Basic Harmony - Illustration: Puff

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As I was writing the previous post, I saw how difficult it was to explain matters of notation and terminology in addition to the elements of harmony purely by visual means.  (It's amazing that this was how it was done, for the most part, for many, many years, in many many places.  As a result, the few musicians who survived this training were more mathematicians than musicians.  The rest of them were taught at the keyboard, or in other words, using musical examples at every step.)

What I'm going to do is to illustrate as many of the basic ideas of harmony I have already begun to explain using this one example of Puff, the Magic Dragon.

First of all, here's (1) the basic tune, with (2) the chords below it, and (3) a simple bass line under everything else.  Luckily, it fits on a single page.  For this first little movie clip, I spent most of the time implementing the "bouncing ball" method, to keep your eye on the point of the score that's sounding.  Already, there is a compromise: I have to choose a key, that is, a set of notes that we are going to use, and these sets are named for the starting note of the scale, in this case C.  In C major, the chords used are I (C major chord), II (D minor chord), III (E minor chord), IV (F major chord), V (G major chord), VI (A minor chord), and VII (B diminished chord, which doesn't get used in this song).  All the chords (except VII) are used in this song, so I haven't bothered to give you a picture showing them all.  Here it is.  (Reduce the volume of your speakers, just in case):

(As you see, moving the arrow along is so much work that I gave up after the first few lines.)

I'm going to do two slight changes immediately, because it sounds so dull:
First, I'm going to change the II chord that appears here to the #II chord, which means that it is really a chord imported from another key (in this case, chord V of G major).  It is very common to "travel to" other keys in the course of a piece, and this song briefly visits G major just here, and returns right away to C.
Secondly, I'm going to change the notes of the bass line to introduce a little rhythmic variation, since we're not going to have any percussion playing along.  (I'm going to hold back from "strumming" the chords, until I have them the way I want them.)  There is a little hiccup in the bass right at the second measure, and I guess I'll remove that presently.  Anyway, here it is:


(It's now a clarinet playing the melody, but I forgot to indicate that in the score.)

The next step is important.  Many of my friends to whom I've explained most of this took a little while to get this into their heads.

One of the traditional values of harmony is to make the separate lines of the chords as smooth as possible, in other words, to have as few skips as possible, and even those as small as possible.  This comes from the aspect of harmony that is called counterpoint--the skill of writing chords so that each part is a melody that is independent and pleasing in its own right.  We use the word 'part' here imagining that the chord is actually sounded by three people (or three instruments) each playing one of the notes.  One instrument plays (or is imagined to play) the top note in each chord, the next instrument plays the middle note, and a third instrument plays the lowest note.

The first two chords are I and III, and at present we have the three parts of the harmony all skipping up two notes from one chord to the next.  So what we have is

1 - 3 - 5

3 - 5 - 7.

When you read this, each line is one chord, and going down the first column you have the notes "sung" by the lowest part, down the second column the middle part, and along the third column, the highest part.

With the understanding that 1 and 8 are essentially the same note (octaves), and 2 and 9 are 'identical', and so forth, an alternative is

3 - 5 - 8

3 - 5 - 7,

making use of the fact that 8 is just as good as 1.  This is so smooth that only one of the three parts moves at all!  (We have to build in an occasional skip just to make sure that the parts don't wander higher and higher, or lower and lower, out of their voice ranges entirely.)

Let's include the third and fourth chords in our study of smooth parts.  The first four chords are I, III, IV, I.  The smoothest choices I can think of are below.  Another important classical principle is to avoid parallel octaves and fifths, that is if the 'interval' between two parts in one chord are either 8 (octave) or 5 (fifth), we want to avoid the same interval in the very next chord.  (Of course, a guitar playing so-called "power chords" blithely violate this principle, but good counterpoint is not high on the list of considerations in popular music, and that's appropriate. Sometimes, there is reasonably good counterpoint in pop/Rock; e.g. "You're going to lose that girl" by the Beatles.)  This has an impact on what we do between III and IV.

3 - 5 - 8

3 - 5 - 7

1 - 4 - 6

1 - 3 - 5.

Well, we have unavoidable 'drifted' downwards; but in the next few chords we can drift back up again.  But the important thing is that, even when we rearrange the notes of our triads to obtain smoothness, we use the same three notes.

