Back on the treadmill

"In short, getting out of bed in the morning and making breakfast involves more complex decisions than the average game of chess."

- Naked Economics

I read this sentence while I was waiting to get my hair cut. The guy who cuts my hair is from Iraq. He charges $15. There were three people ahead of me, and nobody after me. That means he made $60 and worked about one hour. There will be other customers in the day, but I would say the morning rush was over. I wonder what the rent on his place is? It can't be much because it's a single, small room at the far end of Newtown, right down near the zoo, but still, it must be something. Then there must be the rent on his flat, and power, and food on the table and all that.

I have to teach my Year 10 students about economics next term so I am reading about it. This is sort of interesting, and sort of annoying. The first book I read was Freakonomics. It was a book that perfectly captured the interesting/annoying feeling for me. It's interesting to hear their theories, and it's annoying that they're so frigging confident that they're right. It's an imperial thing. Sorry to be tangental, but I am also watching a documentary about the British empire and I noticed how all the soldiers in the old photos look cocksure in their swishy uniforms. Nowadays when you think of a British soldier you think drab, or dowdy or brown. It comes through in the writing too. The Undercover Economist (British) is so much more prudently written, more hedging and helpful. Freakonomics is brash. America is the current imperial power.

The quote at the beginning of this post made me think that you can only really understand this sentence if you are all grown up. If I had read this book when I was a teenager or at university I wouldn't really have understood it. He's talking about weighing up the costs of doing things. Not the monetary cost alone, but the social costs and what not, even the cost in your head of having a big fry up for brekkie against your age, the death of someone about your age in the morning paper, and the health warning on the packet about cholesterol. Cost. While I am here typing this I am thinking about how I need to wash the car, attend to the lawn, sweep the floor, and pick up E. at 12.30. When I was a teenager my mother's labour allowed me to laze around and believe I had problems. Ha!

When it was my turn for a haircut I noticed a picture of two boys stuck to the hairdresser's mirror; one boy was probably about three and the other about one. They looked like Dad. I suppose his children are playing out in the sun this morning, or helping mum with the housework, or with family while mum works and wondering where dad is. E is running around at creche getting her clothes dirty and playing with Tom. For them there is also a cost. It's a cost they do not see. It is our turn now to labour so that they can be free.