{"id":12010,"date":"2016-07-27T13:40:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T17:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=12010"},"modified":"2016-07-27T13:40:07","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T17:40:07","slug":"the-mandibles-nobody-can-agree-on-what-caused-the-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/27\/the-mandibles-nobody-can-agree-on-what-caused-the-collapse\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mandibles: Nobody can agree on what caused the collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing my posts about\u00a0Lionel Shriver’s\u00a0The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047<\/a><\/em>…<\/p>\n

One of the things that seems realistic\u00a0in this novel is that Americans don’t change their views on economics or politics based on new facts. When the economy collapses, therefore, each American explains it according to his or her\u00a0previously held political or economic viewpoint.<\/p>\n

Here are some excerpts:<\/p>\n

At Barnard, having written her honors thesis on \u201cClass, 1945\u2013Present\u201d had seemed daring, because Americans flattered themselves as beyond class. But that was before the fabled economic downturn that fatally coincided with her college graduation. After which, Americans talked about nothing but class.<\/p>\n

Checking the rice, she [liberal mom] tried to remember what her weirdo son had claimed about the recrudescence of malnutrition in Africa and on the subcontinent, after both regions had made such strides. It was an outrage that the poor simply couldn\u2019t afford to eat, she\u2019d bemoaned to the boy [conservative teenager], when the planet had plenty of food. He\u2019d responded obtusely, \u201cNo, it doesn\u2019t.\u201d He proceeded to recapitulate his great-grandfather\u2019s tortured explanation\u2014something like, \u201cIt only seems like there\u2019s plenty of food. If you gave the poor more money, then the price would rise even higher, and then they still couldn\u2019t afford it.\u201d Which didn\u2019t make the slightest sense. Around Willing, she should monitor her grandfather\u2019s propaganda more closely. The old man was liberal by creed, but she\u2019d never met anyone with money who didn\u2019t have conservative instincts. One such instinct was to make the morally obvious (if fiscally inconvenient) seem terribly complicated. Like, rice is too costly, then give people the money to buy it. Duh.<\/p>\n

[Keynesian economics professor talking with his therapist wife] \u201cSorry. I did get into an argument, with that boomerpoop Vandermire. Because, okay, the bond auction today, it\u2019s\u2014unfortunate. At the moment, foreign demand for US debt is low\u2014but there are completely unrelated reasons for backing off US debt instruments in a variety of different countries that just happen to be coinciding. Here, the market is hopping; investors can find higher yields in the Dow than in dumpy Treasury securities. Interest rates aren\u2019t likely to stay anywhere near 8.2 percent and this is probably a one-time spike. Jesus, in the 1980s, Treasury bond interest careened to over 15 percent. Bonds paid over 8 percent as recently as 1991\u2014\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s not very recent.\u201d \u201cMy point is, there\u2019s no reason to get hysterical!\u201d \u201cThen don\u2019t say that hysterically.\u201d\u00a0\u201cWell, Vandermire is ecstatic. He loves the attention, and he\u2019s on a high of having been supposedly right all along. \u2018Unsustainable! The national debt is unsustainable!\u2019 If I heard him say the word unsustainable one more time this afternoon I\u2019d have punched him in the nose. The functional definition of unsustainable is that-which-is-not-sustained. If you can\u2019t keep something up, you don\u2019t. After all that noise twenty years ago about the deficit, the melodramatic shutdowns of government over raising the debt ceiling, and what\u2019s happened? Nothing. At 180 percent of GDP\u2014which Japan proved was entirely doable\u2014the debt has been sustained. It is therefore, ipso facto, sustainable.\u201d\u00a0The trouble with being a professor is that when you pontificate for a living it\u2019s hard to cut the crap once you get back home. Avery was used to it, though she didn\u2019t find Lowell\u2019s rants quite as enchanting as when they first got married.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Fed chief was emphatic. Krugman said the limits were for a few days, max.\u201d [Paul Krugman is running the Fed and puts in capital controls]<\/p>\n

