Okay, I'm no economics expert. In fact, I still count on my fingers. Just yesterday, I bought 4 packs of spider pop-up toys that came 4 to a pack because I needed 12 for my son's daycare Halloween party (I was counting by 3's). So I'm the last person you would ever want to trust with your money.
However, I do think I have enough common sense to make some assessments about what would help us get out of this economic mess we're in. With that disclaimer, here is my patented six part plan to fix the economy:
1. Legalize Marijuana
This one seems like a no-brainer to me. By legalizing pot, we would reap the rewards of tax revenue, while eliminating the cost of law enforcement involved in pot-related cases. "But wait!" you say. "Won't everyone start smoking pot then?!" No. I personally would not become a stoner if pot was legalized tomorrow, nor would most people I know. The people who are doing it now will keep doing it, and the people who aren't, won't. I think this same argument applies to all illegal drugs, but we can stick with pot for now.
2. Legalize Prostitution
See my argument above and apply it to this. Also, I think that prostitution is something that will always happen, and women would benefit from having it legalized. They would get better access to healthcare and would be able to operate in a safer environment.
3. Tax Product Imports
If companies are going to ship all of our manufacturing jobs overseas, then we should give them a disincentive to do that by charging them to bring all those products back into the country. Right?
4. Focus on "Green" Jobs
I think we could make up for some of the manufacturing jobs that have been lost over the years by creating new "green" manufacturing jobs. Solar panels, wind farms, etc. I don't know a lot about this industry, so I won't go into detail, but it seems like it would work.
5. Medicare for All
Providing a single-payer insurance plan for all Americans would reduce the costs we are already paying for people who have no insurance and rack up large hospital bills for things that could have been caught early. Think about it, everyone having coverage would mean everyone could go to the doctor and get their prescriptions and medical supplies. What does this mean? Higher demand for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, receptionists, nurse's aids, etc. Sure, a lot of health insurance company employees would lose their jobs, but they could retrain for one of those new green or healthcare jobs. Also, at least they'd have their medical costs covered while they were unemployed.
6. Taxation Fairness
Make the wealthy pay the same percentage of their income in taxes as the rest of us do. Seems only fair to me, and it would help us raise a ton of money to train people for all those new green and medical jobs we'll have.
Pretty soon, we'll all have a job and be able to buy stuff, which means more companies can sell stuff, which means more people have jobs, which means more people can buy stuff, etc., etc., etc.
Why don't I rule the world yet?
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
The Santa Question
I should back up a little and say that I was listening to the audiobook version of "Parenting Beyond Belief" which is a parenting book for atheists. There were a few different takes on the Santa issue in the book. Some said you should never tell your child that Santa is real to begin with, but since I read the book 7 years into my parenting adventure, that really wasn't an option. Someone else said that you should reveal the secret at the point when they ask you point blank if Santa is real or not, because otherwise you're just lying to them, and when they eventually figure that out they may not trust you on other issues.
This plan of attack made sense to me. Last year, when we were driving home one day, he piped up from the backseat and asked "Mom, is Santa really real?" At that point, I just kind of danced around the issue by saying that some people believe Santa is real, and others don't, and it's really up to you to decide if you believe. I realized later that this was the exact response I gave him when he asked me if God was real.
So a few days ago, I asked him what he was currently thinking about Santa Claus, and he said that he had a plan this year, whereby he would ask Santa for a certain present and not ask anyone else for it, and then when Santa brought it for him, he would know he was real. Smart kid.
You see why I didn't want to have his dreams crushed come Christmas morning.
When we spoke with him last night and told him that we were the ones buying him those "Santa" presents, he smiled. We asked him how long he had suspected it was us, and he said, "since I was 4." Again, smart kid. When we asked him if he was disappointed that Santa wasn't real, he said "no" and then moved on with reading his book.
Christmas at our house is a purely secular/cultural holiday. It's all about food, family, and fun (oh, and presents). I suspect that our son doesn't really care if Santa brings him any presents, as long as someone does and Christmas keeps coming.
And hopefully, this will be a lesson to him in questioning the things that other people say are true, "just because." If I can do anything good as a parent, it would be to instill in my sons the need to question and think for themselves.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Letter to a Bumper Sticker
This article was just so great I had to reprint it here. That, and I'm too lazy to write anything original at the moment. It was written by Cate Odonnell at Drake University and I'm very jealous that I didn't write it. Enjoy.
I would like to take a moment to acknowledge my favorite bumper sticker I used to see in the Goodwin-Kirk parking lot. I’m talking, of course, about the one that asks me, “Aren’t you glad your mother was pro-life?”
Good call, bumper sticker. Yes, all people who give birth are automatically pro-life. But just for argument’s sake, what might it be like to have one of those crazy, baby-eating, pro-choice mothers?
Bumper sticker, it might interest you to know that I personally have one of those baby-eating mothers. “But that’s impossible,” you might say. “You have not been eaten and surely you were once a baby.”
