Here's an above the fold, front page headline from the
New York Times
today: WOMEN ARE NOW
EQUAL AS VICTIMS OF POOR ECONOMY.
I thought initially this was a victory--
Hey, Raul Castro may have
recently
declared
egalitarianism dead, but not us! Go
America!--but, as the article
quickly demonstrates, this is actually a hitherto undiscovered
strain of
bad
equality. To our political consultant friends, trust us,
Equality of Opportunity...To Fail remains a losing campaign slogan.
Or is it?
After moving into
virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large
scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing,
stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut.
And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or
disappearing for a while.
While losing a job is certainly not the best case scenarios,
surely being in the position to be affected by downturns is better
than being kept out of those positions during good
and bad times, no? And,
since this post title provides an opportunity as
equal as any other, I've
been meaning to post a link to James Poulos' typically
outside the box take on Phil Gramm's now (infamous, I guess)
pegging of ours as
a nation of whiners:
The point is that Americans are
whiners, but also sometimes not whiners. They are sometimes whiners
about bad actual things they can't affect, and sometimes whiners
about stupid things (my gas is going up! It'll cost so much to
drive to Starbucks!) but not about much less stupid things (I won't
be able to afford heat this winter!). Gramm's rhetoric is so
troublesome because it's so falsely polarizing -- in a world where
there are two types of people, whiners and nonwhiners, a redress of
grievances is impossible, because there are no grievances worthy of
the name.
So, yes, my
initial
glee at Gramm saying the unsayable has been somewhat tempered
by the explications of two of my much smarter, well respected
colleagues--Jim Antle, being
the
second--even if, I must admit, it has not yet been
extinguished. Maybe it's a personal failing or just a soft spot for
free-market orthodoxy espoused by those who resemble melancholy
woodland creatures. It's anyone's guess, really.
topics:
Business
