When Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992 (seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?), rumor has it that he had “It’s the economy, stupid” posted everywhere in his campaign headquarters, to remind people to focus on the big issue of the year. And it still seems today like good advice, because everywhere around us, we’re seeing the wreckage of people believing that various economic laws of gravity had been repealed. First, it was just going to be a few irresponsible subprime borrowers, and then we blinked, and suddenly banks are failing, students can’t borrow money for school, automobile sales are plummeting, the unemployment rate is rising, and on and on. Everything’s connected, and it amazes me that people keep forgetting that.
A couple days ago, I received an email from the proprietor of Licorice & Sloe, the lovely coffeehouse I’m playing at this Saturday night. His room is a couple hundred feet off the main intersection of State and Middle streets in Newburyport, but the dropoff in foot traffic is considerable (at least, it was the one time I was there), and he’d applied to place an A-frame sign on the sidewalk at the intersection. Unfortunately, the application was denied.
Now, this isn’t the end of the world for him, yet; he’s going to appeal, and I plan on being one of a number of people who send testimonials to the City Council on his behalf (if you’re interested in helping out, let me know and I’ll send you details). But the point is, his business is part of the economy like everybody else’s, and in this tough economy, many venues are feeling the pinch, and an A-frame sign a couple hundred feet away can make a major difference in the hours a venue can stay open, or even whether it can remain open at all.
Of course, it’s not just the venue that suffers; we musicians do, too. We suffer in the ways you expect; people have less disposible income, they put less money in the tip jar, they buy fewer albums. But people like me suffer in other, less clearly economic ways. See, as you know, I’ve been working hard to find longer gigs, and the venues where I’m qualified to play are relatively rare. The owner has to like my brand of music; the folks in the room have to like my brand of music; and the owner has to not mind that my draw is minuscule. Every one of these venues is precious to me, and like other venues, they’re struggling. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t really care about whatever paltry money is involved in my performances; but I do care about the availability of the stage.
So if one of these venues closes, or shortens its hours, or decides it needs to go with musicians with a bigger or different draw, I don’t lose any money; but I do lose a stage. And that’s my currency; that’s my wallet.
One way of looking at it is that economics is just a convenient quantification of the activity of a society. Money makes the world go round, it’s said, because it’s the means of exchange for many of the things we value: a better education, a larger and safer home, a healthier diet, more control over our time. Money can buy all these things, if you know what you’re doing, and in a healthier economy, more people can use money to buy more of these things. But we can’t measure them nearly as well.
For instance, we can count how much car sales are suffering, but it’s harder to quantify the consequences of fewer car sales: the stress of breaking down in an older car, the worries about money because you can’t afford the gas for the Chevy Fuel Incinerator that you can’t trade in, the anxiety of whether unstable transportation will cost you your job in a market where there are more people looking. Or maybe you’re doing OK, but you have more friends who are feeling the pinch, and you’re worried about them, or you’re trying to help them out, either financially or otherwise, and that’s putting a strain on your marriage.
And so it is with me. I’ve got a good job, which isn’t in any danger. I made a number of really smart economic decisions a long time ago – an affordable home in an attractive urban setting, a long-lasting, fuel-efficient automobile – and my wallet isn’t hurting much. But no amount of my own money will buy me useful places to play; only a healthier economy can do that.