sounds like a wage shortage from me

It seems like one of the more popular news stories these days has to do with labor shortages (are we calling it The Labor Shortage yet? - Shortage Gate? keep an eye on this space, reader, and I will let you know). It's challenging to condense the story into a short summary, but let's give it a shot - there are more open jobs than available workers. This story makes sense to me. Over the past few months, I've made a handful of trips to Veggie Galaxy, an excellent vegetarian diner over in Central Square. The difference between now and those pre-pandemic days is that I've had to check each time if they were open before heading over. Their problems have manifested in different ways - partial menu availability, outdoor seating only, takeout only, outright closure - but the source has always been a staffing shortage. I am hearing a similar story in my own job when I speak to hiring teams - I've gathered that at the moment, it's a great time to be a job candidate, but not quite so easy to be hiring. The basic national story, one that speaks to the aggregated difficulty of filling open roles, is manifesting for me in the most straightforward possible ways.

I guess this leads me to a certain point of confusion - isn't this a basic problem where the simple answer is to raise wages? If I walk into the store and offer two bucks for a three-dollar item, the answer is always no, but if everyone does the same thing for a few weeks then eventually the price comes down. Hiring is technically more complicated than that example but in the general sense it's the same idea. I'm sure some firms are coming around and offering better pay packages, but if so then the details are somehow failing to make the front pages. My hunch is that this is not happening, or at least not happening fast enough or widely enough or consistently enough to resolve the current labor shortage. It's tempting to suggest that this is another example of corporate greed running amok, an observation supported with just a casual glance at the stock market - corporate profits seem larger than ever, yet for some reason they can't offer people enough money to take a job.

Of course, it could just as easily be the case that greed has nothing to do with it, the problem merely being that finance departments have a natural aversion to increasing wages - we could raise the wage by X percent, but we've always had people available to work at the traditional rate. It may simply be a matter of time until these departments come around and accept the current situation. It's hard to know the difference between a permanent shift in the market and a temporary timing problem, so it's no surprise that such departments would move slowly before committing to a change. But I am starting to think that we now have enough evidence in this case. Hasn't this been a topic of discussion for months? I think firms are either being willfully ignorant or incapable of grasping the logic. Isn't the other big story at the moment about inflation? If the price of everything is rising, then so should the price of employees. But again, maybe it's just hard to see the need for a change, a situation being enabled by the constantly recycled narrative that since there is a shortage, then no one is available at any reasonable price. I suppose at the very least that believing this also has the advantage of excusing you from handing out raises to your current staff. 

Perhaps the other side could present the argument that maybe job seekers are simply enjoying their unemployment benefits, which offered too much of a cushion. There are always some stories out there of people "being paid more to not work" but such anecdotes rarely expand the analysis beyond the transactional. Trust me folks, I've paid taxes on unemployment, and they show up in far more places than the 1040 or the W-2 or wherever. But I think the stronger point I can make is that this is yet another signal of the need for higher wages - if the government is paying people so much unemployment money that business owners are convinced people are "being paid more to not work", then I think the next logical step would be to increase wages. I'm not here to trot out the statistics, but I will point out that when Massachusetts's minimum wage becomes $15 in 2023, it calculates out to $30,000 a year for someone working forty hours a week, fifty weeks a year. I'm sure many folks out there would love to spend hours explaining to me how that's supposed to work, but I'd rather use that time to figure out how to increase wages.

As usual, nothing I say can or will (or should) change the state of affairs, so let's wrap up and get back to (not) work, which is our short-term reality. But is there hope for the future? We can count on things improving in the long run, that mythical horizon for which there are so many famous economic aphorisms, a category that I add to now with my own version - in the long run, we all move slow. Perhaps the most relevant personal example I can share is that each time I've arrived at the Veggie Galaxy, the prices have been the same. The missing piece with everything I've discussed so far is me, since the amount I pay on the tab is where you get increased wages, triggering the theory of synchronized movement which economists have mostly failed to notice ever actually happens in real life. Am I willing to pay $21 for a can of beer? Sure, maybe if my salary tripled. Would my employer triple my salary? Absolutely, if their revenues tripled. Could their revenues triple? Without question, if customers paid triple for their goods and services. What do those goods and services cost now? Well, I'm not sure, but this can of beer still costs $7, and it's going to cost $7 until someone wants to go first, so - who wants to pay $21 for a can of beer?

