cincinnatus_c (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cincinnatus_c) wrote2011-12-16 01:30 am
cincinnatus_c) wrote2011-12-16 01:30 am
I really don't know what I'm doing here
Currently at Toronto Pearson: 2. High today: 14, which'll be within a degree of a record for Dec. 15. This is the first year since 2001 that it hasn't gotten as low as -10 in the first fifteen days of December. The roses at the side of our house are still blooming.
Speaking of which, for some reason, I never really realized until sometime in the last two or three years that the trees in Ontario spend more time leaf-less than leafy--not by a lot, but they do. (I've noticed this year that the trees down here have lost their leaves a full month behind the trees up at Wollaston--these here trees:
(This picture never ceases to amaze me. I took it on my highly deprecated c. 2002 camera while bobbing around in a boat. I could hardly have composed it better if I'd sat out there with an easel and an actual artistic ability.)) That made me sad. (I often think of something someone who used to live around here said once about the world being fallen when it's not summer. I often think of how when I was a kid I lived for two months out of twelve--the whole rest of the year was pretty much the torturous price to be paid for the summer, as far as I was concerned. I've been moderately worried, the last couple of years, that life was getting that way again ... that the stuff I do for a living was never going to get beyond ... "drudgery" is not the right word, but that it was always going to be more unpleasant than pleasant (that's really not the right way to put it either, but ... ), and that life would be good mostly for the time away from it, which would be a relatively small amount of time. And of course you think that for a second and then you realize that that's just how life is for most people and how they expect it to be. Thank God it's Friday. So, you know, in Zarathustra one moment of joy with Zarathustra is supposed to redeem the whole long agonizing stupidity of existence--this moment is as eternal as any other, as all the others put together. Is that good enough? I think a big reason I can't help myself from encouraging the kids to go to grad school is that it's one of the few things you can do that holds out the possibility that your life will be consistently worthwhile. At least, the live alternatives don't generally seem to hold out that possibility.) But then a couple of weeks ago I realized that there are only two months in which dandelions never bloom in Toronto. Well, I don't know, maybe they don't ever bloom in March, either. (You'd think you'd remember a thing like that, but you don't, do you?) So, maybe three months. Either way, hurray!
For months or maybe years now it has bugged me that the governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, keeps harping about consumer debt while keeping the magical Bank of Canada interest rate close to 0. You'd think the whole point of keeping interest rates low is to get people to, you know, borrow money (and to not save it, since the highest savings account rates are now somewhere near half of inflation). For some reason it just dawned on me yesterday that the point isn't to get people to borrow money so they can spend it; the point is to get capital to borrow money so it can invest it, and the source of Carney's frustration is that he has only this one blunt instrument at his disposal, which unfortunately is just as good at putting cheap money at the disposal of consumers as it is at putting cheap money at the disposal of capital. Today I read this in the Globe, more or less summarizing a speech Carney gave recently: "Mr. Carney warned that too much ... capital is being used to fund household spending, instead of building the economy’s productive capacity." So, yeah, that. (Although, I guess, technically, money used to fund household spending is precisely not capital. It is something like the opposite of capital.) Anyway, none of this is really not completely familiar or more or less obvious. What is striking to me is that what Carney and all those talking up the need for "deleveraging" are saying, in effect, is that there is too much money under the control of consumers, and we need to find some way of transferring it to the control of capital so that it can be put to use in creating new stuff (although Carney himself is limited to complaining that consumers don't just decide to do this themselves by refraining from borrowing money at rates--determined, ultimately, by Carney himself--that fail to support the growth of capital). This is striking because it seems to be the exact opposite of whatever general message there is (or was) in the Occupy movement, and the general idea that economic inequality is increasing alarmingly and so on.
Something else that's striking to me about the idea that consumer debt is a bad thing: as far as I can tell, people generally take it to be a bad thing because debt limits future spending (hence the paradoxical merry-go-round of "Yay, consumer spending is up!" / "Boo, consumer debt is up!" headlines); on the flip side, though, debt is a promise of future productivity--ignoring for the moment that it's also a threat of future bankruptcy. The more you're in debt, the more you have to work to pay it off. Of course, you have to have some way of working it off available, which is where the threat of future bankruptcy comes in. If you have tens of thousands of dollars in student debt after you graduate, you need to get a job that will pay it off. If you don't, then you don't; you just need an income that will fund whatever aspirations you happen to have. Hence, all other things being equal, massive student debt is a (massive?) productivity incentive. And: while in the short term your student debt inhibits spending, in the long term, after you've paid it off, you've become accustomed to a highly liquid lifestyle (which likely will have boosted your aspirations); now you have a high income and no more debt to pay off. Even before you've paid it off, the income needed to pay off your debts gives you access to funds that you might not have had if you hadn't been motivated to get a high-paying job by your indebtedness.
Now, why did I bother writing all that just now? Damned if I know. But I'd like to thank Tori Amos for introducing me to Charles-Valentin Alkan, the composer who was not actually killed by a falling Talmud. I wish I could link to a video of his Prelude No. 10, Op. 66, played on pedal piano, but such a thing apparently does not exist, alas. (I wonder what is the median time between my being disappointed that something is not on the internet and its being on the internet.)