The next clips shows the parts completed smoothly all the way to the end.  To emphasize how smooth the parts are, we've used "choir Ahs" as the sound for the chords, while a clarinet is playing the melody.  I also couldn't resist adding what the software calls 'swing' to the music, where the rhythm is jazzed up slightly.  With this effect, we almost don't need to make the chords repeat, that is, we don't need a strumming effect.

Basic Harmony

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Traditional Western music is inspired by harmony, which most of us think of as the "chords" which go with the melodies in our music.  If you ever learned to play the guitar, you learned the chords that you played while singing a song, so that you actually learned a very clear-cut, rather oversimplified view of what harmony is.

The chords that most young guitarists learn are about 15 or 20 in number (ignoring variations of the same chord played using different positions on the fretboard).  In rock music, in particular, the bass note of the chord is usually played on an entirely separate instrument (the electric bass guitar), so that the lowest note in a chord you strum is actually not really important, since the bass guitar plays an even lower note.  But in classical harmony, the bass note is actually rather a big deal.  In this post we're going to only look at the basics, and we're going to worry about additional details some other time.

When you learn guitar chords, you must learn a song differently depending on whether you have a high or a low voice.  For instance if you have a high voice, you might play a song "in C," which means you have to use the chords C, G, F, A minor, and so on.  But if that's too high for you, you might play the song "in A," which means you have to use the chords A, E, D, F Sharp minor, and so on instead.  To the guitar student, therefore, it seems as though you have to learn a whole different ballgame depending on whether you want to sing the song at one pitch or a slightly different pitch, without cheating by using a Capo.  In classical music theory, they don't worry about all this!  They use a relative method of chord notation that's almost like Do-Re-Mi, which is a relative method of describing tunes.

Whatever pitch you're going to be singing in, there is the Tonic note, the note for which the key is named, also called "Do".  (The "Do-Re-Mi" system is called Tonic Sol-Fa, if you didn't know already.)  Let's number the notes, using 1 for the tonic note, 2 for the next note (called the supertonic, but we're not going to use any more of those names), 3 for the next note, and so on, until we get to 8, which we could call 1 again, since it is just the same note as 1, only an octave higher.  This identification of note 8 with note 1 is sometimes convenient, othertimes not, so be ready to use 9 instead of 2, 10 instead of 3, and so forth.

The chord I = [1-3-5]
The main chord of the key is the Tonic triad, which consists of the notes 1, 3 and 5 sounded together.  You can add 8, 10 and 12, but you realize this is simply harmonic duplication, since they're the notes 1-3-5, only an octave higher.  So we're going to say that the chord consists of just 1-3-5, though additional octaves are understood to be allowed.

The chord II = [2-4-6]
This second chord is by no means the second most important chord, but importance is relative, but sequence is absolute, and there's no denying that this is the easiest chord to describe next.

At this point, it might make sense for you to take a second and get to a piano.  The best key on which to experiment is C major, which has no black keys at all.  To get I, you play C, E, G.  If you need help locating these notes, here is a Wikipedia diagram to help you:

To play II, you just play D, F, A.  As you can see, you get this chord by moving each note of the chord I one note upwards.  (Note: These two chords are played this way only for C major.  If your tune needs to be sung at a higher pitch, for instance, you might need to switch to another key, which is used here in the sense of set of notes.)

The chord III = [3-5-7]
By now you're getting the idea.  The third chord, also a triad, is played by shifting the previous chord up by one note.

The chords IV, V, VI and VII
these are all obtained exactly the same way: you shift the notes up, one note at a time.  All the chords should sound fairly familiar: major triads or minor triads, except for the last one, VII, which is a little different (and used more rarely), and is called a diminished triad.

The amazing thing is that most simple melodies can be harmonized using just these seven chords, and sometimes just 3 or 4 of them.  Of course, as you might expect, the harmony can be made richer and more satisfying by using additional chords.  But the fact remains: these are the chords to start with.

A common campfire song goes like this:

Oh the more we are together, together, together,
Oh the more we are together, the merrier we'll be!
For your friend is my friend, and my friend is your friend,
And your friend is their friend, and their friend is me!