reading clearout - november 2021

Hi reader, what are you thankful for? I think my answer is that I didn't spend more time writing about the following books. The obvious follow-up point is that I mean no offense, it's just that some books are simply better to read than write about, but of course there is another reality in this case - sometimes, ignoring the details is the only way to see the big idea.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (October 2021)

I think at some point in my life, say, maybe when I was a junior in high school (though let's be honest, it was probably true even two years ago), I would have been perfectly happy to sit down with the title story and connect every sentence to the larger theme of the work. I just as likely could have done the same with the collection as a whole, mining Unaccustomed Earth for every symbolic detail reinforcing Lahiri's meticulous patterns, which is the obvious suggestion when her characters seem to overlap so much in terms of their heritage, opportunities, and experiences. This time, all I tried to do was read the stories once, then return to the ones I liked the most - "Only Goodness", "Unaccustomed Earth", "Year's End" - without imposing any obligation on myself to dig further into the stories.

The unexpected thing was how I still ended up sensing a certain direction regarding the theme of this collection - it would be something about the way we are easily deceived into assuming others are seeing a situation with the same perspective as our own. In most cases, this is a self-delusion, and it comes apart with the same good manners of a shattering mirror. I'm not sure I could have noticed this if I'd considered each story within its own confines - the evidence in any given work is too subtle - but across multiple examples it became clear to me. The specifics of this lesson vary among the stories - some enjoy the solitude of a suburb while others are crippled by its isolation; silence about an event can be as much punishment as it is protection; the death of a loved one can be a moment of liberation just as much as it is one of suffering - but it's often the characters who bring the idea to the forefront, usually through a kind of epiphany when they recognize the temporary nature of a connection forged through similarity with others. Whether a deeper link results from relating across difference is the question left unanswered by Unaccustomed Earth, and it's one I'm comfortable leaving open for now.

Walking on the Pastures of Wonder by John O'Donohue (January 2020)

I'm tempted to insert a somewhat sensational claim about this book, such as "a miracle of a work" or whatnot, but as usual with books I read so long ago I'm having trouble recalling enough of it to support such a statement. That said, there is something to the thought because this collection of radio conversations involving the late O'Donohue is about as highly rated as any book I've ever searched online. Going through my notes, I saw much of what I liked about his work, and it led me to add Anam Cara to my list for the traditional December rereading month.

One advantage of holding off on a review for so long is that I can give an honest account of what stuck with me from the reading. I'm tempted to highlight the note that memory is a kingdom filled with the ruins of presence, but this wasn't strictly true throughout these past couple of years (though it did resonate when I finally saw people again after a year of almost total isolation). I'm also intrigued by the idea that it can be a gift to help others open their imagination, but I must add that the past couple of years has reinforced how difficult this work is given how the average person initially resists the idea of thinking outside his or her established patterns. I think the winner in this regard is the insight that the most frustrating aspect of hearing a story is knowing that there is likely a more important story being left untold, with countless examples from my pandemic experience supporting the claim. It's undoubtedly true that the pandemic for many people was a time of doing nothing, but the fact that stories of nothing held the stage during what was surely an opportunity for growth of the inner life underscores the "unprecedented spiritual hunger" of our time, the satiety of which O'Donohue pursued with the full energies of his life's work.

Returning to my notes for this review also pointed me to a comment about God - there is nothing in the world that resembles God so much as silence. It reminded me of something I've noticed lately about digital communication - the greatest moments of isolation grow not out of feeling alone when there is no possibility of connection, but rather in those instances where the digital medium reinforces that someone is there but not present. As O'Donohue comments in this work, the opposite of presence is not absence but vacancy, and the way our digital tools can reduce priceless interpersonal communication into the background noise of modern life is symbolic of how being connected without necessarily being present is the surest way to strip ourselves of the very essence that defines connection.

everyone remembers you for something

I used to think that it would be pretty cool to run into my favorite writers and talk to them about some of my favorites pieces - Hey Bill, loved that column about the Azteca! or Murakami-san, I'm going to name my first pet after Mr. Honda, what do you think? Lovely notion, but once I started writing a few years ago I realized that this was nothing more than another daydream doomed by flawed logistics, the latest flight of fancy departing from my airport of the imagination, where it once seemed logical that I could circumvent the globe in a straight line if I had a duck boat. The problem I discovered through my own clumsy foray into TOA is that when someone comments on my writing, most of the time I initially have no idea what that reader is talking about, and by the time I've clarified my confusion the interest in further discussion has long disappeared, resting forever in that mythical beyond where sounds echo in eternal silence, having died in the same breath where they had been born. If I could barely remain on familiar terms with my relatively small archive, what gave me the right to expect that those who do this for a living would somehow have superhuman powers of recollection?

