an assumption” she said, because the man was taken alive and the majority of mass shootings in the U.S. are by white men. You read it right, he could only be a mass shooter and alive because he’s white.

No need to wait for the facts when some good, old race baiting and virtue signaling can be put out to the masses, right Meena?

Politicians predictably rushed to the nearest microphone to proclaim the need for more stringent gun laws. The problem is, according to various relatives of the Colorado shooter, interviewed by various organizations, the man had serious mental problems.

Maybe we should tighten up those commitment laws. Just a thought here.

And the alleged shooter had been convicted of misdemeanor assault in high school. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.

Even more insidious than the politicians capitalizing on yet another tragedy to push an anti-constitutional agenda, is the way the news media acted in concert to ignore vital facts that were deemed essential in the reporting of the Georgia shooting.

The Colorado shooter had posted on social media about his hatred for President Trump. Guess that makes the guy a Biden supporter, but that has not been mentioned prominently by what passes for most mainstream media. Or maybe he felt the Bern.

Similarly, judging from reports of social media posts, the guy appears to be a follower of Islam. Again, no need to point out that religious tidbit. It’s not like he’s a Southern Baptist, after all.

And I think of George W. Bush, in the wake of Islamists piloting planes into the World Trade Center and The Pentagon, with his cloying repetition of his pet phrase “Islam is the religion of peace.”

Maybe Biden should get his handlers to include “Southern Baptist is the religion of peace” in his next thousand or so speeches.

Or maybe some of the biggest offenders in terms of politicizing and pontificating should get a grip on their emotions and have a quick re-introduction with facts.

Start with this basic truth: About two-thirds of the gun deaths annually in the United States are suicides. People don’t kill themselves with “assault rifles.”

Even if there were no guns, people would continue to commit suicide unless we outlawed tall buildings, bridges, potentially lethal prescription drugs, ropes and even the combination of water and electrical appliances.

The 32 dead in the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting, at the hands of a man of South Korean descent by the way, similarly wouldn’t have benefited from a ban on “assault weapons.” That shooter used two semi-automatic handguns.

Cars and trucks have been driven into crowds to kill masses. Don’t forget flying airplanes into buildings (having taken over those planes using box cutters as weapons) or packing explosives into a vehicle to take down buildings.

Banning cars, trucks, fertilizer, box cutters and diesel oil won’t address the problem.

What we have in this country is an insanity crisis. It is a crisis not just among those who would commit such atrocities, but also among those who would seek to use the tragedies in the most cynical way possible to advance their assaults on our rights.

Welcome to the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the tulip bulbs of the digital age.

You are to be forgiven if you’ve not heard of NFTs, a creation of recent times that stretches the bounds of reality, which could be the point.

Allow me to provide a parallel. Tales of speculative excesses often focus on the Tulip Mania, in which residents of Holland, inexplicably enamored by tulips, bid bulbs of the plant to ridiculous levels.

This happened in the 1636-37 time range most agree, when wealthy Hollanders had plenty of money made by trading the world and were looking to spend it.

That seems to me to be analogous to 2021, with the Federal Reserve leveraging the money supply as never before, the federal government handing out stimulus money at unprecedented levels, and people embracing debt at historic rates.

The degree of the Holland tulip bubble – a bubble being an example of speculative or investing excess – has been debated in recent years. But even if we take the toned down version of events from one doubter, this skeptic does admit that some bulbs traded for as much as 5,000 Guilders, enough to purchase a nice house at the time.

Many expensive bulbs saw prices increase 12-fold during the mania.

This supposed bubble-popping researcher found “only” 37 examples of a bulb selling for 300 Guilders. But, for perspective, 300 Guilders was roughly the annual salary of a skilled craftsman at the time.

When a plant’s bulb sells for a year’s salary, even once let alone 37 times, I’m calling it a bubble.

It’s a real-life counterpart to the distorted reality of The Emperor’s Clothes.