Now, using the chords described above, and in any key: C, or G, or F, it doesn't matter, the chords, or the harmony can be described using the chords I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII as follows:

Oh the (V) more we are to-(I) gether, to- (V) gether, to-(I) gether,
Oh the (V) more we are to- (I) gether, the (V) merrier we'll  (I) be!
For (V) your friend is (I) my friend, and (V) my friend is (I) your friend,
And  (V) your friend is (I) their friend, and (V) their friend is (I) me!

(Ideally we should have the chords on a line by themselves, so that we can write the chord and the syllable one under the other, but this is good enough.  As you can see, we're getting away with just two chords, and the harmony is, honestly, a little dull.  A slight variation is to use VI instead of I at least once in line 3, but using I is really very satisfying.  (The song is also sung to the words Ach, du lieber Augustin.)

Puff the Magic Dragon, popularized by Peter, Paul and Mary, uses a few more interesting chords.  You might not be satisfied with this choice of harmony, in which case you're welcome to expand your repertoire as you like!

(I) Puff the magic (III) dragon,
(IV) lived by the (I) sea,
And (IV) frolicked in the (I) autumn (VI) mist
In the (II) land of Hon-A- (V) Lee
(VI) Little Jackie (III) Paper
(IV) loved that rascal (I) Puff,
And (V) brought him ships and (I) sealing (VI) wax,
and (IV) other (V) fancy (I) stuff!

You can sing this song without much trouble in C major, in which case
the chord I represents the C major triad,
the chord II represents D minor,
III represents E minor,
IV represents F major,
V represents G major, and
VI represents A minor.

A significant improvement would be to use D major instead of D minor.  Why is this?  D major uses a note that does not belong to C major at all, but rather to G major.  The harmony leaves C major to dwell in G major briefly, though the tune appears to remain in C major.  The note of C belongs to seven different keys, and with a little experience you can tell which of these keys the melody is actually in, or in which you want to consider it to be, and the harmony will be flavored accordingly.  (You could go completely bananas and consider the melody to hop over to A Flat major for that one note, but unfortunately your audience might walk out on you.)

The I, II, III notation is not well equipped to deal with travels into other (related) keys, unfortunately.  The usual approach is to indicate which key you've arrived in (such as, in this case, G major), and then use the chord as it would be written in that key.  For G major, the [D-F Sharp-A] chord is actually [5-7-9], which is V, which is followed by the chord [G-B-D], which is I is G major.  Then the tune returns to C.  So the system I have described is perfectly serviceable provided you do not leave the home key.

If the reader is interested, he or she can study up the so-called chords of the seventh.  There are seven of these as well:

I7 = [1-3-5-7]
II7 = [2-4-6-8]
III7 = [3-5-7-9]
IV7 = [4-6-8-10]
V7 = [5-7-9-11]
VI7 = [6-8-10-12]
VII7 = [7-9-11-13]

All of these will be familiar to most readers.  In a piano or orchestral piece the notes will get rearranged to give the best effect, of course; it is rare to have them sound in this particular arrangement (called closed position), and as was said earlier, the bass note is a huge deal, and is chosen very carefully.

V7 is by far the most familiar of these seventh chords, but the others are far from being uncommon.  Surprisingly, the last one, VII7, is the chord you get when you play a harmonica by sucking in your breath.  (It is also featured prominently in a number from The Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky, which you have probably heard not too long ago.)

I hope this gets you started on your inquiries into how harmony works; you don't need to learn a million different chords, but just the various chords based on triads and sevenths, on the seven so-called degrees of the scale, 1, 2, 3, ... , 7.

Important Note: as you should have noticed, the chords I, II, III, ... and so on, are a major chord, a minor chord, another minor chord, then two major chords, and so on.  If your key happens to be a minor key, then I is a minor chord, II is a diminished chord, III is major chord, IV is a minor chord, V is usually altered to be a major chord, VI is major, and VII is diminished.  The chords of the seventh (that is, [1-3-5-7] and so on) are even more complicated, and students are not taken through the harmony of minor keys until they're unlikely to be confused by the details of chromatic notes, which is a reference to extra sharps and flats that are used in minor keys.

Arch, going to bed.

Music of the Christmas Season -Repost of an entry from 2008

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[The following is a re-post of what I blogged back in 2008, before most of you readers were aware of this blog.  The subject-matter is still relevant, since the same carols are enjoyed every year!]