I suppose I could have saved myself an epiphany if I had paid better attention to certain telling examples from my pre-writing days. I remember one night, catching up with a friend over wings, being informed that I had once said something so memorable, so unexpectedly profound, that it had influenced his thinking throughout the years. I didn't know what he meant, so I asked, waiting in eager anticipation to bathe in the renewed light of my own lost brilliance, and perhaps learn something from the most unlikely teacher - myself. He wiped the sauce from his mouth and cleared his throat - you said "everyone spends their money on something." I basically spit out my wing. Really? What the fuck?? I felt like I'd been hit in the back of the head by a snowball. Of all the smart, moving, brilliant things that had flown from my lips - recently chewed wing notwithstanding - the one thing that had resonated with him was something I might have pulled from the shattered promise of a fortune cookie?

One could argue that I should have cut him out of my life on the spot, but had I done so I would be looking back now on the regretfully rash reflexes of an arrogant young man. The reality is that most of us barely remember anything, those including but not limited to the things we say or write, and it would be immature beyond measure to expect that others do this work for us. Perhaps the recommended way to navigate this problem is to take these moments in stride, little reminders that we aren't quite so brilliant or insightful or interesting after all, the lesson being that we can pretend to know about humility once we stop pretending we know about everything else. This may all seem a bit depressing, suggesting the possibility that this entire exercise called life is little more than a charade among goldfish, exchanging volleys of forgetfulness until we remember to die, and I can at least see the validity in such a perspective. But let me offer a different conclusion - if it's the case that one friend can distill years of conversation into what I would argue is among the most pointless things I've ever said, then it at least confirms that anything we say or write could become that one thing which changes someone's life forever. It's not quite as good as being able to choose what we are remembered for, but we can at least choose the things from which everyone else will choose, and that's good enough of a choice for me.

the toa newsletter - november 2021

Wait, is there news? Not quite, I'm afraid - I'm just getting the sense again that it might be a good time to hit the brakes for a few weeks. I think we'll go strong up to maybe the end of the month, then we'll turn it over to a somewhat reduced version of TOA - either less frequent or far shorter posts - while I work through another offseason.

I have no desire to deprive loyal readers of something today, so here's a link to the short story "Orientation" by Daniel Orozco. This happens to be the first story in his likeable collection Orientation I just finished last week, but I'm sharing it for another reason. During this moment when I hear plenty of talk about how this office or that company is making a return to in-person setups, it seems fitting to stop and ask - just what is it, exactly, that we gain by having everyone back in one shared space? According to Orozco, it's something different for everyone, which is also kind of true for short fiction. Here's hoping, at the very least, that this story will be a benign thrill, a faint blip, on the dull, flat line of your Sunday.

a stupid story

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned having problems condensing my thoughts on Thinking Without a Bannister, Hannah Arendt's 608-page collection, which covered a wide range of topics such as history, philosophy, and politics through selected essays, speeches, and conversation transcripts. My strategy for these tougher reviews is to focus on my personal reading experience instead of merely summarizing the work, reasoning that anyone could read it on their own to gather the same facts and insights I could otherwise list here. This inevitably leads me to focus on the things I learned from a particular read (such as the thought shared in January that we accept the last resort of war when we participate in the nation-state system). This method seems like the safest bet - if I focus on the things that caught my eye, perhaps I'm inadvertently honing in on the things other readers would find equally instructive. 

But there are cases where the passage of time allows other directions to emerge in my belated reading review process. What I'm discovering about Arendt's book is that certain passages have remained with me since I finished reading, popping up from time to time to help me better understand a given interaction or situation. It may be that the best way to review a reading experience is to write about how I changed after finishing the work. A good example came up this week when I saw a news story that reminded me of a comment from Thinking Without a Bannister. Arendt describes a story about a farmer from World War II era Russia who hid starving refugees in a space beneath his barn. This farmer liked to talk about his experience, describing the way they would eat anything, but Arendt makes her verdict clear to the reader - in her mind, the farmer's story was a stupid story because it was merely describing the behavior of starving people, and the fact of placing them in a particular time and space did nothing to change the underlying fact that this story revealed nothing about the world.

