Rich Man's Burden

The following is a parable, so relax and enjoy it.  

Imagine a country with eleven people in the private sector.  Ten of them are the workers, and happy, productive workers they are, or so we are assured by the government’s official news agency, the Timely Washingtonian, a non-profit established by the extremely wealthy Reverend Money.  It wasn’t always the government’s official news agency, but when you have Money’s kind of money, shit happens. 

The ten workers produce one hundred units of NW (National Wealth). They are paid five units apiece for their labor. The eleventh member of the private sector is The Boss, who is paid fifty NW, just because … Well, just because, or as the Timely Washingtonian puts it: “Because it’s Just!”

Meanwhile, the government needs a lot of money (don’t they always?), so The Boss has to pay 40% of his money in a variety of taxes, and only keeps 30 NW, while paying 20 NW in taxes.  The workers, being poorer, pay 20% of their money in various taxes, so they keep 4 NW.  And everyone is so, so happy says the Timely Washingtonian.

But not everyone is happy. The Boss is not so happy because he is paying 40% of his money in taxes.  So he helps to elect a series of corporate whores … Scratch that: statesmen, beginning with his buddy, Ronald Raygun.  The Raygun and his successors zap the workforce, taking away such things as collective bargaining.  And they organize tax reform.

Over the years the workers become more productive, and eventually they are producing two-thirds more than when they started.  The Boss explains this is all his doing, as anyone who reads the Timely Washingtonian can verify.  So he claims all of the extra NW for himself. 

Meanwhile, with the new tax reforms he pays only 30% of his total income in taxes, but he and the “statesmen” make sure that he pays a lot of “come in” tax. And they cut the “come in” tax for the workers, who should be happy but seem to be ungrateful wretches.  As it happens, as the country produces more, the government is spending more, on such things as the corporate bodyguard force.  Where will the money come from?  Well, they can’t raise taxes on The Boss, so that leaves … But, they don’t want to raise the “come in” tax on the workers, because that would defeat the propa … Sorry, it would contradict the government news.  So they increase certain taxes that the workers pay, such as the “roll pay” tax. After the reforms the workers also pay 30% of all their earnings in taxes. “That’s fair,” says The Boss. “That’s fair,” says Reverend Money. That’s fair,” says Ronald Raygun.  The workers, who weren’t consulted, and weren’t even informed, don’t say much of anything.

Now let’s do some math.  Before, The Boss made 50 NW, paid 20 NW in taxes, and kept 30 NW. The workers collectively made 50 NW, paid 10 NW, and kept 40 NW, or 4 NW each.  The government got 30 NW, and The Boss paid 67% of that.  Now that the output is 166.67 NW, The Boss gets 116.66 NW, and pays 30% of that, or 35 NW, keeping 81.67 NW.  The workers make 50 NW, and pay 30% of that or 15 NW.  They each keep 3.5 NW.

But notice, The Boss used to pay 67% of the taxes, and now he pays 70%.  This fact is duly reported in the Timely Washingtonian: “The Boss pays 70% of all taxes. The workers pay hardly any ‘income tax!’ Poor, Boss! Ungrateful workers!”

Stay tuned for more reforms to help remedy this terribly unfair situation.

Notre Dame de Puerile

“This is a tale that takes its place. In Paris fair, this year of grace.
Fourteen hundred eighty two. A tale of lust and love so true.
We are the artists of the time, we dream in sculpture dream in rhyme.
For you we bring our world alive, so something will survive.”

Are you Type A, or Type B?

A: Wow, this show might be too intellectual for me!

B: Wow, pretentious and dumb!

If you are Type A, and planning to see Notre Dame de Paris, now playing at Marina Bay Sands, I have good news. Once you make it past the opening number your worries are over.

If you are Type B, boy, have I got bad news for you!

The songs – and this is one of those shows where every word is sung – deliver the three elements Type As prize.

Rhymes: “Here in my home so high, the weather's always nice.
Where summers pass us by, we're safe from winter's ice.
Notre dame de Paris, it's my home in the sky.
Where I think about why, we must live and must die.”

Type A: Ooh, that’s slick!

Type B: Ooh, I’m sick!

Repetition: (The following begins the refrain to The Age of Cathedrals, and while the lyrics as published on the internet show it occurring only three times, I think Gringoire must have sung the song four or five times through, because I heard this line sung at least a dozen times.) “From nowhere came the age of cathedrals.”

Type A: I don’t know what that means, but is sure sounds important.

Type B: I don’t know what that means, because it sounds like gibberish.

Volume: (One of the later repetitions.) “FROM NOWHERE CAME THE AGE OF CATHEDRALS”

Type A: I told you it was important!

Type B: Why is he bellowing that line?

The show is better known for its dancers and its acrobats.  The set is a forty-foot high wall of brownish grey blocks, the wall of the cathedral.  The blocks sometimes open, as windows to the interior.  Quasimodo and the acrobats climb the face during the show.  During the opening number the acrobats, clad in brownish grey sacks emerge from the walls like gargoyles, then slither down to join the similarly clad dancers, who lie about the stage. In the second song they all rise, playing the refugees seeking asylum at Notre Dame.  From whence they came seeking refuge I cannot say, nor can the author. As near as I can tell the song was meant as a nod to our own inhospitable times, with Archbishop Frollo serving as a stand-in for modern conservatives, complete with impending sex scandal. But before he turns them away from the cathedral they dance in front of it in their brownish grey sacks.  It looked like what you’d get if the producers of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe had hired Twyla Tharp to choreograph the Rock People.

A few random comments concerning the second act …

Sitting in front of me was a young man, a very tall, gawky young man.  I was beginning to nod off when his nodding off woke me right up.  Because he was so tall, had he sprawled his arm would have been trailing across East Coast Parkway, while the ICAS would have been stopping his foot at the Woodlands Checkpoint.  To compensate he seems to have learned to curl in on himself. Body parts would begin to fold, then he would start to tip, and then he would jerk awake, only to begin folding other parts, and tipping in a different direction.  It was a bit like Stephen Hawking being tased.  Or like the choreography. 

When they get around to killing Clopin, there is a lighting effect: three large white Xs appear on the wall.  Didn’t anyone tell them this looks like a giant trying to play solitaire ticktacktoe?

They seem to have improvised the curtain call.  First, there was an uncomfortably long pause.  When the lights came up the entire cast was lined up, so perhaps they took roll call.  After bowing, they ran off, then came back on in a more traditional "chorus first, leads last" set of bows.  Then they all lined up and bowed again.  Then Gringoire came forward, and the audience quieted down for him to make his announcement, but instead he began singing, in French, just to remind us that before the show had bad English lyrics it had bad French lyrics.  Then the rest of the cast joined him to finish the song. Then they all bowed again.  Then we all went home.

The sad part is that a very talented cast was wasted.  The seven principals have wonderful voices, and the dancers and acrobats are terrific.  Despite some of the comments made above, many of the dance numbers are spectacular, as for instance the acrobats dressed as Quasimodo doppelgangers swinging from the bells during God You Made the World All Wrong.  The trouble is that while they swing from the bells, Quasimodo is singing:

“God you made the world all wrong, he's so rich; and I'm so poor.
He will make her life a song; he will give her nothing more.”

To which I offer my own version:

“God, you wrote these lyrics wrong, I hate to bitch, but they’re so poor,

You think that rhyming makes a song; you are a talentless whore.”

Giving credit where credit is due, the English lyricist is Will Jennings, the man who put the “ai-yi-yi” and the “ooh-ooh-ooh … ooh-ooh” in “I Will Always Love You.”  If you were looking for a new reason to hate him, Notre Dame de Paris will fill your need.