Why Gravity is Having Trouble with its $70k Minimum Wage

Back in April I wrote about one of those stories which launched a thousand hot-takes: The CEO of Gravity, a small (120 person) credit card processing company in Seattle, had decided that he would establish a $70k minimum wage for his company, both as a blow against income inequality and because he's read some research that raises up to the $70k threshold have a much bigger impact on personal happiness than raises thereafter. This caused a massive media sensation, and a lot of people thought that it said something Very Important about where American business was heading and how much could be achieved if only CEOs were less selfish.

Gravity employees aren't all making $70k yet, although the news it all at once the company plan which was put in place phased the wage increases in over three years. However, some employees have already seen raises of around $10k/yr and the company is experiencing significant transition pains, and the NY Times has an interestingly detailed follow-up story describing them.

A number of pieces were written at the time criticizing Gravity Payments' move. One that I linked to and discussed was by Joe Carter writing at the Acton Institute, whose piece was descriptively titled: "Why the $70,000 Minimum Wage is Doomed to Fail" It presented two main arguments. First, that Gravity Payments would lose business to competition, since any company which had a lower average wage and offered the same service could easily take customers from that. Second, that those currently making less than $70k/yr in pay were probably providing the company with value below $70k, and so therefore these employees would become net losses to the company, and thus the most likely to be cut when the company ran into financial problems.

Since I deal with pricing analytics professionally, this kind of story fascinates me. However, I took a bit of issue with Carter's approach in that while at an Econ 101 level, his criticisms are accurate, it's a lot harder to know whether these specific problems will apply in any given real world situation.

Recently I did a pricing analysis on a fairly small company which sells consumer electronics. They have four main models of their product, and their product is fairly unique. There aren't direct competition for their products, although they do, of course, face what we call "share of wallet" competition, which is basically to say that consumers have to decide whether to spend money on their products or on some other thing that they might buy which isn't in any way a similar product in function, but is also a kind of cool household gadget which people buy when they have the money for discretionary spending of household electronics toys. The results that I came up with were that they should significantly reduce discounting (and thus in effect increase price, on average) on their most expensive models. The reason is that their most expensive models were selling more than their middle priced models with similar features. This suggested that a lot of consumers perceived the value of the top model as being significantly above it's price. If they increase the after-discount price on this top model, more consumers would trade down to the mid-range models. They would have a more even distribution of sales between their models and higher profits overall. Now, normally, if you increased the price of a product by 20-30%, you'd expect to lose a lot of sales to competition. Indeed, even a very small increase can cause a lot of people to buy less or to move to competition in a highly competitive area. This is why the editorials we read every so often explaining that all McDonald's or Walmart has to do in order to pay all their employees better is increase prices by 5% show a lack of understanding of what happens when retailers like that increase prices. (A few years back I did pricing for one of the big three fast food chains, and believe me, small price increases can cause big reductions in purchasing by consumers.)

While there are a few basic economic tendencies which are at play within most pricing questions, it takes a lot of familiarity with the specifics of a given company's situation to understand which ones will be at play and how. This made me hesitant to confidently assert that Gravity would run into problems because of its $70k minimum wage, because I didn't know the dynamics of the particular business in question and whether this unusual approach to compensation would work. (The answer to whether this could work for all companies is simple: No.) Reading about how things have worked out thus far, I think it's interesting that none of the problems are of the simple Econ 101 type which were being predicted. They're mostly far more human.

The first major impact was simply the onslaught of attention. CEO Dan Price admits that he partly made the move in the way he did in order to score some positive publicity, but it's hard for anyone to predict the kind of pressures which a news story going viral can produce:

The move drew attention from around the world — including from some outspoken skeptics and conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who smelled a socialist agenda — but most were enthusiastic. Talk show hosts lined up to interview Mr. Price. Job seekers by the thousands sent in résumés. He was called a “thought leader.” Harvard business professors flew out to conduct a case study. Third graders wrote him thank-you notes. Single women wanted to date him.

What few outsiders realized, however, was how much turmoil all the hoopla was causing at the company itself. To begin with, Gravity was simply unprepared for the onslaught of emails, Facebook posts and phone calls. The attention was thrilling, but it was also exhausting and distracting. And with so many eyes focused on the firm, some hoping to witness failure, the pressure has been intense.
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But any plan that has the potential, as Mr. Price has put it, to “set the world on fire,” is bound to make some people squirm. Leah Brajcich, who oversees sales at Gravity, fielded complaints from several customers who accused her boss of communist or socialist sympathies that would drive up their own employees’ wages and others who felt it was a public relations stunt. A few were worried that fees would rise or service would fall off. “What’s their incentive to hustle if you pay them so much?” Ms. Brajcich said they asked. Putting in 80-hour weeks after the announcement, she called the mistrustful clients, stopping by their offices or stores, and invited them to visit Gravity to see for themselves the employees’ dedication. She said she eventually lured most back.