Fast-forward to 2021 and we have NFTs, in which blockchain technology, the process that has given us Bitcoin, is used to produce verifiable ownership of an art object. There is no hard copy – it’s all digital.

The use of “fungible” has nothing to do with fungus and simply means something that can be substituted for another just like it, as, for example, one penny for another penny.

Since the tokens are “non-fungible” they are supposed to be one of a kind.

Think of the Mona Lisa on a hard drive. I’d argue it’s not necessarily the same as the actual painting, but then again I didn’t grow up avoiding reality by playing video games as so many younger people have.

You know these people, often failures in school or life, who find comfort in being lords of some imaginary land accessed through their computer or a game console.

On a larger scale, there also are the philosophical navel-gazers who argue our entire existence is merely a computer simulation being run by aliens, or Gods, or some other omnipotent entities.

Earlier this month, Christie’s auction house sold an NFT of a digital collage for $69.3 million. What the buyer got was digital proof of “ownership” of the digital original.

Try hanging that on the wall and impressing visitors.

This strikes me as a takeoff on Bitcoin and other digital cryptocurrencies. They have worth only because people think they do. There is nothing tangible about it.

The symbol for Bitcoin, by the way, looks a lot like a gold coin with a letter B on it with two lines through it – think of the dollar sign ($). To repeat, there is no actual physical Bitcoin, only a digital entry that gobbles up massive amounts of electricity annually to keep the system running.

Bitcoin supposedly has worth due to scarcity. Theoretically there are a limited number of Bitcoin, but there is no limit to the number of similar digital currencies that can be created.

The price of Bitcoin admittedly has skyrocketed. But is that indicative of worth? Or is it more a case of a tulip bulb/NFT-style mania destined to end badly?

I doubt that anyone in Holland can buy a house for one tulip bulb these days.

Some in the conspiracy theory camp see digital exercises like NFTs or Bitcoin as the elites trying to get the masses in a position to speculate wildly and eventually to lose their net worth, making them that much more dependent on government handouts and the strings of control that come with them.

I’m not sure that is the case. What I am reasonably sure of is that down the line historians are going to chronicle this likely ephemeral phenomenon of valuing digital assets over the real thing and question the collective sanity of the masses.

They will add NFTs to the Tulip Mania; just the latest chapter in the book of testimony to mass gullibility.

Andrew Cuomo, embattled Democratic New York Governor and former darling of the left-wing media, provides an interesting study in selective outrage.

Calls continue to be heard for Cuomo’s resignation due to accusations from a growing number of women that he did everything from making them uncomfortable with his comments, to actually reaching under the blouse of one.

In a classic example of piling on and virtue signaling, the list of fellow prominent Democrats calling for Cuomo’s resignation has grown steadily for weeks, reaching all the way to the top. Joe Biden – you know, running mate of President Kamala Harris and significant other of DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!! – took a break from his comedic stumbling up the steps to Air Force One to proclaim that Cuomo should resign if investigations confirm the women’s allegations.

But Sleepy Joe Biden didn’t seem to feel as strongly about the FBI’s investigation into the suspicion that Cuomo and/or his aides intentionally under-reported nursing home deaths due to COVID-19 in an attempt to shield Cuomo from criticism because he had ordered such facilities in his state to admit or re-admit infected elderly.

Critics contend that this policy escalated New York’s nursing home death toll and the fact that it’s being investigated to determine if the totals were massaged downward suggests further suspicion is warranted that people in charge realized it was a mistake.

Despite it all, Cuomo has refused to resign and continues to go about playing the petty dictator in his state.

It’s more than a touch ironic that Cuomo hurriedly was awarded an Emmy for his virus press conferences.

Also ironic is a soundbite from one of those insipid gloat-fests he had on CNN with younger brother Chris, AKA Fredo. In what passed for journalism, Chris Cuomo asked Andrew last May about being “single and ready to mingle?”

Apparently, if that long list of accusers is to be believed, Cuomo has been looking to do more than mingle for some time.

