So today I met with a client. He’s a 53 year old Mexican immigrant who arrived here as a teenager with 0. At 25 he started his own little restaurant in a suburban NY community teeming with Hispanic mainly Mexican immigrants. 28 years later, his restaurant is such a success that he bought the building for $1.6 million and now it’s worth $3.5 million. While I’m meeting him the workers cleaning his exhaust system are working around us. I ask him about them; the owner of the small business is a Guatemalan immigrant in the country for 15 years. He worked for a contractor for 13 years then started his own business installing and cleaning exhaust systems. He has 3 employees. Suspect that his son/daughter will probably be a doctor, lawyer or executive somewhere. The American Dream. Alive and well in the immigrant communities of this nation.
I am exceedingly wary of the R candidates moderating their speech or scrubbing their websites of extreme language re abortion (the election lie, too, for that matter). I see a big "bait and switch" potential here. These candidates should be asked point blank what their views are concerning the various aspects of the abortion debate (and the Big Lie). Even with that, the specter of bait and switch looms large in the background.
With due respect to the notion that people don't pay a lot of attention to politics, I have a hard time believing that anyone who cares about those issues is going to be fooled by a scrubbed website 'good republican'.
The American Dream has always been a pipe dream, if not an outright lie, for significant proportions of Americans. The American Dream should have actually been called the white Christian male American Dream.
Even then, it only really held for a brief period between WWII reconstruction, up until the death of union membership in the 1980's.
Now, Americans have the lowest rate of social mobility of every industrialized nation, don't have universal healthcare coverage, and have maternal mortality and just general life expectancy numbers that are on par with third world countries rather those of other Western countries.
This fake American Dream has been abused by Republicans for decades. It's how they get the poor and uneducated to consistently vote against their own economic interests. Why do they vote for a party that is only interested in protecting the interests of the uber wealthy? Well, because the mirage of the American Dream tells them that one day, they too will be millionaires if they just work hard enough.
The American Dream is such a ridiculously ironic misnomer.
The question of what constitutes ‘upward mobility’ in our society is unfortunately easily able to be reduced to ‘how much is enough?’ I think it should be enough to be able to achieve great things AND be constrained to a maximum annual personal income through a progressive tax. One more private jet benefits no one, even the owner.
Dobbs is a transient issue that will affect the next election and the next election only because:
1) The 2023 recession (+ stagflation) is going to dominate the conversion going into the 2024 election so much that we'll be asking ourselves "remember when Dobbs happened? That was only a year ago!" come next year when the national subject has shifted to the next set of jingly keys. American voters have an incredibly short political memories, and it is SO important--especially for highly-educated Bulwark readers--to remember that *the majority of American voters are not as rational and well-informed as you are because they think with their gut more than with their gay matter*.
2) MAGA takes the house either way, so all Dobbs does as a motivating force is lessen the gains MAGA is already set to make before the country moves onto the next issue (likely the recession).
3) Once MAGA takes the house, they will be the ones driving the news narrative with Hunter Biden investigations and pointing out how hypocritical liberals are for going after MAGA elites on corruption when liberal elites are equally corrupt (there are of course, GREAT degrees of difference between MAGA corruption and Biden corruption, but America is largely blind to matters of degree once two sides are doing the same shit).
If you think the Dobbs decision will do more than buy the dems a few less seat losses in the house *this election* and then become a backseat issue from there then I don't know what to tell you. You're simply *not* paying attention to how things work here and how short our national attention span is.
Disagree. Dobbs is on course to become the gun rights argument of the left.
It may not have the same surge value in 24 that it's looking to have in 22, but it's likely to have the same sort of diehard coalition behind it that never lets it go.
As for the rest, forecasting 23 and 24 is a total sucker bet. Maga crap about Hunter will tickle the base but the rest of the country has zero care because Hunter isn't a prominent public personality like a certain ex president who can't stfu.
Thanks. As I said on a previous "Comments" thread, men like Travis will forget about Dobbs, but women are reminded monthly about their reproductive choices, or the lack thereof, and will act accordingly.
First Republicans have been clamoring for Biden to apologize for suggesting that the Republican Party has become a home for racists, white supremacists, Christian nationalist--- oh, and Nazis. Aside from the fact that truth is an absolute defense against slander, libel and defamation---- Biden should apologize just as soon as Republicans quit calling Democrats socialists, communists and baby killers.
I hope that Republicans are richly rewarded for their post-Dobbs insanity.
