No System Can Account for Itself, So What's the Price of Money?

There are several ways to refute the idea that the price for which something is exchanged is the sole measure of its economic value. Try this: Human beings have lived most of their history without money. The invention of money has been a great lubricant for economic activity. The existence of money has value, therefore, for society that is exterior to the money system. What is the price--how much would you pay--for entry to the money system?

Days fly by, winter drags on.
A plow scrapes by in the night.

Whenever concerns are raised about the widening disparities of income and wealth in this country, there are warnings from the right about igniting class warfare. I suppose that there's a little truth in that, but the likelihood of marching hedge fund managers to the guillotine or forcing plutocrats into exile in Shanghai is pretty small.

In actuality, at this time the most virulent class hatreds are between strata of the working/middle class. And these are not fomented by liberals. Until a few decades ago, those ill-paid and ill-treated by employers could hope to emulate their better-off fellows in union jobs by organizing and bargaining collectively for better pay and better treatment. But now that the tide of unionization has gone out, there is little of this hope. What remains is a lot of bitter envy.

Abuses of power by unions--burdensome work rules, pensions that bankrupt companies, protection of incompetent workers--are constantly pointed to. Examples are not hard to find. When I was was growing up, the folks in my extended family were probably the only Republican factory workers in Toledo. And there were stories about Uncle Freddy going to work with a knife in his waistband to protect himself against against union thugs. But any individual or institution with power is quite likely to eventually abuse it. Examples are not hard to find. A employer of much size at all will have greater power than its individual employees. We cannot strip them of the countervailing power that organizing gives them.

What public employees in Ohio should sacrifice to help alleviate the state's fiscal distress can certainly be negotiated. But those who recently gained political power would seek to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights even in the best of times. Do not let them use the present crisis to persuade us to let them do it.

In Passing

I have myself
held a newborn son,
living,
but too young to live.

These grief trains
have no doors to open,
no common measure of their loads.
Just a wave, then,
through a clouded window,
from one passing
on a distant track.

Blueberry Smoothie

Shocking shard of glass
on my tongue that becomes ice
as it disappears.

Who is an American?

Regardless of their parentage, people who have lived here all their lives and are linguistically and culturally American are American. Law should acknowledge this fact. I would vote for the Dream Act, although the reality of these folks being our countrymen ought not to be conditioned upon their going to college or serving in the military. If they're PhD's, they're American PhD's and if they're criminals, they're American criminals. But if the bill passes it will likely be because it appeals to our sense of magnanimity. And that good feeling of granting citizenship to people who not quite fully entitled to it is bound up in those conditions.

On the other hand, a one-year-old who is deported along with its parents should be no more entitled to citizenship because it was born a week after its family came here than if had been born a week before. I'm inclined to think that changing the 14th Amendment to reflect this logic would cause more rancor than it's worth. But if we were starting from scratch, my view is that mere birth on American soil ought not to be sufficient qualification for citizenship.

Remains

And one will remain
the unseen sleeper
for the other,
still dressing in the winter dark.