The Invisible Hand

I make no claims about being an economically knowledgeable. And I’m not going to speak about broader economic trends and policies (though of course I have a number of opinions). There is one issue that’s come up recently that seems to make no sense to me. If someone of the like 3 people that reads this can help me out, please let me know in the comments.

So O’Reilly (and other conservatives, he’s not alone) have been using the idea that raising the marginal tax rate on high earners will lead to them deciding not to work anymore, leading to laying off all of their staff. This seems like a laughably incorrect interpretation of the Laffer curve (apologies if misspelled). Of course, if taxes are 100%, then people wouldn’t work (if you can’t harvest the results of your labor, then why bother?). However, that’s nowhere near where we are talking about. Raising the rate from say 30 to 40% still allows you to benefit from the work you do, so we’re not talking about that far end.

So the narrative goes like this: raise the taxes and these high income earners will stop working. If these people stop working, then their workers will lose their jobs. However, this seems to neglect that the roles that these individuals fill are not irreplaceable. Say that that extra 10% taxes were enough to make O’Reilly quit. In such a case, it’s not like that market niche goes away. Just because he doesn’t believe it’s sufficiently profitable does not mean that it’s not profitable. And if there is profit to be made, someone will do it. That role will be filled by someone else who will in turn restafff and continue. And if individuals were to replace O’Reilly’s media empire in a piecemeal fashion, they might even increase employment as they lack the returns to scale that a larger, consolidated operation can bring.

If the government were making it so that it were not profitable for the top earners to continue as they are, then I would agree totally with that point. But what he and others are arguing is that the proposed changes make it not profitable enough from their perspective to continue. That’s a personal choice, but it’s not like the government is making an industry impossible to run. Those roles will continue to be filled (there’s obviously a market and with unemployment over 9%, there’s obviously supply) and if it’s profitable, someone will take on his place. We’re not in a supply constrained space with regards to the supply people that can produce political bullshit, so demand rules the day.

Just a rough thought.

Revelatory Gravity

I would rate my normal reflexes and agility as somewhere between feline and acrobatic (anyone who says otherwise is a liar or scoundrel, of course). Despite this obvious prowess, I’ve found myself literally falling off of everything recently. I’ve fallen off of beds, chairs, couches, and curbs. At first I thought this was some sort of weird full body version of being tongue-tied around a girl. But I’ve come to a conclusion after careful observation: L is pushing me off of the edge of any space we share.

I was surprised at first. She doesn’t need much physical space (“L sized sliver” is the phrase in current vogue), so it’s not like there’s not enough room for the both of us to sit or lay down. She just happens to push me off of whatever furniture or surface we share. As near as I can figure, it’s a consequence of trying to be near each other. When I’m on the edge and she tries to move close to me, she inadvertently pushes me off. And then she gets to reap the unintentional benefit by laughing at my misfortune. At first I was a bit put off by these proceedings, but it’s hard to be that annoyed honestly. I have a girlfriend that likes to be near me and a couch that apparently is not very deep. Oh, the horror.

This is just another one of those million little things that I wasn’t expecting about being in a relationship. Actually being in a relationship is pretty new to me. I’m not going to gush about her; that’s not what this is really about. (Except to say that a girlfriend that has serious considerations about how to repurpose the Care Bears to meet the sexual accessory distribution needs of today’s modern adults is one worth keeping around/an eye on) What’s been crazier about the whole thing has been what I’ve seen and learned about myself.

For years I’ve seen myself as the guardian of my own happiness. Enjoying a party, a book, a game; my happiness was the direct result of the actions I took. Recently, however, I’m finding that it’s possible to be happy by making someone else happy, without goal or ulterior motive. For example, the other day I made dinner and then cleaned up afterwards. This is not generally a fun process; cutting chicken, cooking rice, dicing vegetables and standing over the stove are not exactly fun time vacations. However, the smile when I was done and finally sat down made the whole damn process worth it.

Falling is the moment when you realize that your world is defined not entirely by your actions and your will, but by larger forces surrounding you. Much to my surprise, I find that my happiness isn’t just mine anymore. There are all sorts of downsides: I have less control over my life and time (I haven’t been free to play video games in a month), I have to listen to the acappella SpongeBob theme song, and despite decades of hiding myself, I now am vulnerable because someone knows me. At the same time, it’s an exhilarating feeling to be able to surrender some of that control and just enjoy the rush of excitement as I get to enjoy her company and the journey we share. And that’s what falling is: the thrill as you experience a profound lack of control.

Those of you seasoned relationship veterans are probably chuckling at me and my puppy-like naivety. “It’s in the honeymoon phase” or “wait and see” or an evil cackle are all things I’ve heard (and understand). And I’m not knocking that all this is true-invariably things worth having require work and effort and blood and sweat and tears. And I’m not claiming to know the future, its shape or form. But even those hardships do not detract from the lessons that larger forces out there shape us and our happiness in the world. That’s the biggest lesson any relationship can teach us. It’s why all the best descriptions of the process revolve around the word “falling”.

This post was my entry for the topic of “Falling” on the Synchronized Blogging Experiment. Look at them, they’re better.

His Astonishing Lack of Drawl

A friend’s recent post on accents and what they say about us brought to mind my personal issues with the spoken Queen’s Own.

I know I’m in peril of revealing myself through deductive disclosure and all. However, there are like no people here that have read all the posts and don’t already know who I am. Such a risk taker I am becoming.

