The Second Most Secret Subject
Telling the truth about a taboo topic - Money!
I once worked for a small business for about $7 dollars an hour. Not bad, I thought, considering that my first job paid $1 an hour; it was in 1965 as a library page at Syracuse University. My real pay there was discovering books in the stacks, usually off limits to undergraduates like me. It set me on the path of a bibliophile. Later that path led me to the University of New Orleans Library where I discovered Roland Penrose’s Scrapbook: 1900-1981.
Until I opened this book, I didn’t know you could put words and pictures together in such an intriguing way, with not too much of either on a page. Penrose hobnobbed with the Picasso circle, and from the pictures, I discovered grown-ups could have fun in their lives and in their art.
Today I can’t say I like everything in the book, but at that time my glimpse of the Surrealists’ playfulness inspired me. Later, I realized they were making what they could of a world gone haywire.
For several years I looked for a copy of the Scrapbook to buy, until I found a used one for not too much, though a lot for me at the time, maybe $35.
Looking online just now I found Penrose’s Scrapbook. It’s not signed and book and jacket are “near fine”, like my copy. The price is $150. Inflation may not have everything to do with what my Scrapbook is worth today. I think it’s a rare book.
Perhaps you feel that my focus on dollar value is a little off-putting. Let me drive it home, and call it my focus on money.
When I worked for about $7 an hour, no one knew how much co-workers made. I guessed the ones who had worked there for many years earned more than I did and that was fair. Soon after I left the job, a young man was hired and someone found out that he was making more than than the long-timers, who were all women. It was a bit of a scandal among us, but we kept it quiet.
We’re conditioned not to talk about money when it’s personal. This taboo is probably encouraged by the employer, who has a lot to gain from pay secrecy.
So, people in power can find that not revealing the truth about money is a useful tool.
For instance, today in America there’s a struggle going on between the Republicans/Magas who say Biden is driving the economy into the ground, and the Democrats who can’t seem to say loudly enough that under Biden our economic growth is the best in the world.
Republican officials take credit for the many infrastructure upgrades going on around us, so their voters won’t see the link to Democratic policies. Still, it bewilders me that all of them want Biden taken out, because obviously (to me, anyway) Biden’s the one in charge right now. On Wednesday the stock market was at an all-time high.
If all politics is personal, don’t Republican voters personally benefit from Democratic policies? They must have gotten their annual Social Security letter last week, as I did. I’m happy for my increase for 2024. Even after Medicare and drug plan deductions, it will almost cover our city services bills for the year.
How personal does it have to be before people thank the administration for their larger checks?
The facts: I realize the cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) this year is 3.2%, which is lower than the expected 3.8% rate of inflation in 2024. But last year our raise was higher than the expected rate of inflation. To put it in perspective,
the 2024 COLA is higher than the average cost-of-living adjustment over the last 20 years, which was 2.6%.
I also realize the rate is set by the Department of Labor, not by Biden himself. My point is, this Democratic president has not filled the Department of Labor with MAGAs who are out to cut what Republicans call “entitlements” like Social Security, which their own president plans to do on “day one”. (I don’t know what Republicans plan to tell voters, when their checks stop coming.)
Beyond my example of Social Security payments, there’s a bigger thing at stake here than money, and I want to do something about it.
In 2024 I want to help break the Republican taboo against the truth — by telling it. But that’s not enough; to be heard, it has to be personal.
In 2024 we each will have one chance, one voice, one vote - if we use it - to fight the biggest deception of our lifetime, the lie that a democracy like ours that takes care of its citizens and of the planet is the worst thing on Earth.
But back now to the title of this post. So, what is the First Most Secret Subject? It’s too taboo for me to say!
It would be wonderful if there were more people like you, Deda, educating the populous. Thank you for another enlightening postcard. I agree with all that you imparted.