Putin only really has to wait until Trump is back in 2024... so Biden needs to win the war in Ukraine sooner rather than later.
The American Dream is exactly that a dream that hever has been and never will be.
I'd argue that there is an American dream that's provided a great deal of uplift to every destitute generation that has washed up on our shores after the country was founded. (The original colonists came as conquerors, I don't particularly romanticize them.)
The irony of this flavor of the American dream is that the current crop of "patriots" are the same strain of bigots who stirred moral panic about every immigration wave we've ever had.
The current batch yell about coming here legally like their ancestors did and sure, my great grandfather came in legally, registered at Ellis Island and became an American citizen, just like that. And he was part of a demonized minority (though the Germans were, outside of the war intervals, less demonized than the Italians, Irish, Jews, and East Europeans in that era.)
But he and his Finnish wife did live a good life, first in Minnesota and then in California when she got tired of the snow.
But they've taken away those avenues for ready access to citizenship, then yelled about people bypassing them.
Thank you, Jim for a well analyzed look at how the GQP is coping with their own "success" to debase and deny full citizenship rights to women. I do hope their own insanity brings them to their knees. The entire GQP could benefit from a bit of suffering, and humiliation, if it inspires them to change at a fundamental level. We can only hope. And vote.
Nancy Davis' problem isn't solved by exceptions for rape, incest, or the [physical] health of the mother. I don't think any Republicans would be willing to do anything because the language of it gets too tricky. "Pregnancies that won't result in a viable baby"? "Pregnancies that produce children with critical genetic abnormalities"? They are all going to sound like science fiction/eugenics.
This is the problem they have created for themselves by not trusting women and their doctors to make proper health decisions.
The extract of Eric Edelman's remarks on "Beg to Differ" was good to highlight, but there was another great exchange when Edelman was asked about diminishing US munitions stocks.
The latest "Shield of the Republic" podcast, with Amb. John Herbst joining Edelman and Cohen should also be featured.
The narrative of the American Dream--greater economic prosperity for the next generation-- is obsolete when everyone realizes that we have no idea what jobs will exist in 20 years or how long they will last. That is where we are today. Therefore, creating political expectations using an obsolete narrative imperials that messenger in the long run. Narratives about meeting great challenges, like fulfilling the ideals of liberal democracy (or the flip side of the coin, fulfill the ideals of our constitutional republic) and meeting the challenges of a new economic frontier may play better.
I just finished reading Sarah Churchill’s book about the origins of the “American Dream”. I suggest that you read this book for a deeper dive into the many meanings of the American Dream!
The Republican party SHOULD be associated with the horror and suffering that women are now being put through. It was their court, their pols, who have inflicted this, who have taken from women a right to self determination and bodily integrity. The deluge of nightmare stories we've seen since Dobbs are the inevitable result of the actions of the forced birth movement, and these stories don't even include the women quietly suffering, the women forced to bear children they don't want and can't support, the children born into worsening poverty, the lives and dreams and aspirations now limited and constrained. Making abortion illegal is always a horror show.
I find it astounding that anyone could be convinced that an embryo can feel pain but that the woman carrying it cannot. It’s clear that the authors of the abortion bans now being passed have not considered the significant and sometimes lethal unintended consequences of this legislation. In Georgia, these consequences are likely to include an increase in our maternal mortality rate, which is already among the highest in the nation. Twice as many Black women die of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth as White women and twenty percent of women in the state have no heath insurance. The lack of health insurance is significant not only for childbirth, but also for prenatal care and access to contraception.
While the Georgia Republican legislature and governor insist that they are “pro-life,” they have repeatedly refused to expand Medicaid, which would cover additional low-income families at less cost than the program they propose. They love those “bouncing babies” as the sponsor of our 6-week abortion ban put it, but not enough to help them after they are born.
"The issue at stake in the abortion debate isn't whether a fetus is a person, but whether a woman is." Ellen Willis. Far, far too many of these cruel laws prioritize the rights of an unsentient embryo over the rights of sentient women. For far too, too many so-called "pro-life" legislators and activists, the lives of women mean less than nothing.
The modern American woman has about 360 ova in her lifetime. Let's call them eggs.
It's always a question of which of those ~360 turn into babies. Some intentional attempts don't make it; some unintentional ones make it. She may decide on two or three in her life. Either way, she ain't gonna have more than ~ 1.7 on average to success.
