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elfsJames Poulos, an editor at Ricochet Magazine, says that there are two Americas, and he refers to them as "The Mature and the Immature." Poulos, ricocheting off the New York Times article "What Is It About 20-Somethings?," "suggests" (his word) that the dividing line between these two Americas can be seen in thi discussion about gay marriage: on the one hand, his preferred kind of people get married and become mature adults early in life; on the other, "the desire to expand marriage to fit any voluntarily formalized love-oriented arrangement is sure to erect a vast new legal and administrative apparatus dedicated to managing the social, economic, and psychological fallout from the dissolution of those arrangements."
In other words, because marriage will be seen primarily as a voluntary agreement among parties, the willingness of those parties to sustain it will be deeply wounded and we will be left with "a costly, cumbersome, ubiquitous, and intimate legal and administrative system obliged to manage the achievements, setbacks, and failures of a vast class of Americans defined above all by their immaturity."
As if we weren't there already.
Poulos, of course, counts himself among the "mature" Americans, who somehow are privileged to understand... something or other. He doesn't actually convey a sense of what "maturity" means, other than to suggest that "generations will become ... meaningless" and "the window of reproductive sexual activity will expand to embrace five decades." (He links to a James Lileks' piece in which Lileks laments, with mild irony, that most teenagers have no appreciation or understanding of the different eras of music: everything is just fodder for the next mash-up, which will entertain for less that two weeks before something else comes along.)
Being in that inconvenient age slot between the Boomers and Generation X (my "generation" has the irredeemable name of "Wedger"), I have little appreciation for the distinction of "generations;" I have appreciation for human beings of different ages, but the whole idea of "generations" always seemed a little overbroad to me.
Jonathan Rauch has his own take on the same discussion, several months back, entitled "Red Families, Blue Families, Gay Families, and the Search for a New Normal." Rauch's argument is more concise, and goes like this:
The American tradition of maturity, the "Red Family" tradition, is predicated on two facts: (a) sex leads to children, and the core pupose of marriage is to regulate sexual and social activity to provide for stable, nuturing families; and (b) a low-skilled man, if he applied himself, can get a job, make a living and support a family. Families, Rauch says, formed early (and not always voluntarily), but that was acceptable because the man could still get a job and support his kids. Small-town values are designed around these facts and their consequences.
The premise is that "Families Form Adults."
(This also leads me back to the November 2008 issue of New Yorker and the story "Red Sex, Blue Sex," which asks, in the wake of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, why evangelical kids get pregnant out of wedlock so much; the basic answer is that their world has the above expectation and a story of redemption and forgiveness that lets them ease the psychological distress of their failure to abide by their community's expectations.)
Rauch says that there are two world-changers: birth control, and the global information economy. Blue Families, in contrast, appreciate that it takes much more than a mere high-school education to survive in our high-tech economy. (There is some indication, for illustration, that the economic crisis has revealed a lack of jobs for the low-skilled workforce in the United States.) Basic jobs require more than a high-school disploma, and you can't get those skills if you can't go to a trade school or college. You can't do that if you have a family, but birth control allows twentysomethings to manage their sexual procilivities without the consequences of children. In the Blue Universe, early family formation is a disaster that short-circuits the path to economic viability.
Rauch suggests that this is the reason why the "voluntary formal arrangement" model of marriage is so anathema to the right, even moreso than gay adoption(!): in the Blue universe, same-sex marriage is in line with the twin values of autonomy and responsibility: "In Blue World, gay couples fit the paradigm perfectly. They are responsible adults trying to live more stable, more responsible lives, and trying to improve the prospects of any children they may have. Who could ask for anything more?"
In the Red universe, the delinkage of marriage and sex has been disastrous (again, see: Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston). But it is inevitable, unless you outright ban contraception and somehow provide a means by which young people who form families can somehow maintain the high-investment pattern both Red and Blue state parents are proud of, and somehow allow Red state parents to acquire the high-value skills needed to provide our workforce.
Polous does not approve of the idea that one must achieve a level of maturity and economic autonomy before forming a family unit. Obviously, I think Polous is wrong, and inevitably so: what he wants is incompatible with the onrushing future. (If you want a sick take on it, consider the Alternative Right website's take in "The Red State Family Crisis:" "This is a nice distillation of the bizarre idea that all Americans have the potential to be college graduates with lots of skills suitable for a post-industrial economy. IQ never enters the equation. But this utopian future is just not going to happen. A far better program would be to provide better economic opportunities for White people, especially White males, whose prospects have been blunted by the present regime." All of the usual nonsense is there: the suggestion that too much of America is too stupid to keep up with the Blue program, and that white people, especially, have been blocked from accessing the low-skill economic activities due them by "the current regime.")
In any event, I expect the debate to get uglier even as the circle of Red gets smaller.