All the music that floods the air during the season (especially the shopping season, gotta love it) brings out strong reactions from listeners, usually bad reactions. 

Let me start at the beginning. As a child, my earliest Christmas memories were the most common carols and hymns:

• Adeste Fideles (“O come all ye faithful”, from a medieval Latin poem, evidently by a British monk during the Roman occupation);

• Stille Nacht, hurriedly composed by Francis Grüber one night when the organ was out of commission, and they had to have carols accompanied by a guitar;

• “Ding dong merrily on high”, played on our ancient His Master’s Voice gramophone (phonograph). [Note: “Ding dong merrily on high” is sung to a French tune, Branslé Officiél.] 

There were also local carols, hardly ever heard outside a 100-mile radius of where I grew up. As I grew older, I found myself participating in actually singing these carols, and since my mother was the local musical impressario, I began to learn unusual carols, taken from the pre-eminent scholarly carol book of the time: The Oxford Book of Carols, edited by the venerable Martin Shaw. To this day, some of those carols remain relatively unknown, and as such the book remains an excellent source for ‘new’ carols. 

Eventually I got old enough to sing in the school choir, and I came under the influence of the celebrated carol festival of King’s College, Cambridge. This influence, felt throughout the Episcopal Church, had both good and bad consequences: the use of boy trebles and male altos, the use of the organ to accompany everything, the use of Victorian harmonies, and a strict metrization of the carols, and the canonical nine readings from the Bible. The choir was moderately small, consisting of sixteen trebles, and about four each of the other parts. The director of the choir for many years had been Sir David Willcocks, and his personal influence over the Christmas Carol Industry has been enormous.
The next, and final, step for me was to be given responsibility for an entire service of carols. I became interested in where the carols came from. They were medieval Christmas dances, for the most part, since Christmas had replaced the ancient midwinter festivals that kept up the spirits of the dwellers in northern climes during the dark, dismal days of December.  (Say that ten times real fast.) 

Romanticism has many aspects; two of these are exoticism and eroticism. Though in common parlance, the word romance is most often understood in its erotic sense (romance novels, etc), the exotic aspects of romanticism is almost as important (e.g. Orientalism, Science Fiction, Egyptology.) Thus, carols fascinate us especially if they are from ancient times (remoteness in time) and from far away (the East, South America), or unusual in some way (Latin rhythms, calypso) or accompanied by unusual instruments. (For instance, consider “Mary’s boy child,” made popular by Harry Belafonte, and Nina and Frederik.) So when people look for variety in Christmas music, they look at these alternatives, since the spirit of romanticism is complementary to the nostalgia of Christmas. 

This post has been influenced by my friend Ileana, who wrote to me deploring the fact that most stores and radio stations keep playing the same songs, until they sound too hacked to be tolerable. The ‘variety’ offerings in the CD market are very dull, and unavoidably so, since the variety offered is relative to the compiler, and, most of all, constrained by the necessity to be marketable.  This means that the contents of the CD must appeal to the widest possible audience, which in turn means that they must be dull, by definition. Dullness in taste is apparently a survival trait in the human species. (The individual who survives to propagate his/her genes is the one who has not been bored to death before he or she can do the propagation.) Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a Christmas collection that one could play through the season, through the quiet hours before midnight of Christmas Eve, to the first few carols of Christmas Day itself, and more lighthearted songs for later in the season? I would like to see a collection along these lines: 

