Does Clinton think some workers are lazy and shouldn’t be entitled to, say, family and medical leave or affordable daycare? That sure is what she seems to suggest. Again and Again.
Hillary Clinton never, ever says the word “families” without prefacing it with the adjective “hardworking.” It’s downright Pavlovian. And every time I hear her say “families”—which is often—and therefore “hardworking” in reference to families, I wonder whether she’s dividing workers into hardworking ones and ones who slough off their work onto their colleagues, or something.
It’s right up there with children’s right to fulfill their God-given potential. Thank God.
Joking aside, this is the kind of thing that reminds people of Clinton’s worst attribute as a candidate: that she seems never to say anything that has not been vetted or suggested by one or another of her many very-highly-paid consultants.
Every adjective, every phrase, is straight from some list of consultant-suggested words or phrases. These two, “hardworking” and “God-given”, date—surprise!—to the ‘90s. She’s too programmed—too clueless, really—to recognize that this stuff gets in the way of her actually communicating about her policy proposals.
If she’s talking about policies that would apply only to working families, then she should say “working families.” If she’s talking about families generally, then she should just say “families”. She’ll sound less like a Chatty Cathy doll.
But that would require the mental agility to recognize the nature of the political moment we’re in, not the one we were in 20 years ago. Or even eight years ago. It also probably would require her to ditch most of the consultants. And think all by herself.
I’ve just given her some very good advice. I’ll send her a bill.
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Okay. This is my last Clinton-bashing post here for a while. I’ve just burned out on it.
Does Beverly think that some workers are lazy and not entitled? That is sure what she seems to suggest.
Leaves I understand as policy. Affordable daycare a whole lot less. Affordable daycare is not what is meant here. States could change regulations to allow lower cost daycare. Is that what is meant? That would be “no”. It gets affordable by roping in other people to pay what is described as unaffordable. There is a price point where providers and customers and regulators are seemingly in full agreement that the service shouldn’t be offered; won’t be profitable; and won’t be purchased. This is a non-problem.
Okay, Eric, I’m gonna risk a copyright lawsuit by the New York Times and reprint here without permission Gail Collins’s entire column in yesterday’s Times, titled “What Happened to Working Women?”. Here it is:
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WHAT HAPPENED TO WORKING WOMEN?
Japan now has a higher proportion of working women than we do. I’m trying to get my head around this fact.
“Everyone else is continuing to rise and we’ve declined, and now we’re basically tied with Japan. And Japan’s on the upswing and we’re still going down,” said Jason Furman, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. He was pointing to a chart that shows women in the labor force in 24 countries. These are the usual suspects when we’re comparing ourselves to other societies — Australia, Belgium, Canada, etc. “When it came to women in the workplace, the United States used to be seventh. “And now we’re 20th,” said Furman in a phone interview. You’ll be happy to know that while Ireland also seems to be closing in on us, it’ll be a hell of a long time before we fall below Turkey.
Stick with me for a minute on this. We spend half of our national debate time talking about how economically fragile Americans feel. Why do you think that is? Well, there’s the whopping disproportion of national wealth flowing into the pockets of the already ¬wealthy. And the plummeting power of labor unions.
But women falling out of the work force is also a huge deal. It reduces family standards of living and puts a crimp in the economy. And why do you think this is happening?
One of the reasons is clearly, positively, absolutely the cost of child care. It’s incredible that we’ve built a society that relies on women in the labor force yet makes no discernible effort to deal with this problem. The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, recently divided the country into 618 “family budget areas” and determined that in more than 500 of them, the cost of child care for a family with a 4¬year¬old and an 8¬year old would exceed housing costs.
Also, if you’re a working single mother with those same two children in, say, Buffalo, child care probably eats up a third of your income. And infant care is impossible. In most states infant care is more expensive than college tuition.
We generally — and rightly — talk about early childhood education as something that’s critical because it increases kids’ chances of success in school. But as Carmel Martin of the Center for American Progress points out, “there’s also evidence of a positive effect on the economy over all.”
I am going to take a huge leap of faith and say that Japan is not trying to bring its mothers into the work force because of its historic commitment to feminism. (Last year, when a member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly made a speech calling for more services for women, she was taunted with cries of “Get married!” and “Can’t you even bear a child?”) But the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is convinced that encouraging working women will stimulate the economy. Now Japan, where 64 percent of working¬-age women are employed, compared to 63 percent in the United States, is in the process of creating 400,000 new prekindergarten spaces.
We will now stop for a moment and recall that in 1971, Congress passed a bipartisan bill that would have made quality preschool education available to every family in the United States that wanted it, with tuition based on the family’s ability to pay. Also after¬school programs for older children. Forty-four years ago! Richard Nixon vetoed it, muttering something about “communal approaches to child rearing.”
