This post was originally published on this site
We can begin by looking at the present state of Trump’s economy through the eyes of a bewildered TikTok personality observing daily FAFO disasters.
They, holding some econ book, look there: Washington State is in a recession. The same goes for 22 other states. And economists at Moody’s Analytics fear that if New York and California, gigantic economies that are barely staying afloat, sink into a bottomless recession because the present government doesn’t have the tools, programs, or even experts needed to deal with it, the whole of the US will sink with them.
They look over there: Foreclosures are spiking, particularly in Nevada and Florida. The reason these states are in deep trouble is because the tourism sector is experiencing great stress from two sources: one, the recession is spreading, and the first thing cut from tightening budgets are vacations; two, a growing number of Canadian and European tourists are giving, for obvious reasons, Trump’s America the pass.
They look there: Farmers shot themselves in the foot by voting for a man who instigated a needless trade war with China, the second-largest economy in the world and a big buyer of American crops. Trump is now trying to force Asian and African countries to purchase the unwanted crops, particularly soybeans. But Trump’s administration can’t exert influence on these countries because it dismantled USAID with no idea of its geopolitical/economic function. The civil servants who would have cleaned up this mess are gone. But we have ICE and some nickel-and-dime contracts for a “Smart Wall.”
They look there: The Trump administration is the banana peel that caused the labor market to slip and crash so swiftly (in a matter of months) that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was forced to bury and (hopefully) forget September’s jobs report. And the employment data for August—which cost the head of BLS, Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, her job—made it clear that the market was only a month away from entering negative territory. We are certainly there now, and the only jobs the administration is bothering to create are for ICE, which will not help the economy because they are not in the millions but the thousands, and, in the long run, being a masked thug has poor to negligible multiplier effects—you don’t need training or an education to grab people from the streets. And ICE will never accumulate something as rich as the institutional memory of a Boeing or Bell Labs (from the latter we get the evidence for the creation of the universe, the Big Bang). And, lastly, the very nature of ICE jobs is unstable because they stand on a ground that can, at any moment, due to our highly volatile political environment, turn into quicksand.
What all of this adds up to is ESOP: extra suffering for ordinary people. Times were, for sure, not ideal under Biden—one can’t deny that the wealth of the richest of the rich exploded during his presidency—but now it’s only going to get worse, much worse, for those who are lucky enough to live paycheck to paycheck. The Trump squeeze is already here: accelerating job cuts, breadbaskets that keep demanding more of your shrinking wages, the lack of social safety nets, the works.
As Trump assaults our attention with his brazenly illegal revenge tour (James Comey, Letitia James, and so on), the bizarre deification of Charlie Kirk, the deployment of troops to Portlandia—we must turn to and be grounded by the jukebox of our minds. In these bombastic times, never lose sight of the truth in these pop tunes.
1. “Time Tough”
The opening line of this classic Toots and the Maytals tune says it all: “I go to bed / But sleep won’t come…” He can’t sleep because if he did, he’d wake up to the “landlord knocking on [his] door.” Toots even gives a dollar amount of what is owed in back rent: 400 Jamaican dollars. And even if he were to find a job, if he were to make some scratch, inflation would rapidly reduce the value of his wages: “…everything is getting higher and higher.” Two years before “Time Tough” was released (1974), Marvin Gaye described the effect of inflation and rising taxes in this way: “Money, we making / before we see it, you take it.” Gaye understood, as did the post-Keynesians of his time, that inflation is only a measure of political power.
2. “Let the Dollar Circulate”
A year after “Time Tough,” Philly Sound pioneer Billy Paul Williams presented what can only be described as an economic doctrine written on funk. “Let the Dollar Circulate” has a monetary theory that’s far more advanced than that found in graduate-level economic textbooks because the tune recognizes the social power of hoarding money. For the neoclassical school, money was just an instrument that made exchanges efficient. Remove money, and you have bartering, which is inefficient. Williams saw money in its proper light. It’s often removed from circulation, and this removal increases the wealth of the few (savers) who can afford to do so and harms the many who are in no position to hoard. So “let the dollar circulate, let the dollar circulate.” Indeed, to keep things moving, some heterodox economists have suggested placing expiration dates on cash. This is the Philly funky economics of the Billy Paul.
3. “Money’s Too Tight to Mention”
“Money$ Too Tight (to Mention)”
There are two versions of this superb and powerful tune. The original, by Ohio’s Valentine Brothers, was released in 1982. The other, by Britain’s Simply Red, was released in 1985. Though the original is not bad (despite its unfortunate excursion into rap), Simply Red’s cover is the cookie. Sorry, Brothers, but the blue-eyed soul left you in the dust. Both, however, are about the trickle-down economics of Ronald Reagan (USA) and Margaret Thatcher (UK). This is the austere world you get after the decimation of Big Labor and the collapse of the Welfare State. Unemployment is skyrocketing, and deindustrialization is in full swing. The combination of the two developments results in the Specials’ “Ghost Town.”
4. “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On but the Rent”
Many see this classic of mid-’80s R&B as a celebration of the type of person often ridiculed as a “gold digger.” But that is a misinterpretation of what’s really on Gwen Guthrie’s mind. If you want a gold digger, then go to Madonna’s “Material Girl,” the gold digger’s anthem. Though Guthrie does say “no romance without finance,” she’s not looking for a man with millions, but a man who has a stable job. Guthrie sings: “I’ve got lot of love to give / But I will have to avoid you if you’re unemployed.” In short, she wants nothing more than the basics, the meat-and-potatoes man, a “ 9 to 5” man. Even if the job drives him crazy, he’s got to get up in the morning, get dressed, and, in the words of Dolly Parton, “pour… a cup of ambition.”
5. “What’s the Colour of Money?”
Hollywood Beyond, a band from Birmingham, only had one hit. It happened in 1986, and it declared, to a catchy beat that swirled and thumped like a boozy party, that the color of money was not green but red. Meaning that cash, which rules everything around us, is not about life but death. Meaning, the proper name for economics is actually necro-economics. Now, recall how, in the middle of the COVID shutdown, Texas’s Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick recommended, on national television, that old people should sacrifice their lives for the sake of the economy—that returning to business as usual was far more important than them filling their Medicare-dependent lungs needlessly with air: This is an unambiguous description of necro-economics. This is the color of money.
6. “Devil’s Pie”
Let’s conclude with one of the greatest pop judgements of the evils of capitalism, D’Angelo’s apocalyptic “Devil’s Pie.” Built on a beat by DJ Premier, the track presents a world that’s totally fallen because of money—the devil’s pie, the man’s form of social power. This is the real inferno. Those who don’t own the biggest slices must wait in line and do what they can (kill each other, sell their bodies or drugs) to get a very small slice. D’Angelo, who died yesterday, October 14, at the young age of 51 (pancreatic cancer undid him), and released the track at the turn of the century (2000) on his second and penultimate studio album, Voodoo, soulfully simmers as he describes the lives that are lost in this cruel game of the haves and have-nots. No one has said it better since. May he rest in peace.
“Ah-ah-ah I said everybody out there gettin’ down
With a slice of the devil’s pie
Ah-ah-ah standing in line
For a slice of the devil’s pie
Said the woman in the street
Sellin’ her fuckin’ body
For a slice of the devil’s pie
Ah-ha niggas killin’ each other in the streets
For a slice of the devil’s pie
All in line, all in line
For a slice of the devil’s pie.”
