A Twitterer (Tweeter? Just Twit?) I follow posted an observation about English:

“Price” and “Worth” mean the same thing, yet “Priceless” and “Worthless” are opposites.

They followed this with the usual metatags, you know, #DeepThought, #Philosophizin, #MindBlown, the identifiers that are much more “tag” than “meta,” in the sense that they are markers used to track things, clunky lumps sutured to one’s ear out in the wild; or perhaps they are a children’s game that seems designed to frustrate all the players but one. But just as those tags are really more prosaic, more obvious, and more concrete and direct than they are meta, so this conundrum of English is not that difficult to untangle: it’s a paradox like any other in English, meaning it is only contradictory, only interesting, if seen from one particular angle. Change the angle and it becomes clear. The answer, I posted in a reply to this Twitterer, is that “price” and “worth” are not actually the same thing at all: “worth” is something’s inherent value, its qualities that make it precious and/or coveted; and “price” is a measurement of what someone is willing to pay to acquire that value. So “worth” is set by the thing itself, and by the perceptions of the owner or coveter; “price” is set by the market, and determined much more by one’s available assets and one’s eagerness to possess: the depth of one’s coveting, that is. “Worth” is internal (though externally perceived), and “Price” is external (Though to some extent internally determined). In recognition of this, we use the antonyms, priceless and worthless, to name two different qualities: one describes an object you would never sell, and the other describes an object you would never buy.

This is why I don’t have more followers on Twitter. Because my posts, while free for all, are not valued by many, and are not coveted by any. So I don’t earn much of the modern currency of social media: attention. I could, of course; I could post nothing but #HotTakes, and maybe some #FunnyJokes, and throw some #Shade at some #Influencer; that would earn me more currency, more attention, and that could eventually translate into value for me: especially insofar as I would be able to sell copies of my books, and raise my #Profile by #EngagementFarming — and I don’t mean to mock or belittle the people who do that, because they do, as I said, find value in it: usually through price, because they market their products successfully to their circle of engaged followers, but sometimes through genuine connections made with people who reach out to them personally and build relationships, which I would consider worthwhile. Either way, more power to them, whether they draw in attention currency through the worth of what they create, or through using the market to raise the price (The key to engagement farming is not only to capture attention, it is too demand attention and receive it; since attention is the currency of the social media market, when an engagement farmer [If you’re unfamiliar with the term, this means one of those accounts that posts things intentionally for likes and follows and responses of any kind: either platitudes or intentional irritation are the most common paths] demands more of your attention and receives it, they are raising the price of their product, and you, the consumer, are paying it.) of what they offer. Either way, it is creating value, and it’s a fine thing.

But it’s not my thing. I’m bad at price. You can tell because I am a fantasy author, married to an artist, and both of us are public school teachers: nowhere in there did we find a way to get rich. And we’re not, subsequently. The things I do with my time have a low price: at least partly because I love doing them. But that doesn’t mean, at all, that they have a low worth: my writing, my wife’s art, and both of our teaching, are extremely worthy pursuits, and ones that are generally valued in our society: just not by the market. This is because markets value scarcity, not worth. Which is why, again, the comparison of “price” and “worth” is not good: not only are they not equal, but they are almost unrelated in the modern world.

Not entirely: I make a living, a decent living, through teaching, and I have for more than 20 years; this last week, I went to speak to my principal about something, and as I was leaving after saying my piece, he stopped me because he wanted to ask why I hadn’t signed my contract for next year: he wanted to know if there was a problem, or if, in the worst case scenario for him, I hadn’t signed it because I was leaving. I am not leaving, I assured him: I had actually just signed the contract the day before, he just hadn’t seen the notice yet. (I hadn’t signed it earlier not because I refused to sign it, but because when I looked at the online document awaiting my signature, it said that the contract start date was — my salary. I don’t know when “63,810” is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not this coming August, which is when I have to start teaching, so I thought I should double check that the contract was correct before I signed it. But when I went back to check again, it had resolved, and the correct start date was there, so I signed it. Or at least I typed my name into the text box and clicked on the blue button, a process that will never not be weird to me. At any rate, on hearing that I had signed and would be returning, my principal literally did this:

So that tells me my work has worth. Last week I Twitterered that I was struggling, on evening; I felt like my students didn’t value my teaching, and I didn’t want to stand in front of them and be ignored; it feels not only like a waste of my time and a waste of their opportunity, but also, it’s just damn insulting: first because my teaching is valuable, whether students recognize it or not; and second because their idea of value is so skewed that they would rather watch a video of someone falling down than listen to me teach them about reading and writing and literature. But one of my former students replied that I was her favorite teacher, the one who had the greatest impact on her; that I was damn good at teaching and she would always be grateful that she had been in my class. That, even more than my principal, tells me that my work has worth.