(1) Traditional hymns tastefully performed: O little town of Bethlehem, O come all ye faithful, Brightest and best of the suns of the morning, etc. And let’s not forget Quem Pastores Laudavere. (A slightly more renaissance-sounding version is here.)
(2) Traditional French carols, e.g. Il est né le divin Enfant. Charpentier has immortalized several of these in his Midnight Mass for Christmas.
(3) Traditional German carols: Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (sung here by the choir of the same St Thomas’s Church School at which Bach worked when he was alive); Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (the clip is of an elaborate setting by Bach, his opus No. 1, movement 1.); Vom Himmel hoch; as well as chorales made famous by Bach: In dulci jubilo, Break forth o beautious heavenly light; modern German and German-Swiss and German-Austrian carols, including Silent Night (Stille Nacht), and German versions of lovely Latin carols: O du fröhliche, o du selige; etc.
(4) Medieval English carols: Lully lulla, thou little tiny child; He came all so still; Lullay myn lyking; ...
(5) Medieval Basque, Catalonian, Spanish and Portuguese carols.
(6) Carols from the Middle East, and Eastern Europe: the Cuckoo Carol, the Zither Carol.
(7) Modern carols from other lands, tastefully selected. An example is Arirang, a carol created by Malcolm Sargent from a Korean Lullaby, and Ariva-rararo, a carol in a collection by D.T. Niles, from a Tamil lullaby. Cantique de Noel, by Adolphe Adam (sung by Joan Baez), (sung by Roberto Alagna).
(8) Modern English carols, e.g. The Little Road to Bethlehem (Michael Head), one of my favorites. Another lovely arrangement is by R. R. Terry, of Myn Lyking, with a string accompaniment by John Rutter.
(9) Last, but not least, Celtic carols, and carols of Ireland. Searching for an Irish carol, I stumbled upon the Cherry Tree Carol, which I had always thought of as English, but what do I know? 

A merry Christmas, a happy holiday season to all my readers, and any others who happen to stumble upon these pages! 

Arch, blissfully listening to Schlafe, mein Liebster

A private response to public tragedy

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Friends:

I don't want to comment excessively on the emotional public response to Friday's killings in Connecticut (2012-12-14); sincere grief and empathy is healthy, and it would be inhuman to deny its expression.

But the frequency of this type of impersonal murder spree is rising, and how can we continue to respond with sincere grief if we immerse ourselves in these tragedies?  We will inevitably become inured to the pain of others, and over the years our response will become cynical.

I am determined to try and respond to this sort of impersonal mass-murders at a level that is inversely proportional to my distance from the incident.  I would take note of a killing spree in Arizona or Colorado, but I will try not to investigate the circumstances too deeply.  Connecticut is next door, and I cannot avoid reacting to it more intensely.  I do not envy Barack Obama, who must speak words of comfort on every such occasion; his first response was admirable.  But at a prayer vigil held for the victims, he ventured into religious mumbo-jumbo about the prize of immortality.

Some writers have speculated that the media attention to the perpetrators is an incentive to mentally unbalanced individuals to try to top the violence they see in the news with a violent show of their own.  Disasters and controversy is gold to the media, and they're never going to give it up.  A borderline insane person cannot be dissuaded from a violent deed by arguments or laws; it must be by hindering his or her access to murder weapons.  (Notice that few of these murderers are women.  I almost fear to mention the fact, in case the trend reverses.)

The preciousness of life is a concept extended from the value we place on our loved ones.  As we grow older, we appreciate the lives and the talents and the company of people, especially young people, less closely connected to us.  A young couple values their children far more than the children of their neighbors.  But as time goes on, they absorb more people and kids into their circle of concern.  It is inevitable; it is in our genes; the most intelligent of us are most delighted by the people around us (even if some of us shrink from prolonged, intense contact on occasion).  This is a major tool that Darwin has given the Human Race, that we're ultimately in favor of the progress and achievements of not just our families, but our neighbors, our State, our Nation, and all nations.

But I just can't grieve at the same level for all such crimes.  I will knit the information into my scarf, like Madame Defarge, and continue to work.

The time to love the perpetrator (but hate the crime) is before the crime is committed.  To lock away your firearms, to stop abusing young people, (many victims of abuse, I believe, turn into homicidal maniacs, but I could be wrong), and to address all issues that could lead to this type of insanity: avoiding drug, tobacco and alcohol abuse, thoughtful child-rearing, family life, these are all ways that give potential homicides a different path.

Too long we have depended on the fairy-tales of religion to keep kids comforted and focused on "The Good Life."   But we can't go back to Religion with a cynical attitude, no matter how admirable the reason.  We must work harder to give meaning to young people, if it is the perceived meaninglessness of life that incites them to violence.  There is no special meaning to Life: I think the point is to be of service to whatever extent it is possible, and to delight in the bounty of what we still have to enjoy, and the opportunities to draw the attention of our friends to it; what else is there?  We're slowly killing the Planet, but it refuses to die, and continues to support life beyond all expectations!  If we show them the good things that there are, that will give them time to discover the bad things for themselves when they're ready for them!

