Expensive

"What are the things that I don't even recognize as privilege..."
- KP

"the elephant in the room is that no one can live on minimum wage, and that we are making a whole swath of our society - tens of millions of people - live like animals. So that the luckier segment can live with indulgences their parents never dreamed of."
- Bill Maher

Thinking about the cost of things today. That and the old liberal elitism v. egalitarianism debate, a.k.a., are there some things one should be proudly anti-democratic about (bread n' circus culture, pulp fiction, blockbuster movies, chain restaurants, "f*cking merlot", etc)?

Annette and I like to look at paintings. There are four kinds of art we come across. There are famous prints, like the Starry Night everyone had in college. There are framed prints of less familiar paintings, which look like they were painted because someone does random brushstrokes over them with a clear varnish. There are actual hand painted canvases that are churned out, same painting over and over but painting still. Usually these involve flowers or comically overweight Italian pasta chefs.

Then there are "real" paintings. These come in two types. The first is what the general public wants. Boats. Flowers. Paris cafes. Anything French Impressionist.

Then there are the paintings we like. A jungle scene in a street market in Lilande; women in a one-room gallery in St. Emilion; untitled monochrome abstracts in a Houston Festival. Paintings seemingly done for the artist (or art) itself. Who buys these? Why do they buy them? Decoration for a beautiful house? Conversation piece for the neighbors?

The jungle was cleared when we came back for it, and the women though beautiful were unattainable. But the monochrome got a title - Red - and a home.



Our first dreamed-of indulgence now hangs blood-red over our couch. It was part of a two week party, with nice meals, cowboy hats and boots, and general fun. It was a bit expensive, as Annette noted on her last day.

Maybe things should be a little expensive. Driving around Houston I'm struck by how much I get for the work I do. Per Adam Smith, specialization means I'm good at what I do, and you're good at your stuff, so we each can do a lot of what we do and trade the leftovers. So everyone benefits. But I work at a computer 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I get what in exchange? Shelter, entertainment, roads, a car, parks, nice food, piloted travel to visit loved ones across the globe, nice clothes, you name it. Then it strikes me, I'm not just exchanging the fruits of my labor with others; I'm enjoying the legacy of what people before me have built. The libraries were built before I was born, ditto the oil refineries funding my salary.

We in the US, especially those in the upper middle class, enjoy the fruits of labor of untold millions of people. But we and our agents (government, WalMart, Krogers) have the better bargaining position, so we get the better deal. In "The Stand", Steven King writes (after Plato & co. I'm sure) that once the town gets too big for people to know each other personally, things start breaking down. Who paves the roads we drive on, who tends the parks we play in, who grows our food?

We've got all these complicated machines making our toys, so not much blood of child or slave labor, or unsafe workplaces or environmental damage gets on anyone's hands. Businesses will naturally race to the bottom to compete. Thus we pass laws protecting our basic values, allowing businesses to compete with each other without being tempted to exploit those people and things that aren't able to protect themselves.

Reading Bill Maher's wonderful link above, I'm inclined to think minimum wage laws do the same thing, protect us from our worst impulses to get ahead at the expense of the unnamed others. Forcing ourselves to act as if we know each other in a society too crowded for that to be true.

We talked to the painter of Red, who teaches graphic design and draws great lines. Her name is Nicole Bent and her web site is http://www.nicolesart.net. After we talked for a while, she gave us a discount (more even than Annette asked for). But I'm happy that it was still well over minimum wage. Our first painting was just a little expensive. As good things should be.