Some customers didn't like the move, either because they saw it as endorsing politics they didn't like or because they saw it as embarrassing them by making them look greedy for not making a similar move. Others worried that despite promises to the contrary, Gravity would increase its fees to cover the expense. The attention got Gravity new clients (they nearly doubled their usual number of new customers in the month after the announcement broke) but because of the startup expenses of getting a new client launched those new customers won't actually be profitable for Gravity for about a year.

It sounds like one of the things which both led to the salary increase and also to the problems coming afterwards has been the personality of Mr. Price. He apparently got in arguments with some other business owners about the move:

Roger Reynolds, a co-owner of a wealth management company, said his discussion of the pay plan with Mr. Price got heated. “My wife and I got so frustrated with him at a cocktail party, we literally left,” said Mr. Reynolds, who complained that Mr. Price unfairly accused him of measuring his self-worth solely in terms of money and trying to hold somebody else down. Everyone may have equal rights, but not equal talent or motivation, Mr. Reynolds said. “I think he’s trying to bring in some political and aspirational beliefs into the compensation structure of the workplace.”

But he's also had problems in his relations with some employees:

Mr. Price’s drive to succeed, fierce commitment to help small businesses and exacting standards attracted other business-minded idealists. Some even took pay cuts to work at Gravity. Keeping an existing client is more important than getting a new one, he decreed. Never make a caller hear more than two rings before picking up.
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Maisey McMaster was also one of the believers. Now 26, she joined the company five years ago and worked her way up to financial manager, putting in long hours that left little time for her husband and extended family. “There’s a special culture,” where people “work hard and play hard,” she said. “I love everyone there.”

She helped calculate whether the firm could afford to gradually raise everyone’s salary to $70,000 over a three-year period, and was initially swept up in the excitement. But the more she thought about it, the more the details gnawed at her.

“He gave raises to people who have the least skills and are the least equipped to do the job, and the ones who were taking on the most didn’t get much of a bump,” she said. To her, a fairer proposal would have been to give smaller increases with the opportunity to earn a future raise with more experience.

A couple of days after the announcement, she decided to talk to Mr. Price.

“He treated me as if I was being selfish and only thinking about myself,” she said. “That really hurt me. I was talking about not only me, but about everyone in my position.”

Already approaching burnout from the relentless pace, she decided to quit.

The problem here seems dual: On the one hand, as someone putting in a lot of time and effort she sees it as unfair that there will be very little money available to provide raises to her and other top performing employees as the company struggle to meet the new salary commitments for lower level employees. On the other hand, that might have been smoothed over had Dan Price (doubtless also under long hours and mental pressure himself) been able to better handle his discussion with her about her concerns.

Perhaps most cripplingly for the company's financial future, however, has been a falling out between CEO Dan Price and his brother Lucas Price who owns 30% of the company. There are apparently long been tensions between the two brothers, and the pay increase (which in the short term may take the company's profits to near zero, before building back to profitability, according to Dan Price's plan) was apparently the last straw. Lucas is suing his brother demanding to be bought out. Since Dan has just committed to take the company's profits down, and has cut his own salary in order to help finance the salary transition, he's short of money with which to buy his brother out.

Another interesting take on the wage increase comes from an employee who doesn't want to find himself trapped at Gravity by the high pay:

The new pay scale also helped push Grant Moran, 29, Gravity’s web developer, to leave. “I had a lot of mixed emotions,” he said. His own salary was bumped up to $50,000 from $41,000 (the first stage of the raise), but the policy was nevertheless disconcerting. “Now the people who were just clocking in and out were making the same as me,” he complained. “It shackles high performers to less motivated team members.”

Mr. Moran also fretted that the extra money could over time become too enticing to give up, keeping him from his primary goal of further developing his web skills and moving to a digital company.

And the attention was vexing. “I was kind of uncomfortable and didn’t like having my wage advertised so publicly and so blatantly,” he said, echoing a sentiment of several Gravity staff members. “It changed perspectives and expectations of you, whether it’s the amount you tip on a cup of coffee that day or family and friends now calling you for a loan.”

A company is built around relationships: relationships with customers and relationships with employees. And in this case, obviously relationships between owners as well. It's not surprising that such a major change has caused turbulence in these relationships, even granting (as so far appears to be the case) that the basic Econ 101 sources of concern are not at play here. If I were to guess what will be the biggest long-running program with the new $70k minimum wage, it will be satisfying the sense of fairness for the people in mid-level positions at Gravity, people who currently make more then $70k and thus don't stand to benefit from the new regime. Often, especially in a young startup company like this, those positions are held by people who voluntarily put in a lot of extra hours and effort, both because they take a lot of pride in doing good work, and out of a desire to "get ahead". If many of them end up like Ms. McMaster, feeling that they are not getting the raises they deserve because all the money is being spent on bringing low level employees up to the $70k mark, the company is going to have a hard time keeping good talent and thus maintaining its current level of service and growth. One hopes that Price took account for giving those people proportional boosts in salary as well when he was planning the cost of his initiative.