Speaking of which, for some reason, I never really realized until sometime in the last two or three years that the trees in Ontario spend more time leaf-less than leafy--not by a lot, but they do. (I've noticed this year that the trees down here have lost their leaves a full month behind the trees up at Wollaston--these here trees:
(This picture never ceases to amaze me. I took it on my highly deprecated c. 2002 camera while bobbing around in a boat. I could hardly have composed it better if I'd sat out there with an easel and an actual artistic ability.)) That made me sad. (I often think of something someone who used to live around here said once about the world being fallen when it's not summer. I often think of how when I was a kid I lived for two months out of twelve--the whole rest of the year was pretty much the torturous price to be paid for the summer, as far as I was concerned. I've been moderately worried, the last couple of years, that life was getting that way again ... that the stuff I do for a living was never going to get beyond ... "drudgery" is not the right word, but that it was always going to be more unpleasant than pleasant (that's really not the right way to put it either, but ... ), and that life would be good mostly for the time away from it, which would be a relatively small amount of time. And of course you think that for a second and then you realize that that's just how life is for most people and how they expect it to be. Thank God it's Friday. So, you know, in Zarathustra one moment of joy with Zarathustra is supposed to redeem the whole long agonizing stupidity of existence--this moment is as eternal as any other, as all the others put together. Is that good enough? I think a big reason I can't help myself from encouraging the kids to go to grad school is that it's one of the few things you can do that holds out the possibility that your life will be consistently worthwhile. At least, the live alternatives don't generally seem to hold out that possibility.) But then a couple of weeks ago I realized that there are only two months in which dandelions never bloom in Toronto. Well, I don't know, maybe they don't ever bloom in March, either. (You'd think you'd remember a thing like that, but you don't, do you?) So, maybe three months. Either way, hurray!
For months or maybe years now it has bugged me that the governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, keeps harping about consumer debt while keeping the magical Bank of Canada interest rate close to 0. You'd think the whole point of keeping interest rates low is to get people to, you know, borrow money (and to not save it, since the highest savings account rates are now somewhere near half of inflation). For some reason it just dawned on me yesterday that the point isn't to get people to borrow money so they can spend it; the point is to get capital to borrow money so it can invest it, and the source of Carney's frustration is that he has only this one blunt instrument at his disposal, which unfortunately is just as good at putting cheap money at the disposal of consumers as it is at putting cheap money at the disposal of capital. Today I read this in the Globe, more or less summarizing a speech Carney gave recently: "Mr. Carney warned that too much ... capital is being used to fund household spending, instead of building the economy’s productive capacity." So, yeah, that. (Although, I guess, technically, money used to fund household spending is precisely not capital. It is something like the opposite of capital.) Anyway, none of this is really not completely familiar or more or less obvious. What is striking to me is that what Carney and all those talking up the need for "deleveraging" are saying, in effect, is that there is too much money under the control of consumers, and we need to find some way of transferring it to the control of capital so that it can be put to use in creating new stuff (although Carney himself is limited to complaining that consumers don't just decide to do this themselves by refraining from borrowing money at rates--determined, ultimately, by Carney himself--that fail to support the growth of capital). This is striking because it seems to be the exact opposite of whatever general message there is (or was) in the Occupy movement, and the general idea that economic inequality is increasing alarmingly and so on.
Something else that's striking to me about the idea that consumer debt is a bad thing: as far as I can tell, people generally take it to be a bad thing because debt limits future spending (hence the paradoxical merry-go-round of "Yay, consumer spending is up!" / "Boo, consumer debt is up!" headlines); on the flip side, though, debt is a promise of future productivity--ignoring for the moment that it's also a threat of future bankruptcy. The more you're in debt, the more you have to work to pay it off. Of course, you have to have some way of working it off available, which is where the threat of future bankruptcy comes in. If you have tens of thousands of dollars in student debt after you graduate, you need to get a job that will pay it off. If you don't, then you don't; you just need an income that will fund whatever aspirations you happen to have. Hence, all other things being equal, massive student debt is a (massive?) productivity incentive. And: while in the short term your student debt inhibits spending, in the long term, after you've paid it off, you've become accustomed to a highly liquid lifestyle (which likely will have boosted your aspirations); now you have a high income and no more debt to pay off. Even before you've paid it off, the income needed to pay off your debts gives you access to funds that you might not have had if you hadn't been motivated to get a high-paying job by your indebtedness.
Now, why did I bother writing all that just now? Damned if I know. But I'd like to thank Tori Amos for introducing me to Charles-Valentin Alkan, the composer who was not actually killed by a falling Talmud. I wish I could link to a video of his Prelude No. 10, Op. 66, played on pedal piano, but such a thing apparently does not exist, alas. (I wonder what is the median time between my being disappointed that something is not on the internet and its being on the internet.)
no subject
Aaaaand, that's my rant for the day.
no subject
Nah, the economy is simple; Jean Chretien had it all figured out when he was prime minister: if he seems happy, then everyone feels good and buys things.
oh, WTFever
I agree whole-heartedly.
no subject
I agree that high tuitions lead to high debt loads lead to desperation. It's a good thing I am not an economist, because I have a hard time wrestling around the idea that this is a good thing.
Also, hi.
no subject
therefore encouraging students to go to grad school is mostly futile
Well, you know, I'd meant to emphasize the partly-not-futile part, but, eh, all is vanity under the sun.
If the mass of men didn't lead lives of quiet desperation, they might go live in the woods or something.