There’s also paid family leave. Japan guarantees that mothers get 58 weeks of maternity leave, about half of it paid. In this week’s Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders said he was embarrassed that the United States was the only “country on earth” that did not guarantee workers paid maternity leave. This was inaccurate, since Sanders completely overlooked the situation in Papua New Guinea.
Our current government policy requires that employers give new mothers 12 weeks of unpaid leave. This was based on a bill passed early in the Clinton administration. I remember well the combination of joy (parental leave!) and despair (three months with no pay?).
During the debate Hillary Clinton laced into Carly Fiorina’s argument that government shouldn’t “dictate to the private sector” about family leave. “They don’t mind having big government to interfere with a woman’s right to choose and to try to take down Planned Parenthood. They’re fine with big government when it comes to that. I’m sick of it,” Clinton said. It was really one of her better moments.
You may be stunned to hear that while the Republicans talk endlessly about ginning up the American economy, the idea of helping working mothers stay in the labor force does not come up all that often. Although Ben Carson has described preschool as “indoctrination.” From Richard Nixon to Ben Carson, and wow, nothing’s changed.
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That’s the full column. I’m going to add this: The purported justification for federal subsidies to industries such as the oil and gas industry and agriculture is that it has a significant positive effect on the economy. Agree or not with those policies, that is the stated justification for it.
Just as that is the stated justification for a slew of other policies that the American taxpayer is forced to pay for. Such as highway and bridge construction and maintenance, before the Tea Party gained control of Congress.
I understand that it requires abstract reasoning to understand this. And that people who incessantly rage about the American taxpayer having to pay for this or that don’t DO abstract reasoning. But really, some things are interconnected. The health of the economy and government subsidies for daycare are two of those things.
Seems there’s an actual difference between what is unaffordable for individuals and families and what is unaffordable for, say, the national government. In other countries as well as ours. The public in other countries has figured this out.
Do I think that some workers are lazy and not entitled? That is sure what I seem to suggest, Lord?
Really? That is what I seem to suggest? Where exactly in that post do I suggest that?
Japan’s birthrate has crashed. 54 weeks of maternity leave might be available, but fewer and fewer people are taking it.
Western civilization, and Japan which has adopted much of it, is dying out, and the primary driver behind that is women’s choosing career over children.
You really think Clinton is suggesting some workers are lazy and not entitled? Lord.
Not sure why Clinton should be attacked for doing something that all — all, yes, even Bernie Sanders — must do. This isn’t bean ball. You don’t piss off a million voters because it comes from the heart when there’s a way of saying it that does not piss those voters off.
“Western civilization, and Japan which has adopted much of it, is dying out, and the primary driver behind that is women’s choosing career over children.”
Warren, Warren, Warren
Given that world population numbers are not exactly crashing and we are headed pretty quick towards a 10 billion humans on Earth figure the only way to parse this statement is to say that whites and honorary whites like the Japanese are being outbred by the blahs and brahs.
Now I think you are fundamentally a decent human being, just infected by the Alan Bloom virus. But Christ man get some treatment. Western civilization is not threatened by brown people. St. Augustine was probably browner than you would be comfortable with. And some guy named Jesus. Cause we all came out of Africa and only some of us encountered the genetic accident that had us melanin deficient.
“Western civilization — is dying out”. No it isn’t. It is getting a little more brown and having some really good food introduced. Christ even the English have adopted fucking curry since 1880.
All politicians must do this, Urban Legend? Speak in focus-group-tested slogans? Because if the politician doesn’t say, for example, “working families” or just “families”, rather than “hardworking families”, again and again and again and again, people will think she wants to, say, give free stuff to the 47%?
I’m no fan of Joe Biden, but I’m pretty sure that a big part of his appeal to a lot of Dems, vis-à-vis Clinton is that he talks lie a normal person having a normal conversation. He doesn’t talk in slogans and soundbites.
I have no idea why you think all candidates—or any candidates—must speak like a canned message machine. I think it’s a big part of why Clinton isn’t better-liked personally.
I also think there’s a big generation gap—a BIG generation gap—in how off-putting this is to some voters. Does this kind of stuff appeal to millennials? Even to Gen Xers? Or do they find it annoying? In any event, unless Clinton is trying to subtly be playing a 47% kind of message—and I don’t know whether or not she is—then she should stop this.
She should just say matter-of-factly that most people who work work hard, and they deserve to be able to support themselves and their families in what has been traditionally a middle-class lifestyle. Assuming that that actually is what she means.
That’s why the English conquered the world — they were going for take-out.
And so you just throw out the “RACIST” canard. Please.
It’s not a matter of skin color, but of culture. If South American culture is so wonderful, why are so many coming here at risk of life and limb?