Looking at my responsibilities as a mostly upstanding citizen of this great land, I can feel overwhelmed. It's easy to pine for the days when my bills were paid by someone else, when my only jobs were to learn and avoid a criminal record. Life's just so damned complicated now.
The daily responsibilities of a career, a relationship, homeownership, pets, laundry, and keeping in compliance with the rules of daily life are all manageable on an individual basis, but are tough to shoulder all at once. I haven't even had kids yet! No wonder people are willing to pay a premium for the convenience of someone else doing their taxes, cooking dinner, even raising their kids.
Life is more complicated than it was. In the nineteenth century, I may have lived in squalor, worked a menial job, and paid half my salary towards the rent with no prospect for retirement. I may not have expected to live that long in any case. But life was simpler. How many bills could I have been responsible for? How many monolithic bureaucracies could there have been involved in my life? How many decision points would I face on a daily basis compared to today? Would I worry about career advancement? Sending kids to college? Would I think about the DMV, pizza or Chinese food? Calories? Cavities? IRAs? Gas mileage? My commute? What to watch on TV?
I'm hard pressed to imagine a life in the 19th century that I'd pick over one in the 21st. For every emperor, cowboy, pioneer, and swashbuckler there were many thousands of forgotten, nameless, short, painful lives. But it's easy to be nostalgic when it's you in the modern drudgery compared to the guys that actually got written about sometime in the past.
So much of the discontent of modern times in America is fueled by nostalgia. Nostalgia offers a highly distorted view of bygone days, but within that view is a kernel of truth. The world really was simpler.
People are pragmatic. They understand, for example, that terrorists like to use planes as projectiles against landmarks. In boarding planes, they understand the necessity of security. But that understanding has limits. Walking through a metal detector to get on a flight is no big deal. You tell me there are bombs in people's shoes? OK, I'll take mine off to be x-rayed. Bombs made from liquids in bottles? All right, I'll put my shampoo and conditioner measuring 3.4 ounces or less in a clear Zip-Loc bag, and place it on the belt. You want my laptop to go through too? Whatever. You want me to take everything out of my pockets and stand there while a machine looks through my clothes, or get groped by someone in a blue shirt? Hold on. People have limits.
People don't want to get in trouble. They understand, for example, that an IRS audit, tax evasion charges and all the rest are not worth the cost of a visit to H&R Block, or an update to their TurboTax. At the same time, when they factor in their clothing donations, mortgage interest, gains and losses from investments and a dozen other things, they're happy to get a refund from Uncle Sam, even if it was their money to start with. You tell me I need to prove that I have health insurance too? Even after I spend a whole weekend in February sorting through receipts, 1099s, W2s, and bank statements to try and recover some of the money I'm owed? Hold on. People have limits.
The government has a lot of power to make life better. It can prevent religious zealots from crashing planes. It can raise the money needed for security, roads, power lines, education, health care, food safety, and a dozen other things we take for granted in daily life. We can even add to that list and make the world better in doing so. But none of it will be appreciated if it's a headache on people. No matter what the upsides may be, nobody wants to get photographed naked, or spend all day on esoteric forms under penalty of law. We pine for simpler times, forgetting what all this complexity has given us.
But it could be simpler. The wise politician should think about the experiences of daily life, and look for ways to make it easier. I can picture a simpler, clearer and fairer tax code that relieves a lot of stress, pays down the deficit, all while providing massive incentives to hire people and grow wealth. I'd bet we could even raise taxes if only it were simpler than it is today. I'd imagine that there's another way to handle airline security that leaves me alone as I try to get to my flight. Policymakers should look at the activities of daily life, the responsibilities of citizenship and ask themselves, how can we make this easier on people?
The world's complicated enough. Simplicity and clarity are the missing mantras of our time. Don't just make my life safer, cleaner, more enlightened or privileged. Make my life easier. I'd vote for that.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Monday, November 08, 2010
Life in the Big City
Last August marked 5 years that I've lived on East Confederate Avenue here in Atlanta. When we bought our house, the property next door had an old Ford Aerostar van parked wheel-well deep in the mud. The van was smack in the middle of my neighbor's back yard, neatly garnished with scrubby weeds, rusted construction equipment, moldy sheets of styrofoam insulation, and regularly serviced by a family of stray cats. But somehow the house looked like a work in progress.
Over the years, a pile of cinder blocks arrived, and later moved to the back of the yard. A construction dumpster was filled, emptied, and refilled, eventually taken who knows where. Piles of wood ebbed and flowed with the seasons. Scaffolding was erected over the house, siding stripped, windows removed and replaced a few feet to the right. Scaffolding was dismantled and neatly stacked on the side of the house. The roof was reshingled, mostly.
Diana was born on our block, and eventually married Johnny, all long before we arrived on the scene. The two of them lived next door when we moved in. They both have adult children who come and go, bringing their own children, sometimes depositing them with the happy couple for good. There is now a teenager, a tween and a toddler who call Johnny and Diana mom and dad. An old swingset arrived, and was placed in the middle of a circle of stones that holds chaos back like some druid ritual. Other wayward relatives have taken up residence. Graying men with the haggard look of drifters lean over their balcony for a smoke, leering over our property and ourselves as we relax on the back deck. Somewhere in the process, the neighbors picked up two ratty little terriers who bark in their front yard all day and into the night until someone calls the cops or tells them to shut up. Somehow there are now 5 ratty little terriers, each with its own grudge against passers-by as they move along on foot down our sidewalk. At least the van is gone.