I hope the journalists continue to check in on how Gravity is doing, not because I think they represent a model for something most companies can do, but because it's always interesting to see how real people deal with unusual situations. It will be interesting to see if Price ends up having to change his plans on the new salary structure. While I don't agree with Dan Carter's analysis at Acton on the potential pitfalls of the move, I do agree with his parting thought, which is that if Price wanted to share the profits of his company more widely he would have been much wiser to set up a bonus program or employee ownership program which all his employees could have participated in proportionately. But then, that sort of plan would not have received the nationwide media coverage which the "$70k minimum wage" caused, and Price sounds like he is, like many company founders, something of a showoff.

The Rich Drama of Virtue

In the New York Times, Thomas Mallon and Alice Gregory debate whether a virtuous character in a novel can be an interesting character. Mallon says no:

We expect fiction’s round characters to undergo change in the course of their book-length adventures, and the most important kind is usually an increase in self-awareness — a journey that leaves an unblemished character with no place to go. Self-awareness for the fully virtuous will necessarily be a matter of self-satisfaction, a state that can only render them insufferable. 

Who among us is fully virtuous? Reading this, I wondered whether Mallon had ever known a virtuous person or attempted a life of virtue himself. Virtue rarely leads to self-satisfaction, but to ever increasing self examination, as a person increasingly realizes how short he or she falls from the mark.

Alice Gregory says yes:

But as anyone who has earnestly attempted it will admit, being good is to feel far more at odds with the world than being bad does. It is the cumulation of calculated social compromises, purposeful acts of communion, and meticulous emotional arithmetic. Commonplace wickedness, meanwhile, is seldom the result of anything more devious than inattention to the feelings and realities of other people. Living virtuously is hard. It takes generative intellectual work that is far more interesting than the defensiveness of “being bad.” I would rather consider the challenges that go into a consciously lived life than the inevitably hurtful products of a cruel one. 

...If I were to commission a novel, I would ask the author for lots of things (that it be short; that it be written in free indirect speech; that it include funny, but frank, acknowledgment of women’s grooming rituals), but mostly I would want this notional novelist to take up the challenge of animating at least one character who is virtuous, not in the intimate way that everyone seems to be up close, but in a way that is obvious and legible in the book’s own universe. It’s time that goodness be shown in all its relentless torment and sacrifice.

Leah Libresco, in a separate post on the topic, points out:

Being Good isn’t a matter of choosing once and then proceeding on autopilot.  It’s a lot of small, creative acts of resistance. It’s a lot of doing small, boring kindnesses that can secretly be a little thrilling because they don’t happen by default — they’re a matter of choosing or of building up habits of thought and action until caritas does actually wind up feeling natural.

Calculated acts of villainy do take planning and coordination and an aggressive will to dominate, which is why so many books and movies choose to focus on and glamorize that kind of evil. But everyday acts of malice and selfishness take no self-control or forethought. It's always easier to snark than to be charitable; to snarl in impatience rather than smile at someone inconvenient; to ignore the child making a frustrating demand rather than put aside the book or phone or even to turn aside from legitimate business and really listen and then act. Goodness is always an act of the will, and the biggest triumphs are often the least seen because they're played out in and against one's own heart. A novelist can take these everyday sacrifices and create a story of high drama about even the outwardly smallest stakes because the richest stories are about moral choice and change. Purely plot-driven stories about big events -- will the family escape the tidal wave in time? Will Apollo 13 make it back to earth safely? -- are exciting, but without an foundation of moral agency in the human characters, those stories will ultimately be shallow, entertainment with no substance.

Also, I've already written Alice Gregory's dream novel.

Eowyn: Another Strong Character the Movies Weakened

Now that I pull it up, I see that this piece from The Mary Sue about Eowyn is actually from half a year back, but for some reason last month a bunch of people I know were passing it around on social media. I'm glad it was, because it reminded me that back at the beginning of the year I'd been listening to Lord of the Ring during my commutes, but it turned out that the old copy I had was missing a disc half way through Two Towers, and so I'd stopped and gone no further. My Audible subscription had a few credits waiting, so I picked up nice digital copies of the whole trilogy and had a wonderful time listening to the book again.

The article seems to make the case that Eowyn as shown in the Peter Jackson movies is not as strong a character as she is in the books. This is actually a pretty easy case to make, as I can't think of a single character who is stronger or more interesting in the movies than the books, and many are far less interesting and far weaker in terms of characterization. If Eowyn loses some strength and complexity in the adaptations, Aragorn, Faramir, and Denethor get it worse, and let's not even speak of what was done to poor Gimli. Still, it's interesting to see what's going through this writer's head:

[T]here are some things I feel like the writers stumbled on and Eowyn is one of the big ones.
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It says something to me that a WWI vet from a devout Catholic background wrote about a warrior woman in a book published in 1954 that was more feminist than her modern interpretation ended up being.

