Full title:
The Mandibles. A Family 2029-2047. In God We Trusted.
It’s by Lionel Shriver and it’s really good.
The story centers on the four generations of an American family built on old money. In America, that just means money that was earned by someone who is already dead. In the case of the Mandibles, the money was earned pre WWI. To Europeans, that may be all that’s left but it still stinks of new money.
All that is just set up.
It’s an economics horror story, told with wit and humor.
Like One Second After, by William Fortshen, it’s a well thought out tale of ‘what if’. In One Second After, it was ‘what if we suddenly lost not only the power grid, but anything dependent on electrical wiring?’ In that book, one year after the event that fries the electronics, 80% of the nation is dead, mostly of starvation.
In this story, we keep the electronics but when the world dumps the dollar as international currency, total economic collapse follows. What exactly is ‘total economic collapse’? It’s not quite so dire as losing our power but you wouldn’t want to live through this one, either. The power stays on if you can pay the constantly skyrocketing fees. The water keeps running but it becomes more expensive every day. The real problem is food. It always comes down to food.
I guess you could say both books are studies in the fragile nature of our society and how quickly the culture reverts to barbarism when the conventional structures of society are suddenly gone.
In this novel, the first steps the government takes to attempt to shore up the national economy after the rest of the world rejects the dollar is to confiscate all the gold (historically accurate: FDR did it), make it illegal to take more than $100.00 out of the country and erase the national debt. A lot of people actually think that sounds great. The show Mr. Robot made the elimination of debt something to be desired. This story blows that hippy dippy dream out of the water. The biggest debtor in America is the federal government, at -$20,000,000,000,000.00 and counting. To get out of a hole that deep, they’re perfectly willing to erase the pensions of every person in America. When we can’t borrow money from foreign banks, the true value of a dollar is revealed as nearly bupkiss. The feds print more to cover entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, which causes inflation to skyrocket. Those essential workers who keep their jobs have salaries tied to the rate of inflation so they’re able to buy what groceries are still available as they get raises every week but they can never quite keep up with inflation.
I’ll spare you the details but the big question is this: What’s the difference between a billionaire and a homeless person when the economy collapses? The Answer is that after six months, the homeless person at least has the callouses to survive on the streets.
What makes the Mandibles easy reading is the way the family bands together to help (most of ) each other survive. There’s no sap involved. They don’t relish doing it and the complaining is realistic, loud and sometimes very funny. Their troubles cascade until they find themselves in a place they never, ever imagined they’d be…but by sticking together, they actually survive it. The story does have a good ending.
I like to think it’s a well written but far-fetched story. The problem is that I know it’s not far fetched. If the US continues to borrow at the rate of the last ten years, and IF our economic growth remains as low as it has been during that same ten years, total economic collapse by 2029 is a very real possibility. Why on earth would China continue to lend us money, knowing we’ll never be able to pay it back?
Having very little (none) faith in government’s ability to solve actual problems, I found the idea that government would do all the wrong things to address the problem very easy to buy. I lived through the ‘energy crisis’ of the 70s. I know that price controls are a politically expedient move: most of us are so economically ignorant that we think controlling prices sounds great and we lack the imagination to realize that people won’t produce if they won’t get paid what they think they’re worth. You want to see a run on toilet paper like Venezuela has experienced? Tell Charmin, Scott and Northern they can only charge 10c a roll. Within a month you won’t be able to buy toilet paper for love nor money.
Our economy is really a house of cards. It only works if everyone does their part and a huge part of capitalism is the ability to lend and borrow in good faith. If the biggest business in the world (the US federal government) acts in bad faith by borrowing with no intent to repay and printing money at will, eventually that house of cards will collapse. It’s an economic truism that what can’t continue will eventually stop.
I can just hear the Bernie supporters whining “That’s why socialism is better!”
There’s a reason why most of Bernie’s support came from kids too young to own anything.
Capitalism isn’t perfect. The reason it works is because everyone involved doesn’t have to be perfect. You make money buy providing a good or service that others choose to pay for. If no one wants what you're selling, you have to find something else to sell. But Capitalism does depend on the rule of law and by that I mean: you obey the contracts you make or suffer the legal consequences. It's very true that Capitalism can't stop the greedy and unscrupulous from stealing what they haven't earned. Capitalism does absolutely nothing about people's morals. The law (government) is supposed to exist to protect the majority from the greedy and unscrupulous. That's why it's so important that the the law (government) be held to account.
On the other hand, Socialism creates the situation where the greedy and unscrupulous can steal everything from everyone and they use the law to do it.
That’s why the zoo animals in Venezuela are gone for sandwiches.
In the beginning of The Mandibles, the university economics professor mocks his loser brother in law for wanting to start an organic farm in upstate New York. By the middle of the book, the loser brother is the only hope the family has of survival. I laughed out loud when the Econ prof got fired, indignantly protesting “You can’t fire me! I have tenure!”
Tenure, at a school with no enrollment, whose endowments have all been confiscated by the government, is worth considerably less than a peanut butter sandwich.
In a nice touch, the professor does get his two months back pay a year or so later. By then inflation is such that his two months’ pay can’t buy a week’s worth of groceries.
I found The Mandibles a highly entertaining read and I recommend it.