Labour & Pop Culture: Busted

This week’s installment of labour & Pop Culture is Ray Charles’ 1963 hit “Busted” (which was also a hit for Johnny Cash the same year). 

The song is basically about unemployment during a market downturn—something many Albertans can likely relate to:

My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes and I'm busted
Cotton is down to a quarter a pound, but I'm busted

The third verse is the most interesting part of the song:

Well, I am no thief, but a man can go wrong when he's busted
The food that we canned last summer is gone and I'm busted
The fields are all bare and the cotton won't grow,
Me and my family got to pack up and go,
But I'll make a living, just where I don't know cause I'm busted.

This verse hints at two important effects of unemployment: crime and economic migration. Crime rates tend to get less attention in Alberta, but there are some suggestive and gendered effects. Alberta domestic violence, for example, was up 40% in 2015.

Abuse victims say layoffs and job hunting have ratcheted up stress in some homes, according to the domestic violence workers. 

"Whereas before the abuser might have been at work during the day" now they're home, [Andrea Silverstone, co-chair of the Calgary Domestic Violence Collective] said. Women feel more monitored and controlled if the partner stays home, she said, making it harder to leave or call for help.

This pattern seems consistent with that seen during other economic downturns, yet the underlying explanation is contested. A paper that lays out the evidence (mixed) and theories that attempt to example what (if any) connection exists between domestic violence and economic is available here.



My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes and I'm busted
Cotton is down to a quarter a pound, but I'm busted
I got a cow that went dry and a hen that won't lay
A big stack of bills that gets bigger each day
The county's gonna haul my belongings away cause I'm busted.

I went to my brother to ask for a loan cause I was busted
I hate to beg like a dog without his bone, but I'm busted
My brother said there ain't a thing I can do,
My wife and my kids are all down with the flu,
And I was just thinking about calling on you 'cause I'm busted.

Well, I am no thief, but a man can go wrong when he's busted
The food that we canned last summer is gone and I'm busted
The fields are all bare and the cotton won't grow,
Me and my family got to pack up and go,
But I'll make a living, just where I don't know cause I'm busted.

I'm broke, no bread, I mean like nothing, It's over

-- Bob Barnetson