Here’s some wonderful news from the “Alas” inbox:
Enjoy the good news
Whooo-hooo! Maziltov, Nick!
That’s all the info I have at this point. Nick promised me that photos will eventually be posted (possibly not for a couple of weeks, however).
Remember, there’s just a week and a day left to write your entry to the IWF’s College Essay Contest! (Here’s my previous post about the contest).
Please discuss your experience on college campus as an independent woman. How has your college or university helped or hindered your intellectual and personal growth? Please describe what you think it means to be an independent woman in the year 2005.
Writing 750 words is easy, and the first prize is $5000 – and what could be more fulfilling for a young feminist than spending $5000 of anti-feminist money? So if you’re a female undergrad, give it a shot!
Above, Sydney plays with her birthday candles (no one remembered to buy the kind you put on cakes, so we just found these in a drawer somewhere). Her expression in this photo gives me the giggles.
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Here’s an interesting article, from the right-wing magazine The Weekly Standard, suggesting that the Republican party needs to do more for working-class Republican voters.
Without a youthful population, the costs of supporting retirees are unsustainable, and the innovation and entrepreneurial zeal that make America the world’s economic leader will slowly wither. Yet the decision to raise children continues to be treated as something akin to the decision to buy an expensive automobile–a perfectly fine thing to do, but don’t expect any sympathy or support when you can’t afford a tune-up or an oil change. I read this going “where have I heard this before?” I mean, this sounded very familiar. And then I remembered – Nancy Folbre, one of the nation’s leading feminist economists, makes virtually the same argument in The Invisible Heart, except that she calls it “children as pets” rather than “children as expensive automobiles.” Compare the above-quoted paragraph to this paragraph by Folbre: It is sometimes popular to argue that the decision to raise a child is nothing more than a discretionary form of consumption, like raising a kelpie. Why then, should taxpayers be asked to support it? “You propagate, you pay!” Perfect market-based reasoning. But most pets do not grow up to become taxpayers, workers or citizens. And market goods are subsidised by mothers and fathers who do the non-market work of raising children. Every time you hire a wage earner, or buy a product that was produced by a wage earner, you are benefiting from the altruistic contributions of the parents, other family members, and poorly paid care workers who developed that worker’s capabilities. Although I’m sure it’s innocent – I doubt the Weekly Standard writers have even heard of Folbre – the similarity is striking, isn’t it? The Standard writers go on to say: The trouble is that the contemporary workplace demands that women follow the male career track, which assumes a seamless transition from school to full-time employment, and a career path that begins in the early twenties and continues in unbroken ascent until retirement. For many women, this is an appealing model–but many more find themselves losing their best childbearing years to the workplace, and then scrambling to squeeze in a child or two before middle-age arrives. A better way to approach the division between work and family life might be what sociologist Neil Gilbert calls a “life-course perspective,” with measures that would allow a mother (or father, for that matter) to provide child care full-time for several years before entering, or reentering, the workforce. For instance, the government could offer subsidies to those who provide child care in the home, and pension credits that reflect the economic value of years spent in household labor. Or again, Republicans might consider offering tuition credits for years spent rearing children, which could be exchanged for post-graduate or vocational education. These would be modeled on veterans’ benefits–and that would be entirely appropriate. Both military service and parenthood are crucial to the country’s long-term survival. It’s about time we recognize that fact. Nothing there that feminist economists like Folbre haven’t been suggesting for years. (The military service analogy is another one Folbre has made, by the way.) If this were standard Republican thinking, there’d be many more Republican feminists. Frankly, I’d love it if the Republicans would co-op more feminist ideas (Bitch PhD has posted another example – creating structures to enable young single parents to combine raising children with going to college). I’m all about policy, not party – if the Republicans want to put some good feminist ideas into action, then good for them.
My cartoon from the next-to-latest issue of Dollars and Sense… If the art is hard to read, you can view a larger version here.
You should also have big handfuls of the glitter bunched up in your fists and wads of confetti stuffed in your coat as long as it has an elastic waistline to hold it all in. This way, when the bus smacks into you…
Read the rest. Hat tip: True Ancestor.
And when you’re done celebrating that holiday, you can start making plans for next year’s exploding whale day.
If I could have one wish in arguments about the economy, it would be for the default definition of “growth” to be changed. Normally, it’s taken to mean overall GDP growth, and it’s certainly true that steady GDP growth is a good thing. But really, what’s the point of economic growth if all the extra money is going to Donald Trump and the average guy is just treading water? What’s the value of growth like that?
If I had to choose one single thing as the most important determinant of a genuinely strong economy, it would be median wage growth. After all, if median wages are increasing smartly, it’s a sure bet that the economy as a whole is growing too and everyone … including Donald Trump … is doing well. It’s quite possible to have strong GDP growth that still leaves two-thirds of the country stagnant … which is roughly what’s happened for the past 30 years … but it’s almost impossible to have strong median wage growth and not also have a booming economy.
An interesting article in last week’s New York Times Magazine asked, why do people vote? The odds of anyone’s vote changing an election’s outcome are virtually nil (unless one happens to be on the US Supreme Court, that is), so why does anyone bother?
The Swiss recently switched to a vote-by-mail system – and they did it gradually, district by district, enabling social scientists to get a good measure of how such a system changes voting behavior. Never again would any Swiss voter have to tromp to the polls during a rainstorm; the cost of casting a ballot had been lowered significantly. An economic model would therefore predict voter turnout to increase substantially. Is that what happened? Not at all. In fact, voter turnout often decreased, especially in smaller cantons and in the smaller communities within cantons. This finding may have serious implications for advocates of Internet voting – which, it has long been argued, would make voting easier and therefore increase turnout. But the Swiss model indicates that the exact opposite might hold true. The theory the article suggests is that in countries in which there’s a strong belief that voting is a civic obligation, people vote so that other people can see them voting. So a vote-by-mail option, by making it less necessary for people to be seen voting to get social credit for voting, actually reduces the reason for people to vote. If that theory is correct, then what policy – short of manditory voting, which I think is a good idea that will never happen here (if we can make taxpaying and jury duty manditory duties of citizens, why not voting?) – should we use to encourage voting? Perhaps the “I voted” stickers should be made of nicer material and be more prominent.
LOL, thanks!
I want to put that WORDS poster on a t-shirt!
While Bob Hope was indeed an immigrant, white anglo saxon protestant male immigrants are explicitly welcomed by the current shitocracy…
I bet I.C.E. comes back for them later.
@Avvaa: I'm not sure even WASP male immigrants are welcome. There have been several tourists who have been detained because…