The Battle of the Budget Begins

A few weeks ago, President Obama discussed and answered questions about his budget proposal, arguing that it will move the economy towards recovery and growth.  The goals make sense: get people back to work and get the banks lending again.  Although most people understand that you have to spend a little money in order to make a little money, there are some politicians who want to play the “debt card.”  They claim that spending billions of tax dollars on things like public works and, yes, bank “bailouts” are unfair to both the taxpayer and the taxpayer’s children.  But who is this taxpayer?  Who in America doesn’t need banks, healthcare, and schools?  Generating a large national debt is most likely a sacrifice that we must make at this time, more so than at any other in recent history.  It will certainly anger our imaginary taxpayer—an individual so disconnected from the political and social fabric of American society that he or she seems to be living “offshore,” perhaps running a corrupt investment bank and hoping to avoid the end of Bush’s tax cuts—but it’s a sacrifice that we all make for the good of everyone.

We know the creators of this imaginary taxpayer will be theatrically angered by such progressive policies, but will President Obama’s economic plan anger hip hop too?  Mainstream hip hoppers definitely seem to live a life apart from mainstream society, in their private jets and yachts.  They might not enjoy handing over more of their hard-earned scrilla anymore than Dick Cheney would…

"(Ay, who I be?) Rubber band man, Wild as the Taliban, 9 in my right 45 in my other hand. (who I'm is?) Call me trouble man, always in trouble man, worth a couple hundred grand, Chevys all colors man"

Indeed, mainstream hip hop seems to be obsessed with the private accumulation of wealth.  50 Cent claims that he’s not investing any of his money in public companies, but instead going “straight to the bank” with his cheese (hopefully to an FDIC insured bank).  Lil’ Wayne needs a Win-Dixey grocery bag to carry around his pocket Benjamins.  Jay-Z loves to remind us of how he came from the bottom of the block to the top of the charts, accumulating as much lettuce as he could along the way.  Scrilla, cheddar, gouda, any type of cheese, Benjamins, lettuce, dough, stacks, cake.  For a music genre that is obsessed with being “real,” it is odd to see how much hip hop likes to see money in the abstract.  But maybe seeing money in the abstract (using mostly metaphors of food, oddly enough) is more reflective of recent financial reality than seeing it as some concrete material.  Most of the people who got us into our current financial crisis have had a similar conception of money.  Derivatives, speculation, loan swaps.  Somehow the people holding most of the money in the world, the policy makers who aided their disastrous financial “recipes,” and most of the uninformed public embraced abstract conceptions of money—readily edible representations of money that suggested that dollars were indeed like seeds and trees, like so many ingredients to be used to magically bake up a financially sound future.

Break that bread, chop that lettuce, bake that cake, cut that cheese

However, most of us are now changing our conceptions of money.  Instead of enjoying the careless comfort of edible metaphors, we are now seeing money as the most inedible of substances: paper.  Maybe it’s the paper that shows how much money is in your bank account or mutual fund.  Maybe it’s the electronic and tree-made paper that held information regarding ill-advised loan-swaps and uncontrolled speculative gambling.  Maybe it’s just the paper that we try to keep in our wallets in order to pay rent and buy food.  Regardless, we’re all confronting the paper trail that has been piling up around us over the past decade of deregulation, accelerating global trade, and two expensive wars.

"Stacks on deck," better get some "Petron on ice"

The confusion of the paper trail might have helped cause the problem, but unraveling the paper trail will inevitably be a part of the solution.  In order to get out of this economic crisis, we’re gonna have to read through the paper, understand it, and write policies that prevent us from authoring another crisis.  Although T.I.’s latest album Paper Trail most obviously is a self-reflective work that showcases T.I. pondering the motivations, causes, and effects of his illegal gun purchases, it also has some lessons for how America can remedy the consequences of its own paper trail.

In the context of T.I.’s album, the metaphor “paper trail” has many meanings.  It refers to the stacks of paper upon which he penned his lyrics while under house-arrest.  It refers to the consequences of all the paper, or money, that he gained and spent under the eyes of the public.  It refers to the lack of paper documents that made T.I.’s weapons purchase illegal.  It refers to the court documents that coldly silenced the context that surrounded T.I.’s crime, arrest, and trial.  It refers to the document that proclaimed T.I. should be put in jail for a year and a day.  It refers to how all these forms of “paper,” or lack thereof, have constituted T.I.’s identity, as suggested by the album’s cover art.  When these metaphors converge, we see “paper trail” as being a juxtaposition of money, fame, personal reflection, conflicting narratives, and consequences.  T.I.’s paper trail shares all the meanings of America’s paper trail.  Let’s continue along this thread tomorrow. (Part 3.2 Here)