The bake sale as performance art

As the GOP nomination fight rolls on and questions about the political appropriateness of the TEA Party continue to simmer, your pie maker found delight in the irony that the most controversy seems to center on those who sell baked goods.  Now, is the bake-sale-as-performance-art a valid form of political expression?  Are there valid non-verbal forms of expression about how the currently powerful should feel about threats to their status?

It's unpleasant to think so, but the alternative is that we self-police to an extent that people only discuss things when they know everyone in the room agrees with us.  Oh, wait.  Is it wrong to implicitly challenge the consensus that regulatory arbitrage is the best way to address society's ills?    A "Town Hall" is likely to disintegrate into a shouting match or agreement-fest, depending on who attends, and there's so much more fun that we could have.

Anyone who seriously objects to this little protest has a very simple means of reprisal.  Set up a bake sale of your own, find a woman with enough Native American to qualify for free goods, and sell the BCR's goods to raise funds for things they hate.  Ah, but of course to do so points out what the performers were trying to say in the first place, that race-based arbitrage results in something seriously unpleasant, at least in the eyes of the BCR.

Instead, go for the "regifted fruitcake" approach.  Use the same woman to collect all of the baked goods, but then sell them based on net tax rate (highly regressive when one includes sales tax), and require proof of legal residency (or a bribe campaign contribution).  Keep a tupee handy in case someone tries to present a birth certificate.  To keep the "fruitcake" door open, make sure there's a category of people, say relatives of oil company workers or defense contractors, who can get them free as a "credit."  Extra credit would be to include a "bake sale to buy a bomber" reference.

There is no shortage of injustice in the world.  There's an even greater abundance of ill will and tender feelings surrounding identity issues.  Universities are where we should be able to discuss these realities, and art is an excellent tool when conventional language and forums fail.  Engagement, uncomfortable or not, leads to understanding.

The Obligatory "Jobs" Post, p.1

This is an economics blog, and your pie maker can't help piling into the great flood of "jobs" posts on other econ blogs.  Despite all the bits shifted (as opposed to ink spilled), there is something unique to say.

If you're wondering about why the US, and indeed much of the developed world's, employment picture and economic growth looks so bleak, ask yourself this question:  What do you want, can afford, but cannot find?

Odds are good that list is pretty small for most people.  For your pie maker, the only example he can think of involves his preferred brand of bike tire.  That being practically a commodity part, he will be trying a new brand, and thus rewarding a different set of employees and investors, but his net outlay will remain about the same.  Utilities service, in particular wireline phone, TV and internet, is the only service your pie maker can think of off-hand that the average consumer has to wait for, but these are generally provided by monopolies with strong regulatory reasons to avoid pushing marginal profits.

In the US, and presumably elsewhere, the people who encounter this problem most often are entrepreneurs who want to expand what people want to include their new, hopefully better, product or service.  They rely, largely, on credit issued by investors who think people will want these things, and up until 2008, on credit issued to consumers to expand the "can afford" criteria above.

Today, "simple(r) living" has become something of a virtue of necessity, shortening the list of what people want.  Even with interest rates at historic lows, few enough investors are willing to expand consumer credit enough to increase the "can afford" category.  Finally, our economy is keeping up with demand with up to 16% of the workforce sitting idle (your pie maker prefers U6, which includes "discouraged" workers).  What are we to do?

Two natural disasters

"No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." --From Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Instead of staying home and experiencing an earthquake and hurricane in the same week, you pie maker was called away to prepare his first commissioned pie (recipe coming soon). However, he couldn't help noticing a little bit of a media tempest surrounding a GOP candidate's suggestion that the paired disasters might be a warning from the Almighty. Of course, we know that God is not in the whirlwind. Don't we? While your pie maker's economic life is dominated by methodological naturalism, he's not one to shy away from a good narrative. This one begins with Exodus. If one actually reads the Mosaic law, the central theme is loyalty to the one God of Israel, who brought his people out of slavery in Egypt. Because of their loyalty to and love of the greatest emancipator, the Israelites were commanded to treat one another fairly, to not exploit the poor, the orphan or the widow, It is certainly possible to acquire great wealth while following the law, but it commands the follower to avoid and charges the tax-collecting temple to enforce a ban (through dispute mediation) on the gleaning of fields and exploitive lending or business practices. Centuries later, the Babylonian exile forced ancient Israel to wonder what went wrong. Some of their prophets had warned of idolatry and injustice (not so much sexual morality, except as related to idol worship), but were ignored. Sitting by the waters of Babylon, they decided to take such warnings seriously and were eventually allowed to return home. Once there, the temptation to exploit and seek power in this life without divine guidance cropped up again and again. And so, again and again there were prophets warning of disasters that would befall them if they did not. One of these was Amos, whom the reverend doctor famously quoted above. The Thursday before Hurricane Irene arrived, a 5.8 magnitude quake hit Virginia and rattled DC. The District partially evacuated, and all of the monuments were shut down, including Dr. MLK Jr.'s. However, the next day, it was the wealthiest man memorialized on the Mall whose monument was closed indefinitely, That weekend, the national press and government had planned to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the speech quoted above with the formal dedication of the new Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Instead, we are left to imagine the self-congratulatory speeches and pages about how appropriate it is that a man with an black African father should be President on such an auspicious day. About how far we have come as a nation from those bad old days, and how, while things aren't perfect, we are living out and up to Dr. King's Dream. Meanwhile, our gap between rich and poor grows. Laborers, when their work isn't simply offshored, find their livelihoods and safety threatened by an unraveling social safety, weakened unions and tax policy that favors the selling of debt by the very few over the production of goods by the many. That weekend, Irene rolled in with a lot of water and unleashed a mighty stream. Instead of putting a capstone on the work of the man who came to preach Amos to us, the story continues. If someone was trying tell us something, I doubt it had much to do with preserving the suburbs.