Hands in the Soil, Head in the Clouds

Atlanta, GA

October 14, 2019

Most know me as one who reads obscure history, watches classic movies, subsists on red wine, and writes pretentious emails. A guy who likes his political theory, his philosophic speculations, and his economic treatises like he likes his popular music and his Catholic liturgy: published before 1970. 

Then again, who doesn’t?

But this summer, with time to stretch my muscles, ease my mind, and till the land, I realized I am much more than an ethereal, head-in-the-clouds, professorial type. I might actually be a regular guy. A Joe Six-Pack. A man’s man. 

Comment dit-on…un homme du peuple?

A few months ago I painted a basement and spread acres of mulch. A couple weeks ago I grouted some tile and planted a Butchart of azaleas. Last weekend, I dug a drainage channel and constructed a rock berm on the periphery of our yard. And I chopped down my first tree. 

It was a privet…a thick, stubborn weed of a tree, one of many things America has imported from China. Like its native Middle Kingdom, it had grown quickly, resisted resistance, and was not easily coaxed to compliance.

But it was reluctantly welcoming. Hawks rested atop it. Squirrels frolicked within it. A bear could have climbed it without bringing it down. It was a real tree, not a mere aspirational shrub. Yet it was no match for your rugged correspondent. 

To attack my arboreal prey, I decided against some high-powered, suburbanite chain saw. That would have been the IPA, Chardonnay, avocado-toast approach. Instead, my new Schlitz, Gallo, beer-nut incarnation spit on his soon-to-be-calloused palms, rubbed them together, and wielded a pick axe. 

Within thirty minutes, the trunk began to groan, its squirrels started to scatter, and its giant stalk covered the lawn. I was triumphant, and ready to take on any domestic challenge. My home was my castle, inhabited by a woman who now refers to herself as Mrs. Bunyan. No litter box, light bulb, or breaker switch was beyond my power or purview. If a toilet threatens to overflow, I can stop it.

#MAGA

But I decided to pace myself. The afternoon was wearing on and the sun was sinking low. The air, and the chardonnay, had started to chill. I decided I should probably do the same.

From the soil of the earth, I turned my eyes to the clouds in the sky. I stopped digging as a gardener, and resumed shoveling as an economist. 

As we continue to freshen our nest, our eldest bird is seeking a new branch. So, we are stockpiling seeds to support him on his next perch. But why, with an economy that is ostensibly so fertile, do we need so many kernels?

A couple weeks ago our local high school hosted a session that would have been unnecessary and unthinkable a couple generations ago. A well-spoken, well-intentioned young man from the state stood before an auditorium of parents, and presented to them a Rube Goldberg complex of loans, grants, qualifications, deadlines, and forms for mitigating accelerating college expenses.

Parents listened intently, raised phones as if at a child’s violin recital or a police checkpoint, photographed a series of convoluted slides, and took extensive notes. They have been instructed that tho’ college costs are exorbitant, they are ineluctable. College is indispensable, it is an investment in the future, and the future should pay for it. Good and hard.

But these rising costs are neither act of God nor freak of nature. They have a cause. In some cases, it is no more than clever pricing. Universities…like Six Flags or the tax code…set standard rates extraordinarily high to establish an absurd anchor. They then offer discounts and loopholes that look appealing by comparison, for the industrious or well-connected to exploit. 

But…like inflation, depressions, bubbles, and busts, most high tuition has a more sinister source. As it happens, it is the same spring, and it is obvious…yet inconspicuous. As Chesterton noted, one can always be blind to a thing, as long as it is big enough.

Few rackets rival that which the Government uses to serve balls of cash to the education-financial complex. Much like programs to ameliorate the costs of healthcare and housing, those billed as balm for the financial arthritis of college are “necessary” only because they exist. 

Without these “services” and the third-party providers who ostensibly pay for them, demand would fall, and pull prices down with it. But low prices are not what is desired by the loudest advocates and quietest beneficiaries of “affordable” college…the universities, the State, and their financial institutions.

When prices really do drop, as with housing in 2008, these advocates panic, and do all they can to arrest the decline. Affordability means not lower prices…but loans, grants, and subsidies. Rather than allow you to run on your own, they’d rather break your leg, then offer you a crutch. For a fee.

These are the thoughts that, like a slug moving molasses through Mumbai traffic, flow through the head of an obtuse economic mind while other parents transcribe tactics to reduce real college bills.

Regardless, we will steer our son toward what we think is a high-quality education, for what we hope is a high-value price. 

The Victorian critic John Ruskin observed that it is unwise to pay too much…but it is worse to pay too little. Or, as my unassuming, proletarian, ditch-digging, stone-laying, wall-painting alter ego might say…

…le prix s’oublie, la qualité reste.

JD