But it is not valued in our society as much as it is worth: and that is why my price is low, compared to, say, an engineer or a doctor or a professional athlete. When people talk about the teacher shortage, and how to fix it, this is how: we have to value teachers according to their worth; not according to their price. Teachers should not be paid at what the market will bear: partly because the market has intentionally been jiggered to keep all wages artificially low; and partly because teachers are generally passionate about our work, and therefore we are willing to do more work than we are paid to do. So we get exploited as workers, and we get exploited as people who care about children.

And then they call us indoctrinators. And fucking groomers.

And you wonder why there’s a teacher shortage.

There’s another issue going on today in our society regarding a disparity between value and worth; it’s inflation. Actually, it’s consumerism in general, but we’re seeing the making of the sausage right now, in a way we haven’t really seen for a long time: there’s been inflation, but not this much and not this quickly.

Inflation occurs when the worth of something is greater than its price: sometimes because of supply and demand, sometimes because of changes and innovation, but for whatever reason, if something is worth more than we are paying for it, as sure as sunshine in summer, that price is going to go up, until the price is equal to the value: which is generally above the worth. (By the way: I’m definitely not using the economics terms for these things correctly; but then, I’m not a trained economist. You can tell because I’m not evil.[#FMF]) It’s above the worth because we have always equated price with value: whenever something is expensive, we think it is a good thing, surely a better thing that that cheap knockoff, or that discount brand, or — God forbid — that used version. And so because expensive things automatically have more value, in order to increase both sales and profits, we mark up the high price even more: that draws more people in, and more people want to pay more for something they have to pay more for, even though it has no more value than it would if it were priced more reasonably. This is why there is premium gasoline. Or gasoline at all, for that matter.

The problem with inflation right now is that it is no longer being driven by the worth of the products being more than their price. It was initially: because during the pandemic, people needed something that could cheer us up. We also needed to adapt to our new circumstances. And we needed to stop putting things off for later, because we didn’t know if we would have a later. All of these things increased demand, which also increases the worth of something: if I need it more now than I would have last year, because I’m having an ongoing existential crisis right now, then the thing that will cheer my up out of my crisis is more valuable now than it would have been before, because it will have a better and more powerful impact on me. The same with equipment that will allow me to work from home, in a time when people are losing their jobs and their businesses left and right: I am more desperate to keep my job, and so I am more desperate for what I need to do my job in these trying times. In addition, as people lost jobs and businesses closed, the supply chain for our goods and services simply disintegrated. Which increased the scarcity of things we wanted just as we started really desperately wanting them. And although scarcity doesn’t actually increase worth, it does increase price, because people grow more desperate to get something they want when that thing is hard to get. (I suppose in some way it increases worth because if we want something very rare and we get it, then our satisfaction is greater than what we feel getting something common: but also, a root beer and a good tuna sandwich would make me happier than a limited edition copy of a novel by my favorite author.)

So when inflation started, it was because of that: people really, really wanted to buy stuff, and there was less stuff to buy: so prices went up. No, it was not the government giveaway of money: because prices went up around the world, and the US government only gave money to American households. U.S. inflation increased fourfold between 2020 and 2021, which put us — 19th out of the 44 most industrialized economies.

The problem since then has been that inflation has continued to rise: and there are two reasons for that. One is that the people who sell things to us very quickly realized that our desperation to buy things meant that they could charge us more, while the supply chain issues and the fanatical belief propelled by neoliberal economists that increases in the monetary supply are the only and inevitable cause of inflation (I mean, other than the many, many times this government has increased the money supply without affecting inflation; but those other times don’t count. This time was the one that proved their thesis. Certainly not the first stimulus checks that came to us in the middle of the quarantine shutdown, which affected inflation not at all. It was the other ones. You know: the Democrat ones. Damn those tax and spend Democrats. Totally their fault that a change in the monetary supply had a greater effect than any other similar change in the last four decades. Totally not other causes.) gave those companies cover. Because normally, if a company just raises prices because they can, there is a backlash: people get pissed that the stuff they want is more expensive now, and so they don’t buy it. This is why I don’t go to Starbucks any more, because their coffee is too damned expensive, without giving me any greater happiness from buying it.

But if companies are raising prices because they’re struggling, too, then it’s not their fault: and we grumble — but then we pay the higher prices. And somehow, we ignore the unbelievable increases in corporate profits for the last two years: and we just get madder and madder at — Joe Biden. (Please follow that link: not only is it a very reasonable explanation of what has actually driven inflation, but also it includes this AMAZING statement: “It is unlikely that either the extent of corporate greed or even the power of corporations generally has increased during the past two years. Instead, the already-excessive power of corporations has been channeled into raising prices rather than the more traditional form it has taken in recent decades: suppressing wages.” #DAMN.) So now, the price of goods and services is higher than the value we gain from them, and MUCH higher than the actual worth of those goods and services: which I’m going to say is lower than the value because the things we buy make us happy, which we need, but they aren’t actually making our lives better, which should be part of calculating something’s worth. Because the corporations and megacorporations that make the world economy move find value and worth in only one thing: money.

