The Artist on the Side of the Road

Untouchable artists, tossed aside.

That silver taxi won't take us for a ride. 

But we do art just to survive. 

You can throw that out, too, when we die. 

Puny Statues

 The gods are glaring at me. 
They boast, "Ha! Look at us:
Frozen in space and  carved so fine. 
You are clumsy, wet, impermanent!
You wish, wash, slush around. 
We know and are on solid ground."

I take the puny statues
Crush them with my hammer. 
"Ha," I say, 
"Seems you've forgotten 
who's constructed of clay." 

You Have Nothing to Lose but Your 401K

 

A coworker of mine is turning sixty-five and is going to retire right away. She and her husband have worked all their lives and are ready to enjoy some free time.

“I’d like to travel,” she says. I nod my head supportively until she tosses in a grim caveat. “But we have to do it soon.” She sweeps her hand across her obese body, as if submitting it into evidence, “We don’t have much time left.”

I utter some encouraging phrases before heading to my own health wrecking office considering the pervasiveness of this story. It could be dubbed “the retirement fallacy”: buying into the notion that a life spent working in exchange for a few blissful decades at the end is a good bet. Not so, if one arrives at retirement age sick and broken, the money saved for that trip around the world vanishing into medical bills.

Of course, there is a “choice” component to a healthy lifestyle, but working full time clearly discourages it. First, deliberate exercise and healthful meal preparation require time. Once all the average working person’s hours are truly accounted for, there is very little of that left. Meanwhile, the chronic stress associated with the often-grueling activities of working-class jobs leaves a person exhausted at the end of the day. The activities often used for recovery, like smoking, drinking, or watching television, further erode the working persons’ health. Many a treadmill bought and abandoned in the living room, sufficing as an expensive coat rack.

My more conspiratorial self is tempted to call the retirement fallacy a deliberate arrangement: a scheme that has been inflicted on the working class since its advent. The concept of retirement is dangled like a swinging chocolate carrot, enticing the worker to sacrifice her peak years making other people rich, spoil her health in the process, only to get shipped off to the packer when she is no longer useful: an entire class of Orwellian Boxers.

It is for this reason that I am not waiting for some enlightened rich person to normalize the twenty-hour work week; as of several months ago, I adopted it anyway.  I’ll put it into words the investor class can understand: I am choosing to spread my retirement out over the remainder of my life instead of taking it as one lump sum.

The benefits of working part time have been well documented. It is not just for physical health; it improves mental health, lowers stress, and increases happiness.  I’ve noticed that there is more time for self-improvement: more time for creative endeavors and DIY projects. There is less of an impact on the environment. I am driving less, consuming less, and attempting to raise some of my own food. I am still “working”, but I can see the direct results.    

I realize that most people are not able to do this.  A combination of luck, choice, preferences, and privileges make this plan viable for me. For example, if my mind remains sharp, I have the type of job I can do well into my old age.  I earn enough of an hourly wage so I can still afford the basics while working fewer hours. The most glaring advantage of all? I have no kids. Because of these factors and more, I have the option to be poor.

Naturally, there are risks. The most striking is ageism: just because I’m able to work doesn’t mean the job market will have me.  Also, an unfortunate life event, like a chronic illness, would indeed spoil my plans. However, even if I unleashed my full-time earning potential now, a catastrophe would exhaust my meager savings very quickly. Besides, by investing in my health, I am mitigating much of that risk.

I’ll admit that for some, mostly the wealthy, the retirement life-structure works beautifully. For others, retirement may not be the anticipated reward, but simply icing on the cake.  Because of a full-time commitment, a working person can reap all the benefits of modern society and live comfortably. That may be enough for some people, but I’m sure there are many who feel shafted, as I do.   

Thwarting my indoctrination is not easy, and I worry about the barriers that a society hellbent on destroying me will accomplish just that. However, I refuse to continuously subsidize the rich with my time and labor at the expense of my health and happiness. I am choosing time over money. I’m investing in my health instead of my 401K.

Divide and Don't Conquer

 

I want to be clear: I identify as a political progressive. I embrace the notion that governments can invest in their citizens and produce healthier societies. I am not opposed to policies that help people. However, I have noticed a fatal flaw in the programs that progressives tend to champion: they are fundamentally unjust, separating people based on who is “deserving” and who is not.

Income-based assistance for housing, food, healthcare and the like is a case in point. A safety net is crucial for survival in a society such as ours, one that simply doesn’t pay most people a living wage. However, it also creates resentment towards the “poor” by the “working poor”.  

A working-class friend of mine once put it this way whilst explaining his animosity towards “welfare” programs and his support for Donald Trump, “I’ve worked all my life just to keep my head above water and nobody helped me.” It wasn’t so much that he felt the poor were “undeserving”, as much as he wondered why he was not. Further embedded in his comment is the sense that he was being punished for his hard work.

Student loan forgiveness is another good example. Again, it’s not that it’s a bad idea, it’s just that some people have made many serious sacrifices of time and money to pay off their student loans. Potentially forgiving that debt now feels like a slap in the face. Again, attempts to justifiably help relieve the financial stress for some feels like an insult for others.

