Half Changed World

D is becoming aware enough of the days of the week that he wanted to know yesterday why I had today off of work (and he had it off from preschool) and why we were going to a party. 

T and I explained to him that it’s Memorial Day, a day to honor people who were soldiers for our country and who died.  He wanted to know how they died, and I said that they could have died lots of different ways — that some were shot, and some maybe fell out of airplanes, and others just got sick and couldn’t get to a doctor.  But that war generally involves people getting killed.  He suggested that some of them might have been cut with knives, and we agreed that was a possibility.

Then he wanted to know why there were wars.  And T said that people fought wars for lots of different reasons.  Sometimes we go to war because we’re invaded, and want to protect ourselves, and sometimes we go to war because there’s something bad going on and we want to stop it from happening.  (With more time to think, I would have added that we’re not very good at figuring out other ways to resolve disagreements.  But I’m not a pacificist — in 3rd or 4th grade, I was the only one in my class in my hippie elementary school to say that I thought war was sometimes justified, with WWII and the Holocaust as my main example.)

And then I talked a little about how sometimes when people die, the things that they cared about or fought for live on.  I talked about I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, which T used to sing to the boys as a lullaby.  (Yes, we may well be raising the last red diaper babies in America.)  And we talked about Martin Luther King, who D learned about in school, and how lots of people believe in the things that he worked for, even though he was killed.

And then I told D that our country is right now fighting a war in a place called Iraq, and that I and his daddy don’t think the reasons we’re fighting this war are very good, but we still honor and are thankful for the soldiers who are fighting, since they are fighting because we asked them to.  And he asked if the soldiers in Iraq would die, and we said that some of them would, but not most.  (His class has been writing letters this year to a soldier in Iraq who is the older sister (I think) of another student in the school, so I think he may have been thinking of her.)

And then he wanted to know if there would be goodie bags at the party.  I said no, it wasn’t a birthday party.  I told him that Memorial Day is considered the start of summer, and so people like to do things that they can only do in the summer, like barbecue and eat strawberry pie and play in the sprinklers.  All of which we did.

I promised to pass along some of the interesting articles and reports that I ran across in my new job.  Here’s the first one, Babies, Bathwater, and American Manufacturing: What’s Worth Saving and How, by Dan Luria and Joel Rogers of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (yes, the acronym is COWS).

It’s a short article (only 5 pages), and worth reading in its whole, but these are some of the points that jumped out at me:

All manufacturing jobs are not equal.  When put like this, this seems like a statement of the obvious.  But much of the writing and rhetoric about manufacturing treats it all the same, whether acting as if all manufacturing jobs are worth fighting for (what Luria and Rogers call "manufacturing centrism", the glorification of making "something you can drop on your foot") or dismissing them all as hopelessly 20th century.

In deciding whether a job is good or bad, you need to control for the amount of education/training required.  A job that pays $14 an hour is great for a high school dropout, and quite respectable for a high school graduate, but pretty depressing for someone with a 4 year degree.  If two jobs pay the same amount, but one requires several years of specialized training first, the other one is a lot more attractive.

My expansion on this idea is that jobs that require firm specific training are worse than jobs that require industry specific training, which in turn are worse than jobs that require general skills.  If you’re going to ask a potential worker to go to school for two years to develop skills that aren’t going to help them get a job anywhere else, you darn well better be guaranteeing them a job for the long haul.

Employers have been politically united beyond their interest — good employers don’t fight to be treated differently from bad employers.  As Luria and Rogers write, "owing to the relative weakness of labor in the U.S., there is an unnatural degree of class cohesion in the American business community, which further encourages supression of differences in interest within it."  I thought this was an interesting point, mostly because it’s so pervasively true that it fades into the wallpaper.  I know the business community isn’t entirely monolithic — the Committee for Economic Development certainly doesn’t argue for the same positions as the US Chamber of Commerce — but it doesn’t differentiate itself along the lines of job quality.  You don’t see employers who provide health insurance lobbying for higher taxes on those who don’t.

Sometime last year, I gave up my daily newspaper subscription.  It was piling up unread, and was adding to my sense of being always behind, and T was unhappy about the mess.  (My mother has huge piles of newspapers in her apartment, and I think he’s afraid the trait is genetic.)  I was suprised at how little I missed it — I still caught up on the headlines on the web, and I devoted my metro reading time to books and magazines instead.

But last month, the Post offered us one of their special deals where it only costs about $0.35 a week more to get the daily paper delivered than to get just the Sunday paper (which we had never dropped).  And so I signed up, and it started last week.

From an economic point of view, it’s definitely worthwhile — there was a $4 off coupon this week from CVS that pays for the subscription for several months.  From an environmental point of view, I feel guilty about the dead trees.  I read a somewhat wider range of stories with the paper in front of me than I do on the web, which has its pluses and minuses.