If the FBI does as well on this Cuomo investigation as it did looking into the persecution of President Trump – by the FBI among others – expect nothing more substantial than a Cuomo underling or two being slapped on the wrist.

As for the accusations of sexual harassment, Cuomo has proven to be resilient, so short of him being imprisoned, I’d be surprised to see him leave his office ahead of schedule.

We are yet to hear any claims that Cuomo’s leers or roving hands killed anyone. Critics of Cuomo’s nursing home policy argue people did die owing to his bad policy.

Yet you are much more likely to hear or read about Cuomo’s unacceptable conduct with women than to hear criticism of his nursing home policy, or the alleged falsification of the records.

And that speaks to continuing decay of our society’s moral compass. I can’t imagine anyone being able to make a rational defense of those who see sexual harassment, as abhorrent as it is, as being much worse than a governmental policy that possibly inflated death totals, then under-reported them.

But that is exactly the case trying to be made.

March is just a bit more Mad this year as the NCAA men’s basketball tournament returns after a one-year, virus-induced hiatus.

This annual Betting Bacchanalia, spiced with a bit of Wrong Way Corrigan Day (July 17, you can look it up!) is a moment of rampant shared enthusiasm. After a year of going cold turkey without a tournament, one can feel the fervor for this year’s triumphant return.

This brings the sort of unity so many politicians profess to desire, but do not promote with their actions.

Unlike what those hypocrites actually achieve, filling out brackets for betting pools consumes and unites people of every race, creed, sex or religion. Many of the people you know will have a bracket they follow slavishly to track their prowess at picking winners.

Forget that the men’s basketball tournament generates almost all the betting interest and the women’s tournament slogs along in veritable seclusion. Even social justice warriors are willing to ignore that and put their cause on hold for a shot at bracket nirvana.

In many ways this is like the Super Bowl in that it lures in novices who ordinarily would not consider betting on sports, but somehow think they now can compete with the sharks based on the sheer numbers of the uninitiated participating.

A word of advice: If you are a serious gambler, open an online account at one of the betting sites and pick individual games, or even do some parlays or future bets.

In that way your expertise might be rewarded.

Picking entire brackets correctly tends to be an inverse function of in-depth knowledge.

I’ve won a couple of small bracket contests in the past at work, but more often than not I’ve merely donated my money.

Here is what I’ve learned along the way.

No matter how much you think you know about college men’s basketball, your bracket is likely to be won by someone making their picks based on the color of the team uniforms, the school mascot, or the name of the school, particularly ones such as Gonzaga or Creighton, Baylor or Duke that give no clue to geographic location, as opposed to Alabama, Michigan, Illinois and the like.

Don’t pick No. 16 seeds to upset No. 1 seeds in the first round. Yes, it’s happened once, UMBC over Virginia in 2018, thereby wrecking my brackets and millions of others. But the overall edge for No. 1 seeds is about 140-1. You don’t want to buck those odds.

If you can’t help yourself, pick a No 15 seed to upset a No. 2 seed. That has happened eight times in tournament history, which means while such picks remain incredible longshots, they still have eight times the historical chance of happening as No. 16 upsetting No. 1.

The darling upset pick, the one that will get a knowing nod of approval from bracketologists, is to pick one or more No. 12 seeds to take out a No. 5 seed in the first round. At least here you have a reasonable chance at success. Five times in the past 40 years at least three No. 12 seeds have won in the same tournament year. Over that same 40-year span, there have been just five years when there wasn’t a No. 12 upset of a No. 5 seed.

Taking favored Gonzaga to win the NCAA championship is an even greater longshot than picking a No. 12-No. 5 upset or two. The Zags are 26-0 coming into the tournament, seeking to become the first unbeaten champion since Indiana went 32-0 in 1975-76. Be doubly scared because so many in the college hoops cognoscenti, ranging from Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim to ESPN guru Dick Vitale, are taking Gonzaga to win it all.

