CSotD: Friday Short Takes
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Start with something entirely new to me: India's sudden announcement of a move to a cashless society, as criticized in this Sajith Kumar panel from Cartoon Movement, which he explains in a note there:
In India, the demonetization drive, an ambitious project by the govt to make its economy cashless and digital,has hit the poor and the unprivileged. The Prime Minister likened it to serving a strong tea (kadak Chai), he used to make as a tea seller during his younger days, which, he says the poor likes and the rich doesn't. But in reality, the poor was hit badly, as the country lacks the infrastructural-logistical wherewithal to be a cashless society at this point in time.
While that's helpful, I wanted more, so went to Google and came up with this more detailed discussion from Bloomberg.
That, in turn, reminded me of a chapter in "Lancer at Large," Francis Yeats-Brown's 1936 sequel to "Lives of a Bengal Lancer."
The book is less about army life than about his exploration of yoga and his search for a welcoming ashram, but part of his scene-setting included a discussion of marketplace vendors who, for a slight fee, exchanged crumbled, dirty bills for newer, cleaner ones.
India has changed markedly, of course, from those days, but I get the impression that the underclass continue to pass around cash not so much to create the graymarket economy India's PM wants to eliminate as because, well, that's the way it is on the street, whether or not economists in New Delhi understand it.
It is important to differentiate between this literal street-level economy and the more substantive blackmarket, and, in that Bloomberg article, reporter Mihir Sharma explains the latter:
The Indian economy is as much “informal” as it is formal — meaning that most enterprises operate under the regulatory and legal radar. They don’t have to depend on bank accounts; cash payments are the norm. An unknown — but certainly significantly large — proportion of Indian national income is thus unaccounted for. It’s perhaps as much as a fifth of India’s GDP, or more than $450 billion.
The topic would merely be a curiosity to outsiders, except that, as Sharma notes, India is not the only Asian economy looking to shift away from cash, which suggests we'll eventually get there, too, unless it turns out to be like going metric or having fast, cheap Internet access or affordable medical care.
Whatever. We stand out in our ways, and India stands out in its.
At the moment, it stands out as the only nation that has suddenly announced that it's actually happening, and not the most likely to be able to pull it off.
As Sharma notes:
India’s a far-flung economy that lives in many centuries at once, and ATM cards or mobile payments may not have percolated far enough. There will probably be a price to be paid in efficiency — and the poor will pay a disproportionate share of that price.
Winding down …
Clay Jones somewhat reluctantly adds to the "I Hate 2016" parade, but, in his essay, makes the salient point that his generation is getting to an age where, yeah, people start to die.
And it's the Gen-Xers who dominate social media, so the death of George Michael takes on a great deal more significance than perhaps it would if the Millennials, Boomers and Greatest Generation were an equal presence. (Millennials being, I think, more quick-hit Snapchat than in-depth Facebook oriented.)
Another factor is that we all seem addicted to vicarious grief.
I realize that those who saw Star Wars as kids have an obviously stronger attachment to Carrie Fisher than the parents who took them to the movies do, just as they cared more about Prince than those who had stopped keeping up with rock by then and bought them Walkmen for just that reason.
But now we are being inundated with cartoons of a new angel in a yellow slicker with an umbrella, an outfit she wore in a film 65 years ago, damn near before I was born and long before they were.
Yes, it's sad that she died a day after her daughter. I get that.
But weep for that, not for someone you barely knew.
Where, after all, are the Molly Brown cartoons? Where are the Tammy tributes? "Charlotte's Web"? "Rugrats"?
If all you know of her is "Singin in the Rain," you're faking it.
Generational Juxtaposition of the Day
Speaking of generationally specific cultural references, I don't think a lot of Millennials, and perhaps not all that many Gen-Xers, can identify with the joke that says an intellectual is someone who can listen to "The William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger.
And fewer people will get why I've juxtaposed the two comics except those old enough to have completely lost focus in the first panel of Dogs of C Kennel and begun thinking:
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man,
I live in a garbage can,
I like to go swimmin'
With bare-naked* wimmin,
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man!
*("bow-legged" if your parents were within hearing)
Not to be confused with the alternate version:
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man,
I live in a frying pan,
I turn up the gas
And burn off my ass,*
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man!
*(not to be sung at all anywhere near your parents)
The first earworm there, the Lone Ranger one, was intentional.
Pretty sure the second one was an accident and only struck Boomers. Or perhaps only me.
I'll still walk around with the damn thing in my head for the rest of the day.
Kieran Meehan sticks in athomb
While all the other cartoonists are crying in their beer over the year just passing, Pros and Cons looks to the future with the attitude we need, dammit.
Go thou and do likewise.
Somewhere in here is tomorrow night's moment of zen
(Now we've all got earworms; My work here is done.)
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