Do you read a daily paper?  Which one?

Today’s book is Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead, by Tamara Draut.  In many ways, this book could be called The Two-Income Trap, Jr.  Like Warren and Tyagi, Draut analyzes the ways that families today get into economic trouble through little fault of their own, with wages failing to keep up with the spiraling costs of housing, health insurance, and child care.  The hook is that Draut focuses on the experiences of young adults, 20-34, and compares their (our) experiences to those of the Boomers in the 60s and 70s.

The most convincing part of Draut’s case is her discussion of the rising costs of college, the diminishing availability of grants to cover those costs, and the ways that student loans hang over young people’s lives.  She also writes persuasively of the ways that lower-income students’ educational options are limited because of their reluctance or inability to take on that debt burden.

Nicholas Von Hoffman had an article in the Nation a bit back where he argued that the increased cost of education is a form of social control, forcing young people to focus their energies on earning money rather than fomenting social change or following their dreams.  I’m not sure I think it’s a deliberate plot, but I do think there’s a lot of truth to the story.  At my reunion, the Dean gave a speech in which he said that they did a study of the career paths of graduates.  Of those who left without student loans, he said, 95 percent took first jobs in the public or nonprofit sectors.  Of those who had more than $80,000 in loans, only 45 percent took first jobs in those sectors.

Draut’s argument becomes less convincing in other chapters where she lumps together the struggles of a teacher hoping to have an apartment to himself one day and an affluent couple buying a home in suburban Connecticut.  They both may be living paycheck to paycheck, but that’s the extent of their similarities.  And while this generation may be struggling compared to the Boomers, it is NOT the first generation in history not to be as well off as their parents.   Living with your parents was the norm for unmarried young adults for most of history; the recent increase isn’t really a sign of the collapse of the American economy.

Draut is the director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos.  The book ends with a chapter of proposals for how to solve these problems (expanded student aid, support for unions, paid parental leave), many of which I agree with, but none of which will convince anyone who doesn’t already support them.

Sorry about the lack of posting, but between the change of jobs and a quick trip to Boston for my graduate school reunion, I just haven’t had the time.

The trip started on a low note when a) we got stuck in a huge line at security and had to race across the airport with the boys in order to catch our plane and b) N threw up all over himself in mid-flight.  This is the second time he’s puked on an airplane — last time, we figured it was because he had been crying his head off for an hour, but this time was without any warning, and he didn’t even seem particularly upset by it.

The reunion was ok — fun, but not spectacular.  I was disappointed that more of my classmates didn’t come.  I’m not sure whether my class did a particularly bad job of staying connected or what.   It was sort of fun telling people that I was starting my new job on Monday.

One of the highlights of the trip was meeting the one and only Phantom Scribbler and the Scribbler-Blue family.  Both Phantom and Mr. Blue were really lovely — generous to us, patient with the kids.  It really didn’t feel like meeting someone new, but more like getting together with old friends.  It helped that D and LG hit it off very nicely (even if they both jumped the gun every time they raced cars against each other).  It’s been a good 10 years since the last time I went to the Museum of Science, and I had forgotten how well designed the interative exhibits are.  The kids had a great time and stayed cheerful until the end, even though they were clearly exhausted.  (N. was so wiped that he fell asleep in his car seat on the floor of the totally packed Green Line train as soon as we left the Science Park station.)

On the bus to the airport, D was making up a song about how much he loved JetBlue.  Individual televisions with cartoons and chocolate cookies — what more could a 5 year old ask for from an airline?  On the other hand, I’m not staying at the Radisson in Cambridge again — the shuttle bus only ran about half the time, so T wound up hiking back and forth on Memorial Drive with D on his shoulders and N in the stroller more than once.  Yes, the man gets double bonus parenting points.

In the airport waiting for our flight home, we saw as impressive a double rainbow as I’ve ever seen — the main arc was absolutely glowing, and you could see the full spectrum on the secondary arc as well.

Work today was pretty quiet — my new boss wasn’t in the office.  But I got my computer account set up, and started figuring out the important things like where I print to, and how to adjust the temperature in my office.

I realized yesterday that I’m going to be out of town for the Senate primary next month, so I need to vote absentee.  It’s not a big deal — you can just stop by the elections office and do it on the spot.

At this point, I’m leaning toward voting for Jim Webb.  I don’t agree with him on every issue, but he’s a powerful voice against the Administration’s Iraq policy, and I like his populist economic message.  While he’s not perfect on gay rights (he supports don’t ask don’t tell), he opposes the hideous constitutional amendment that’s going to be on the ballot in the fall.