In other words, because marriage will be seen primarily as a voluntary agreement among parties, the willingness of those parties to sustain it will be deeply wounded and we will be left with "a costly, cumbersome, ubiquitous, and intimate legal and administrative system obliged to manage the achievements, setbacks, and failures of a vast class of Americans defined above all by their immaturity."
As if we weren't there already.
Poulos, of course, counts himself among the "mature" Americans, who somehow are privileged to understand... something or other. He doesn't actually convey a sense of what "maturity" means, other than to suggest that "generations will become ... meaningless" and "the window of reproductive sexual activity will expand to embrace five decades." (He links to a James Lileks' piece in which Lileks laments, with mild irony, that most teenagers have no appreciation or understanding of the different eras of music: everything is just fodder for the next mash-up, which will entertain for less that two weeks before something else comes along.)
Being in that inconvenient age slot between the Boomers and Generation X (my "generation" has the irredeemable name of "Wedger"), I have little appreciation for the distinction of "generations;" I have appreciation for human beings of different ages, but the whole idea of "generations" always seemed a little overbroad to me.
Jonathan Rauch has his own take on the same discussion, several months back, entitled "Red Families, Blue Families, Gay Families, and the Search for a New Normal." Rauch's argument is more concise, and goes like this:
The American tradition of maturity, the "Red Family" tradition, is predicated on two facts: (a) sex leads to children, and the core pupose of marriage is to regulate sexual and social activity to provide for stable, nuturing families; and (b) a low-skilled man, if he applied himself, can get a job, make a living and support a family. Families, Rauch says, formed early (and not always voluntarily), but that was acceptable because the man could still get a job and support his kids. Small-town values are designed around these facts and their consequences.
The premise is that "Families Form Adults."
(This also leads me back to the November 2008 issue of New Yorker and the story "Red Sex, Blue Sex," which asks, in the wake of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, why evangelical kids get pregnant out of wedlock so much; the basic answer is that their world has the above expectation and a story of redemption and forgiveness that lets them ease the psychological distress of their failure to abide by their community's expectations.)
Rauch says that there are two world-changers: birth control, and the global information economy. Blue Families, in contrast, appreciate that it takes much more than a mere high-school education to survive in our high-tech economy. (There is some indication, for illustration, that the economic crisis has revealed a lack of jobs for the low-skilled workforce in the United States.) Basic jobs require more than a high-school disploma, and you can't get those skills if you can't go to a trade school or college. You can't do that if you have a family, but birth control allows twentysomethings to manage their sexual procilivities without the consequences of children. In the Blue Universe, early family formation is a disaster that short-circuits the path to economic viability.
Rauch suggests that this is the reason why the "voluntary formal arrangement" model of marriage is so anathema to the right, even moreso than gay adoption(!): in the Blue universe, same-sex marriage is in line with the twin values of autonomy and responsibility: "In Blue World, gay couples fit the paradigm perfectly. They are responsible adults trying to live more stable, more responsible lives, and trying to improve the prospects of any children they may have. Who could ask for anything more?"
In the Red universe, the delinkage of marriage and sex has been disastrous (again, see: Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston). But it is inevitable, unless you outright ban contraception and somehow provide a means by which young people who form families can somehow maintain the high-investment pattern both Red and Blue state parents are proud of, and somehow allow Red state parents to acquire the high-value skills needed to provide our workforce.
Polous does not approve of the idea that one must achieve a level of maturity and economic autonomy before forming a family unit. Obviously, I think Polous is wrong, and inevitably so: what he wants is incompatible with the onrushing future. (If you want a sick take on it, consider the Alternative Right website's take in "The Red State Family Crisis:" "This is a nice distillation of the bizarre idea that all Americans have the potential to be college graduates with lots of skills suitable for a post-industrial economy. IQ never enters the equation. But this utopian future is just not going to happen. A far better program would be to provide better economic opportunities for White people, especially White males, whose prospects have been blunted by the present regime." All of the usual nonsense is there: the suggestion that too much of America is too stupid to keep up with the Blue program, and that white people, especially, have been blocked from accessing the low-skill economic activities due them by "the current regime.")
In any event, I expect the debate to get uglier even as the circle of Red gets smaller.
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The low-skilled workforce
Date: 2010-08-23 01:33 am (UTC)There is no lack of work for low-skilled workers in the US.
It's just that it's illegal to hire anyone whose labor is worth less than a certain amount, which is probably somewhere above $30,000 per year: the net cost of the salary, Social Security, benefits, and supports costs (management, HR, finance, facilities, etc.) of a low-skilled worker.
As a result, these people can't find work and become dependent on social support systems, especially government programs.
And that is exactly what minimum-wage laws were intended to accomplish.
. png
Re: The low-skilled workforce
Date: 2010-08-23 02:01 am (UTC)At first blush, this comes across as being the worst sort of conspiracy theory, bordering on demagoguery.
After further consideration... I'm still not seeing a viable alternative interpretation.
