How Not To Cut

I woke up Monday morning to an assignment from the NYTimes. One of those neat little drawings that draw the reader's eye to the letters on the editorial page. Maybe this is why they are called drawings.

The subject was the one on everyone's mind: the draconian sequester cuts––it's unusual when two of the three words describing the issue of the day are words nobody uses much and most people couldn't define for you. We have half the country enthused (to the point where they should maybe go lie down) about cutting federal spending. What's interesting is the people most rabid about cutting are the ones whose lives and whose districts would be most negatively affected. Here's where we enter the realm of unintended consequences. ("Honestly, doctor, I didn't realize I shouldn't cut that branch closer to the trunk than the point where I was sitting on it.") It's the Red Districts that receive most of the federal dollars and they also, conveniently, pay less in taxes than they receive. There is a Snopesian cleverness about this which I almost admire. But it is hard to squeeze all of these thoughts into a drawing the size of your thumb. So, as always happens, I resorted to metaphor. And there is actually a thumb in the metaphor, although it isn't the thumb which the budget cutter is about to sever.

Point is, we don't always think about deeds and consequences. Sometimes wars cost money. Sometimes poisoning the air winds up poisoning the people who breathe it. Sometimes cutting federal spending during a severe economic downturn ends up cutting the only spending that's happening. At which point the economy begins to lose any semblance of a pulse.

Republicans and rich people like to give advice to the poor about thrift, but only poor people know thrift.  They are experts at it. The Republican gasbags (there are Dem gasbags too) like to preach the morality of spending cuts "to save our children". They preach austerity while driving large cars and owning twelve homes. Forcing austerity measures on an economy during a recession is like starving your children to protect their inheritance. Which sounds stupid, but to rich people it's actually smart, because after the children of the poor starve, their money carefully unspent will remain in banks where the rich can go on playing with it. I enjoy drawing pictures describing damnfoolishness like this.

(I would like to thank Ben Shahn and Ludwig Bemelmans and a few others who taught me how to draw hands and papercutters.)

The Magic Hand of the Market

I studied economics in college, not only in Econ classes but in History classes, where economic forces play themselves out in the rise and fall of individuals and of empires. I read Adam Smith, whose elegant explanations made a young idealist almost believe there was a kind of magic guiding our lives. I've never stopped reading, and because I'm an illustrator the reading conjures pictures, diagrams, visual analogies. This is one of those. It appears in the September issue of the Atlantic, art directed by Jason Treat.

My point in this simple drawing is that the so-called "Magic Hand of the Markets" does indeed direct and correct the forces that determine our fates. What should be obvious, though, is that the magic hand of an unregulated market corrects some fates more than others, protects some more than others, favors some fortunes more than others. Larger fortunes are more buoyant already but the market tends to nurture and support them. The fortunes of little people have less juice in them, less upward trajectory, they're buffeted more, given less favor, fewer advantages. We see it every day, every year, but we are taught not to believe it because in America everyone is supposed to have an equal chance. It's our national religion, even if we can see it isn't true.

Beasts of Burden

I did this illustration for Milwaukee magazine about ten years ago, for a story explaining how upper employee costs are shifted to justify lower wages and benefits further down the pay scale. This described it pretty well, I think. I doubt the practice has gone away.

Underfoot

There are things a drawing can convey better than a photograph can. It's hard to photograph a feeling or an idea, an abstract relationship, a sense of oppression or liberation. Sure you can show the look on an individual face, and that's real, but even that is open to interpretation, relying on context or subtext for its meaning. A drawing can express something without explaining it. You nod your head without even knowing it.