Minor skirmishes sometimes occur. Johnny asks to cut down a perfectly good tree limb that leans over his property. I'd been told explicitly by our predecessors here to never let him cut a tree. That same towering oak is majestic on my side, and a mangled mess of half-sawed stumps with haphazard shoots on Johnny's. After some consideration, I told him he couldn't cut the tree, having looked up chapter and verse of city ordinance to ensure my position in the matter.
Johnny and Diana aren't bad people. They're just bad neighbors. From what I've gathered through neighborhood gossip and by living adjacent to their property, they had hard lives, made bad decisions, and became religious, charitable people who buttress a large complement of friends and relatives who have had their own share of hard life and bad ideas.
Yesterday, before an open house to sell our place and move back to DC, Katie and I went next door to ask Johnny to keep the dogs inside, at least from 2 to 4. He was very apologetic, sincere in his frustration about the situation, and determined to make it a little better. I played bad cop to Katie's good cop, and we felt like we made progress without letting things get as ugly as they could. During the conversation, Johnny mentioned that Diana thought we were in the CIA, or something maybe a little more sinister. That's probably because of the travel we do, the lack of kids, and the hometown we share with Jack Ryan and J. Edgar Hoover. Katie was quick on the draw with the vague reply, "we're in health care," as I stood silent, looking at my feet. The dogs were quiet when we needed them to be.
Tonight, from about 5 until a little after 6, Johnny was working a jackhammer into his foundation not a stone's throw from my porch. I sat inside patiently, foregoing the mild night air, preaching tolerance to myself, not allowing rage to take root. I sat inside, knowing it would stop soon, and it did.
As Johnny was shoveling debris into a pile before heading inside for dinner, I opened a beer and walked onto my porch, pretending to be on the phone. I spoke a mix of Hebrew and semitic-sounding gobbeldy-gook, throwing in a few extra glottal stops and khhhs for added effect. It was a confident, animated conversation with myself in no particular language, punctuated with the occasional "ok, man... yeah I know... say hi to Fatima and Ahmad, all right?" for authenticity. Before going inside, I finished the call with "salam habibi, yallah bye," and hung up, pressing the off button to make that cordless phone beep that makes it sound that much more real.
Tolerance is all well and good, but sometimes a little fun at someone's expense makes it all better.
Over the years, a pile of cinder blocks arrived, and later moved to the back of the yard. A construction dumpster was filled, emptied, and refilled, eventually taken who knows where. Piles of wood ebbed and flowed with the seasons. Scaffolding was erected over the house, siding stripped, windows removed and replaced a few feet to the right. Scaffolding was dismantled and neatly stacked on the side of the house. The roof was reshingled, mostly.
Diana was born on our block, and eventually married Johnny, all long before we arrived on the scene. The two of them lived next door when we moved in. They both have adult children who come and go, bringing their own children, sometimes depositing them with the happy couple for good. There is now a teenager, a tween and a toddler who call Johnny and Diana mom and dad. An old swingset arrived, and was placed in the middle of a circle of stones that holds chaos back like some druid ritual. Other wayward relatives have taken up residence. Graying men with the haggard look of drifters lean over their balcony for a smoke, leering over our property and ourselves as we relax on the back deck. Somewhere in the process, the neighbors picked up two ratty little terriers who bark in their front yard all day and into the night until someone calls the cops or tells them to shut up. Somehow there are now 5 ratty little terriers, each with its own grudge against passers-by as they move along on foot down our sidewalk. At least the van is gone.
Minor skirmishes sometimes occur. Johnny asks to cut down a perfectly good tree limb that leans over his property. I'd been told explicitly by our predecessors here to never let him cut a tree. That same towering oak is majestic on my side, and a mangled mess of half-sawed stumps with haphazard shoots on Johnny's. After some consideration, I told him he couldn't cut the tree, having looked up chapter and verse of city ordinance to ensure my position in the matter.
Johnny and Diana aren't bad people. They're just bad neighbors. From what I've gathered through neighborhood gossip and by living adjacent to their property, they had hard lives, made bad decisions, and became religious, charitable people who buttress a large complement of friends and relatives who have had their own share of hard life and bad ideas.
Yesterday, before an open house to sell our place and move back to DC, Katie and I went next door to ask Johnny to keep the dogs inside, at least from 2 to 4. He was very apologetic, sincere in his frustration about the situation, and determined to make it a little better. I played bad cop to Katie's good cop, and we felt like we made progress without letting things get as ugly as they could. During the conversation, Johnny mentioned that Diana thought we were in the CIA, or something maybe a little more sinister. That's probably because of the travel we do, the lack of kids, and the hometown we share with Jack Ryan and J. Edgar Hoover. Katie was quick on the draw with the vague reply, "we're in health care," as I stood silent, looking at my feet. The dogs were quiet when we needed them to be.
Tonight, from about 5 until a little after 6, Johnny was working a jackhammer into his foundation not a stone's throw from my porch. I sat inside patiently, foregoing the mild night air, preaching tolerance to myself, not allowing rage to take root. I sat inside, knowing it would stop soon, and it did.
As Johnny was shoveling debris into a pile before heading inside for dinner, I opened a beer and walked onto my porch, pretending to be on the phone. I spoke a mix of Hebrew and semitic-sounding gobbeldy-gook, throwing in a few extra glottal stops and khhhs for added effect. It was a confident, animated conversation with myself in no particular language, punctuated with the occasional "ok, man... yeah I know... say hi to Fatima and Ahmad, all right?" for authenticity. Before going inside, I finished the call with "salam habibi, yallah bye," and hung up, pressing the off button to make that cordless phone beep that makes it sound that much more real.
Tolerance is all well and good, but sometimes a little fun at someone's expense makes it all better.
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