I have available to me, for being such a loyal subscriber, a free six-month gift subscription to The Economist website (not a print subscription), which I will give to the first person who provides a worthy motive for wanting one. Why don’t you give me a 200-word essay laying out your reasons for wanting one and how it would help you to improve the world? Post a comment below or email me. You do want to “take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress,” don’t you?

A few nights ago, C. and I decided we wanted to see some live music. It sounds simple enough, but C.’s manner of appreciating music is wholly different from mine. As a result, compromise is almost always necessary. For me, rock clubs are the default. The band should be loud or not at all. Ideally, there should be at least two guitars. Did I mention loud? I want the volume up as high as it goes, and I want to position myself dead center and as close as I can get to the stage, arms crossed, not dancing around like an idiot, just immersing myself in music so loud it vibrates the cuffs of my pants. Lyrics are disposable; I’ve come for the music—and mere volume is not enough. I want to get carried away by the subtleties in song structure and melodic details. The music should have texture—rich and luxurious, or thin and tenuous and strung out, or jangly and poppy—whatever the particular brand of music, it should have a self-consistent aesthetic that stands up to tough questions.

Since this has long been my favorite way to see live music, my ears are, well, less sensitive than they used to be. C.’s are not, and the noise level of what I’d consider to me a mid-volume band is intolerable and even painful for her. So I usually find other concert-goers when such bands are involved. But on this particular night, we were trying to decide between jazz and bluegrass, and I’m so picky about both that I had to call a few clubs to make sure that we weren’t in for a night of Kenny G. While looking at the jazz club listings in the City Paper (DC’s local arts & entertainment weekly), I happened upon the weekly schedule for the Black Cat, a rock club where the indie and punk bands I most often enjoy tend to play. There, on this very night, was Bella Lea, a band you’ve probably not heard of. They’re new. I wouldn’t have heard of them either, except that I’d recently been googling my old friend and bandmate, Ryan Rapsys, and discovered that his new band goes by this name.

So we hopped into the car and drove down to the Black Cat. Ryan had called to wish me a happy Thanksgiving in 2002, I think, but other than that, I had seen him only once or twice since I left Chicago in 1998, so my mind was all aflutter as we approached the club. I expected that he’d be pretty much the same guy I’d always known, but I have occasionally been surprised upon meeting old friends that sometimes they change quite a bit over the course of not too many years. Parenthood and marriage are the most radical catalysts, or at least one would hope, but there are others. Traveling can do a lot, as can heavy amounts of alcohol applied liberally over a long period of time. The refreshing thing about people who devote real energy and time to making art is that, despite what changes may have come, the front-and-center focus on art anchors a person in ways not much else can. Ryan’s drumming has changed—or at least he drums differently in this band; Bella Lea’s beats are more basic and the drums slide in line behind the guitar and serenely creepy vocalist (formerly of Denali)—but he has not. His drum kit has changed—the marbled blue Gretsch five-piece set has been usurped by something transparent (the better to try to catch the hummingbird-quick movements of his Stewart-Copelandesque hands)—but the lanky six-foot-five guy with the just-consciously coy yet always charming smile was no different.

We always suspected that if any of us would one day be able to quit our day jobs, it would be Ryan. His talent alone put him head and shoulders above many of us. When Euphone first began, it was all him and him alone. On stage, he had his drum kit, a little drum machine, and a cheap Casio; he’d play all three at the same time, one hand on the keyboard, doing more on the drums with his other hand than many can do with with two. (For an example of the drumming virtuosity, I recommend “Press On,” available for free download at the bottom of Euphone’s epitonic.com page.) Sure, the Lonesome Organist outshines him at the whole one-man band thing (and coincidentally plays guitar on “Press On”), but neither is a novelty act. In the studio, Ryan played bass, guitar, piano, drums, pen-on-thigh, glasses full of water, you name it. In fact, barring a couple of sporadic cameos, the first Euphone album (the self-titled one on Hefty Records) features Ryan on every instrument on every track. Watching Ryan approaching an instrument for the first time is always a bit like watching an idiot savant walking toward a piano. You know that within moments you’ll be witness to something amazing.