Arch

Soup Kitchen: A Fabulous Old Idea

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Waldmüller (1793-1865) : "The Soup Kitchen"

The Plutocrat Sector in the US, and economically upwardly-mobile people in the USA are pressuring the American government at all levels to get out of the charity business.  They see all the social safety-net system put in place over the last century as essentially State-Financed Charity, and they insist that this business should be outsourced to religious organizations and churches.

They would like nothing better than to increase the influence of churches, simply because they believe that crime and vagrancy of all sorts is due to godlessness.  If only it were so simple!  True, feeble-minded folks are likely to toe the line for fear of divine retribution, but unfortunately the criminal classes are getting as smart as the rest of us (which probably means: not very,) and they see that religion is a fiction.

A soup kitchen in Chile, 1932

In the wake of the Great American Depression of the 30's, a wonderful idea was put into practice: the Soup Kitchen.  It went as follows:
The organizers begged or bought food at wholesale prices, got volunteers to turn the food into soup at various central locations, using equipment and locations given for charity, and proceeded to feed a vast number of impoverished individuals with soup.  You got essentially a couple of bowlfuls for free, and I think you were allowed to buy additional bowlfuls for a nominal cost.  The cooking, the serving, and the cleaning-up was all done by volunteers.  The Wikipedia article on the institution of the Soup Kitchen is very brief, and provides essentially the information given above, adding that in 1985 it was discovered that a sample of men who ate at a soup kitchen were found to have vitamin deficiencies.

Navy volunteers in California

Today, the knowledge about soup kitchens is confined only to those who have to get their meals there: usually unemployed or marginally employed workers, and the homeless.  In the last years of the 19th century, young people from well-to-do families often volunteered at soup kitchens, and it was considered quite an acceptable place in which to be seen, either volunteering in one, or getting a meal at one.  Today, a soup kitchen appears to be a place to be generally avoided by fashionable young people.  Our school has a variety of places in which the undergraduates can earn public service "credits", but I haven't noticed soup kitchens among them.  There is a Shepherd of the Streets program here, which was very energetic in the 1990's, when homelessness was a big problem in our town, but money seems to have dried up for it, along with the general level of affluence of the place.

It seems to me that a Soup Kitchen need not be a dismal, dreary place at all.  Nor need the food provided there be nutritionally deficient.  Of course, our young people would prefer to eat Pizza all the time, but it seems reasonable that those who manage a soup kitchen can provide nutritious, perfectly yummy soups or stews in a reasonably cheery atmosphere for relatively little cost.

A soup manufacturer has taken the initiative to provide a supply structure for soup kitchens.  Even if the motive if profit, still it is helpful to have someone do the head-work for the food end of such an operation, provided the product is nutritious and flavorful.  I know for a fact that flavorful, nutritious soup exists, because we had some just yesterday. 

Everyone should eat in a soup kitchen once in a while, even if for the simple reason that if we ever find ourselves needing to eat at one, we will know the ropes, and the location.  Working at a soup kitchen need not be a drudgery.  When we were working on the Obama Campaign, we were often offered meals at the campaign headquarters, and some of the poorer volunteers welcomed the food with pleasure.  The food was provided by one of the leading restaurants in town, and it seemed a great pity to have it come to a screeching halt when the election was over.

Working at the campaign headquarters was quite an education.  Many of the denizens were those I would not normally choose to socialize with, I suppose, and I was initially nervous going there.  But over the weeks I got to know the people, and got attuned to their sense of humor, and their odd habits and styles.  [It struck me that non-Democrats who read this paragraph might be amazed at the fact that Democrat volunteers worked for little reward ---outside of electing their candidate, that is--- except for a meager meal.  It also struck me that it would probably take a great deal more incentive to get the "other 53%" to volunteer to work at a GOP campaign headquarters; certainly soup wouldn't cut it ...]

At first some of the little kids who accompanied their mothers were rambunctious and noisy.  Over the weeks, as they became familiar with the place, they quietened down, and regarded the strangers volunteering there with friendlier faces.  It seemed to me that meeting all sorts of people regularly was good for all of us.  We opened our home to two sets of people, on two occasions, and the second time, we found it easier.