Parental leave is a third example. It’s undeniably important for parents to get time off to spend with their children, especially in the critical early years of development. I like the idea of guaranteeing a reasonable portion of time for workers to take care of their families. However, whenever I hear politicians gushing over the value of parents in society, my blood starts to boil Why? As a childless person, the message I receive from those advocating for parental leave is this: you have no kids and, therefore, you are not deserving of paid time off. In addition, if parental leave policies go into effect, the person who will be left to pick up the slack at work?  Again, an attempt to help one group creates resentment in another.

Family leave might be more inclusive, but many of us do not even have families. My question is this: why not just mandate paid leave for all workers regardless of the reason? Just leave it at “leave”. Look, I’ve just created my slogan!

In the case of income-based programs, the concerns I outlined above bring me to just one of the reasons I support a Basic Minimum Income (BMI) as a less exclusionary approach to human investment. In addition to being flexible and efficient, as well as potentially necessary in a society that faces increasing automation, a uniformly applied, reasonably determined BMI could, at least theoretically, replace programs that determine who is “deserving” and who is not.

For the same reason (and others), I support a taxpayer funded single-payer health care system that gives everyone access regardless of income. When I worked full-time, I didn’t receive a health care subsidy because I made “too much” money, even though I was living paycheck to paycheck and the $400/month premium was a gigantic burden for me. Now that I’m working part-time, I pay nothing.  My old self is very angry with my current self. “Why do you get free health care? I worked myself half to death and nobody helped me! You lazy free loader!”

I am steadily surprised by how a group that claims they are committed to bringing people together consistently support policies that push people apart. To get support, progressives need to stop advancing programs that sound compassionate but are inherently divisive.

 

The Radical
Is lost.
Maybe she’s in the beehive
Capped like honey.
Or in the egg
Floating inside
Or maybe she’s carefully placed
somewhere in the sky.
Without her this body
Is immobilized. 
Counting the days until she awakens
Or dies.
 

Christmas 2021

Unchosen pumpkins spilling like
Hopeful orphans who haven't been told
That it's November 1st. Don't they know?
Their orange cheeks still glow,
Noses high,
Unblemished rinds like wide, waiting eyes.
But it's time to move on. 
The people walk by 
Legless turkeys can't hold up their heads,
Pressed into boxes on the back of a  bed.
They travel along, cold wind on their flesh.
Suffer in life, suffer in death.
Uneaten turkey, we don't remember.
We've got work to do! 
It's the end of November!
Unchosen tree propped up all alone
In an empty lot as the cars come and go. 
It's December 26th, don't you know?
"Was my foliage too thin? Was I slightly askew?
We're my branches too long? Too many? Too few?
Maybe I was too far back in the queue.
They would rather a fake one, I heard them all grouse. 
They are always perfect
And don't leave brown needles all over the house."
Left over champagne, your bubbles all gone. 
Dumped down the drain. 
Now the year can move on. 

Dear Fellow Progressives

 When I have a job without paid sick leave, I go to work sick. When I have a job with paid sick leave, I do not go to work sick, but I also take a few “mental health days”. I don’t go hunting, but I do go to the beach. Chances are I am not alone.

The answer to the question of whether many people suffer in our economy without government assistance or protection is “yes”. The answer to the question of whether people take advantage of said system is also “yes”. The question society should be asking is: which is worse?

While suspicious activities perpetrated by a rich wall street executive or a hedge fund manager would not escape scrutiny, left leaning politicians appear incapable of even considering the notion that people who benefit from government intervention exploit the system.  The left’s narrative is that poor people are all hardworking, honest, and pure. They will only take paid sick leave if they really must. They will only take food stamps if they desperately need it. They will only buy recreational drugs if they earned the money.  Everyone is just like their unassailable single mom who worked three jobs but still struggled financially.

The right, on the other hand, sees corruption everywhere, except maybe among wall street executives and hedge fund managers. They call it like they see it. It is common sense! Humans, mostly poor ones, are innately shifty. They are selfish, insatiable opportunists. Give them something, and they will just take more, unlike their parents who worked hard to get ahead, never took a government “hand-out” and subsequently deserved their inevitable success.

The truth is that these narratives are both fantasies and until politicians stop embracing this false dichotomy of human nature and experience, we cannot have rational policy discussions.

The reaction to Joe Manchin’s statement regarding people spending monetary benefits on drugs or using sick leave to go hunting is a case in point. The audacity!  The shame! Joe Manchin clearly despises his own constituents. He thinks poor people deserve to be poor. In the meantime, the party of “common sense” rolls its collective eyes.  They cheer Joe Manchin for stating the obvious.

I suggest that if the left wants to persuade skeptical people that a social safety net is necessary in a civil society, they must start by admitting that humans will take advantage of it. They must recognize that the doubters are not just talking about flagrant fraud and corruption schemes, like the ones that make headlines. They are referring to the wide array of minor misappropriation going on under the radar: the guy who is sharing half his food stamps with his neighbor, the parent that bought a pair of earrings with the child tax care credit, and those who could work, but choose not to, because they can get benefits instead.

If they start with that confession, they can then move on to the important questions: what is the cost of not having a social safety net? How do these programs benefit society as a whole? How can the system be made more efficient?

Vulnerable people certainly need to be defended in a society that works against them, but not by turning them into gutless lambs. They should be fully respected as mature adults with agency: agency that will occasionally take them to the beach on a day they should really be working.