If Romesh Ponnuru and David French can indeed convince a ten year old rape victim to fully gestate, she will likely decide early on to stop the charade and turn off subsequent ones (by a variety of means). On the otherhand, if she aborts early ones and becomes an executive, she may have her share in her thirties. May be she will freeze some and have them later.
The question is: Who should be playing God with the fate of those 360 eggs?
I certainly don't want Romesh or David to play God. And definitely not Ted Cruz. Let it be the girl/woman.
The forced-gestation crowd needs to realize that it's a zero sum game. If they want to improve on the ~1.7 average, change the support system. Not by force.
Immigration is how you make up for that ~1.7 number because we're not going to fix the wealth inequality and cultural decadence problem that's making child-bearing and child-raising so expensive on households. Birth rates go down as women's education increases (an international trend, not just an American one) because dual-income household wages go up as a result of both partners having graduated college, which drives an increased cost of living due to their spending habits as an economic class, which makes child-raising more expensive for everyone else who isn't in a dual-degree household, which drives lower birth rates for the nation.
Want demographic growth? Replace American women with immigrants. I promise the birth rates will go up. And you don't have to force anything on anybody to make this happen, just need to let more immigrant women into the country than we currently are.
Unlike American women, immigrant women don't need to "live their best lives" (a factor of money and careerism) in order to feel comfortable settling down and raising kids with someone. There is no culture of fear of missing out (FOMO) for immigrant women, because frankly they just feel lucky enough to have the opportunity to raise kids here. American women on the other hand? Lol. They need a career, a marriage to their "best friend" (who always happens to make the same or more money than they do), and a giant sense of financial security before they're ready to plan for kids. FOMO on all the decadence is what is driving lower birth rates here. It ain't abortion (or lack thereof).
Not sure my fox news indoctrinated male family member would agree with your solution to birth rate decline. He has been railing for several years about how "THEY" breed like rabbits while white women are having fewer kids.
Immigrants are not the solution to our demographic challenge - the authors here;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/295085 show that birth rates for immigrants decline with each succeeding generation and approach the mean for all women. Hint; immigrant women and their offspring aren’t stupid, they will limit their offspring to the # needed to continue the family line and aren’t going to multiply just to meet our demographic needs for more people. Look around any immigrant community, like say Queens in NYC. The mothers are not towing 5-6 kids behind them - maybe 2-3, sometimes just one or two. They get it. It’s expensive and it inhibits economic potential which is why they came to the US in the first place. This phenomena is carried to their daughters who more than likely will mimic the demographic model of the higher income strata they occupy. So, we’re stuck. The only option, and the authors determine it’s not a fix, is to increase net immigration. Good luck with the that -
I don't know, man. This reads like something from a red-pilled reddit, especially the last part about the differences between American-born and immigrant women.
Interesting take you have there. So what was the sample size used from coming to this conclusion? How varied was the data source? And what exactly is your definition of an ‘American’ woman and ‘immigrant’ woman? Like just how far off the boat does one need to be in ordered to be classified as one or the other? Or better yet, please simply send a link to the study from which these musings derive.
Ah, another area of your expertise - what women want. I'll run this by my (non-immigrant) daughter. She has a very good job, which she for the most part likes. She has a family. She has many personal interests and activities. She would prefer not to be forced to give birth to an unintended child. Along the way she has learned to avoid laying blame for the many challenges she has faced, has accepted adult responsibilities, does not indulge in free-floating anger, and does not believe that she alone has it all figured out. But, I will inform her that she is, whether she knows it or not...decadent. I think she'll be very surprised to learn this about herself.
As a blue collar factory worker, I will never apologize for giving my daughter a college education so that she could have a more comfortable, more secure life. Whether she married or not.
Just like men, not all women want or need children to feel fulfilled.
Daughter of an immigrant father here. Daughters (and sons) will usually work to obtain a better (in you eyes decadent) life than their parents had.
The thing is, I'm not talking about you here because you're a blue collar factory worker. Now, if your *kids* use those benefits you gave them to concentrate wealth, then they're being indifferent to the rest of the country who is struggling because they're more focused on marrying someone who is post-college like they are than thinking about the power they hold and the responsibility that comes with it. If you see nothing wrong with this wealth-mating issue, and the consequences it has for other less-fortunate households in this country, then I'd say you're feeding into the same kind of economic indifference that is tearing this country apart politically.