I plan to look into the Soup Kitchen phenomenon, and report on a later occasion.  For the moment, I just want to remind my readers of the idea, just to begin a conversation about the possibilities.

[I really love Waldmueller's art (at the top); the expressions on the faces are just glowing!  The mood seems very markedly celebratory, and the children seem very rosy-cheeked and well-fed, if ill-clothed.  This is obviously an artist who liked children.]

Arch

Fiscal Cliff, and Other Strange Tales

Introduction

I was curious to find out exactly what this Fiscal Cliff was, and I thought I may as well put the information here.  This is going to be from the viewpoint of a skeptic, since I don’t believe the Economists know what they are talking about, and in any case I believe that the ostensibly impersonal “market forces” that make predictions possible from the point of view of Economics can be subverted by investors (that is, Wall Street,) who may be motivated by politics, even if they are ultimately motivated by self-interest.

History

During one of these periodic wrangles between the two parties, the two houses and the White House over the Budget, Congress (bouncing off a recent election, at the time) refused to compromise, and all parties agreed that if a budget that was “balanced” according to certain criteria was not passed by such-and-such a date, taxes would go up, and various items in Federal spending would be drastically cut.

What the Actual Cliff Is

The website here <http://www.cfr.org/economics/fiscal-cliff/p28757> describes the situation and the cluster of automatic actions that comprise the Fiscal Cliff this way:

Tax Increases:

1. The Bush Tax Cuts will end.  This collection of tax cuts that were enacted between 2001 and 2010 will expire, and personal income taxes will go up.  The taxes at the highest tax rate go up a little less than 5 percentage points (from 35% as it is now, to 39.6%), and the Alternate Minimum Tax will automatically apply to a large category of people.

2. The Social Security Tax Holiday will expire, and the SS tax rate goes up from 4.2% to 6.2%.  (As someone who expects to retire within ten years, I’m totally in favor of this rate going up.  You young people think you’re never going to retire.  That’s funny.  Some kids think they will be able to entirely finance their own retirement years.  Wrong.)

3. Other Provisions: some tax credits for research and experiment will expire.

4. New taxes that pay for Obamacare will go into effect for high income earners.

Spending Cuts:

5. A whole collection of programs will get spending cuts, half of them from Defense, the other half from non-Defense programs.

6. Eligibility to start receiving unemployment benefits will stop at the end of this year.  (I’m not sure I completely understand this item; it sounds like people just getting laid off can’t apply for Federal unemployment benefits, but there’s probably more to it than meets the eye.  While I’m strongly in favor of unemployment benefits in general, I think we need to re-think the eligibility requirements, how the benefit cut in and cut out, and exactly what they are.)

7. The so-called “Doc Fix”, which increased the payment doctors received for giving Medicare services will expire, and doctors will get paid less (by Medicare).

Why it is such a Big Deal

First of all, one of the big points of contention between the two parties is just how much the Federal Government should be allowed to outspend its income, called the Debt Ceiling.  Congress has passed a law that says this cannot exceed  $16.4 Trillion.  But in an unprecedented move, Congress declared, two years ago, that it would not honor debts in excess of this limit. This caused the Credit Rating agencies (Standard and Poor’s, for one) to downgrade the credit rating of the US Government.  Such an intention to default is reasonable from one point of view (since otherwise the various offices of the Government do not take their budget limits seriously), but in some other ways, it is silly, since it has dire repercussions in terms of interest rates and the economics of world trade.  Setting itself up as the unofficial Printer of Money for the Universe, as the US presently is, has consequences; and if we start getting silly about our obligations to our creditors, the currency markets will take action to base their currencies on Yens, or whatever.  This isn’t necessarily bad, but we won’t like it.

Secondly, the tax increases will, according to practically everyone, lead to a recession, and unemployment will go up beyond 9% once again, at least for six months.  As an Economics atheist, I don’t believe this has to happen, but all it will take is for a few major businesses to lay off a large number of employees, e.g. Wal-Mart.  In the first place, Wal-Mart isn’t such a wonderful place in which to work.  But people work there not because they like it, but because there is absolutely no alternative.  If these people are laid off, they will all be looking for jobs, and that will make it harder for everyone to get new employment.  Wal-Mart is legendary as a terrible employer.  But, despite their Black Friday misadventures, if Wal-Mart makes huge amounts of money, they will be reluctant to fire their workers; if they do not make a lot of money this holiday season, the last thing they will want to do is to scale down.