I know what you’re thinking. “But Eowyn kicked ass! She swung a sword and she fought the Lord of the Nazgûl! She said “I am no man!”

Yeah, I know. And look, I’d really like to tell you that that’s enough for me. But it isn’t. Let me explain why.

I'm skipping around a bit to avoid quoting her entire post, though it's a fun read, so here's the core of his first big complaint:

My issue is with the way they had Eowyn moon over Aragorn in the films. And it hinges on a key scene from the book that they left out completely. In it, Aragorn tells Eowyn that she can’t come with him on The Paths of the Dead because her people need her and that renown isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be. He’s not wrong, exactly, but he basically tells her it’s her duty to stay behind, something he would never say to her uncle or brother.

And she calls him on it. Flat out. She tells him, “All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.”

Think about that for a moment. Not only is she calling him out for sexism, she lays out why it’s sexist and does a pretty damn fine job of distilling down the lot of women in this culture. To whit: if there aren’t men around, you don’t really matter, and you definitely don’t get to decide for yourself how you live OR die if you’re a lady. That’s very powerful, especially in a series that deals a lot with the trappings of war and glory from a distinctly masculine point of view.

She doesn’t come even remotely close to saying anything like that in the film, instead pleading with him out of love, giving a lot of doe eyed looks, and generally being deferential instead of defiant. It undermines her character’s strength and feminist bent. Because although she thinks she’s in love with Aragorn she has no problem telling him he’s completely full of shit. Full of sexist shit, in fact.

And her second:

This brings me to the scene with the Lord of the Nazgûl. In the film she’s terrified, which is understandable, but they stripped out the amazing speech she gives as, scared as she is, she stands up to only the second most awful creature in the series. Don’t forget, the Lord of the Nazgûl is Sauron’s second in command. Grown men cower at the sound of his voice. He stabbed Frodo at Weathertop. He even freaks out Gandalf.

So, this terrifying monster thing has just mortally wounded her uncle and she tells it where it can stick it in one of my favorite passages in the whole series.

“Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!”

A cold voice answered: ‘Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shriveled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.”

A sword rang as it was drawn. “Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.”

“Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!”

Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel.

“But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.”

This got distilled down to “I am no man.” Look, I know they couldn’t have just put this in verbatim, it’s got an old-timey cadence and they’d already tweaked other dialog to be less formal. But. There is so much more here than “I am no man.”

First of all, he didn’t just threaten her with death. He threatened her with horrifying, endless torture and mind rape, basically. And she laughs at him. And then she stabs him in the face. What’s more? She makes him afraid before she does it because up until then, he thought he was immortal. Whoops!

I think you lose a lot of important nuance by over simplifying it to “I am no man.”

Still, I could have lived with that except for what comes after.

See, in the book, she’s falls over onto her enemy because he’s so evil that his death nearly kills her. She’s found later on the battlefield and they think she’s dead. Eomer is incredibly upset (understandably) and ends up going off in a foul, suicidal mood, where he and the other riders chant “death, death, death” as they cut a swath through the enemy. It’s pretty bleak.

The movie, for no reason I can fathom, decides that Eowyn can’t just kill the Witch King. Nope. After this huge showdown she also needs to be chased by Tumor the Orc, an enemy we got introduced to that isn’t A. interesting B. even in the same category of terrifying as the Witch King. He’s completely beneath her as a foe at this point.

So far as I can tell he exists so that Aragorn can kill him and “save” her, without actually knowing he did so. Which is just…weird. Why would you have this amazing moment where Eowyn defeats an enemy literally no one else in Middle Earth could have…and then have her crawling away from a generic, malignant orc in the aftermath? And why does Aragorn need to save her? What does this do for either character? Other than undermine her achievement, of course.

It’s one of the most perplexing character and narrative choices/changes in the films. What’s more: I don’t think it occurred to anyone that, along with making her overly lovesick, they inadvertently damsel’d her. For me, it’s a frustrating example of casual sexism creeping in. It’s even more frustrating when you realize Tolkien, writing in a time that was quite a bit less progressive than now for women, did it better. Sticking closer to the original narrative and character would have solved this issue neatly. It stands out as pointless and tacked on.

After all of this, Eowyn ends up in the Houses of Healing and eventually meets Faramir. They develop a strong bond, one based on compassion and understanding, and we see that Faramir truly appreciates her for who she is. He knows she’s a warrior and a queen in her own right, he never talks down to her or treats her as less than his equal. We get a hint of this in the extended edition of Return of the King, and I know they didn’t really have time to do more. Yet I still miss that relationship because it says so much about both characters. Eowyn ends up discovering what real love is and finally being seen by someone for the amazing person she is.

