Who, exactly, are care workers, other than the people we need most right now, as the covid-19 pandemic overlays the division of labor with a new division of risk? I’ve long been an advocate of using the term “care worker” rather than “caregiver” even though the work can be and often is, at least in part, a gift. Because care–whether… Read more →
View from a Blue Rurality
We are the lucky ones, distancing in an already pretty distanced place. On country roads, plenty of space for walking, biking, breathing easy. One neighbor says not to worry because another neighbor has forty rolls of toilet paper, which her boyfriend nabbed before the shit hit the fan. If need be, we can beg for some. Rio the border collie… Read more →
Care Work Network: Distillations_1
As of March 30, 2020… Very helpful discussions of Covid19 social impact have unfolded on the Care Work Network list. Some impressions and engagements especially relevant to the U.S. are listed below. A forthcoming post will summarize some comments from the global South. (You can learn more about Care Work Network here. To subscribe to the listserv, email Darcie Boyer with your… Read more →
Coronavirus and the Fragility of the U.S. Economy
The Roosevelt Institute organized a twitter chat on Friday, March 29th and invited me to participate, along with about twenty other people (under the hashtag #ProgressingAhead) As a twitter newbie I found it a bit chaotic, like a video game I’d never played before. But the melee did help me clarify my thinking on some big issues. The first question… Read more →
Coronavirus Tweet Diary
I have generally been a pretty timid and reluctant Tweeter, but somehow the Coronavirus crisis and sequestration encouraged me to think in chunks of 280 characters. It seemed like a helpful way to process anguish. March 26, 2020 Want parents to go back to their jobs eventually? They will need childcare, and grandparents won’t be able to help. Stimulus package:… Read more →
Not O.K., Boomers (with postscript)
I must be a boomer, because I can never remember the difference between Generations X, Y (Millennials) and Z. Yet I am a fan of the phrase “OK, Boomer,” because it’s a relatively polite and pleasantly concise, if ironic, way for young people to explain “there’s a reason why we disagree.” And this reason is a good one: generational differences… Read more →
Greta on Fire
After her first speech to the Davos Forum of world “leaders” in Switzerland last year, Greta Thunberg was cautioned against causing panic. In her recent encore performance of January 21, 2020 she drily observed that she was clearly not causing panic, because they had done absolutely nothing over the past year to halt global climate change. Anyone who doubts that Thunberg’s… Read more →
A UBI for Care?
Guest post by Almaz Zelleke: Thanks, Nancy, for inviting me to share my proposal for a UBI that supports women, children, and care work in general. As we weigh the pros and cons of a UBI, it’s important to be specific about the goals and details of any particular proposal, since the basic definition of a UBI–a broadly distributed regular… Read more →
Basic Incomes for Whom?
Whatever you think about Andy Yang, you gotta love his slogan: Make America Think Again, acronymized as MATH. Yang has helped publicize the concept of a universal basic income, or UBI, and that concept itself is encouraging America to think harder about social policy. The merits of any UBI depend greatly on the specifics, and I have long worried about… Read more →
Beyond the Margins 1.0
With a hat tip to one of the first feminist economics conferences, (“Out of the Margin” in 1993), I’m inaugurating a mini-series on miscellaneous outrages, Beyond the Margins. Topic of the day is plutocracy, /plo?o?täkr?s?/, government by the wealthy– prompted by a Washington Post article suggesting that Michael Bloomberg is the top choice for a Democratic presidential candidate because he… Read more →