08.19.03 - 2:11 p.m.

Strange day. Every half-hour or so, I get up and either turn on my A/C full blast and close the window or vice-versa, open the window and turn off the A/C. It's a hot, humid day outsid, and the sky is an ugly, nothing-ish haze. The bridge is in shadow, a shape sketched against the colorless sky, and beyond that point there are no real distinct features, just the retreating silhouette of the bluffs that line the river, a bare two shades darker than the featureless ugly nothing of a sky above the them. The color isn't even properly called gray, because it lacks the density, the depth, the definition even for that. I think it's one of those universal smog-hazes, though perhaps ours are less brown than the ones that shroud big cities. It's ugly, though, and it sours my mood. I would prefer the clean brightness of a fine blue sky (well, duh. that's a no-brainer) or a nice thoroughly storm-laden sky, or even just a flat, gray day to this oppressive whateverness.

I am currently playing a game that, I suppose, most officeworkers at small companies play: will they replace my stuff before it complete dies. It's a fun game, and I recommend it, particularly to the wealthier companies as a means of dealing with those pesky high-morale employees who always raise your expectations only to dash them to pieces when they turn out to be complete Tony-Robbins-listening-vitamin-C-megadose-popping-freak-ass-weirdos. Let me tell you how it works: let your stuff get old. Then let it get older. This works particularly well when you play these games with technology essential to the smooth function of your employees' positions, like phones.

Actually, I think I've found one central truth of office life. If someone thinks your challenge is easy and/or solveable, they will be attentive and try to fix it. If they have no clue where to begin, they will ignore you until you summon Dumbo to swoop through their respective windows and stomp them on their respective heads. And then they will ignore you more because they will be dead, and will have a good excuse to continue doing so. And where, you ask, is the evidence supporting this theory?

1. My phone: crackles. Has crackled for more than a month. Shortly after I told the technology/whatever guy about it, he was up three times: we changed the cord, the handset, and the phone. Still crackling, but he hasn't been back. He didn't even respond to my email to say, yeah yeah, or f' off, or, I'll get to that someday. Or anything.

2. My computer: sucks. I get Dr. Watson errors when using Word at least three times per day, usually when I've just finished the first edits on a long letter and have not yet saved it. Moreover, I cannot print envelopes, and the printer driver (my computer likes the old printer driver. it just woke up one day and apparently said: i'm going back to my first love) randomly changes trays on a semi-regular basis. Now I am even more spoiled by the whole secretary thing. Soon I will be completely helpless and require her to accompany me when I ... oh, well. The picture is there. No need to bring it into sharp focus.

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Blargh. I'm reading, off and on, a book by Kevin Phillips called Wealth and Democracy about, well, uhm, yeah: wealth and democracy, the intersection of the two. And things. Anyway, it begins with a brief political history of the rich (during the revolutionary war, the richest men in Europe held vast amounts of property so as to completely dwarf the largest American fortunes, which may have - barely - reached a million dollars. Blah blah blah, acquisitions acquisitions aquisitons: wealth grows, but sometime mid-century wealth balloons along with the growth of railroads. Most of such fortunes are related, somehow, to railroads or other similar investments that are closely tied, in one way or another, to government: i.e. railroads were much subsidized by local/state/federal governments, and the people who made fortunes on railroads would not have made such fortunes without significant federal subsidies. Similarly, some of the big New York real estate fortunes owe much to favorable property assessments and other tax dodging perks that come with being someone important. It wasn't just that such people saved money by avoiding the taxes, as one supposes that one could argue that getting back what gov. takes does not constitute amassing a fortune based on close ties to government. Consider this: OTHER property owners were subject to taxes and restrictions to which the ppl amassing the NYC real estate fortunes were not.

Anyway: so, the book drafts the exponential growth of fortunes in the US, charts the track of the 1920s, and discusses, in detail, the great compression of the late 1940s to mid 1960s wherein the middle class expanded and gained on the superrich, while the gap between the richest and poorest Americans close, then charts the (again) exponential growth of the largest fortunes over the last thirty years, as compared with the flat salaries of the average worker, and the declining place of the working class, and the worsening lot of the v. poor.

The second portion of the book charts the rise and fall of the last three great world economic superpowers: sixteenth century Spain, seventeenth century Holland, and nineteenth-early twentieth century Britain. Basically, Phillips argues that the shift from a manufacturing economy to a service-based economy marked the beginning of the end of economic dominance by Holland and Britain, and in particular the reliance on finance as a vehicle for wealth creation (and all the complicated weird finance-related things) rather than production is a key feature of the end of an economic superpower. In both cases, Holland and Britain (Spain - the connection seemed less obvious. It seems like mostly they were just so wealth thanks to then plundering of So. America) become involved in the world economy, increasingly outsourced their production but relied on technology and financial expertise. Unfortunately, both can be coopted and imitated, eventually. Both had a long period during which prosperity really was a rising tide lifting all boats, especially those of a highly skilled emergent middle and working class, followed by an extended period of ballooning fortunes among the very rich coupled with contracting fortunes among the non-financial classes - i.e. the middle/working/poor classes. The idea, obviously, is that the US is mirroring the tracks laid by both Holland and Britain.

Phillips also answers the "new world economy"-cakes and "uber-technology"-cakes arguments satisfactorily (new world economies for Holland and Britain, too. Uber-technology developed in Holland/Britain exported and REALLy explointed elsewhere, i.e. Britain/U.S. respectively for each country.).

So, it's confusing and I'm still trying to work my brain around the concepts at play here, particularly after a decade lauding the "New Service Economy" or the "Information Age" as more revolutionary than it seems.

I'm still, sourly, trying to sort out - in my mind - the importance of manufacturing, to both local and national economies and the whole world trade thing: there are competing interests there too. This is unsatisfying, because the issues just aren't black and white, and I am not satisfied with many of my own opinions here. There are too many hedges, too many qualifications. Two articles in this morning's NYT made me want to wrestle with this, but I really haven't started wrestling, what with all the damned explication.

The first one discusses the importance of manufacturing to a country's (our country's!) economy. Here!

The second article discusses recent job losses in the S. Carolina textile industry, and how concern over the economy has created fissures of discontent with Bush and the Republican party among both laid off workers and textile executives, two very different constituencies: Here!