Don't like economic anti-elite populism? Then *stop* encouraging wealth mating and elite-making. Otherwise, expect your daughter to do the same shit coastal elites are doing today, and creating more of the same economic populism problems we have in our national politics in the next generation that may or may not see even worse anti-democratic backlashes come around as a result. Hey, fuckin why not right? It's not like democracy is being slowly deleted right before our very eyes. Why NOT just keep doing what we're doing and expect better results?
I do hear what you are saying, Travis. My daughter did marry better than me (college educated,humble young man, her best friend, lol!) They don't have the desire for children, they love their life. But they are strictly middle class folks (small home, non-flashy autos, simple wants and pleasures).
Just a humble question, you're talking about the old money folks with education marrying off the their children to like-minded folks?
People like that live in an exclusive world, would never admit people like me or my educated daughter into their circle. Heck, we can't even find their circle.
I educated my kid so that she could survive in this world. And yes, it is a more expensive world driven by those that have money.
Jeri, I hope it's not out of line for me to tell you that your daughter did not marry better than you, no matter how great a guy he is. Don't allow a culture that believes in status symbols as the worth of a person to put its hallow bs on you. You're a thoughtful, caring, aware person who lives in fing Texas. That makes you a great person right there.
That's not the decadent part. The decadent part is only ever marrying across or above class once you *have* that education and future earning potential, because *god forbid* women make themselves the household breadwinners instead of marrying someone who makes equal or more than they do and driving up the cost of living for everyone else. Having a college education and a meaningful career can be very rewarding, and can provide you with the funds to raise children in a country whose cost of living is going up because of decadent post-college wealth-mating and the associated spending patterns of dual-degree households. But it's that wealth-mating that is *causing* the cost of living to be so high in the first place.
When post-college couples get together, they buy bigger houses, buy nicer cars, put more money into their children's future, which leaves everyone else who isn't like them struggling to give their children equal opportunities that only the dual-degree households can afford. THAT is the decadence of the millennial post-college class. They're driving wealth inequality even harder than their Boomer parents who they love to complain about. Wealth-mating, NIMBYism, and low taxes on high earners is the story of the post-college millennials who got together and sold out on their populism once they realized they were the ones who had it made.
By my point remains: we'll get to higher national birthrates by importing less-decadent women from abroad, not by getting careerist American women to stop wealth-mating so that the cost of living can come down low enough for more people to feel financially comfortable having kids. American post-college women have already shown us that they don't give a shit about the problems that wealth-mating causes since the 1970's. They just want to live their best lives--economic consequences for others be damned--and they don't want to hear you judging them about it.
Abortion has nothing to do with the birth rates we have here. Decadence does. Don't like being judged? Live a less decadent and hypocritical lifestyle. Otherwise, expect judgement. Nobody escapes this life absent judgement by others. Better get used to it.
There is so much wrong with point of view that I don’t even know where to begin. It’s literally blame shifting all the countries “problems” on a class of people (women) that was continually repressed for the first 200 years of this republic.
Here is a thought: why can’t more men get their shit together and stop bitching and moaning about women wanting more from their mates?
Yep I just saw your exchange from yesterday. Over-the-top. According to Travis, you are to blame for the worlds ills.
What I keep missing in his analysis is how he thinks a president with a 50-50 senate and a 5 seat majority in congress is suppose to accomplish any of his goals. He cannot snap his fingers and make the Democratic Party vote on things they don’t want to vote for.
Even more frustrating is that his complaints (maybe rightly, who knows), is fundamentally cultural. A president can’t change that. Even more frustrating is that his complaints have nothing to do with democrats. Republicans were for trickle down economics and low taxes on the wealthy. The democrats have been the party of the less wealthy. How this is somehow Biden’s fault or his job to somehow fix is ludicrous.
Yeah. Oldest romance plot in the history of the world is the crazy kids who fall in love in spite of class differences and the families forbid it because they only want their kids to marry somebody of equal or better class.
So today I met with a client. He’s a 53 year old Mexican immigrant who arrived here as a teenager with 0. At 25 he started his own little restaurant in a suburban NY community teeming with Hispanic mainly Mexican immigrants. 28 years later, his restaurant is such a success that he bought the building for $1.6 million and now it’s worth $3.5 million. While I’m meeting him the workers cleaning his exhaust system are working around us. I ask him about them; the owner of the small business is a Guatemalan immigrant in the country for 15 years. He worked for a contractor for 13 years then started his own business installing and cleaning exhaust systems. He has 3 employees. Suspect that his son/daughter will probably be a doctor, lawyer or executive somewhere. The American Dream. Alive and well in the immigrant communities of this nation.