Of course, that whole ‘quitting your day job’ thing can be a mixed blessing in the indie-rock world. The way to get your indie cred is to strive to be not a rock star, but a musician, and the difference is crucial. The music comes first. If fame or money accidentally follow, it can only be as a result of word of mouth, of a fan-base built up one by one after experiencing life-altering epiphanies or soul-shaking orgasms upon hearing your records. Ryan was the butt of a good many bitter comments back then, not only because he was better at his second and third instruments than many were at their first, but because he could use that grin to network his way into opportunities unavailable to the rest of us, whose overdeveloped sense of integrity made us insist on doing it the hard way. In our early twenties, it was easy to criticize the business acumen of the networkers and schmoozers who sought out internships at record labels in order to inside-track their way to decent distribution for their records. Now that I’m 30 and effectively left that whole thing behind years ago, I must congratulate those who have found a way to make a living from music. If you’d told us ten years ago that Ryan would be making soundtracks for arcade games, scoring music for dance performances, and signing to Capitol Records, we’d have drawn up a list of 900 synonyms for ‘sell-out’. Now, I’ve nothing to say but ‘congratulations’.

That night was the second one recently that I’d been in the audience, neck craned upward trying to catch a glimpse of someone on stage with whom I used to play rock music. A couple of weeks prior, Dischord’s emo heroes Hoover got together for a reunion show at the Black Cat, where Alex Dunham—half of the guitar onslaught in both Hoover and Radio Flyer—used to tend bar when the music scene was in DC and I lived in Chicago. Now Al and the music scene are in Chicago and I live in DC (a day late and a dollar short, as usual). I haven’t touched a musical instrument in about three years, and even then it was in some ways but a feeble mimicry of what was.

While watching those who have kept the making of music front and center for these almost ten years since my last band, noticing all the while that my thoughts of musicianship occur almost exclusively in the past tense makes me a bit ashamed. I can remember emphatically, fist-poundingly-on-the-table decreeing that I refused to be one of those guys who “used to be in a band.” But that’s exactly what I am. And so it is, having been confined to the audience one time too many (and in fact, I couldn't even get close enough to the stage to say hi to Alex at the Hoover show, which really pissed me off) this ex-crafter of what would be, in other hands, sonic lusciousness—but with a you-can-dance-to-it-if-you-bust-out-your-TI-88 feel—has decided soon to acquire a keyboard that will interface with some lovely nearly-free software purveyed by Apple computer intended to make the making of music easier for those who’d make it. That’s me, with an itch buried so deep I think I’d all but forgotten how it could be otherwise, but not for long.

Believe it or not, I still go to the gym. Admittedly, it’s dropped from five times a week down to slightly less than three (on average), but I’m still there after work more often than not, sweating away on some machine, listening to the same five albums on my iPod, and watching Fox News with the closed captioning on.

I don’t choose the Fox. It’s what’s on. But having nothing to do with my eyes for an hour a day while I run on the goofy pseudo-mountain-mimicking machine reconfirms my old suspicions that it’s nothing but a propaganda mouthpiece for the far right. It really hurts to watch it and realize that a huge swath of this country thinks it’s news. Tonight, for instance, I noticed that the right-wingest of right-wing nut jobs, Sean Hannity and Charles Krauthammer are regular commentators. I haven’t seen any amid the sweat dripping into my eyes, but I’m assuming that the liberals they put on stage to pretend at an unbiased presentation sound pretty middle of road. If they showed us the rainbow from green to ultraviolet, we’d be happy to affirm that the whole spectrum’s there, give or take the lunatic fringe.

My favorite sequence tonight segued within ten seconds from a story about Al-Zarqawi’s aide’s confirmation of intent to pull off attacks on U.S. soil (did that come as a surprise? the last one got such a rise out of us) to a couple of apocalyptic quotes about how terrorists could plant a bomb anywhere if they put their minds to it (e.g., movie theaters, malls, schools, your freedom-loving blonde-haired son’s lunchbox), to a story about our wide-open and unsecured border with Mexico where, wouldn’t you know it, over one million illegal aliens are caught ever year trying to sneak across! And an estimated three to five million more get through! Omigod! We’ve got to shut that border with Mexico!