[teenage son talking to liberal mom]\u00a0\u201cThe government will have lots of money. But it won\u2019t be worth anything. Which is the same as having no money.\u201d\u00a0One of her few concerns about her only child was that he inclined toward smugness. \u201cAll right. What. Since I\u2019ve heard we need regular inflation, like at least 2 or 3 percent, my whole life.\u201d \u201cI know you have. You\u2019ve been brainwashed.\u201d He sounded so cheerful. \u201cWe could easily get along with a small, steady, predictable rate of deflation. Inflation is a tax. Money for the government. A tax that people don\u2019t see as a tax. That\u2019s the best kind, for politicians. But inflation isn\u2019t inevitable. Starting in 1300, the British pound pretty much maintained its value for six hundred years. And that was during the Empire, when English people practically ruled the world.” …\u00a0\u201cPrices aren\u2019t going up,\u201d Willing said authoritatively. Florence snorted. \u201cCould have fooled me!\u201d \u201cThey have fooled you.\u201d Willing\u2019s stride had developed a swagger. \u201cIt\u2019s the mistake people always make. They think things are getting more expensive. Actually, everything costs the same. Prices aren\u2019t going up; the currency is going down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re in a corner. They can\u2019t borrow. They could raise taxes. But the rich already pay high taxes. And now their investments are gone. The rich aren\u2019t rich. So the only people left to tax are people like you and Esteban. Who can\u2019t buy cabbage. Blood from a stone, as Great Grand Man put it. What else is there to do? Photocopy the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNever forget where information comes from, puppet. I wouldn\u2019t accept everything your great-grandfather says as gospel. He\u2019s liberal on social issues, but wealth always pulls people to the right\u2014because they can\u2019t help wanting to keep it. Everyone has an agenda.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The patriarch is the main source of family conservatism.<\/p>\n

\u201cCarter. I will let you in on what isn\u2019t a secret to any housewife who\u2019s bought a cucumber. The American dollar is worthless now not because of the rate spike, and not because of crashing on the international currency exchange, and not because of the bancor. It is worthless now because it was worthless before.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s melodramatic.\u201d \u201cNot melodramatic\u2014dramatic. In the hundred years following the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the dollar lost 95 percent of its value\u2014when one of the purposes of the Fed was to safeguard the integrity of the currency. Great job, boys! Ever wonder why no one talks about millionaires anymore\u2014why no one but a billionaire rates as rich? Because a man who had about ten grand in 1913 would be a millionaire a century later. Hell, everyone\u2019s a millionaire these days, every halfway solvent member of the middle class. And the majority of that currency decay is historically recent. Why, the dollar lost half its value in the mere four years between 1977 and 1981.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The academics are the ones who really go at it. Here are\u00a0the boring Keynesian professor and his exciting Thomas Piketty<\/a>-like colleague at a dinner party:<\/p>\n