I am exceedingly wary of the R candidates moderating their speech or scrubbing their websites of extreme language re abortion (the election lie, too, for that matter). I see a big "bait and switch" potential here. These candidates should be asked point blank what their views are concerning the various aspects of the abortion debate (and the Big Lie). Even with that, the specter of bait and switch looms large in the background.
With due respect to the notion that people don't pay a lot of attention to politics, I have a hard time believing that anyone who cares about those issues is going to be fooled by a scrubbed website 'good republican'.
Ted Johnson's piece is fantastic. Great insight into conflating Dream and Promise.
The American Dream has always been a pipe dream, if not an outright lie, for significant proportions of Americans. The American Dream should have actually been called the white Christian male American Dream.
Even then, it only really held for a brief period between WWII reconstruction, up until the death of union membership in the 1980's.
Now, Americans have the lowest rate of social mobility of every industrialized nation, don't have universal healthcare coverage, and have maternal mortality and just general life expectancy numbers that are on par with third world countries rather those of other Western countries.
This fake American Dream has been abused by Republicans for decades. It's how they get the poor and uneducated to consistently vote against their own economic interests. Why do they vote for a party that is only interested in protecting the interests of the uber wealthy? Well, because the mirage of the American Dream tells them that one day, they too will be millionaires if they just work hard enough.
The American Dream is such a ridiculously ironic misnomer.
The question of what constitutes ‘upward mobility’ in our society is unfortunately easily able to be reduced to ‘how much is enough?’ I think it should be enough to be able to achieve great things AND be constrained to a maximum annual personal income through a progressive tax. One more private jet benefits no one, even the owner.
Dobbs is a transient issue that will affect the next election and the next election only because:
1) The 2023 recession (+ stagflation) is going to dominate the conversion going into the 2024 election so much that we'll be asking ourselves "remember when Dobbs happened? That was only a year ago!" come next year when the national subject has shifted to the next set of jingly keys. American voters have an incredibly short political memories, and it is SO important--especially for highly-educated Bulwark readers--to remember that *the majority of American voters are not as rational and well-informed as you are because they think with their gut more than with their gay matter*.
2) MAGA takes the house either way, so all Dobbs does as a motivating force is lessen the gains MAGA is already set to make before the country moves onto the next issue (likely the recession).
3) Once MAGA takes the house, they will be the ones driving the news narrative with Hunter Biden investigations and pointing out how hypocritical liberals are for going after MAGA elites on corruption when liberal elites are equally corrupt (there are of course, GREAT degrees of difference between MAGA corruption and Biden corruption, but America is largely blind to matters of degree once two sides are doing the same shit).
If you think the Dobbs decision will do more than buy the dems a few less seat losses in the house *this election* and then become a backseat issue from there then I don't know what to tell you. You're simply *not* paying attention to how things work here and how short our national attention span is.
Disagree. Dobbs is on course to become the gun rights argument of the left.
It may not have the same surge value in 24 that it's looking to have in 22, but it's likely to have the same sort of diehard coalition behind it that never lets it go.
As for the rest, forecasting 23 and 24 is a total sucker bet. Maga crap about Hunter will tickle the base but the rest of the country has zero care because Hunter isn't a prominent public personality like a certain ex president who can't stfu.
And you're prescient too. Already calling future elections and who's to blame.
Thanks. As I said on a previous "Comments" thread, men like Travis will forget about Dobbs, but women are reminded monthly about their reproductive choices, or the lack thereof, and will act accordingly.
"how short our national attention span is."
Less than gnats.
First Republicans have been clamoring for Biden to apologize for suggesting that the Republican Party has become a home for racists, white supremacists, Christian nationalist--- oh, and Nazis. Aside from the fact that truth is an absolute defense against slander, libel and defamation---- Biden should apologize just as soon as Republicans quit calling Democrats socialists, communists and baby killers.
I hope that Republicans are richly rewarded for their post-Dobbs insanity.
Putin only really has to wait until Trump is back in 2024... so Biden needs to win the war in Ukraine sooner rather than later.
The American Dream is exactly that a dream that hever has been and never will be.
I'd argue that there is an American dream that's provided a great deal of uplift to every destitute generation that has washed up on our shores after the country was founded. (The original colonists came as conquerors, I don't particularly romanticize them.)
The irony of this flavor of the American dream is that the current crop of "patriots" are the same strain of bigots who stirred moral panic about every immigration wave we've ever had.