Last September, Time magazine gave a similarly dramatic pronouncement: “The number of illegal aliens flooding into the US this year will total three million.” Time, bastion of rigorous analysis that they are, reached this figure by figuring that for every illegal immigrant caught, “at least three make it into the country safely." Now that’s science. I expect my journalists to use more than the fingers of one hand to do their figgerin’. Do you?

I might have believed those figures, too, had I not been reading this very morning on the bus to work in, you guessed it, The Economist, that

. . . the immigrants caught by the Border Patrol are often repeat offenders. They are returned to Mexico and then promptly try again. In other words, a million arrests do not equal a million different people.

What would be a more plausible figure for the growth in illegal immigration? The INS once calculated that around 40% of undocumented residents entered America legally, but then overstayed their visas. At the same time, many illegal residents have managed to legalise themselves.

Apart from the official amnesties (some 2.7m took advantage of the blanket amnesty in 1986 and another 3m or so have benefited from six targeted bills passed by Congress between 1994 and 2000), at least 100,000 unauthorised residents become legal every year, either by “adjusting their status” (it helps if you marry an American citizen) or by leaving the country and returning with a visa. The numbers are confused guesswork, but it is perfectly possible to believe that some 1m migrants might enter the country illegally this year.

If their numbers are in doubt, their destinations are not. Many will join the 1m or more undocumented immigrants (out of a total agricultural workforce of 1.6m) who are at back-bending work in the nation’s fields, particularly in California.

The last figure got me thinking. Almost two-thirds of the total agricultural workforce in this country consists of illegal immigrants? So what would happen if we were, in a hypothetical world, successful in rounding up every last undocumented worker and shipping him or her back to Mexico or Paraguay, and sealing up the border for good? Would we find a million Americans who are willing to toil in the sun picking strawberries and oranges for $4 to $6 an hour? It’s possible, but I suspect not. I suspect that even if we could find a million Americans (or legal immigrants, but i guess they’re Americans too) who were willing to do the work, they’d demand a hell of a lot more than minimum wage to do it. That would drive up produce prices, making American produce more expensive on the world market and (ouch!) in the grocery store. It might put a dent in our ability to get asparagus for $2.99 a bunch in the middle of January in Chicago. Would consumers stand for that for long?

That got me thinking about the minimum wage, an increase in which was recently discussed briefly in Congress and shot down. It’s been $5.15 for eight years now, so I can only assume that the road to our glorious and shiny new ownership society is paved with fives. Now, I remember finding that it was difficult to own much of anything when I made minimum wage. I’d always go to the restaurant next to Tower Records and order a glass of water and a cup of soup for my lunch, because it came with a roll basket, and even then my lunch came to almost an hour’s pay. On that kind of pay, I’d love to divert a hefty chunk of my social security contributions into a personal savings account. Heck, I’d throw in $20 or more a year! Would that be enough to retire on? If the S&P 500 grew just 10,000% annually (on average), I’d be able to afford name-brand coffee to drink while I relax in the shade on what’s left of the concrete slab upon which used to set my grandpappy’s mobile home.

Even Rick Santorum (that’s Latin for "asshole") proposed a $1.10 increase, just barely half of Ted Kennedy’s $2.10 proposal, with an exemption for small businesses (which admittedly makes some sense). But both were rejected as amendments to the bankruptcy bill, which passed to the delight of credit card companies everywhere. Here’s what The Economist thinks of the law:

Is the system really abused? In fact, evidence suggests that the boom in personal bankruptcies has more to do with the piling on of consumer debt than with debtors playing the system. In the 1990s, revolving debt (mostly credit-card debt), grew by as much as 12% a year; from 1980 to 2004, it increased nearly 15 times. And the non-partisan American Bankruptcy Institute puts the number of bankruptcy filers who could afford to pay a good chunk of their debts at 3.6%: still a big number, but not nearly as much as the 10% or more claimed by creditor groups.

In any case, the bill’s means test (an average of the debtor’s past six months of income) should catch those who can clearly pay up. But opponents fear that the test, which they think too harsh and arbitrary, will drag those who rightly belong in Chapter 7 unfairly into court.

More troubling is the part of the legislation that makes it harder for poorer debtors, not likely to be the abusers of the system, to file for bankruptcy. Some 84% of all filers are too poor to qualify for the new law’s means test. But they will still be put through a great deal of rigmarole to get relief. For example, all debtors will have to get credit counselling before they file—a costly process, and one which does little to steer people out of bankruptcy. The bill also requires people to produce all sorts of paperwork, from payroll stubs to tax returns. Those who have not kept strict records will have to give up or pay for a lawyer to plead their case in court.