I’m from Texas. Born and raised. On the playgrounds where I spent most of my days and so on (you already know the rest). This invariably fascinates people when they first get to know me. Apparently I don’t fit the mold of what a Texan is supposed to be, look like, sound like and think like. Well, unless I’m wearing my cowboy boots. I have a surprisingly abundance of Texas pride, provided that I’m not in Texas itself (it’s an elastic phenomenon). But while people always give me looks or crack jokes about it, the thing I almost always get first is “but you don’t sound like you are!”

I would like to say that I don’t know what someone from Texas is supposed to sound like, but sadly, as a cultural consumer, I do. We’re all supposed to speak slowly, with a lovable twang, folksy charm and possibly with a piece of straw sticking nonchalantly from our lips. That ain’t me. I’m a city dweller brought up by two parents not from Texas. Except for my loving use of the word “y’all” (Texas’ answer to the oversight in the English language of a second person plural pronoun), I sound like a national TV news anchor. I can sometimes, maybe, say a word or two that sounds like what people expect, but even that’s pushing it. I just happen to have very non-region specific diction (I think).

Everyone understands how annoying it is to be told you can’t be part of a group. But this is even worse. I’m being told that I don’t belong to a group that I actually am a member of, solely because I don’t fit their stereotypes of the group. It’s not like this with other ex-pat Texans. Whenever I run into one of those rare birds, we’ll talk about where each of us is from and maybe what chances the Cowboys have this season. That’s all it takes-we know. People in the group have no problem acknowledging our shared membership this simply. However, people who haven’t even flown over the place seem to think that by me not living up to their notions, I can’t be Texan.

I know it’s not meant as it comes across. I’m sure sometimes people say it to fill in those slightly awkward pauses in the getting to know you conversation. Part of it might even be a measure of praise, elevating me above what they believe Texans are like and supposed to be, though that’s infuriating in its own right. Given where I live and what I do, I’m guessing that it’s not shock that someone as lame as me could be associated with such a good place, but who knows?

Every subculture and social group has its cues for assessing membership, the shibboleths and secret handshakes. I think this particular case vexes me so because the membership is not being assessed by other members, but by people who don’t know anything about the club. It would be like if you were only able to get into an exclusive nightclub based on the votes of people walking by on the street who were oblivious of what was inside. They shouldn’t have a say, you’re already a member.

I speak plain. And I’m a Texan.

Deal with it.

In the End

As I’ve discussed before, I’m a bit of a science fiction aficionado. Or addict. Whichever sounds nicer in polite conversation. In one of those awesome post-apocalyptic fiction books (Fitzpatrick’s War, if you’re so inclined), there was a line at the end that really snapped out at me. A puppet master character was explaining to our protagonist the secret of the world. To paraphrase (because with L here, I’d rather not devote time to quote hunting), every civilization exists in three phases: a heroic age, a golden age of empire and finally a period of decline and decay. To forestall decline, there exists in that civilization a secret group whose goal is to keep them forever stuck in the heroic age. But that’s not what I came here to write-book reports are so 3rd grade.

This was so interesting to me because, as a sociologist, I’ve always loved thinking about the nature of civilizations. I know I’m not original; hundreds, thousands, hell millions of people have historically considered the nature of civilizations’ rise and fall. I could use my few remaining words to discuss what kinds of civilizations gain the upper ground in the game, but I think that can be explained in almost the same way as why certain species evolutionarily succeed-a mix of adaptation, luck and flexibility. What has been of more interest to me in the past was how civilizations fade; losing influence or territory or cultural supremacy. As a child of the 80s and 90s, I don’t really remember a time when the United States wasn’t an ascendant power. For me (since I was in middle school and such), I’ve lived in world defined, in many ways, but American hegemony. As a consequence, I’ve always been on alert for things that could lead to the end of this particular, golden moment in time.

There are so many possible things that could lead to our fall. We could lose our economic edge. Technological competition could lead to our military being leapfrogged by a foreign power. Increasing cultural divide could lead to gridlock or (what the hell, we’re being speculative) a second civil war. Someone else could build a cultural wonder. There are so many possible paths to failure, as any seasoned Civilization player could know.

But that’s not what will happen.

Before you pull out the stones to kill your false prophet, hear me out. There’s a reason that not a single one of those reasons will be our downfall; our fall (when it comes) will be the result of a number of events (unless it’s some sort of species wide extermination, in which case, all bets are off). It’ll be something like foreign excursions sapping our will and draining the treasury such that we are unable to invest in our infrastructure, making us unable to economically compete and in the face of increasing foreign resistance, we then withdraw our focus to our own shores. Just saying.

As a student of the Cliff Notes version of Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, and to pull from Judson again, “rigorists always win”. Civilizations fall because they lose their unity of purpose and are supplanted by groups that have not. When groups within the society fragment to the point that there is no commonality of purpose, then that society has given up on keeping its cultural/military/technological/linguistic/whatever superiority. The Roman Empire, devolving into conflicts for the imperial purple, was destroyed by barbarian clans united in their desire for gold, food, land and hot Roman women. The machinations of the imperial court of Sung China fall to the barbarian forces of the Mongol horde. The economic power of the British Empire is splintered relative to singularity of local independence movements. Unity of purpose and sense of self is all that keeps a society together and prevents it from surrendering into that good night.

And that’s what makes me so scared about following politics these days. The more that I see and watch, the state of American politics seems to be breaking this unity of purpose. That we have one party that seems to doubt even the legitimacy of their opponents seems that we are, as a unified society, giving up our continued place in the sun. Oh well, it was a good ride while it lasted.

This post was part of the continuing series of mental gymnastics known as the Synchronized Blogging Experiment. Look at them, they’re better.