And I think he’s got a better chance of beating George Allen than Harris Miller does.  Miller’s policy stances are fine, but as far as I can tell he’s got the charisma of a dishrag.  He’s got a bunch of endorsements from state elected officials who he helped as chair of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee, but it’s hard to imagine anyone getting really excited about him.  Anonymous is a Woman has a nice post explaining why it’s a bad year for a "consummate insider" like Miller to be running for the Democratic nomination; she argues that his insider status is counter to the story that the national party is trying to tell.

I know that there are a bunch of bloggers who are hot for Webb.  If anyone who reads here wants to make the case for Miller, I’m willing to listen.

Following up on the theme of last week’s book, today’s review is of Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, by Barbara Ehrenreich.  After the success of Nickel and Dimed, her report on her undercover experience as a minimum wage worker, she planned to go similarly undercover in corporate America.  But she couldn’t get hired, so the book turned out to be her exploration of the various services being offered to the desperate white-collar unemployed.

The book isn’t nearly as good as Nickel and Dimed.  Compared to the deep sympathy Ehrenreich showed for her low-wage counterparts, she shows nothing but scorn for her fellow travellers on this journey.  She doesn’t believe that corporate public relations (which is what she’s trying to get hired to do) actually involves real skills, and so sees her efforts as purely a matter of puffery.  She even seems to suggest that it’s somehow unethical or misleading to target your resume to each job you apply for.  (By contrast, see Kristie Helms’ killer advice for job seekers.)

Moreover, Ehrenreich seems to have checked her common sense at the door, pouring hundreds of dollars into job coaches and networking groups that offered absolutely nothing of value.  She reserves her worst scorn for church-based job search groups, not knowing whether she is more concerned for other atheists who might wander unwittingly into their midst or for the poor fools who actually believe that God will help them find a job.

But, as The Disposable American makes clear, there really is a problem.  The reason there are so many people selling half-baked services to job seekers is that there are a lot of very desperate people out there who are willing to buy.  And the more you (used to) make, the harder it is to convince a potential employer that your job can’t be done for half the price by someone right out of college (or one-tenth the price by someone overseas).

The most persuasive part of the book for me was Ehrenreich’s anger at the way so many of the job search services she encountered encouraged workers to blame themselves for their failure to be hired, rather than looking for systematic causes.  While there’s a lot of sense to idea that workers should focus on the things that they can control — including their own attitude — rather than things they can’t, Ehrenreich is right that the focus on the personal prevents workers from organizing to demand societal change.

The work-family discussion tends to be very focused on middle-class professionals and on the US.  Here’s some links to new resources that broaden that perspective:

• Ruth Marcus had a nice Mother’s Day column in the Washington Post about the lack of work-life flexibility for people not in white collar professional jobs.  It’s based on a report from the Center on WorkLife Law (Joan Williams’ group), called "One Sick Child Away from Being Fired."
• Jody Heymann has a new book out, Forgotten Families, that looks at work and family issues in an international perspective.  Mother Jones interviewed her, and CLASP has an audioconference with her up. 

I’m totally overwhelmed by the amount of charitable solicitations I receive.  It’s probably the majority of my "junk mail" — but in some ways it’s harder to deal with than the commercial solicitations, which I have no hesitations about sorting directly into the trash can.  I toss all of the charitable solicitations into a pile, and then every few months I sort through them and try to figure out which ones I want to respond to.  (I don’t give money in response to phone calls, no matter how good the cause.)  And because I respond to them, even occasionally, they just keep coming.

We’re thinking about cutting down dramatically on the number of different organizations that we give to, while keeping the total dollars about the same.  We talked to a financial planner last week, and among other things, she suggested that we might want to give appreciated stock instead of cash.  But that only makes sense if we’re going to give essentially our entire annual pool of money to one organization, instead of dividing it among the 20 or 30 good causes that we’ve supported in the past.

I’m open to suggestions on:

• how to pick a single organization to support out of a number of worthy causes
• how to get organizations to stop sending us so much mail — often 5 or more letters from the same organization in a given year.

I’ve got one week to go before I leave my job.  I’m going to miss the people I work with, but I’ll admit that it’s with great delight that I’ve been deleting, unread, all the emails about the training on the new financial management system that’s going to be rolled out this summer.

In general, the news this week has made it easy to walk away from my job without regret.  From the Secretary of HUD bragging about illegally denying a contract on the basis of the CEO’s political choices (via Brad DeLong), to Agriculture Department politicos being instructed to work positive references to Iraq into all their speeches (via the NYTimes), it’s pretty appalling.  I can’t tell you how demoralizing all this crap is to federal workers.  I guess that I’ve been lucky in that I haven’t been asked to cross any lines that would have made me unable to face myself in the mirror.