Care to substantiate your claim?
Re: The low-skilled workforce
Date: 2010-08-23 02:02 am (UTC)Re: The low-skilled workforce
Date: 2010-08-23 02:24 am (UTC)Not low-skilled workers, surely; they tend to lose their jobs. The higher the legal minimum wage, the more of these workers become unemployed.
Not business owners, obviously. They lose the legal authority to hire low-skilled workers for valuable (but not very valuable) tasks.
Not other workers; not even the ones who have had to take over the low-skilled work that would otherwise be done by low-skilled workers, because the quality of their work experience has
declined without (I am sure) a corresponding increase in pay.
No, it's the politicians and social workers who benefit from minimum-wage laws. We might suppose that those who pushed for these laws against Supreme Court opposition in the 1930s did so out of idealism. We might suppose that supporters in the 1950s didn't trust the evidence of the 1940s. I can only hope that supporters in the 1960s believed they could do a better job. There must still be idealists and honestly misguided people out there who really believe minimum-wage laws can be socially beneficial in spite of all the evidence.
But honestly, for decades now, minimum-wage laws have been nothing but a crude brute-force method for increasing dependence on government support, and the politicians who vote for them must surely know that.
This isn't "substantiation". I can't really substantiate the direction of rotation of the Earth in a LiveJournal comment, either. You just have to go outside and look.
Re: The low-skilled workforce
Date: 2010-08-23 02:35 am (UTC)As for the rest... not so much.
Re: The low-skilled workforce
Date: 2010-08-23 02:55 am (UTC)personally, i'd be interested in reading it.
Re: The low-skilled workforce
Date: 2010-08-23 04:34 am (UTC)First, we have David Card and Alan B. Krueger, "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," American Economic Review, Volume 84, no. 4 (September 1994), pp. 774-775
In 1992, New Jersey and Pennsylvania both had a minimum wage of $4.25. During that year, New Jersey increased theirs to $5.05. The authors of the above study looked at actual employment rates in fast food restaurants in both States... and concluded that the increase in minimum wage did increase employment in New Jersey.
The topic of the minimum wage is a controversial one amongst economists... you'll find individuals who agree and disagree with the above study, and individuals who agree and disagree as to the impact of the minimum wage. Frankly, you can find data to support any position on the issue.
As for the assertions being made:
The evidence that a minimum wage costs low-skilled workers their jobs? Iffy, at best... and then there's the possibility that, without a minimum wage, they would have a job... but one which would still not support them.
Do employers lose the authority to hire low-skilled workers? No... that's just nonsense. What they lose is the ability to hire workers at a wage below the minimum.
Finally, this conspiracy theory about "politicians and social workers" reads like a "Birther" or "Truther" tract, and not a reasonable discussion of economics.
Re: The low-skilled workforce
Date: 2010-08-23 05:17 pm (UTC)Number 127
Re: The low-skilled workforce
Date: 2010-08-23 06:19 pm (UTC)If you do try to conclude that minimum wages *generally* have no negative effects on employment, you are effectively arguing that the basic pillars of economics are wrong. I'm sure there are economists who think the minimum wage is justifiable despite the reduction in employment, or that the unemployment effects caused by modest changes in minimum wages can be overshadowed completely by other factors. But if you think increasing minimum wages *in general* will have no negative results on employment, you're not an economist.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 04:52 pm (UTC)Eliminating minimum wage -- which, incidentally, doesn't apply to a ton of jobs already -- simply ensures the 'race to the bottom' we already have.
I have a question
Date: 2010-08-23 05:19 pm (UTC)Re: I have a question
Date: 2010-08-24 06:33 am (UTC)I also have to wonder whether the traditional arguments in favor of government-recognized marriages (or civil unions, whatever term fits best) still have any relevance in the age of effective contraception. In the past, the government had a vested interest in helping sexual partners form a stable environment for conceiving and raising the next generation of taxpayers. Today, however, that's less the case, and in fact more and more developed countries are experiencing negative population growth.
As you put it, the current system allows Person(A) and Person(B) to be considered Unit(AB)...but why? In this day and age, when it's becoming more and more socially acceptable to have children outside of a marriage, and married couples are becoming less and less likely to have children, what does the government get out of the arrangement? Does marriage confer a stabilizing effect on society even without children in the picture? Possibly, but the non-reproductive side of things is rarely mentioned. Of course it would be politically impossible for them to change things, but still, food for thought.
Number 127
Re: I have a question
Date: 2010-08-24 04:26 pm (UTC)Re: I have a question
Date: 2010-08-24 05:26 pm (UTC)A simple contract could cover the obvious things like medical power of attorney and shared assets to an extent, but then there are things like spousal privilege, Social Security survivor benefits, joint tax status, tax-free transfer of property, and so on.
If you're willing to do without all those things, then sure, private contracts would work fine, and plenty of people take that position.
Number 127