The news story that reminded me of the above example described a lost hiker who ignored phone calls from a search and rescue team (here's a link to The Guardian's brief article about the ordeal). It's probably the headline that caused it to spread across the internet - the lost hiker ignored calls because he didn't recognize the number! Oh, us damn millennials, at it again with our misguided ways! The problem should be apparent to anyone who pauses for a moment to think - how lost can someone be if they are still getting cell service? I could go on, detailing more discoveries made after I clicked into this stupid story, but I think my point is already clear - this so-called story is like so many others, stupid at the core in the sense of Arendt's comment, since it's doing nothing more than describing what a certain type of person does all the time. In other words, when you describe what someone does all the time, you aren't telling a story.

I'm temped here to suggest that the fact this became an international story speaks to some larger issue, the deterioration of both mind and soul perhaps reflected in the way we collectively allow what Arendt calls stupid stories to pass for urgent information. However, I think this would be mistaken - for Arendt, it came naturally to stop and think each time she encountered new information, but the rest of us are not up to that standard. What we do instead is rely on personal experience to highlight relevance, whether that be in the news, in life, or even in the struggle to write a reading review, and we do this with the hope that no one exposes the truth - our fascinating lifetimes of small revelations and sudden discoveries are nothing more than a string of non-sequiturs, little flashes of insight when someone with a brain shines a light into the dark corners of our minds, illuminating the things we would have known all along, had we just stopped for a moment to think for ourselves.

leftovers #2 - the boston mayoral race (turnout)

I've always wondered why not voting is considered the same as, well, how can I best describe it? It's as if you don't vote, then it's like you don't exist, at least in the sense of having voting rights. If there is an election that ends 1-1 but you didn't vote, then that's the final result, 1-1, which would have been equally true if you had your citizenship in some other country, like Estonia, where it's pretty easy to vote, unless you are trying to vote in an American election, which is hard even for Estonians. In other words, if you don't vote, then you might as well not exist, at least from the perspective of the final tally, since it was never possible to influence the result at all.

There are others who take this a step further - though I would argue it's a step backward, a regression of logic, mathematics, and civics - suggesting that by not voting, you vote for the other guy, because, you know, voting isn't about your choice, but rather ensuring that the autofill doesn't automatically assign your ballot, by magic, to the person you wouldn't have voted for, which they magically know about even though you didn't vote. Now what is this crap? Again, the example of the 1-1 vote, where you prefer one of the candidates. If you vote for the other guy, it would be 2-1, and your candidate would lose. But guess what, folks, since you didn't vote, the tally remains 1-1. Is this what we mean by a vote for the other guy? People who trot out this "no vote means voting for the other guy" logic should probably skip voting themselves and spend the day in a third-grade math class.

I think the way to analyze this situation is to regard it as a split vote. This makes some sense to me - if you don't really know which candidate you prefer, then it might be a bit daunting to choose one or the other. You know those bars where you can pay for a drink, then the bartender spins the wheel and you get whatever it lands on? Why would those people vote? Let's try, for the last time, that really convenient example of the 1-1 vote. Imagine if the tiebreaking vote was being cast by some guy who can't choose between an IIPA or a DIPA, so he goes to the roulette wheel and comes back with a PBR. You want him to break the tie? He can't make a decision, and he just spent $8 on a $3 draft. I think we're better off just going to the tiebreaker, which I believe is a penalty shootout involving England.

The reason I bring up all this nonsense today is because these mayoral elections, which are referred to as "off-cycle", are notorious for low turnout. The arguments made by the people who understand this stuff, who know what they are talking about, can explain this far better than me. But this nous isn't readily demonstrated by your average citizen, who will simply demand that you vote for no reason except that you should vote because you should vote. But if I don't know the difference, why should I make the difference? Maybe we can give everyone two votes, both of which can be allocated to one candidate if you feel strongly about one choice or the other, to encourage some of these wishy-washy folks who are standing on the sidelines. Or maybe we can just point to those above paragraphs, and remind them that if you really want to split your choice, then you can just leave the ballot blank. I've never done the full blank, I've only come close, but I know by now that they'll never count the bubbles before giving you that sticker. It'll say you voted, no matter how much you actually did, since by walking through that door you made the only important decision you can ever make on election day, or any day really, from your whole life - deciding to show up.