I guess what bugs me most is that they took a legitimately “strong” female character, and by that I mean a complex, flawed, brave, and ultimately a triumphant warrior woman who has her own major arc…and reduced her down to something less than that. To me, strength in a character is about more than their ability to hit or kill things, and while Eowyn’s big moment is certainly defeating The Lord of the Nazgûl, it’s her defiance in the face of insurmountable odds that truly makes her “strong”. I wish the film version had honored that more.

Because that would have been honoring the proto-feminist character Tolkien created.

Here's the scene, with the weird orc bit at the end added in as well:



Now, I think the "feminist" thing here is a kind of a red herring. The key thing here is: the Eowyn of the movies is quite simply a less interesting and less complex person than the Eowyn of the books.

Actually, there's another whole aspect to her arc which the Mary Sue author misses, one which I think underlines how Eowyn's strength and weaknesses are intertwined.

When the Rohirrim are getting ready to ride forth to battle in The Two Towers, Theoden has to decide who to leave in command of the people while he leads the army:

'Behold! I go forth, and it seems like to be my last riding,' said Theoden. 'I have no child. Theodred my son is slain. I name Eomer my sister-son to be my heir. If neither of us return, then choose a new lord as you will. But to some one I must now entrust my people that I leave behind, to rule them in my place. Which of you will stay?'

No man spoke.

'Is there none whom you would name? In whom do my people trust?'

'In the House of Eorl,' answered Hama.

'But Eomer I cannot spare, nor would he stay,' said the king; 'and he is the last of that House.'

'I said not Eomer,' answered Hama. 'And he is not the last. There is Eowyn, daughter of Eomund, his sister. She is fearless and high-hearted. All love her. Let her be as lord to the Eorlingas, while we are gone.'

'It shall be so,' said Theoden. 'Let the heralds announce to the folk that the Lady Eowyn will lead them!'

Then the king sat upon a seat before his doors, and Eowyn knelt before him and received from him a sword and a fair corslet. 'Farewell sister-daughter!' he said. 'Dark is the hour, yet maybe we shall return to the Golden Hall. But in Dunharrow the people may long defend themselves, and if the battle go ill, thither will come all who escape.' 'Speak not so!' she answered. 'A year shall I endure for every day that passes until your return.' But as she spoke her eyes went to Aragorn who stood nearby.

'The king shall come again,' he said. 'Fear not! Not West but East does our doom await us.'

Now, if you picture the Rohirrim as being a sort of land-roving version of the Norse circa 1000 A.D., the idea of putting a woman, even the king's niece, in command of the whole people while the king goes off to war is a big deal (though Norse women were not people you wanted to mess with, and the sagas have a number of strong female characters.) The responsibility that Eowyn is given here is huge, and one which would normally only be given to a man and a respected warrior at that.

However, Eowyn doesn't want this calmer sort of responsibility. She has a deep desire to ride to glory and destruction, for roughly the reasons that the Mary Sue author outlines above.

This is the background scene which explains the later one in Return of the King which she outlines above, in which Eowyn seeks to ride with Aragorn and he tells her that her responsibilities lie elsewhere. Aragorn isn't simply telling her that she needs to stay at home because she's a woman. He's legitimately pointing out that when she's been given command of the whole people in the king's absence, she can't just run off on a death-or-glory errand because she is overcome with feelings of nihilism.

For a while she was silent, as if pondering what this might mean. Then suddenly she laid her hand on his arm. 'You are a stern lord and resolute,' she said; 'and thus do men win renown.' She paused. 'Lord.' she said, 'if you must go, then let me ride in your following. For I am weary of skulking in the hills, and wish to face peril and battle.'

'Your duty is with your people,' he answered.

'Too often have I heard of duty,' she cried. 'But am I not of the House of Eorl, a shieldmaiden and not a dry-nurse? I have waited on faltering feet long enough. Since they falter no longer, it seems, may I not now spend my life as I will?'

'Few may do that with honour,' he answered. 'But as for you, lady: did you not accept the charge to govern the people until their lord's return? If you had not been chosen, then some marshal or captain would have been set in the same place, and he could not ride away from his charge, were he weary of it or no.'

'Shall I always be chosen?' she said bitterly. 'Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown, and find food and beds when they return?'

'A time may come soon,' said he, 'when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.'

And she answered: 'All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.'

Aragorn is right. Eowyn does abandon her post and her duty by riding off to war in disguise. Great good (as well as sorrow) comes of it, as it sometimes the case when people do wrong, but she is doing wrong. Eowyn's desire for glorious destruction takes her to the Battle of Peleanor Fields, and when Denethor's own desire of inglorious destruction draws Gandalf -- the only one who could have faced the Witch King with some degree of equality -- away from the battle at the crucial moment, her desire for death and sacrifice allows her to defeat the Witch King. Seeing her apparently dead on the field of battle, Eomer then takes on the same destructive power:

Then suddenly he beheld his sister Eowyn as she lay, and he knew her. He stood a moment as a man who is pierced in the midst of a cry by an arrow through the heart; and then his face went deathly white; and a cold fury rose in him, so that all speech failed him for a while. A fey mood took him.