The interesting thing is not what the Mysterious Market Forces will do, it is what the not-so-mysterious leaders of Congress will do from fear of the Mysterious Market Forces, or out of sheer spite.

What could happen

One possibility is that a compromise (“a deal”) will be negotiated between President Obama and the Congressional Democrats, on one side, and John Boehner and the Congressional Republicans on the other, and taxes will be raised a little, and spending cut a little.

Obama has offered to raise taxes only on the highest incomes, and on certain types of income that usually does not apply to those earning less than around $250 thousand a year.  (Ironically, though most of my readers probably earn less than this amount, a large minority probably does earn more.)  Though many of us eagerly anticipate that wonderful day when we do pass across that fabulous line and get nailed by President Obama’s taxes, remember that we are taxed on a sliding scale, and if we earn $250,001 dollars next year, only that last dollar is taxed at the rate of  39.6%, and the remaining $250,000 gets taxed at lower rates.  Not a lot lower, but lower.  This is true for everybody, regardless of their income.

Another possibility is that the Tax Cuts will expire, and the spending cuts will go into effect as well.  President Obama has promised that the cuts in Defense will not mean that servicemen and women will be laid off.  (The cuts will impact weapons systems and perhaps equipment and materiel.)  Once that happens, money could be moved around to minimize the negative impact on those affected most.

As we have seen, Obama has been reluctant to tinker with matters heavy-handedly, except for banks and Detroit.  At first I, too, was unhappy with bailing out the big car manufacturers, but it appears that that action was a good thing, in retrospect.  Bailing out the banks was a less obviously good move, but the effect of banks failing is less obvious to laymen such as myself.  It seems to me that the law is notoriously favorable to bank investors, as opposed to the bank customers.

If not for all the hoopla about the Fiscal Cliff, people would not over-react, and hiring would actually have accelerated right after the Elections.  I have said often that businesses whose owners are both Republicans and Democrats have waited until the Elections were over to start hiring.  But this Fiscal Cliff is an artificial way that the GOP can prolong the recession, which is a very long-term strategy for discrediting Obama and the Democrats, and to try to win the next several elections.  This sort of peeing in the well, and ensuring that their dire economic predictions are forced to come true ---if that is what they’re doing--- is despicable.  I suspect that it is true, since there’s nothing the GOP wants more than to win the White House, though what they want to do with it nobody knows.  The GOP does not want power for altruistic reasons, make no mistake.

Should we worry?

Well, yes.  Increasing unemployment is always a worry, especially if there is no prospect of Federal Unemployment eligibility.  (In the short term, State-run unemployment is still available for those who are laid off in the new year.)  When businesses lay off workers, they either lose money, or the remaining workers get overworked, and matters spiral into a miserable mess.  In some ways, the Economists are correct, in that good economies feed on themselves, and take a downturn only when some idiots try to work a racket (e.g. the Mortgage Racket that we endured recently), or people get greedy (e.g. Enron).  Our economy was so good a couple of decades ago that Chinese investors bought a lot of US stocks, and to date this fuels fears that the Chinese will take over the US economy.  I don’t know enough to categorically state that this will never happen, especially if the US continues to refuse to make good on its credit obligations to foreign creditors.

But we’re getting accustomed to the Economists being proved wrong.  That’s one of the best things that could have happened, as far as I’m concerned.  One of the basic axioms of Economics is that they could be wrong, especially if people think that they’re wrong.  It’s all a lot of hogwash, as far as I’m concerned.  So, it is very possible that unemployment could go up, especially if people think that it should.  Defense spending will be cut.  Taxes will go up, but most of us will not feel it.  It is very possible that tax rates for lower income folks like most of us could go down, but certain deductions, such as the mortgage interest tax credit might actually be removed.  This will help those of us who rent, but not those of us who have mortgages.  It will hurt mortgage lenders, because their chief attraction is that mortgage interest in the past has been tax offset.  In any case, I believe the Mortgage Interest Credit will be phased out, rather than abruptly removed.

Still, a hostile Congress with a friendly President is probably more palatable than a hostile Congress and a President most of whose wealth is in the Cayman Islands.

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