Wages

 Like millions of other Americans, I have survived 18 months of a global public health emergency that might easily have tanked the entire U.S. economy, only to find myself with a weird and unexpected surplus of cash in my bank account. The mechanism by which it got there is still not really clear to me. All I was doing was working my regular job. My stimulus checks were chiefly sent right back in the form of donations. But somehow, the lack of travel and a pattern of sponging off my immediate family had evidently trimmed my living expenses so much that—far from facing the economic collapse we all feared at the start of this pandemic—I was flush. 

Add to that a small investment account and a trust, and I had started to regard my job as a kind of voluntary gesture. "I'll work because it's a way to help others," I loftily informed myself, "But I could leave it any time." And lo, earlier today, I decided that time had come. I was ready for the next chapter. Time to move on, maybe go back to school. Or just experiment with living for a while, free of the self-imposed burden of remunerative employment. Oh, to be sure, I knew that health insurance is costly, and I'd have other expenses. But I just looked at that unprecedentedly fat bank balance and knew I was in the clear. 

Pale Vienna

From Jack London's The Road: 

Easter Eggs 005: Williams

A series dedicated to the strange and interesting things that can be uncovered by closely reading books. 

From John Williams, Butcher's Crossing: 

Voting for Kindness

I just got back from casting a ballot in my local precinct election. It's probably the first time I've ever voted for a city council position in my life, but a couple days ago, I received a visit on my doorstep from my Massachusetts state rep, who was out canvassing for one of the people running, and I felt like that was the sort of hustle and personalized outreach that ought to be rewarded. 

Also among my motives, though, it must be said, was a certain desire for absolution. The candidate she favored is running on the DSA ticket, and I thought: "Here is my chance!" Not only can I fulfill my teenage dream of voting socialist (though the chance came around "rather late for me," to borrow a phrase from Philip Larkin), but also I can offer my ballot as a sort of indulgence, hedging against my otherwise guilty complicity in the problems besetting my home town. 

After Böcklin

Photo after Arnold Böcklin, The Isle of the Dead

Inflation Hawks

 Well, the inflation hawks have swooped in full force now, and they are only gaining in number and strength. The first whisper I heard of this line of attack came from an occasionally-Republican friend of mine, who serves as a sometime-informant as to what is going on in the larger conservative hive-mind. Back in that early week in May, when the Colonial Pipeline was hacked and a temporary gas shortage resulted, my friend told me the following: "People [in Republican circles] are already saying it's like the 1970s all over again. The Democrats have only been in office for a couple months and we're basically back to the Carter administration." "How so?" I asked, not getting his drift. "Well," he replied, "People are waiting in line for gas, and inflation is already out of control."

Inflation... out of control? But then I started to see this talking point everywhere. In newspaper headlines. In the op-ed pages. And now, it has even become a line used by the self-declared "moderate Democrats" to torpedo their own party's legislative ambitions. Joe Manchin took to the Wall Street Journal opinion pages this week to pen what reads very much like, but which I earnestly pray is not, the death knell for the Biden legislative agenda—specifically, the diverse set of social policy, climate, and immigration initiatives set to be included in the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package the Democrats still want to get through the Senate on a party-line vote. "An overheating economy has imposed a costly 'inflation tax' on every middle- and working-class American," Manchin wrote—hence, he argued, Dems should "pause" for a time on further spending.