One one things

So the other day I heard that there would be a play based on the Wizard of Oz sometime soon. This is one of the many famous kids stories that I never really read or heard. When I was a kid i didn’t read much, I’d be more at home playing street cricket, stealing the neighbour’s fish and taunting the neighbour’s daughters. Even my bedtime stories were not out of books, they mainly consisted of my grandfather’s own childhood adventures. Stories of how Simon trapped the fox who came from the mangroves to eat the chickens, the story of the rampaging Bullock cart, the one about the rabid dog who terrorized the village and so on. I’d find these far more entertaining than reading about some little girl in England who went to visit her grandmother in the forest. So I’ve missed out on a lot of the famous children’s literature, and this is a bit of a shame as well. On a hot day in Trinity term ‘03, we decided to move to the garden in christchurch for our classical econ tute. And in passing, the tutor said that it was in this garden that Carrol was inspired to write Alice in Wonderland, and that if you look over the wall, there’s still a little shop called Alice’s shop which was apparently the original shop to which Alice would go in the story. He then went on to spend 15 mins explaining the double meanings and allegories in the story and all kinds of fascinating things, none of which I can now remember. But that day I thought i really must catch up on what i missed out on as a kid, so i went to waterstones and picked up a copy of Alice in Wonderland. I still haven’t read it fully bc it never really captured my imagination, but I will give it a shot later.

So anyway, the Wizard of Oz was another one of those stories that I wanted to get to know after I learnt something pretty interesting about it, again, from economics. I remember bugger all about this story, I just remember some tin man (who i often mix up with the scarecrow, I tend to picture a scarecrow made of tin), and I remember that big lion who I mix up with the lion from the Neverending story. To finally get away from the digressions, I was reading something about inflation after I spoke to a central banker, and it transpires that the Wizard of Oz is actually based on the political economy of inflation. So here’s the story. In late 19th Century USA there was a massive deflation in prices which was associated with the monetary policy of maintaining the Gold Standard (where money is only in the form of coined gold, so that money supply can’t increase massively and therefore keeping inflation under control). Problem with this is that the amounts of gold available aren’t flexible, and therefore can’t keep pace with the rate of economic growth, hence the deflation in the late 19th C, where there was far more economic output than money in the system. (The opposite is true in SL today, with far more money in the system than goods and services, driving up the prices of goods). Anyway, this deflation was bad news for debtors and good news for creditors, and in this case the debtors were rural farmers and creditors being big bad bankers. A suggested solution to the problem was a shift to the Bimetallic standard where silver can also be used for coins, thereby allowing greater flexibility in money supply and an inflation in prices, which would be good for debtors. In the presidential election of 1896, this was the leading issue, and the republicans wanted to preserve the GS (surprise surprise) and the democrats wanted the bimetallic standard to help the farmers. Bloody softies.

The Wizard of Oz, is about this issue. Dorothy, the little girl who is lost far away from home, finds three friends. The Tin-man (industrial working class), the scarecrow (farmers), and a lion who’s bark (roar) is worse than its bite (bite), (the democratic candidate). So these four go along the yellow brick road (representing the gold standard) amidst much difficulty, to look for the wizard (the republican cadidate). They finally arrive in Oz (DC), where everyone sees the world through green glasses ($$$s). The Wizard, who tries to please everybody, turns out to be a fraud, and Dorothy finally solves her problem by discovering the powers of her silver slippers. (Though the movie showed the girl’s slippers as being made of ruby rather than silver).

So I thought to myself hmm, now’s as good a chance as any to finally see the full story. But it turns out I’ll be out of town that weekend. Damn shame. The boys are getting buggered at the SSC, so I got myself a free Saturday morning. Maybe I’ll start on Alice in Wonderland then.