The current batch yell about coming here legally like their ancestors did and sure, my great grandfather came in legally, registered at Ellis Island and became an American citizen, just like that. And he was part of a demonized minority (though the Germans were, outside of the war intervals, less demonized than the Italians, Irish, Jews, and East Europeans in that era.)
But he and his Finnish wife did live a good life, first in Minnesota and then in California when she got tired of the snow.
But they've taken away those avenues for ready access to citizenship, then yelled about people bypassing them.
Thank you, Jim for a well analyzed look at how the GQP is coping with their own "success" to debase and deny full citizenship rights to women. I do hope their own insanity brings them to their knees. The entire GQP could benefit from a bit of suffering, and humiliation, if it inspires them to change at a fundamental level. We can only hope. And vote.
Nancy Davis' problem isn't solved by exceptions for rape, incest, or the [physical] health of the mother. I don't think any Republicans would be willing to do anything because the language of it gets too tricky. "Pregnancies that won't result in a viable baby"? "Pregnancies that produce children with critical genetic abnormalities"? They are all going to sound like science fiction/eugenics.
This is the problem they have created for themselves by not trusting women and their doctors to make proper health decisions.
The extract of Eric Edelman's remarks on "Beg to Differ" was good to highlight, but there was another great exchange when Edelman was asked about diminishing US munitions stocks.
The latest "Shield of the Republic" podcast, with Amb. John Herbst joining Edelman and Cohen should also be featured.
The narrative of the American Dream--greater economic prosperity for the next generation-- is obsolete when everyone realizes that we have no idea what jobs will exist in 20 years or how long they will last. That is where we are today. Therefore, creating political expectations using an obsolete narrative imperials that messenger in the long run. Narratives about meeting great challenges, like fulfilling the ideals of liberal democracy (or the flip side of the coin, fulfill the ideals of our constitutional republic) and meeting the challenges of a new economic frontier may play better.
I just finished reading Sarah Churchill’s book about the origins of the “American Dream”. I suggest that you read this book for a deeper dive into the many meanings of the American Dream!
The Republican party SHOULD be associated with the horror and suffering that women are now being put through. It was their court, their pols, who have inflicted this, who have taken from women a right to self determination and bodily integrity. The deluge of nightmare stories we've seen since Dobbs are the inevitable result of the actions of the forced birth movement, and these stories don't even include the women quietly suffering, the women forced to bear children they don't want and can't support, the children born into worsening poverty, the lives and dreams and aspirations now limited and constrained. Making abortion illegal is always a horror show.
I find it astounding that anyone could be convinced that an embryo can feel pain but that the woman carrying it cannot. It’s clear that the authors of the abortion bans now being passed have not considered the significant and sometimes lethal unintended consequences of this legislation. In Georgia, these consequences are likely to include an increase in our maternal mortality rate, which is already among the highest in the nation. Twice as many Black women die of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth as White women and twenty percent of women in the state have no heath insurance. The lack of health insurance is significant not only for childbirth, but also for prenatal care and access to contraception.
While the Georgia Republican legislature and governor insist that they are “pro-life,” they have repeatedly refused to expand Medicaid, which would cover additional low-income families at less cost than the program they propose. They love those “bouncing babies” as the sponsor of our 6-week abortion ban put it, but not enough to help them after they are born.
"The issue at stake in the abortion debate isn't whether a fetus is a person, but whether a woman is." Ellen Willis. Far, far too many of these cruel laws prioritize the rights of an unsentient embryo over the rights of sentient women. For far too, too many so-called "pro-life" legislators and activists, the lives of women mean less than nothing.
Oh I think they know what they are doing. They just don’t care.
They don't care about pain, they care about control.
Slave societies live in constant fear of revolt. Wannabe patriarchs are no different.
The modern American woman has about 360 ova in her lifetime. Let's call them eggs.
It's always a question of which of those ~360 turn into babies. Some intentional attempts don't make it; some unintentional ones make it. She may decide on two or three in her life. Either way, she ain't gonna have more than ~ 1.7 on average to success.
If Romesh Ponnuru and David French can indeed convince a ten year old rape victim to fully gestate, she will likely decide early on to stop the charade and turn off subsequent ones (by a variety of means). On the otherhand, if she aborts early ones and becomes an executive, she may have her share in her thirties. May be she will freeze some and have them later.
The question is: Who should be playing God with the fate of those 360 eggs?
