The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Some folks down by me in these Southern Latitudes have been, what we scofflaws call, ‘Living off the Grid’. They work when they have to, get paid under the table (in the local parlance, meaning, they take only cash) and they don’t report wages to the IRS or the State. I run into wealthy folks up north who do the same thing when the opportunity presents itself. Some people call this tax evasion — and it is — but these folks see it more as what any sensible yahoo would do if he had the chance. Me and my professorial pals call this Cognitive Dissonance, a fancy five buck word for jamming the square peg into the round hole, then proclaiming it a pretty good fit.

My neighbor Gyppo John hit 65 the other day. He’s never paid one dime in taxes, federal state or local other than sin and sales tax on his necessities. He always works under the table, takes only cash or barter and lives pretty much hand to mouth. As far as the government is concerned, John pretty much doesn’t exist. Well, at least til he showed up to sign on for Medicare. I figure what the hell, we’re gonna pay for John’s healthcare anyway, might as well do it through Medicare as all those unpaid ER visits he has after his logging accidents. Dangerous work, logging. Probably exactly the kind of work insurance companies hate to cover. That, and radio antenna repairmen and kamikaze pilots.

John and I were quaffing a cold one when he got to wondering, about two of my beers into the evening, if maybe he could get Social Security benefits too as long as the Government was making him more comfortable in his Golden Years. Imagine his surprise when I sadly informed him Social Security was kind of a pension fund. Your money in, your money out. “Sorta based on your taxes, John,” I said, popping a third can and handing it over, something I guess John was getting too accustomed to.

“You mean I can’t get Social Security?? What the hell kind of security is THAT????” he practically shouted, his can foaming. My can, I mean. “I can’t keep logging til I’m 90!”

Probably true, I agreed, but what I thought to myself was Karma’s gonna be a hard road for some of us South Enders too smart for our own good by a country mile. No doubt it would cost me plenty in additional beer to help John get through those grasshopper winters. But mostly for me to listen to the sob stories.

Just when the unemployment numbers look like they’re heading into Great Depression range, the Republicans are balking on handing out any more stimulus or aid to anyone but the rich. Big Farma just got some money to keep the milk and meat production going, okay by me, but when it comes to, let’s call them the Little People, hell no, they aren’t going to help those who didn’t help themselves. The Big Boyz helped themselves all right, snapping up small business loans like they were rewards for using their TARP money from the first recession to buy their own stocks rather than trickle anything down to their employees.

The latest chutzpah from the GOP is to float the idea that the Little People, the folks who can’t pay the rent, who are behind on their credit cards, who lost their jobs, who probably lost their health insurance too, they can use their retirement money early to help them out of a tough situation. Up to 10,000 bucks would be taken out of their Social Security payments, plus a little interest for Uncle Sam. This is the Republican equivalent of letting them eat cake. Their own cake. But you owe the government some frosting later.

Part of what triggered the Great Recession was refusing to throw money at the problem, just stand back and see how it shakes out. If no one has money to spend, nothing good shakes out, everything grinds to a halt. It’s why we study history, to learn from our mistakes. States are going to bleed money with this Pandemic bringing business to a standstill. Taxes won’t be coming in, rents won’t get paid, landlords will go broke, more homeless, more health care issues, on and on. If deficits were the problem, maybe we wouldn’t have voted in corporate tax breaks a couple years ago under the GOP, but now, oh yeah, deficits are bad once again. Deficits will drag us down. Deficits will cut into profits and CEO salaries. It’s the Deficit, Stupid! Why would we bail out blue states who couldn’t control their budgets? Let them go bankrupt, Mitch McConnell advocated recently, as if any bankruptcy laws cover states going broke.

Compassionate conservatism was a lie back when and it’s a joke now. Compassionate corporatism, you bet. Welfare for the rich, count on it. Trump in 2020? Bring back Marie Antoinette, why don’tcha? Well, actually we got Melania. If it takes a Depression to wake this country up, I say bring back the guillotine too. Heads ought to roll, I don’t care if there’s nothing in em.

This morning in our fishwrapper paper there was a letter to the editor asking if all us citizens would rather see low taxes or would we prefer libraries and parks and concerts and art in our lives. She obviously wanted to raise taxes to support all those amenities that make life more ‘meaningful and aesthetic’. Being a so-called artist, and particularly one who makes his living from taxes that fund public art like mine, you bet your buttsky I want to raise everybody’s taxes. Even mine.

But I have to question the timing of this call to arms, you know, given that the Pandemic has wrecked the economy. It just feels a bit, oh, I don’t know, a little tone deaf asking for more money to fund my favorite things when folks are being laid off, quarantined, kids at home from their furloughed schools, health care no longer covered, worrying about paying next month’s rent or even the damn credit card minimum. I sure don’t want to Scrooge them, they got all the misery they can handle right now.

Anyone who thinks this post-Pandemic is going to be quick and painless needs to pinch themselves with a vise-grip. Hard. Wake up, the world is going to be a lot more dog eat dog than it was a few short months ago. People are scared, can’t you see that? They’re stocking up a lot more than toilet paper, let me tell you. They’re buying freezers and filling them with locker meat. They’re hoarding yeast and flour in case bread disappears on the grocery shelves. They’re buying guns down at the pawn shops and gun stores. They’re expecting something a little different than concerts in the parks or poetry readings down at the library. Despite the sunny assurances of their rich President that the economy will come roaring back soon, that the plague will end before you know it, that the good times are right around the corner, they can see this will be a grueling haul back to anything resembling normal.

Raise their taxes? Sweetheart, the government is throwing money at these people the way GI’s threw candy to the kids from jeeps and tanks in liberated cities during World War 2. Normal? In your dreams…. Meanwhile, let’s clean up the rubble.

The fallout from this little experiment in socialism to mitigate the plague’s disruption of lives and businesses, well, hold onto your hats, you haven’t seen nothin yet. I watched my public art dry up for years after the Great Recession when legislatures went into budget slashing mode so I can hardly wait to see what this Depression will do for the future of parks and libraries and arts. We’re going to find out what folks think is essential all over again. Somehow I doubt it will be me and my art. Unless I start making movies for Netflix….