'Eowyn, Eowyn!' he cried at last: 'Eowyn, how come you here? What madness or devilry is this? Death, death, death! Death take us all!'

Then without taking counsel or waiting for the approach of the men of the City, he spurred headlong back to the front of the great host, and blew a horn, and cried aloud for the onset. Over the field rang his clear voice calling: 'Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world's ending!'

And with that the host began to move. But the Rohirrim sang no more. _Death_ they cried with one voice loud and terrible, and gathering speed like a great tide their battle swept about their fallen king and passed, roaring away southwards.

The end of Eowyn's arc is when she renounces the idea that glory can be achieved through destruction:

And Eowyn looked at Faramir long and steadily; and Faramir said: 'Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, Eowyn! But I do not offer you my pity. For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Eowyn, do you not love me?'

Then the heart of Eowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her.

I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun, she said; and behold the Shadow has departed! I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.' And again she looked at Faramir. 'No longer do I desire to be a queen,' she said.

Then Faramir laughed merrily. 'That is well,' he said; 'for I am not a king. Yet I will wed with the White Lady of Rohan, if it be her will. And if she will, then let us cross the River and in happier days let us dwell in fair Ithilien and there make a garden. All things will grow with joy there, if the White Lady comes.'

'Then must I leave my own people, man of Gondor?' she said. 'And would you have your proud folk say of you: There goes a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North! Was there no woman of the race of Numenor to choose?'

'I would,' said Faramir. And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many. And many indeed saw them and the light that shone about them as they came down from the walls and went hand in hand to the Houses of Healing.

Middle Class Conservative Discontents

I ran into this lefty take on GOP presidential hopeful Scott Walker today which struck me because of how thoroughly it misses the way that a lot of ordinary conservatives think. The jumping off point is a recent National Journal piece which attacks Walker for having some credit card debt and not having a lot of savings. As Spross points out, that actually marks Walker as a pretty ordinary kind of guy:

This is a deeply silly genre of journalism. It treats troubles the vast majority of Americans grapple with as vaguely scandalous. And it implicitly assumes the same rules of thumb that should guide household budgets should also guide the federal budget, which is catastrophically wrong.

More to the point, other details in the Journal piece offer a brief look at a presidential candidate of relatively modest means.

"Walker listed only six investments worth between $1,000 and $15,000, a whole life insurance plan worth between $15,000 and $50,000, and a deferred compensation plan from Milwaukee County worth between $15,000 and $50,000," the Journal continued. Walker received a $45,000 advance for a book in the last year, and it looks like his annual salary since assuming the governorship in 2011 has been around $140,000. That's certainly a lot of income compared to most Americans — it puts Walker just below the threshold for the top 10 percent — but it's obviously nothing compared to the fortunes Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton have amassed.

As governor, Walker makes major than most Americans, but as both a governor and someone trying to get a run for the presidency off the ground, he also doubtless has a lot of expenses that spill over into his personal budget. The fact that he's ended up with some short term debt makes him a lot like someone around the same age and income trying to get a small business off the ground. It's hardly a shocking position to be in.

Where Spross, I think, get's it seriously wrong, is when he goes on to suggest that Walker's modest background contradicts his fights with public sector unions which have made him a national figure:

This gets at something poignant about Walker the politician, and by extension Walker the man. While most all presidential candidates and politicians have a significant amount of socioeconomic distance from the median American, Walker has less than most. Besides his income and wealth, Walker came from modest beginnings as a preacher's kid in a small Wisconsin manufacturing town. He attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, but didn't finish his degree — passing on one of the key status symbols that American elites use to separate themselves from the pack.

And yet few Republicans, and certainly no other Republican presidential candidate, has been so ferociously focused on grinding everyday workers into the ground.

Like any good conservative, Walker pushed massive tax cuts for the well-to-do through Wisconsin's state budget, creating a hole he's now trying to fill by slicing education spending. But he also drove a blistering and brutally successful push to crush Wisconsin's public-sector unions, followed by "right to work" laws that will likely cripple the state's private unions as well.

Nor does it look like Walker did this because Republican and business interests were demanding it — he did it because he wanted to, as a matter of ideology.

Typically of his own ideology, Spross wants to see this as some kind of combined self loathing and racism driven by the flight to suburbs leaving minorities dominating the inner cities. However, his take on Walker's anti-union stances pretty fundamentally misses what makes middle class conservatives tick.

Union baiting is actually solidly popular with middle and working class conservatives -- and there are plenty of conservatives among those economic brackets. Venues like conservative talk radio draw primarily from middle income conservatives, not the Wall Street types which progressives would like to imagine dominate the GOP.