Bonus reason not to take Gonzaga in these cancel culture, anti-establishment times: It is a private Catholic school in Spokane, Washington, whose colors are red, white and blue!

Our society is enduring a breakdown of logic, reliability and trust that is omnipresent if you just care to look.

Consider some personal examples from recent days.

Begin with the order of hats and a T-shirt mentioned previously here in an ode to the power of popup ads. The order eventually shipped from Avenel, New Jersey, where it had spent parts of two days. A recent update had the package moving to Urbancrest, Ohio, where it also has sojourned for parts of two days.

This means my package was transported from hundreds of miles to the east of my hometown, right past me and hundreds of miles to the west before, presumably, doing a U-turn and heading back to arrive on my doorstep, by 9 p.m. tomorrow if the promised delivery time is met.

Not that it will be met, or should I have any reasonable expectation of same.

What used to be taken for granted in this country, things like courteous and efficient customer service, promises kept and quality delivered either in terms of goods or services, and general honesty, no longer can be presumed.

Another example: I received an email recently from my bank that they were going to be charging for future hard copies of statements. I have three such statements I receive monthly and went online where I opted out of the first two, but kept my checking statement.

With my computer printer on the fritz still – and me too cheap to replace it – it’s easier to have a hard copy in the event of a problem.

Formerly, I had been told that since I had the old peoples’ fee-free checking account I needn’t worry about such things.

But I called customer service this morning just to make sure. After some time spent in phone tree hell, where I kept being shuttled around to listen to more and more prompts, I ended up on hold.

The estimated time given by them was 10 minutes. I’d like to have these people work for me at an hourly rate because they sure can’t tell time.

At one point, maybe 8-10 minutes into my hold time I was updated to 6-8 minutes to go. Five minutes later, it was 4-6 estimated additional hold time minutes.

Do the math. In five minutes, my estimate range reduced two minutes. I wrote down the information at the time because that’s who I am.

Eventually I got a live voice on the phone and, yes, if I wanted hard mailings in the future it would cost me $3.95. Per month? Per year? Forever? He didn’t specify, so I asked.

The answer was $3.95 a month, or about $48 a year. If this were an interest rate, the bank would be challenging usury regulations.

While on hold, I was catching up on my email and got a disturbing communique from my brother.

Our mother is in a nursing home. Formerly we each visited daily to help her with meals, etc. Since the virus over-reaction, no in-room visits have been allowed. There was a brief period of lobby meetings, limited to two visitors and with social distancing regulations strictly enforced, not to mention masks required.

But those lobby visits gave way to our dictatorial governor’s mandates to cease such things.

By the way, despite all this, our 84-year-old mother tested positive for COVID-19, but thankfully survived with no real problems.

Now we have teleconferences weekly with her, which are an adventure for numerous reasons.

Also, there are periodic conference calls with staff and supervisory personnel to discuss my mother’s situation. During our most recent call, just last week, my brother made a point to note my mother disliked being put in a wheelchair and left there for hours on end.

We got a staff member to say the wheelchair time was not necessary, that my mother could and should just say no and this supervisor would make sure the staff understood this.

Yesterday, we got a communication from a staff member who visits our mother that mom was quite unhappy about being left in the wheelchair yet again. She got help to put her back in bed.

And today my brother talked with our mother and she said that once again she’d been plopped in the wheelchair and specifically was told when she protested that the family had requested it.

I know, it sounds absurd. But it’s true.

Equally absurd was how when we still were allowed into her room that my mother’s food often showed up not pureed, as mandated, or her food trays arrived missing multiple items. At least one time there was not a single drink item on the tray, which I would characterize as an egregious omission.

This pattern of systemic breakdown goes well beyond my personal experiences. Life is becoming surreal.

We have a president that on any given day is less than a 50-50 bet to remember his name, the names of his cabinet members, or the name of important governmental divisions, such as the Department of Defense.

Former media darling, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo remains in office despite botching virus measure and, more recently, being ensnared in an increasing number of claims of sexual harassment.

