I knew that we were due for snow tomorrow, but the amount is academic--at least sort of. The meteorologists have been jiggling the numbers (i.e. hedging their bets) for several days now. But when I tuned into Twitter for the first time today, one of the trending hashtags was #Snowmageddon.
So with a quasi-seismic eyeroll born of 40+ years of life in Wisconsin and Minnesota (before moving to Atlantic Canada), I clicked. Huh--state-wide emergencies declared in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. And that's not even counting the topical satire in the NSFW Lapine--which for the uninitiated, is basically Canada's retort to the equally-if-even-less-SFW Onion, which, btw, originated in in Madison, WI. (Because when people in the Snow Belt are mocking your winter emergency, you know it's serious--right?)
Across the Maine border, the only East Coaster with whom I regularly keep in touch is someone I knew in college (or, in local parlance, "at University") who's spent most of his life in Boston. Mind you, this is someone who rarely misses any opportunity to snark about my choice of postal/zip code. So naturally, I couldn't possibly pass over the chance to rub his nose in the fact that I expect a paltry 25-35 cm...and of course I left him to translate that into 12-14 inches.
But aside from sheer payback, I wanted to know that he'd learned his lesson after Hurricane Sandy and had already stock-piled batteries, water, and what-have-you--because I know darned well that his first priority will be a ready supply of sugary caffeine. The last laugh's on me tonight, though, as I hedge my bets a bit by emptying, cleaning, and refilling a handful of Coleman water containers. And make sure that my cellphone's charging. And pull the last of the clean laundry from the dryer. And thank whatever inspiration that led to baking a dinner that would taste just fine as cold leftovers. (And likewise thanking the providence of having a gas station three doors away.)
In other words, having the luxury of hoarding for a short-ish interruption in an otherwise 21st century First World lifestyle. And being annoyed the whole while because I need at least two hands to count the things I should be doing with this evening.
But that's the point: Hoarding is a luxury. Please understand that I'm all for having a buffer in the savings account. Cars and major appliances break down--sometimes with zero warning. Planning notwithstanding, children can be conceived when least convenient. Roofs and basements can leak--badly. Layoffs happen through no fault of one's own. Ditto car accidents and major illnesses. To paraphrase my former boss, an avid runner blindsided by Parkinson's Disease, "You can be hit by the ice cream truck jogging home from the health food store."
Bottom line--hedging your bets is a good thing. Up to a point.
Yet during an evening spent basically hedging my bets against a grey swan (I won't say black swan) event, I had plenty of time to reflect on the socioeconomic pathology which rewards hoarding. Specifically, I mean tax structures that favour "carried interest" or stock options cashed in or any number of rarified distillations of the sweat from labour's brow (particularly other people's labour). I mean public loonies funding witch-hunt audits of environmental advocacy groups while offshore accounts are winked at...at least until the CBC and Globe & Mail raise the ruckus. And the crowning absurdity of the American "libertarian" right's decades-long sneer at Canada's socialist dystopia magically evaporating in a thumbs-up for the inversion scheme that allowed Burger King to buy a lower tax bill via Tim Horton's.
That sort of thing.
Again, I'm all for keeping a buffer against life's emergencies. What with interest rates on consumer savings accounts not even keeping pace with inflation (and that's before all the nickle-and-dime bank fees), it's not like anyone's rewarding prudence these days. But it's past time for calling shenanigans on the some-kinds-of-money-are-more-equal-than-others attitude of the tax code. And, as a bonus, pitch for once and all the gentry-worship that our European ancestors should have left behind when they hoisted anchor in the Old World.
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* Wordsworth's poem "The World is Too Much With Us" contains the line, "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers..." Wordsworth, like any self-respecting 18th/19th century Englishman, looked down on trade and manual labour. Had it not been for national pride, he doubtless would have agreed with Napoleon's sneer at England as a "nation of shop-keepers." Proper money, as any right-thinking Englishman knew, was inherited...with a matching title...and lots of land...and serfs to pay rent for the privilege of making improvements on said land so that they could maybe scratch out a living in a good year.
Yeah, we can't ditch that nonsense soon enough for me, either.