The point is not "grinding everyday workers into the ground". After all, most everyday workers are neither union nor public sector. And that's the key. To a lot of conservative everyday workers, it looks like public sector union workers have an unfairly good deal. They're often not fired even for grossly bad behavior or poor performance, and their pension plans can allow them to retire quite young with very generous guaranteed retirement plans.

Nor is disliking this strictly a matter of envy. As smart progressives point out every so often, while the Federal income tax is highly progressive (drawing the vast majority of its money from the rich while actually giving money back to a significant number of people with lower incomes and larger families), state and local taxes tend to be quite regressive. Those public sector union workers are working for local government, so it's disproportionately ordinary people who are having to foot the bill for iron-clad job security and unrealistic pension plans. This naturally makes middle class conservatives cranky, so thrashing public sector unions is fairly popular with them.

Part of the issue here is that American unions have to a great extent pushed an "us first" rather than a common good based approach for a long time. And the result is union rules and benefits which seem focused around not having to do work, getting away with bad behavior, and getting benefits which seem unfairly good. In the private sector, this has served to drive union dominated industries into the ground (see Detroit as exhibit A) while in the public sector it has stuck cities and states with horrific budget problems which can only be solved by raising local taxes and/or slashing government services which people need and want.

None of these play well with non-union middle class workers.

The Book of Job

When I set out to rewrite my script for Job (the final performance of which was last night), I went back and re-read the book of Job and summarized each chapter of arguments by Job and his friends. The structure of most of the book is: one friend makes a statement, Job rebuts; the second friend makes a statement, Job rebuts; third friend makes a statement, Job rebuts; and this is repeated three times. Then Eliphaz, the learned young man, steps in to give his opinion. Finally, God speaks, Job humbles himself, and there's a short last chapter in which Job receives even more blessings than he had at first.

I couldn't reproduce that structure on stage; three sets of arguments was simply too long and repetitive for our slender play. And since the arguments don't build on each other or push the story forward, they could be condensed and slightly rearranged to create the dramatic arc of the scene.

So, here's what I've been doing all summer while I haven't been blogging. I present to you Act 2, Scene 1 of Job. Our characters here are Job; Satan (ever-present but unseen by any of the characters); Job's old school friends Ellie, Billie, and Moe; and Eli, Ellie's nephew, a young man with a great sense of his own importance. I wish you could have seen the fabulous (and hysterically funny) young actors who made the scene come alive, but here's a taste of our show.

(Song lyrics composed by Rick Nohle.)

***

(Job, pacing in discomfort, reading from his prayerbook. Satan sitting on the bench, tearing his hair in frustration.)

JOB: “I love the Lord, for he has heard

the sound of my appeal.

He stoops to listen when I call.

‘O Lord, I beg you, save my life!’

And he has kept my soul from death,

my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.

I held fast to my faith, even when I said,

‘I am greatly afflicted’;

How shall I make a return to the Lord

for all the good he has done for me?

The cup of salvation I will take up

and I will call on the name of the Lord.”

(Billie, Ellie, and Moe rush in and stop short upon beholding Job’s awful appearance. Eli follows more sedately.)

BILLIE: Oh, Job, this is awful! What’s happened to you?

ELLIE: We came as soon as we heard. Everyone at the reunion was talking about it.

MOE: (seriously) Maybe we could start a fundraiser… get you some therapy… some legal advice… a little face cream…

(They settle down by Job, Ellie and Billie on either side of him and Moe standing behind. Billie reaches out to pat Job’s back while his head is in his hands, but decides not to touch him in case he’s contagious. Job is in real pain, itchy and miserable, but trying not to scratch. Eli stands aloof on one side of the bench and pulls out a tome to study, while Satan watches with anticipation from the other side.)

ELLIE: (with decision) Now Job, we’re here to help you. We’re going to dig deep together. We’re going to get inside your head. We’re going to the source of this problem. (She pulls out her phone, ready to get video.)

JOB: What do you mean?

MOE: Confession is good for the soul.

BILLIE: We’re your oldest friends. You can trust us. We won’t tell anyone. (Billie whaps Ellie, and Ellie shoves her phone back into her pocket.)

JOB: (patiently) About what?

ELI: I’m not your oldest friend, but as a fellow seeker of wisdom  -- and correct me if I’m wrong here! -- I think we can both agree that it’s not in God’s nature to act unjustly. Ergo, I think we need to inquire into the root cause of this suffering of yours, and determine: just what did you do?

JOB: Nothing to merit all this.

ELLIE, BILLIE, MOE, AND ELI: (shaking their heads) Oh, Job...

“What Did You Do?”

ELLIE, BILLIE, MOE, AND ELI

Come on! Come on! What did you do-wah-doo?

Come on! Come on! What did you do-wah-doo?

Refrain

Come on and tell us, Job, what did you do? [MOE: What did you do?]

That something so awful should happen to you? [MOE: Happen to you?]

You’re doing the time, Job, so what was the crime?

Oh, Job! What did you do? [MOE: What did you do?]

