Greg Mankiw: STFU & GTFO

A few days ago, former Buch economic advisor Greg Mankiw wrote an editorial arguing that if tax rates returned to their 1990s-era levels, he’d work far less, perhaps writing fewer disingenuous editorials.

If only.

A Taxing Manner and Marginal Revolution and Brad DeLong have all debunked him on the facts, but that doesn’t really address how offensive his lies are.

Like Mankiw, I have several sources of income: I’ve got my day job, and I do some freelance editing, and I do some events work on evenings and weekends at my wife’s book store. Yesterday I worked the Boston Book Festival. Eight hours on my feet with a smile on my face and a twinge in my back lifting books and running a register. For that I earned $80 pre-tax, most of which I spent buying a round of drinks afterwards.

I’m not in it for the money, in other words. I do it because I enjoy it and because I believe in the book store and in sales. And because this weekend I got to meet Dennis Lehane, Chip Kidd, and Kristin Hersh.

Mankiw gets paid good money to advance a theories he doesn’t even believe. If he were serious about what he’s saying, he’d shut the fuck up and get the fuck out, and we’d all be better off.

Revision: The Long Run

The Long Run
It is good sometimes to drop a plumb-line
to the basement and find subsidence;
lie prone in a crawlspace and point a light
at dessicated mice in dusty traps;
hold your hand against the seams of a house
and feel the cold air seep.

To be reminded, I mean, of the long run
and of decay, that maintenance is vanity,
that when your neighbor finds your body
at the bottom of the stairs
he may empty out your wallet
before calling the police.

First Draft: The Long Run

The Long Run
It is good sometimes to drop a plumb-line
to the basement and find subsidence;
lie prone in a crawlspace tearing your knees
and encounter dessicated mice;
hold your hand against the seams of a house
and feel the cold air seep.

To be reminded, I mean, of the long run,
and of decay, of how after an evening jog
and heart attack a man at dawn
will find your body
hold his dog at bay
and empty out your wallet
before calling the police.

Revision: Dark Tide

Dark Tide

On January 15, 1919, a poorly-maintained storage tank spilled over two million gallons of molasses into Boston’s North End, killing 21 and injuring hundreds.

Your home’s a shrine to bad decisions
a monument to deadlines blown and maintenance deferred,
the lassitude that brought disaster down at last.

As often as required, or less, you bathed and dressed
performed your life like people
caught knee-deep in cold molasses.

Blame weather, shoddy ironwork or sabotage:
Either way, the tank is breached
and you’re as good as drowned.

When the moment came to run
you should have known you’d freeze
and fall, encased in amber melancholy.

(First draft here)

Revision: Sheer Curtains

Sheer Curtains

Not yet sunrise, and in an upstairs window
behind a curtain across the street
a silhouette puts up her hair, leans forward
ten degrees to set her breasts in place
before an early shift.

Drunk alone and up all night again
with mute and stupid hopes, but even I
know better than to speak,
not well enough to look away.

I lean against the sill and let the focus fade.
Her light goes out; when dawn begins,
my head is hot against the glass.

(original version here)

First Draft: Melancholy

Melancholy

As often as required, no more, you bathe
and dress and walk upright like people
knee-deep in mud.
Your home’s a shrine to bad decisions:
Mail-piles tombstone over deadlines past,
Whole years of chores put off
spawned tumbleweeds behind the couch
and you across it, greasy supplicant of melancholy,
ignoring calls and hiding from the landlord,
wasting days in helpless sleep.

Signal Problems

Signal Problems
“Everyone’s going to work well not me I’m not going to work.”
– James Moore

Excuse me sir are those—
Sir, I’m going to have to ask—
Sir, don’t block the subway door
      with your bundled lifetime of regrets.

The nameless ghosts of there but for the grace
      of sheer bad luck and poor decisions
      of guilt and guilt and idiot shame—

They fester like corroded wiring
      hunger like the living
      for something they can’t name.

The lights flicker and the train stops
      and we all put down the Economist,
      stare and meet no eye and—

And now what? Nobody’s going
      to work now.

My Own Personal Universe

A poet’s trick for getting unstuck, although it probably applies well enough to other art: Take a stack of index cards cut in half, or blank business cards, or something similar. Write a single word on each one: About 80 to 90 percent concrete nouns, with a handful of verbs and adjectives, maybe a couple abstract nouns. Mix well. Draw three. (Glassine. Ignite. Stamp.)

Got an idea? No? Try again. (Cement. Bile. Plasma.)

I learned it during the CTY poetry workshop I took about fifteen years ago. The instructors called it a personal universe deck. (Rare earth. Extinguish. Bait.)

I’d more or less forgotten about building one since then. But writing more than occasionally requires a bit more effort, and that requires some kickstarting. So I made a new one this week. (Squash. Arsenic. Crutch.)

It’s kind of fun. And sometimes you get poems out of it. (Appendix. Air-filter. Larva).