Tired

I'm tired of tired.

I was reading an article on the Economist's View blog entitled Is Poverty Caused by Irrational Behavior. The thrust of the article: Yes, by normal standards -- but those normal standards don't apply to people who are poor, because what a normal (ie, non-poor) person would regard as a rational reason for acting, or not acting, a poor person would not. One person calls it the bee sting analogy: if you have a bee sting, you take care of it, but if you have multiple bee stings, the motivation to take care of one specific one is much less.

Now, as it happens, I think that's a silly analogy, but the underlying concept, I can buy into. Its distantly related to why I think the 'economic stimulus' package isn't going to work. The rational approach from the economists is, here's some money, and the rational person will spend it, end of discussion. In actuality, I think people will either spend it on things they need but could not have otherwise afforded (which, granted, is towards the goal of the package), or they'll save/invest it. Some will pay off bills -- also a good thing, but doing nothing toward the goal of the package. Similarly, a person who's poor has a different view of whats required, and what a rational approach to life is. If a drug addict, they may well say 'here's my next fix' instead of 'golly, guess I'll go buy that KitchenAid mixer I've been eyeing'; if they've not been able to pay the rent for three months, they are not likely to say 'I'll just hand this directly over to the landlord', because there's no motivation to do so. So the underlying concept, that standard rational man economics don't apply to the poor (at least, not without manipulation; lets hear it for behavioral economics), makes sense to me.

But along the way, the writer uses this phrase:

"It's Econ 101 that's to blame," Karelis says. "It's created this tired, phony debate about what causes poverty."

I hit that phrase, and it derailed me. I stopped thinking about economics and started thinking about lazy writers, and about semantics.

I assume that this is the same 'tired' that shows up on home renovation shows -- You know, everything in this kitchen works, but its just so TIRED. I take it to be a short form of " I don't like it; its been around for a while, and I want a change. It's not necessarily wrong, nonfunctional, or ineffective; I just need some novelty, some difference."

I'm tired of it.