I certainly don't want Romesh or David to play God. And definitely not Ted Cruz. Let it be the girl/woman.
The forced-gestation crowd needs to realize that it's a zero sum game. If they want to improve on the ~1.7 average, change the support system. Not by force.
Immigration is how you make up for that ~1.7 number because we're not going to fix the wealth inequality and cultural decadence problem that's making child-bearing and child-raising so expensive on households. Birth rates go down as women's education increases (an international trend, not just an American one) because dual-income household wages go up as a result of both partners having graduated college, which drives an increased cost of living due to their spending habits as an economic class, which makes child-raising more expensive for everyone else who isn't in a dual-degree household, which drives lower birth rates for the nation.
Want demographic growth? Replace American women with immigrants. I promise the birth rates will go up. And you don't have to force anything on anybody to make this happen, just need to let more immigrant women into the country than we currently are.
Unlike American women, immigrant women don't need to "live their best lives" (a factor of money and careerism) in order to feel comfortable settling down and raising kids with someone. There is no culture of fear of missing out (FOMO) for immigrant women, because frankly they just feel lucky enough to have the opportunity to raise kids here. American women on the other hand? Lol. They need a career, a marriage to their "best friend" (who always happens to make the same or more money than they do), and a giant sense of financial security before they're ready to plan for kids. FOMO on all the decadence is what is driving lower birth rates here. It ain't abortion (or lack thereof).
Not sure my fox news indoctrinated male family member would agree with your solution to birth rate decline. He has been railing for several years about how "THEY" breed like rabbits while white women are having fewer kids.
Immigrants are not the solution to our demographic challenge - the authors here;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/295085 show that birth rates for immigrants decline with each succeeding generation and approach the mean for all women. Hint; immigrant women and their offspring aren’t stupid, they will limit their offspring to the # needed to continue the family line and aren’t going to multiply just to meet our demographic needs for more people. Look around any immigrant community, like say Queens in NYC. The mothers are not towing 5-6 kids behind them - maybe 2-3, sometimes just one or two. They get it. It’s expensive and it inhibits economic potential which is why they came to the US in the first place. This phenomena is carried to their daughters who more than likely will mimic the demographic model of the higher income strata they occupy. So, we’re stuck. The only option, and the authors determine it’s not a fix, is to increase net immigration. Good luck with the that -
Correct. Immigrants are not the solution. Immigration is. All immigrants move to the mean of our society over a generation which means: 0-2.
I don't know, man. This reads like something from a red-pilled reddit, especially the last part about the differences between American-born and immigrant women.
Give it up Travis. Take some introductory courses on stfuing on personal choices of women.
Interesting take you have there. So what was the sample size used from coming to this conclusion? How varied was the data source? And what exactly is your definition of an ‘American’ woman and ‘immigrant’ woman? Like just how far off the boat does one need to be in ordered to be classified as one or the other? Or better yet, please simply send a link to the study from which these musings derive.
Ah, another area of your expertise - what women want. I'll run this by my (non-immigrant) daughter. She has a very good job, which she for the most part likes. She has a family. She has many personal interests and activities. She would prefer not to be forced to give birth to an unintended child. Along the way she has learned to avoid laying blame for the many challenges she has faced, has accepted adult responsibilities, does not indulge in free-floating anger, and does not believe that she alone has it all figured out. But, I will inform her that she is, whether she knows it or not...decadent. I think she'll be very surprised to learn this about herself.
Apparently any woman who wants to have children at an optimum time for herself, her partner, and the child is decadent. This makes my blood boil.
I am a man and I have no idea where he is heading with this. Simple solution imho: men can and need to get their shit together
Goofy reply:
"I'm a man.
But I can change.
If I have to,
I guess."
--- The Man's Prayer, courtesy of the Red Green show
Serious reply:
Women should be in charge of all decisions regarding their own bodies.
Thank you. Women just love it when men start judging them on their reproductive choices. It's no better than what the "pro-lifers" are doing.
Excuse me, I don't think that getting a college education and a meaningful career is decadent. How judgmental can you be?
Right?
As a blue collar factory worker, I will never apologize for giving my daughter a college education so that she could have a more comfortable, more secure life. Whether she married or not.
Just like men, not all women want or need children to feel fulfilled.
Daughter of an immigrant father here. Daughters (and sons) will usually work to obtain a better (in you eyes decadent) life than their parents had.