\u201cMorally, your money does belong to everybody,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cThe creation of capital requires the whole apparatus of the state to protect property rights, including intellectual property. Private enterprise is dependent on the nation as a whole for an educated workforce, transportation networks, and social order. No country, no fortune.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll grant you this much.\u201d Tom was making an almighty effort to remain affable, for which Avery was grateful. \u201c\u2019Kay, for the last several years inflation has bounced between 3 and 4 percent. I realize that to experts like you folks, I\u2019ll sound dumb as a coal shovel. But the figure I tripped across the other day came as a shock to me: with 3 percent inflation, the dollar halves in value every twenty-three years. That\u2019s from Fed money printing. So when I don\u2019t control what \u2018my\u2019 money is worth, maybe it isn\u2019t really mine in the first place. At best, it\u2019s a loan. Which Krugman can zap into ashes while it\u2019s still in my pocket, like a superhero.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBetter everyone is somewhat less well off than we keep tolerating the grotesque economic disparities of the last thirty years,\u201d Lin Yu said. \u201cAs Americans, we can return to first principles. This is a chance at reboot and rebirth. A chance for transformation and redemption. An opportunity to eschew corruption, and cronyism, and inequity, and division, and re-create this country from the ground up. To be the United States again, to live in a united state. To restore this nation to the egalitarian utopia the founding fathers envisioned. We should all be proud to be participating in this watershed.\u201d\u201cBetter everyone is somewhat less well off than we keep tolerating the grotesque economic disparities of the last thirty years,\u201d Lin Yu said. \u201cAs Americans, we can return to first principles. This is a chance at reboot and rebirth. A chance for transformation and redemption. An opportunity to eschew corruption, and cronyism, and inequity, and division, and re-create this country from the ground up. To be the United States again, to live in a united state. To restore this nation to the egalitarian utopia the founding fathers envisioned. We should all be proud to be participating in this watershed.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eventually the professor debates with the teenagers:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe national debt was bound to come to a head eventually,\u201d Nollie held forth on her third glass of wine. \u201cIt was just hard to predict when. And prophets too ahead of their time are always ridiculed. Take population. In my teens, the species was allegedly reproducing itself into extinction. Last time I checked, the human race was still here. Now we\u2019re closing on nine billion\u2014a tripling in seventy years. But what if the \u2018overpopulation\u2019 hysterics were right, just too soon? Same with debt. Twenty years ago, doom-and-gloomers were foaming at the mouth about excessive borrowing. Nothing happened then, either\u2014until a year ago, when everything happened. Familiar with complexity theory? It helps to explain why everything can be fine for a long time and then go to hell all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Avery had tried to tolerate her husband\u2019s self-importance about \u201chis work,\u201d some vital economic analysis without which the world would fall apart. The world having already fallen apart, her tolerance had morphed to contempt. In retrospect, it seemed pretty rich for her whole family to have none too subtly dismissed her PhysHead practice as quackery, when Lowell\u2019s whole field had been exposed as far dodgier hocus-pocus; at the worst, Avery\u2019s cures merely overpromised, while Lowell\u2019s gang of charlatans had wreaked nationwide havoc.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t write off the United States just yet!\u201d Lowell said. \u201cSee the Dow is climbing back up, Goog? What\u2019d I tell you!\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s only going up in dollars,\u201d Willing said from the coffee table. \u201cWhat else is it supposed to go up in?\u201d Goog jeered. \u201cIn a hyperinflationary economy\u2014\u201d \u201cWhoa, hold on there, Willing,\u201d Lowell said. \u201cHyperinflation is a technical term. In my field, Philip Cagan\u2019s definition is broadly accepted: at least 50 percent per month. We\u2019re nowhere near that. In the 1920s, German inflation was 30,000 percent, and Serbian inflation was 300 million percent. In Hungary, after the Second World War? It was 1.3 times ten to the sixteenth\u2014literally beyond your imagination. No comparison.\u201d \u201cSorry,\u201d Avery mumbled to her sister. \u201cI think Lowell misses teaching.\u201d \u201cIn a high inflation economy, then,\u201d Willing corrected, and it was difficult to tell who was more patronizing to whom, \u201call assets seem to appreciate, including stock. But the gains are false. In bancors, the market continues to drop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the usual GOP austerity blunder,\u201d Lowell said. \u201cBecause this is a time to pump up government expenditure. Invest in infrastructure, like a second New Deal. Reinvigorate America\u2019s industrial base, and reduce the need for imports.\u201d It occurred to Avery that her husband needed to get out more. His familiar economics platitudes failed to connect with the rampaging crowds on the Mall, the encampments on the Potomac, the numerous cars on the interstate on the trip to New York with mattresses and bundles of clothing lashed on top, like a modern-day Grapes of Wrath. She had the same sensation listening to press conferences from the White House. The administration went through the motions of being the American government, and saying the things that American officials say, but the exercise had an air of imitation\u2014the studied intensity of tots who cook pies with mud.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The aunt from France and the teenager try to sum it all up:<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have that much power and let it go?\u201d Nollie said. \u201cThat is pretty stupid.\u201d \u201cIt always goes,\u201d Willing said. \u201cWhether or not you let it.\u201d \u201cHaving that much money and letting it go, then,\u201d Nollie revised. \u201cHaving that much money and still spending more than you\u2019ve got. I call that stupid.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Characters adapt to changed circumstances, but no matter how severe the adaptations Shriver doesn’t show them changing their politics.<\/p>\n

More: Read The Mandibles<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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