Other quirks of the legislation make one wonder why credit-industry groups are so keen on it. One loophole allows rich debtors to go on shielding assets in special trust accounts that are legal in a few states. And debtors’ fancy homes in Texas and Florida will still be off-limits to creditors. The bill’s backers say that fear of trampling on states’ rights stopped them closing such loopholes. But it smells rather pervasively like special treatment for the rich.

But here’s my point (by now you were wondering if I had one): Those who argue that people at the bottom of the income ladder deserve to be there—that they would simply find a better-paying job if they were responsible enough to handle one—always seem to miss the basic point. Someone has to do those jobs. Some of the foundations of the daily pleasantness of our American way of life depend upon people earning what many of us wouldn’t bother to pick up if it were blowing down a windy street.

Imagine if waitresses weren’t paid $2.10 an hour, and every restaurant bill suddenly shot up by 20% or more as their wages figured into the meal’s overt price tag. Imagine, immigrants gone, if Americans were picking all those grapes and avocados, and produce prices shot up by 30% or more. Imagine (gasp!) if we kept all these outsourced manufacturing jobs in America and you had to pay at least 50% percent more for everything you buy at Target or Walmart. Imagine what would happen to the cost of living if all the cleaning people, grocery store clerks, gas station attendants, window washers, furniture movers, and so on were suddenly paid enough to live on? It sounds like I’m arguing to drop the minimum wage even lower, but in fact I’m just trying to point out to what extent our comfort and easy living depends explicitly upon the low wages of the people who provide us with it. (And yes, I pulled those percentages right out of my santorum.)

Whatever the anti-immigrant views of the ordinary Joe on the factory floor, America’s bosses are well aware of their dependence on foreign workers. High-tech companies benefit from H-1B visas, created in 1990 to allow the entry of scientists and other skilled professionals for a maximum of six years. In theory there is an annual cap of 65,000 H-1B visas, but during the dotcom boom this was frequently relaxed. Immigration critics say there are now more than 1m H-1B visa holders, plus more than 325,000 holders of L-1 visas, which allow the intra-company transfer of workers from foreign subsidiaries. Doubtless one reason for the influx is that foreigners are cheaper, but the bosses argue that there is also a shortage of qualified Americans.

The same argument applies lower down the employment scale. The Essential Worker Immigration Coalition lobbies Congress and the White House on behalf of ill-paid sectors such as the hotel industry, fast-food, farming, nursing and animal-slaughtering; these could not survive without their immigrant workers, many of them undocumented. The argument is that immigrants take the nation’s dirty and dangerous jobs because Americans will not. The counter-argument is that Americans would if they were paid enough. But there is precious little evidence that Joe White, whatever the pay, is willing to toil alongside José Blanco picking fruit in California. Short of a big increase in legal immigration, illegal immigrants will continue to meet America’s needs.

If everyone in every crappy service-sector job in the country mustered up the motivation to enroll in community college this fall (provided they could afford tuition) and went out looking for that better job in 2007, would we be willing (1) to do without the services they provide? and (2) to provide them each with a better job? No to both, of course, because they perform necessary services, and there simply aren’t enough skilled jobs in the economy to accommodate all the people. Though it takes no real skill to perform them, the worst-paying jobs must still be performed by someone. And there’s no cosmic economics equation dictating a one-to-one correspondence between born losers and crappy service-sector jobs.

In fact, as more manufacturing jobs are shipped off to cheaper places, there are few options left to many people. Ask the guy I know in Polo, Illinois (population 2500) how far he’d have to travel to find a decent-paying manufacturing or trade job of any kind. Everyone for miles around now works at Walmart or Costco in the next big town over.

For many people, it amounts to getting stuck at the wrong end of the bell-curve in a class of overachievers. Even though you answered 80% of the questions right, the fact that half the class did better than you means you’ll be cleaning out toilets until you’re 70. Sorry, that’s just the way things work out. Here’s your plunger. The company supplies the first one. If you should lose or break it, the next will come out of your paycheck.

Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t mean to bother you or seem impertinent in any way, but I couldn’t help but notice all those magnetic ribbons on the back of your SUV. That’s quite a collection you’ve got. Now, I understand that you love America. How could anyone not love it? It’s almost as unimaginable as not loving freedom, or not hating terrorists. Jeez, I hate them. I used to hate communists, but there aren’t too many of them left anymore. Freedom beat the communists, and freedom can beat these terrorists too. Well, freedom and the world’s biggest army. Don’t get me wrong—I still hate Fidel Castro, and if I knew more about him I’d probably hate Alexander Lukashenko too, but really it doesn’t matter. I feel like I should hate Robert Mugabe, even though he’s not a communist or a terrorist, but I spend so much energy hating Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden that I just can’t muster up enough hate for all those who really deserve it. Some of them I can’t even keep track of. I used to love Ahmed Chalabi, but now I really don’t think much about him at all. And that al-Zarqawi guy? I hate him big time. All you have to do is ask yourself, “Who would Jesus hate?”

No, ma’am, I had to speak up because of some of your other ribbons. I notice that you support America, as I mentioned, and that you support our troops too. Jeez, I support them too, probably more than you even. I mean, I personally know a troop, and he loves freedom (and Jesus) more than just about anyone else I know. After all, you know, there they are, putting themselves in harm’s way for the greatest of all great causes, and they really do need our love and support to bring them home safely. This might sound a little, well, you know, radical, but what if we supported our troops so much that we gave them really good and timely veteran’s benefits? Now, of course, I know that with fighting two simultaneous wars in the name of freedom, while at the same time giving tax cuts to regular stiffs like you and me who work for our half mil a year, and especially with cutting the tax on dividends and the estate tax and the capital gains tax, someone has to pay the price. Freedom isn’t free, after all. I noticed you have that ribbon, too. I like that one. It reminds me that sometimes we have to increase military spending and defense spending, while also pumping billions into Homeland Security at the expense of all the domestic programs that benefit the middle class, the poor, the elderly, women, minorities, and the unfortunate. Hey, we all have to sacrifice for freedom. If the soldiers are doing it, the poor can do it too. When is the last time the poor had to give up anything, huh? Seems to me they’ve had it pretty good for an awfully long time.

So I think we agree about a lot of things. I really like your camouflaged “support our troops” ribbon, and your “God bless America” ribbon. I also really like that one “support our troops” ribbon that’s turned on its side like the Jesus fish, and that POW/MIA ribbon. What I wanted to tell you, and I don’t mean any disrespect by saying this, is that those two over there, the pink one about supporting a cure for you-know-what cancer and the one about supporting a cure for AIDS, are offending my children. Do you know what I mean? I mean, don’t you think it’s just a little bit inappropriate to use the B-word like that where curious little eyes can see it? And AIDS, well, what do I have to say about that, really? That’s the disease that kills homo-sexuals, and I think we all know who to thank for finally getting that mess cleaned up once and for all, don’t we? Starts with a “J,” ends with an “S”? Because if we live in a country where people can say whatever they want all over their SUVs and homosexuals can show their love in broad daylight, then the terrorists have already won.

I just love it when foreigners analyze Americans. Often I love it when they criticize us for being prude or ignorant, because we are, and it would be so much easier to admit it than to go to all the trouble of taking an absurdly anti-French stance just because they know more about wine and cheese than we do. But one of the joys of traveling abroad is to get a perspective about your country and culture that just isn’t possible when you immersed in and surrounded by it. And so it is that I particularly liked this week’s Economist’s take on the American notions of success and failure (though I do take exception to the claim that “the barriers are lifted” that prevent blacks from succeeding in America, and I said as much in my letter to the editor (or I will, as soon as I post this). So, without further ado,

An Ode to Failure: Here's to the Great American Loser

There will be plenty of cuddlier films at this weekend's Oscars than Clint Eastwood's “Million Dollar Baby”. The film tells the story of a young woman, played by Hilary Swank, who escapes from a life of drudgery by spending her every spare hour in a boxing gym. For a while, it looks as if she is talented enough to escape. Then the fates deal her a terrible blow: she loses her championship fight, is horribly injured and persuades her trainer, played by Mr Eastwood, to kill her.

