Who's choosing to fly solo?
According to the cover story of the August 28, 2000 issue of TIME, more American women than ever before are choosing the liberated life of a single woman:
"Women get addicted to the possibilities of their lives, the idea that on any given day you have the freedom to do this or that," explains Melissa Roth, author of On the Loose, a chronicle of a year in the life of three thirtysomething women.
Choice is good, and nobody should let themselves be pressured into marriage, and women are leading the way to unwedded bliss:
Forty-three million women are currently single--more than 40% of all adult females, up from about 30% in 1960. (The ranks of single men have grown at roughly the same rate.) If you separate out women of the most marriageable age, the numbers are even more head snapping: in 1963, 83% of women 25 to 55 were married; by 1997 that figure had dropped to 65%.
Or are they? The TIME article focuses on women who are not married. But a different picture emerges when we look at women and men who are single, never married.
According to Table No. 63 of the Statistical Abstract of the United States, in 1998, while 20.5 percent of adult American women had never married, 26.9 percent of adult American men had never married. And in the "head snapping" 25 to 55 age group, 16.6 percent of women had never married compared to 22.9 percent of men.
By focusing on women who are not married, the TIME article glosses over the fact many of those single women are divorced, and that a lot of women who do marry are marrying divorced men because a growing number of men are choosing to never marry. The legal risks are just too high.
Imperfect Unions
In the September 1, 2000, issue of ironminds, Bruce Tulgan says "The defining characteristic of the new economy is the free market for talent."
If what labor unions have to offer people is come work here and we'll fix it so that you can work here for decades at the same company and get treated like everybody else, young workers will say, "no thanks."
This is a good point: when you're smart, talented and ambitious, why would you want to get stuck trudging in the rut with those less talented and ambitious? Unless you're stupid, you wouldn't.
But, contrary to the popular myth, this isn't true for most people. Most of us are not capable of being a John Galt or Dagny Taggert. For many people, being all you can be means lifting and carrying on a construction crew during the week, and drinking beer while watching the game with the guys on the weekend. Or something between the Randian ideal and blue collar sweat.
So? Let the cream rise to the top, why should we support unions? Answer: checks and balances.
It's natural for people to try to get all they can, and when one group has too much power, they tend to abuse it: When unions had too much power, they dragged American companies down, unemployment went up, and it was bad for everybody. Now that corporations have most of the power, they're dragging the American worker down.
So? Pay may be low, but there are plenty of jobs. You can always find work. Sure, but scraping by from paycheck-to-paycheck is a hard life, and when the disparity between the pay of those at the top and those in the middle grows too great, a lot of folks who think of themselves as middleclass are going to backlash. Start the pendulum swinging back in the other direction until unions have too much power, again.
Rather than swinging back and forth from one extreme to the other, we need to find balance, where the wants of the smart, ambitious people are balanced against the wants of the people who work for them. Otherwise, they will always be fighting.
Anti-abortion, anti-woman?
Pro-life is anti-woman, Ellen Goodman seems to be saying in her August 3, 2000, column: "The fine print of the GOP platform is nowhere nearly as friendly as the patter. The same old abortion plank is back."
She still doesn't get it: most of the people who are pro-choice are men.
American preoccupation?
"Occupation is the hardest, dirtiest and most dispiriting military task soldiers perform. Over time it grinds them down while emboldening those they subjugate. Empires have fallen on that observable fact." - Jim Hoagland, Washington Post Writers Group, September 1, 2000
Is he talking about the many regions occupied by American troops? Given our arrogant propensity to act as the global policeman, you might think that, but you would be wrong: "Yet there is a sizable minority in Israel that believes their small country is exempt from that law of political nature."
He's right, but why are we bellyaching about Israel when we are so much more guilty of this sort of thing ourselves?
Fear of Frankenstein
It's old news that the human genome has finally been mapped. Even before it was done, of course, the wags were wailing about Frankenstein monsters and the dangers of messing with the nature of things. But Terry Philpot has taken the chicken little lament to a new level:
Genetic engineering raises the question of the place of suffering in our world. ... Suffering can lay bare the essential self, which is not always the best self. It can strip us of all that is extraneous to our true nature. ... The balance to be struck is in recognising the limits of human intervention, an acceptance of suffering and the desire to do all we can to overcome it. - Guardian, Saturday September 2, 2000
Next, they'll want to bring back the plague and ban modern medicine altogether: "Bring back suffering!"
Overpaying finally pays off?
For years, equalitarian activists have protested that paying female tennis players the same as the male players is unfair because men play more sets and attract a larger audience. No more:
Remarkably, the United States Open has been awarding equal prize money to women for more than 25 years. But this can no longer be considered a form of social engineering, or paternalistic altruism. The fact is, the tournament's female players have become a stronger draw. - Equal Pay on the Tennis Court, New York Times
What I find remarkable is that they tacitly admit that, until now, it has been "a form of social engineering." Fairness to the individual players had nothing to do with it.
Paying or playing?
When I graduated from high school, my father told me, "Go to college or get a job." He also said, "Maintain a 3.0 GPA and I'll pay your way."
I went to college and graduated with a 3.2 GPA, but like a lot of Americans, I also went to work and paid my own way. It wasn't easy and it would have been nice not to work, but those who are ambitious enough will make their own means.
And I know a lot of young people who are doing that, today. While their peers who let their parents pay study by day and party by night, they work nights to pay their way. Vacation is just working because they have a week off from school.
It's not easy. But, as always, there are those who feel it should be:
Despite the fact that there is more financial aid available, paying for college is a steep climb for too many qualified minority students. We think this problem can be leveled with the infusion of substantial money donated by private companies and individuals. - Jeff Brotman and Jim Sinegal, Make a difference in minority education, Seattle P-I, September 1, 2000
What they assume is, if it isn't easy, it can't be done. That qualified students (minority or otherwise) will not attend and graduate from college if they have to pay their own way. And their assumption is wrong.
What do you think? - Equalitarian Discussion forums.
|