Finding the Meaning of Life, Along With a 7% Return - New York Times

Finding the Meaning of Life, Along With a 7% Return - New York Times: "March 12, 2006
Everybody's Business

Finding the Meaning of Life, Along With a 7% Return
By BEN STEIN

ONE of the funniest movies I have ever seen is 'Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.' In one scene, a conglomerate's senior executives are meeting and one of them is invited to report on the sixth item on the agenda: the meaning of life.

The eager executive responds: 'Yeah, I've had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and what we've come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts.

One: People aren't wearing enough hats. Two: Matter is energy. In the universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this 'soul' does not exist ab initio as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.'
The first comment from his colleagues: 'What was that about hats again?'

This comes to mind because, a few days ago, I was on the set of a television production at an outdoor location near Placerville, Calif., between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. We were in a long-disused gas station that had been run into ruin. I played a sort of ghostly, maybe not-quite-real gas station owner, and with a very talented sidekick named Bill I gave ethics advice to an automaker's employees as they wandered in.

So far, so good. The problem was that a cold rain was falling, and the roof did not serve to keep it out. Then it started snowing. A high wind was blowing, and we were painfully cold and standing in slush. There was mud everywhere. Back at my motel, the hot water did not work for a long time.

Anyway, to keep my mind occupied with thoughts other than self-pity — a special curse in my life — I tried to think of how to build an income portfolio that yielded close to 7 percent a year with modest leverage.

I thought of that because, someday far in the future, I want to live on my savings, and a yield of 7 percent would be helpful, to put it mildly. To arrive at that portfolio, I did what I always do. I called my co-author and dear friend, Phil DeMuth, and asked him to do it.

A few days later, I was on a flight from Los Angeles to Miami. My fellow passengers were driving me insane. (A plane is a flying asylum these days.) The man next to me was ripping pages from a magazine, making a horrible sound — why do people do that? The man in front of me had his seat back as far as it would go, so that his dyed orange hair was in my lap. His wife was yakking across the aisle with an accent hideous enough to make Dracula run for cover.

I felt as if I were coming down with pneumonia from my stay in the slush. I had to write some notes on a speech I was to give later. Wow, I thought, am I suffering. Wow, I thought, no one appreciates me. Here I am hard at work on a flying madhouse. My wife is at an Oscar party. Our son is at the new apartment I have just rented for him with the proceeds of my hard work — and, of course, like all American children, he never thanks Mom and Pop for anything. Then I arrived in Miami and my driver did not know his way around. We got stuck in traffic on Interstate 95. Terrible. I felt beaten down. And then, and then. ...

I got to my hotel, the Breakers, and everything was great. The lobby was beautiful. The room was fabulous. The ocean breeze was heavenly. My bed was firm and warm. I turned on the Oscars and, though they make me want to vomit, I was still happy — and suddenly, I realized that I had been looking at it all wrong.

I was working in Placerville in mud and slush. I was not being worked to death, or lined up in mud and slush and shot like three of my grandfather's cousins were by the Nazis. I was not in the Hürtgen Forest dodging tree bursts from German 88's. I was on a set, maybe getting a little cold.

The hotel? Well, even though it lacked instant hot water, I had a warm bed and a view of the freeway. And the rude people on the plane? Well, we were on a plane — not in a cattle car, not in steerage. And my wife? Let's remember that she puts up with me: Enough said. And my ungrateful son? Hey, he's an American child, that's all, and by definition has no clue of how good he has it. And how different is he from me?

I love the Breakers; there is no better hotel. But it occurs to me that all of America is like the Breakers compared with what history has dished up, especially to us Jews. I wish I could get that spirit into my son.

When I was in college, in my fabulous fraternity, Alpha Delta Phi, we had an Episcopalian prayer before each meal, and it sums up what I think about what makes you really rich: For the gifts we are about to receive, please Lord, make us truly grateful. Because, to be grateful, as Phil DeMuth says, is to get rich not just quickly, but instantly. For the gift that is my work life in America, dear Lord, please make me truly grateful.

Oh, and the news about the hats? Here is Phil's portfolio. We don't vouch for the soundness of these securities. And their yield may fall as events unfold and problems occur, so there are risks. Some, as you can see, are European, so there is currency risk, too. But for now, they have a heck of a yield — though not as high as the yield of gratitude, which carries no risks.

Call it the Stein-DeMuth 7 Percent Solution (well, really, the DeMuth 7 Percent Solution). It's sorted by sector, and includes percentage yields for each stock.

REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUSTS Lexington Corporate Properties Trust, 7.1 percent; and Healthcare Realty Trust, 7.1.

MASTER LIMITED PARTNERSHIPS Teppco Partners, 7.6; and MarkWest Energy Partners, 7.3.

UTILITIES Peoples Energy, 5.9; Enel of Italy, 8.0; UIL Holdings, 6.0; Telecom New Zealand, 11.3; United Utilities of Britain, 6.8.

ROYALTY TRUSTS Great Northern Iron Ore Properties, 9.4; and Permian Basin, 10.3.

OTHER UST, the tobacco company, 5.5; ConAgra Foods, 5.3; the Deluxe Corporation, the printer of checks and business forms, 6.6; and Allied Capital, the business development firm, 7.7.

I do not claim that these yield numbers are immutable, but for now you can have a rockin' good time with them. They might actually make up an average yield above 7 percent. Put the excess into hats.


Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com.