Yet a Kansas football coach is forced to resign on the spot for sexual harassment allegations.

And finally, also referring to something posted here, I noted previously that it is curious how government officials pick and choose the statistics they want to cite.

For example, people in the Federal Reserve or Department of the Treasury claim the government’s unemployment figures are understated, and they use that presumption to justify their increasing money creation and overspending.

Yet these same people insist that government inflation numbers, which a large group of economists contend are understated, are just fine. This also allows the Feds to justify money creation and spending.

Signs abound that the threads that hold our society together are fraying. When they pop entirely, you would be well advised to have ample supplies of the three precious metals – gold, silver, and lead.

Classical economists, those who did not worship the misunderstood tenets of the Keynesian method, realized that the so-called “free lunch” is a sleight of hand.

Legendary economist Milton Friedman even wrote a 1975 book titled “There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.”

You ought to be interested in this because the basic point is someone pays for said lunch. Just look in the mirror. The single largest provider of metaphorical free lunches on this planet is the United States government.

The Friedman book should be mandatory reading for anyone in government, be they right-wing conservative or left-wing socialist. The message applies to both ends of the political spectrum and also to all those in between.

Who’s paying for all those free lunches? Taxpayers, anyone purchasing U.S. debt, future generations who will have their prospects reduced by the burgeoning federal indebtedness, and many others are, or will, pay for the freebies.

If you find prices on many of your essential purchases rising, that’s another way that you are paying for the free lunches of others via inflation touched off by the excess governmental spending.

Sometimes there even is opportunity cost for the person consuming the free offering. Maybe they are content to collect enhanced unemployment benefits rather than seek a new job. When the government assistance ends, they are left in desperate times.

This is not a theoretical discussion. In the early days of the COVID-19 unemployment premiums, workers displaced by the virus, or by overreactions to it, found their traditional unemployment benefits supplemented by an additional $600 a week. That’s $31,200 for a year, ON TOP OF UNEMPLOYMENT, which in my state of Pennsylvania is 50 percent of working income up to a maximum of $573 a week.

There were more than a few stories of employers getting federal payroll assistance loans/grants to call workers back to their jobs and said workers, who were making as much or more staying home, being angry at the employer.

Yes, the unemployment benefits theoretically don’t extend past 26 weeks. But even if they didn’t, the unemployed worker could be collecting the equivalent of more than $60,000 annualized.

And these things have a way of being available well beyond stated limits. An acquaintance of mine milked extended unemployment benefits for more than two years during the 2008-09 economic meltdown and after a brief rough patch, rode that right into a career on Social Security disability, one of the few growth industries in this country.

He got his free lunch; many of them. Anyone on the tax rolls paid for that – after this individual’s contributions to unemployment and Social Security are deducted, as well as those of his employers.

It’s safe to say that guy is a net beneficiary of the system.

Multiply him by millions and you get an idea of the extent of the problem.

Even proposals that seem benign on the surface bear costs. To someone theoretically benefiting from the free lunch of an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour, there are potential drawbacks such as reduced hours or complete elimination of the job.

Raise the labor cost high enough and automation – computerized order systems at fast-food joints, for example – become cost-effective.

Companies will not absorb the higher minimum wage, so consumers will pay higher prices for good and services.

Pushback from the few in government who understand economics has resulted in the minimum-wage surge being held up, stimulus checks being marked down from $2,000 a head to $1,400, and the weekly unemployment supplement being negotiated down to $300 extra per week.

That is the current status, but such things are fluid. And, rest assured, millions more “free lunches” are being prepared for the flood of illegal immigrants about to be accorded residency here.

For all of you not yet on the gravy train, better hop onboard quickly. To all those currently partaking of the so-called “free lunches,” enjoy them while they last, because they cannot go on indefinitely.

What is economically impossible cannot continue forever. That’s one law that even woke, cancel culture, or social justice warrior types cannot repeal.