The Library: Sanctuary for the Unemployed and Bored

Today I went to our storage locker to find a pair of pants for my wife that she needs at her new job. This 10x10 storage locker contains all of our belongings right now and has done this since October. We are still living with my parents. We have found an apartment where we'd love to live, but we lack a certain thing: income that pays the rent.

I spent about an hour there, going through every box I could reach, but not finding the pants, which are part of the uniform at PetSmart, where she is going to lead dog training classes. I did, however, find a CD that has been causing me all sorts of trouble. I checked out "Family Tree" by Nick Drake from the library back in September. I put it in the CD player and enjoyed it very much. Then, when we moved out of our apartment, I forgot the CD was still in the player. We put all of our belongings in the storage locker, and when the "your item is due" notice came, I searched for the CD in the room where Miri and I live at my parents' house, until I had an "Oh no!" moment and realized it was locked up. I renewed the CD three times, and then the library wouldn't let me renew any more and started charging me ghastly fines.

Today, while searching for the pants, I happened upon the CD player, pulled it out, found an electrical outlet in the ceiling of the storage facility, plugged it in and started cycling through the CDs in the caddy and found it. So now I can get out of "library jail."

This storage locker is kind of a symbol for our "in between" existence. I don't like to be "in between;" I like to feel like I am going someplace and doing something. I know that as Christians we have to accept everything that happens to us as a blessing because everything that God gives us -- trial or help -- is so that we can dwell in heaven with him for eternity. So what value does "in between" have? All I can think of is the dragons from the Anne McCaffrey books that my sister used to read and how they'd "go between" and teleport as part of their efforts to save the planet from raining Death Thread. I certainly would be willing to be "in between" to defend the planet against the Thread, so would someone tell me where to go to report for duty?

Alas, it's not that simple. But, I can go to the library and check out books, which keeps me busy. Here are a few that I've been reading recently:

State By State: A Panoramic Portrait of America. This a collection of fifty short essays, one about each state in the union, in tribute to the WPA travel guides written during the New Deal. I had no idea the WPA had made these travel guides, but they seem to be required reading for any rambler seeking the "soul of America." I only actually read three or four of them before I had to give it back to the library (they wouldn't let me renew it with my holds) but I really want to read it some more.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein. This book is liberal brain candy, which goes in to great detail about what happens when developing countries get too much capitalism too fast. The theme of the book is to criticize the effects of Milton Friedman's free-market ideologies. A very telling point is that the U.S. government spent great amounts of money having Friedman and members of his Economics School at the University of Chicago travel the world and spread free-market capitalist thought, and they also funded lots of academics from socialist-leaning countries in Latin America to come visit the University of Chicago. The government saw Friedman and his ideology as a means of combating worldwide Communism, and promoted it through covert means, overthrowing several democratically elected governments.

But, Nixon himself drove Friedman nuts by implementing price controls and wage controls at home, and Friedman ended up calling Nixon the worst president he'd worked with. Klein is a talented writer, and she's also very liberal, which made me feel obligated to read some things from the other side.

In Defense of Globalization, by Jagdish Baghwati. I didn't understand a single of his examples. After 70 pages, I just gave up.

Discover Your Inner Economist, by Tyler Cowen. Amusing but forgettable.

The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy - If We Let It Happen, by Arthur B. Laffer, Ph.D, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous. This book's publication date was particularly unfortunate. It came out two months before the market meltdown at the end of September, and spends 300 pages talking about how higher taxes are going to kill the financial system if the Democrats get power. And then, the financial system killed the financial system because a lack of bank regulation allowed the world's investors to kite checks consisting of homeowner's mortgages, and create a whole bunch of wealth that didn't really exist.

It includes such priceless assertions that since the stock market tripled to 3,000 by the time Reagan left office (Reagan was a tax-cutter), and then tripled again to 11,000 by the time Clinton left office and made it all the way to 12,500 in 2008. Therefore, they say, the Dow ought to be able to get to 120,000 by 2020. "If Washington politicians do no harm, and stay on Reagan's road, that could be accomplished," they say.

Rather than teach me much useful stuff about supply-side economics, the book has more taught me why I dislike it -- it's a mathematical solution to a political problem. They talk for chapters about how their way, low taxes, is the way to maximize growth and make people rich. They try to sell me on how this helps the middle and working class by making them a little richer (and they admit that the super-rich become super-super-rich). They talk about how insuring incentives are the way to create a true meritocracy, where the most hard-working and the creative get rewarded. But they operate under the arrogant assumption that I actually want to live in a country with all this new wealth sloshing around. And, while I would agree that hard work should be rewarded, I have to ask how much room does a meritocracy have at the top if everybody takes the bait and works hard?

My graduate school textbook (written by Ben Bernanke, before he was the Fed chairman) made it clear that economists shouldn't offer an answer for which economic decision is more moral, any more than physicists should be deciding how atomic weapons should be used. This dreadful book made it clear to me that the study of economics needs to be put in its place. The question of how to best serve the people, and which consequence of a government choice would be better, belongs to politicians.

Anybody know of a conservative economics book that's written well? Okay, rant over. Now I'm taking this book back to the library.

OTHER NEWS

Uh... you're probably getting the idea from this post that I haven't had a lot to do. This is true. I apply for a lot of jobs. I've had four or five interviews, no offers. Miri is enjoying her part-time job at the zoo, and she's getting a second job at PetSmart and is now in training. She says it's stressful to work with humans again.

I have been delighted to discover the podcast for NPR's Wait, Wait news quiz. My favorite joke I've heard there is that Hilary Clinton listing off facts about the Botswana diamond industry sounded like Hermione Grainger as Secretary of State. So true.

So let me know how you are!