You had us believing that you were a saint. [MOE: You were a saint!]

We’re so disappointed to find out you ain’t. [MOE: Find out you ain’t.]

So what is the purpose of this masquerade?

Tell us the truth! What did you do?

God wouldn’t punish you without a reason.

Some kind of scandal, some kind of treason.

Examine your conscience, look back on your past.

MOE: Do you owe me money? I just thought I’d ask.

Did you go out on a date with a floozy?

Whatever it was, Job, it must have been a doozy.

What were you thinking? Did it involve drinking?

Oh, Job, what did you do?

God wouldn’t punish you without a reason,

Some kind of scandal, some kind of treason.

Examine your conscience, look back on your past.

MOE: Are you sure about the money? It can’t hurt to ask…. (refrain)

Come on! Come on! What did you do-wah-doo?

Come on! Come on! What did you do-wah-doo?

We are your friends, Job, we care about you!

Tell us the truth, what did you do?

JOB: (bursting out, addressing God since his friends aren’t any help) I wish I’d never been born! Since you’ve turned away from me, at least let me die!

ELLIE: (disappointed that their whole song and dance has been so poorly received) Look, can I say something? You can dish out the philosophy, but you can’t take it. Everyone knows: You reap what you sow, and happy the man God reproves, and all that. I’m just saying: turn away from him, and he turns away from you.

JOB: I have never turned away from God! But how can I live if he sets himself against me? At least I have this one consolation: I’ve never denied him.

BILLIE: But even you have to admit, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. God doesn’t reject the blameless man.

JOB: I know that. But innocent or not, I can’t fight against his strength. (He gets up and moves away from the bench, then turns back.) And if I didn’t keep insisting that I’m innocent, you’d take that as sign of guilt, too. I don’t care if I live or die, if only I could understand why all this is happening! Which of you righteous ones will be my advocate before God and plead my cause?

MOE: You talk a big game, Job, but maybe you’re not as smart as you think. If God had a mind to come down and answer you, you’d remember fast enough what he’s letting you forget now. Come on, brother, how you gonna win if you ain’t right within?

JOB: (bitterly) That’s rich coming from you. Nothing less challenging for a comfortable man than heaping a little scorn on the wretched. I’m a neat little narrative with all the ends tucked in: look what happens to the bad guy!

ELLIE: Well, everyone knows that the wicked never prosper. Listen, I could tell you stories of bad karma all day. (She reaches for her phone.)

JOB: Yes, they do. The wicked prosper all the time! How are we even arguing about that? (Laughs to himself) I could spout off sermons too, if our places were reversed, but could you take my part? (To God) And to add insult to injury, you send idiots to defend you!

BILLIE: (indignantly) Who’s stupid? We’re not the ones making all the excuses. Punishment is for the wicked, Job. Everyone knows that.

MOE: Yeah, that’s why it’s called punishment.

(Job collapses back on the bench.)

ELI: (blurting out of the blue; they’d all forgotten he was there) I’d like to take a turn, if I may. I know I’m young, so I let my elders take the first crack at saying something wise, but just as I suspected, wisdom comes from God, not from old age. (Ellie and Billie glare at him) Now, I’m just a plain-spoken fellow, no fancy words, but I feel like I have a unique insight into the problem of pain. (Eli paces down, holds center stage to pontificate.) You see, Job claims he’s as pure as the new-driven snow. He dares to accuse God of attacking him without giving any cause. But here’s where I’ve found your crucial error: God is so far above us that he speaks in many ways, in dreams and visions, and yes, sometimes in suffering. Exhibit A here. (He gestures to Job, who is almost sobbing in agony.) Now answer me this, if you can: how can God pervert justice? How can you demand he answer you as men do? Your only right before God is to repent and praise him, to meditate on how little you understand. (Job rocks himself. Eli is just getting warmed up.) You need to listen for his voice in the thunder, to contemplate his ineffable majesty…

ELLIE, BILLIE, AND MOE: Shut up!

(Eli shrugs sadly and steps back. His long-winded speech has at least had the effect of softening the other three a bit.)

SATAN: (sees his opening, mock-quoting again) “He stoops to listen when I call.

‘O Lord, I beg you, save my life!’

And he has kept my soul from death,

my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.”

He has not kept your feet from stumbling! He has not kept your eyes from tears! And he will not keep your soul from death! Curse God and end this now!

JOB:  (looks up, to his friends) What have I ever done to any of you, that you turn my misery into a game of gotcha? Is it so hard for you to show me even a sliver of human kindness? Does it offend you if I grieve? (begging) Have pity on me, oh you my friends, for the hand of the Lord has touched me!

(stands) But write this down in your book: I know that my Redeemer lives! And when he comes at last to take up his witness stand on this poor dust, he will call me to himself, and I will see my vindication in the flesh.

Oh God, how long will you leave me in this limbo? How long until you long for the work of your hands?