Dirty Harry's former friends on the right have reacted with horror to the film's unAmerican enthusiasm for euthanasia. In fact, the film is most remarkable as an extremely American parable on success and failure. When Ms Swank gets injured, her trainer is eaten up with guilt. But she tells him not to be so hard on himself: she is far happier to have tasted a little success and ended up a cripple than to have remained a nobody.

Americans have always been excessive worshippers of what William James called “the bitch goddess success”. Self-help gurus have topped the bestseller list since Benjamin Franklin published his autobiography. Americans are much more likely than Europeans to believe that people can get ahead in life so long as they are willing to work hard. And they are much more likely to choose a high-paying job that carries a risk of redundancy than a lower-paid job that guarantees security.

But you can't have winners without losers (or how would you know how well you are doing?). And you can't broaden opportunity without also broadening the opportunity to fail. For instance, until relatively recently, blacks could not blame themselves for their failure in the “race of life”, in Abraham Lincoln's phrase, because they were debarred from so many parts of it. Now the barriers are lifted, the picture is more complicated.

All of which creates a huge problem: how exactly should a hyper-competitive society deal with its losers? It is all very well to note that drunkards and slackers get what they deserve. But what about the honest toilers? One way to deal with the problem is to offer people as many second chances as possible. In his intriguing new book “Born Losers: A History of Failure in America” (Harvard), Scott Sandage argues that the mid-19th century saw a redefinition of failure—from something that described a lousy business to something that defined a whole life.

Yet one of the striking things about America is how valiantly it has resisted the idea that there is any such thing as a born loser. American schools resist streaming their pupils much longer than their European counterparts: the whole point is to fit in rather than to stand out. American higher education has numerous points of entry and re-entry. And the American legal system has some of the most generous bankruptcy rules in the world. In Europe, a bankrupt is often still a ruined man; in America, he is a risk-taking entrepreneur.

American history—not to mention American folklore—is replete with examples of people who tried and tried again until they made a success of their lives. Lincoln was a bankrupt store-keeper. Henry Ford was a serial failure. At 40, Thomas Watson, the architect of IBM, faced prison. America's past is also full of people who came back from the brink. Steve Jobs has gone from has-been to icon. Martha Stewart has a lucrative television contract waiting for her when she comes out of prison.

A second way to deal with losers is to celebrate them—or at least sing about them. Perhaps in reaction to the relentless boosterism of business life, American popular culture often sympathises with the losers. In Arthur Miller's “Death of a Salesman” Willy Loman chooses to commit suicide rather than spend the rest of his life “ringing up a zero”. John Updike's “Rabbit” Angstrom is a lecherous car salesman whose best days were on a school basketball court. Scott Adams's Dilbert is a diminutive Everyman trapped in a cubicle. Where would country music be without broken hearts and broken-down trucks?

But even in the loser-loving bits of popular culture, the American obsession with success has a habit of winning through. More often than not, born losers turn out to be winners in disguise. In one version of this idea, the loser turns out to be a winner by virtue of his very ordinariness. The hero of Frank Capra's “It's a Wonderful Life” is a small-town plodder who hovers on the edge of ruin; but in the end the film concludes triumphantly, “No man is a failure who has friends.”

In another version—the one that burst on the scene with James Dean and was rapidly institutionalised by the counter-culture—the loser turns out to be a winner because he is a rebel against society's repressive norms. He is freer than the average American because he isn't encumbered with property (he has nothing to lose); or he is more genuine because he lives according to his own lights, rather than artificial conventions. Bob Dylan was a master of counter-cultural inversion. “The loser now/Will be later to win”, he rasped at one point. “She knows there's no success like failure/And that failure's no success at all”, he moaned at another.

H.L. Mencken had a grumpy verdict on this attitude to success and failure: for him, the typical American was “vexed, at one and the same time, by delusions of grandeur and an inferiority complex”. Delusions of grandeur are certainly common: “American Idol” presents a limitless supply of talentless narcissists, each convinced he is the next Frank Sinatra. Inferiority complexes are common too: America is also full of perfectly successful people who are obsessed by their failure to live up to their self-help manuals. But Mencken still seems too cynical. The worship of success inspires not just extraordinary achievements but also worthwhile failures. That is the unsettling but very American message of “Million Dollar Baby”.