So okay: here we are, watching prices go up and up, and still paying them, partly because we are still in need of comfort (And it’s getting even worse as our financial positions get harder thanks to how expensive everything is now! DAMN JOE BIDEN!), and partly because we don’t want to deal with the difficulties that would arise if we went looking for alternatives. I’m not sure I want to encourage everyone to look for alternatives: because that seems to me like accepting the prices and the inflation and the reasons for the prices and inflation. That is what the Fed is doing: having accepted without comment that corporations had started gouging Americans, the Fed did the only thing they can do: raise interest rates, fuck up the economy, and throw people out of work. If enough people are poor enough, they stop buying things, and that should make prices stop going up. But since the prices are going up out of alignment with the actual situation, simply because corporations decided to take all the money they could, it’s nearly impossible to say when enough will be enough, and people will stop buying things. Take cars, for instance. At what price point do people stop buying cars? New car prices will easily drive people to buy used cars, of course; but when used car prices are nearly at new car prices? Will people stop driving?

Of course not: not only are cars necessary for productive work across this bigass car-centric nation, but we see our car as part of our identity: it’s not even about buying a car to make ourselves happy, it’s about being utterly miserable without one. Nobody could abide that. My students still see getting a license and a car as more important than getting an education, which is why they let their work and grades slip so they can get an afterschool job: so they can buy a car. And they, and their families, will go into deeper and deeper debt in order to get a car. And then, if the Fed keeps raising interest rates, those car loans will become unsustainable: and they will lose their cars, and have to buy older used cars, which they will still be barely able to afford, but won’t be able to live without. So they’ll have to cut back on other things, or they’ll have to get a second job in order to afford their car in order to get to their first job — and probably their second job.

Hey, isn’t it a blessing that we’ve moved into a gig economy? It’s so much easier to get a second job!

Now let’s talk about rent, shall we? It’s the same thing, but worse: at what point can people stop paying rent? They can’t. They have to get second jobs. They have to cut back on everything else. Or else they have to live on the street. Which, of course, people are doing. In record numbers. (That is to say: people are struggling with rent more, not necessarily becoming homeless more often. This report gives the current state of affairs, which isn’t all bad — veteran homelessness, teen homelessness, and family homelessness are all down. But the most chilling bullet point here? This one:

This stability belies more serious issues among those most at risk of falling into homelessness, at
the time of the 2022 PIT Count roughly 50% of renters making less than $25,000 a year reported
being behind on rent.

So what do we do?

Honestly, I came into this intending to say that we should stop trying to find comfort in the act of purchasing material things. And I do believe that: I want to encourage more people to read, because reading is comparatively free and can take up literally every free hour of your life. The same with taking walks, or playing games with friends and family. I think there are wonderful things we can all do that will make us happier, and which don’t cost money; and I think that our society would be better off if we did more of those things. Not only because we’d be happier — and for a longer time because the joy we get from shopping is ephemeral and superficial — but also because it would be better for our planet to stop consuming everything available, and better for our economy to simply stop paying the prices that corporations are demanding of us: because if we stop buying, they won’t stop selling: they’ll start selling for less. It will happen, it will work; the Fed is doing the same thing, just by coercion and with a whole lot less choice and a whole lot more pain in the bargain.

But. I don’t mean to sound like a Boomer telling millennials to stop buying lattes and avocado toast, because the real problem is the system, specifically the way it is intended and designed to reward greed. The whole point is to push the exploitation of the masses as far as they possibly can, because that is how they extract wealth from us. That’s how it is supposed to work: and it does. Here we are, being pushed farther than ever before, while the wealthy capitalists get richer faster than ever before. I think we should try to escape consumerist culture for our own well-being and the well-being of the planet: but for the plutocrats who are destroying not only our world, but also us, in their pursuit of ever greater wealth? The ones who would drive people to live on the streets? Who would exploit people’s joy, and expand and then exploit people’s suffering, for the sake of profits?

I have a different answer. And I think it will certainly improve our moods — and probably help to bring prices down, pretty damn quickly. Because it will increase the cost to those who would increase the prices without increasing the value: and who would discard our worth as human beings in the process. Because whatever worth we can find in consumer goods, and whatever worth we can find in non-consumer goods, and whatever value our exploiters find in the wealth they hoard, it is nothing to the worth of people, nothing compared to the cost of people suffering so that other people can have money.

Here it is. Ready?