The thing is, I'm not talking about you here because you're a blue collar factory worker. Now, if your *kids* use those benefits you gave them to concentrate wealth, then they're being indifferent to the rest of the country who is struggling because they're more focused on marrying someone who is post-college like they are than thinking about the power they hold and the responsibility that comes with it. If you see nothing wrong with this wealth-mating issue, and the consequences it has for other less-fortunate households in this country, then I'd say you're feeding into the same kind of economic indifference that is tearing this country apart politically.
Don't like economic anti-elite populism? Then *stop* encouraging wealth mating and elite-making. Otherwise, expect your daughter to do the same shit coastal elites are doing today, and creating more of the same economic populism problems we have in our national politics in the next generation that may or may not see even worse anti-democratic backlashes come around as a result. Hey, fuckin why not right? It's not like democracy is being slowly deleted right before our very eyes. Why NOT just keep doing what we're doing and expect better results?
I do hear what you are saying, Travis. My daughter did marry better than me (college educated,humble young man, her best friend, lol!) They don't have the desire for children, they love their life. But they are strictly middle class folks (small home, non-flashy autos, simple wants and pleasures).
Just a humble question, you're talking about the old money folks with education marrying off the their children to like-minded folks?
People like that live in an exclusive world, would never admit people like me or my educated daughter into their circle. Heck, we can't even find their circle.
I educated my kid so that she could survive in this world. And yes, it is a more expensive world driven by those that have money.
Jeri, I hope it's not out of line for me to tell you that your daughter did not marry better than you, no matter how great a guy he is. Don't allow a culture that believes in status symbols as the worth of a person to put its hallow bs on you. You're a thoughtful, caring, aware person who lives in fing Texas. That makes you a great person right there.
That's not the decadent part. The decadent part is only ever marrying across or above class once you *have* that education and future earning potential, because *god forbid* women make themselves the household breadwinners instead of marrying someone who makes equal or more than they do and driving up the cost of living for everyone else. Having a college education and a meaningful career can be very rewarding, and can provide you with the funds to raise children in a country whose cost of living is going up because of decadent post-college wealth-mating and the associated spending patterns of dual-degree households. But it's that wealth-mating that is *causing* the cost of living to be so high in the first place.
When post-college couples get together, they buy bigger houses, buy nicer cars, put more money into their children's future, which leaves everyone else who isn't like them struggling to give their children equal opportunities that only the dual-degree households can afford. THAT is the decadence of the millennial post-college class. They're driving wealth inequality even harder than their Boomer parents who they love to complain about. Wealth-mating, NIMBYism, and low taxes on high earners is the story of the post-college millennials who got together and sold out on their populism once they realized they were the ones who had it made.
By my point remains: we'll get to higher national birthrates by importing less-decadent women from abroad, not by getting careerist American women to stop wealth-mating so that the cost of living can come down low enough for more people to feel financially comfortable having kids. American post-college women have already shown us that they don't give a shit about the problems that wealth-mating causes since the 1970's. They just want to live their best lives--economic consequences for others be damned--and they don't want to hear you judging them about it.
Abortion has nothing to do with the birth rates we have here. Decadence does. Don't like being judged? Live a less decadent and hypocritical lifestyle. Otherwise, expect judgement. Nobody escapes this life absent judgement by others. Better get used to it.
There is so much wrong with point of view that I don’t even know where to begin. It’s literally blame shifting all the countries “problems” on a class of people (women) that was continually repressed for the first 200 years of this republic.
Here is a thought: why can’t more men get their shit together and stop bitching and moaning about women wanting more from their mates?
Thank you.
Yep I just saw your exchange from yesterday. Over-the-top. According to Travis, you are to blame for the worlds ills.
What I keep missing in his analysis is how he thinks a president with a 50-50 senate and a 5 seat majority in congress is suppose to accomplish any of his goals. He cannot snap his fingers and make the Democratic Party vote on things they don’t want to vote for.
Even more frustrating is that his complaints (maybe rightly, who knows), is fundamentally cultural. A president can’t change that. Even more frustrating is that his complaints have nothing to do with democrats. Republicans were for trickle down economics and low taxes on the wealthy. The democrats have been the party of the less wealthy. How this is somehow Biden’s fault or his job to somehow fix is ludicrous.
Why is it only the fault of American women who want to marry someone of their own class?
Yeah. Oldest romance plot in the history of the world is the crazy kids who fall in love in spite of class differences and the families forbid it because they only want their kids to marry somebody of equal or better class.
Read a book Travis.