Strong Verbs Are Just Better

In the past two days I’ve listened to almost all of the audiobook of Felix Salmon’s The Phoenix Economy. I have some niche critiques of it - the chapter “Workspace” could really have done with the distinction between space and place which is pretty widely made in humanities circles, but which originates with human geography. Given the overlaps between geography and economics, I would have expected Salmon either to be able to deploy an accessible version in his discussion, or not explicitly state it but write in a way that means I could see the ghost of that theoretical frame. But neither are true.

In one of the later chapters, Salmon quotes someone - Keynes, I think? - who was being grilled about his proposition for massive rebuilding and revitalisation programs for every major civic centre in the UK, in the aftermath of World War Two. But where will the money come from, journalists asked? Can we afford all this? Sayeth the economist: “if we can physically do it, we can afford it.”

One of the recurring motifs of my political consciousness - at least insofar as I have kept track of economics - is the refrain that the federal budget is not a household budget, and government debt cannot be looked at the same way is individual or household debt. The link I just gave is to a Conversation article from 2014, but Australian politicians have been keen to crow about budget surpluses for my entire adult life, and hence I’ve been aware of this talking point (said, frustratedly, usually by persons further left of either major party) for much longer than a decade. The topic flared up again in 2020, too.

Lately, though, I’ve been listening to Greg Jericho’s podcast Dollars and Sense: Somewhere in there I think he made the point that there is good debt at an individual or household level, actually. Education debt: many of us have HECS debts because we believe education is worth it and/or that it will increase our later earnings (we have become much more critical of educational debt when the combination of price hikes, changes to indexing and repayment, lower-than-expected earnings and much much higher housing prices mean the educational debt is no longer resulting in net comfort for the majority of millennials).

The other line Jericho quotes a lot is Julia Gillard’s ”budgets are about choices”. We should care less about whether the current federal budget forecast that the country will be 9 billion dollars in surplus five years from now, and more about what is and isn’t funded in that. We could have made the choice on budget night - or any time before - and we still could make the choice any time now to lift jobseeker payments out of abysmal poverty (up to, say, the Henderson poverty line). That we do not is a choice.

It struck me that Jericho’s use of “Budgets are about choices” is the closest I’ve seen anyone get to pointing out that - especially when you’re in surplus, national budgets are actually quite a lot like household budgets. If I earn, say, $70,000 per year, and I have a plan to save $9,000 over five years, that sounds pretty good, right? That surplus will provide me with wiggle room for unexpected negative changes in circumstances, or be saved for the future. But if I save that $9,000 while my children are going hungry, then that is not good money management, it’s terrible priorities. (70,000 is slightly above the median individual income for Sydney. Someone with one adult income and two or three dependents would struggle to save on that income, but could probably feed and house themselves and their family.)

But if I earned $107,000 per year, and I had a plan to save $90,000 over five years - that’s house deposit money we’re talking about: as long as my hypothetical children are fed and their needs met, that’s good money management, right? Well, sure, but if I and my hypothetical children are fed and renting, but my mother or grandmother is homeless, then no, that’s not good money management, that’s terrible priorities. Now, in a household budget situation exactly WHAT I could or ought to offer my relative would depend on a great many factors, but I feel reasonably certain in saying I ought to do SOMETHING at the expense of my $90,000 five year savings plan. If instead of a household operating in the tens of thousands, I’m a nation operating in the billions… uh.

I guess I’m mostly confused that no one uses the household budget analogy to justify spending - only ever to justify NOT spending money in the national budget.

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Currently Reading:
Fiction:
Jordy Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox. I might not be quite ready for a Novel About A Trans Man Literature Prof.
Maurice LeBlanc, Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Cambrioleur (in English, via Phoebe Reads a Mystery). My hope had once been to read it in simultaneous audio and text in French, but I needed a new chores book and the English version was right there.
Non-fiction:
Lea Devun, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance, in fits and starts
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, also in fits and starts
Monisha Rajesh, Around the World in Eighty Trains - a good “keep in the work go-bag” choice
Felix Salmon, The Phoenix Economy - in audiobook, with about an hour left
Shon Faye, The Transgender Issue - in audiobook, and honestly I might DNF it. It’s depressing reading and not telling me anything I don’t know

Read Recently:

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It took me literal years to get through this, but in this last attack upon it (starting a few months ago), I loved it. The careful engagement with various aspects of women's precarity really is striking.

It also struck me, back when I FIRST started reading it, that Walter is, essentially, the male counterpart to the governess in the Turn of the Screw, or to Jane Eyre. I don't know quite what to do with that insight, but a while back I read an interesting paper on sibling performance in the work of Wilkie Collins. It stressed the general sibling-like relationship between Walter and Marian (that is, in their chosen sibling-hood, each exhibits some masculine and some feminine traits and positions toward the other). Reading Walter as, essentially, a male governess-figure both highlights how his character is not constructed as either a romantic hero or a bildungsroman protagonist - and also underlines the class commonality between him and Marian. Laura, by contrast, is Walter's love interest and Marian's foil, but very much less compelling a character.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was much less mind-bending and complex than I had been lead to expect! I liked it, but nothing about it boggled me. In fact, if I had been told it was a book about the trauma of portal travel, I would have read it before now!

The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine by Thomas Morris

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Solid Dad Book right here.

Backdated Reviews (2021-22)

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


What I learned from this book is that I do not like books or TV shows about circles of Women Existing In New York.

I gather that if you do like books about circles of Women Existing In New York it's great for that.

I have some other personal bugbears, but I shan't air them here.


Home by Stephanie Alexander

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Got an excellent recipe for "popcorn lamb" out of this.


Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I do like these BL Crime Classics. This one I thought at the time would be a bit meh - initially the characters didn't grab me - but not only did I end up enjoying the mystery plot, I find myself thinking about some of the characters off and on years later.

Short Fiction:
Addison Evans, An Itemised List of Charitable Contributions (Wyldblood Press)
Amy Barnes, On rainy nights I smell shoe leather (Scrawl Place) - the conceit / premise of this one tickled me, although I wonder if the author intended when writing that there would be an image that gave it away before you get past the first paragraph.
Shannon Savas, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Woman. I don’t know why I like this one but I do.

Recent additions to the TBR
Fiction: Brood, by Jackie Polzin, which appears to be a novel about someone raising chickens
Non-fiction: Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts, which appears to be a memoir about walking from the Netherlands to Constantinople