Well played, bumper sticker. One of the choices offered by being pro-choice is giving birth. My baby-eating mother didn’t decide to keep me out of fear, lack of access to a safe, legal abortion or because she saw a creepy pro-life billboard. In fact, it would seem that she kept me because she wanted me. Sometimes baby-eaters do stuff like that.
Pro-life is an interesting term, actually. The men and women who are truly pro-life are awesome. You can tell they’re awesome because they do such things as help pregnant women access prenatal resources and help parents locate health care, childcare and other support they need. Rather than guilting women or taking away their rights, some pro-life organizations also look at more successful ways of lowering the number of abortions, such as educating people about using birth control and preventing unwanted pregnancies. Avoiding unwanted pregnancies means fewer abortions, which means everyone wins. Go ahead and give the people who fall into this category a high-five. I like them.
Interestingly enough, though, many people who call themselves pro-life would more appropriately fit under the title of anti-choice. I’ve noticed that a solid chunk of the people who claim to be pro-life actually do more to reduce my autonomy than to increase the chance of life or the quality of life of my future children.
If you’re confused about whether you’re pro-life or anti-choice, here’s a litmus test: Are you forcing your religious convictions on me? Then you are anti-choice. Are you harassing a woman entering Planned Parenthood, intentionally and cruelly making a difficult day harder for her? Anti-choice again. Do you feel that cells in my body have more rights than I do? Anti-choice. Are you holding up a sign that confuses the terms “zygote,” “embryo” or “fetus” with an incorrect term like “baby” or “child?” Well, that doesn’t make you anti-choice as much as scientifically inaccurate and rhetorically misleading. But you still don’t qualify as pro-life. Boom. Roasted.
Moreover, when women are no longer able to get abortions for life-endangering pregnancies, it seems less pro-life and more pro-death. Also falling under pro-death: limiting safe and legal abortions for women, causing an increase in illegal “back alley abortions.” According to the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, 47,000 women worldwide died from unsafe abortions in 2008, not including the women with serious infections and lifelong physical and emotional scars. Don’t limit my right to a safe abortion and tell me you’re pro-life. Just don’t.
I’ll be real with you, pro-life bumper sticker. If I were to have any other kind of medical procedure and you interfered with it, I would judge you hardcore. There is, for instance, no need for you to protest my knee surgery with offensive signs. If you attempted to pass legislature to make knee surgery more difficult to get, then that would be a jerk move. Ditto in trying to ensure that my insurance wouldn’t cover that knee surgery. When it’s all said and done, I feel like you have no business being involved in my knee surgery at all, really. Seeing, you know, as it is a private medical procedure and also not your knee.
So how do we meet in the middle when you think I’m a baby killer and I think you’re laying claim to my uterus? You may be able to tell from aforementioned comments that I have a few opinions on abortion, and I am not free from blame when I say that as students at Drake, we have polarized the issue to the extent that almost all we can do is close our minds. The crosses in Helmick Commons last year signifying “dead babies” was probably not the most persuasive gesture Drake Respect for Life could have imagined (especially since I find it presumptuous that my embryo would have a cross. Are all “dead babies” automatically Christian now?). Likewise, if you’re one of the people who took those crosses or otherwise destroyed that display, you did absolutely nothing but prove your intolerance to other points of view. Good work, kids.
I would like to call a truce of sorts. As pro-choice Drake students, is it possible that we don’t tear down signs that promote Respect for Life and its events? In fact, what if we go to the events and try to understand their members’ perspectives? They had a non-polarizing speaker come to campus last year that said women don’t have access to or knowledge of resources and options besides abortion. What up, compromise? At the same point, it would be nice if the most recent pro-life speaker on campus didn’t lump together homosexuality, abortion, child abuse and the Holocaust. I can’t say those arguments convinced me of anything besides a misunderstanding of every issue, ever.
What if we had conversations around abortion instead of debates? Discussion around the issue of abortion is important, whether it is in classes, in print or in chalk. Perhaps we could see each other as intelligent and opinionated individuals instead of monsters. It would be nice to see collaborative programs educating students about reproductive rights and issues, and it would be great if you stopped assuming things about my mom. I dream of a day when outspoken pro-choice supporters and passionate pro-lifers can walk hand-in-hand and be judged not by their stances on abortion, but by their willingness to open their minds and respect each other’s seriously misguided perspectives.
Boom. Put that on a bumper sticker.
I would like to take a moment to acknowledge my favorite bumper sticker I used to see in the Goodwin-Kirk parking lot. I’m talking, of course, about the one that asks me, “Aren’t you glad your mother was pro-life?”
Good call, bumper sticker. Yes, all people who give birth are automatically pro-life. But just for argument’s sake, what might it be like to have one of those crazy, baby-eating, pro-choice mothers?
Bumper sticker, it might interest you to know that I personally have one of those baby-eating mothers. “But that’s impossible,” you might say. “You have not been eaten and surely you were once a baby.”
Well played, bumper sticker. One of the choices offered by being pro-choice is giving birth. My baby-eating mother didn’t decide to keep me out of fear, lack of access to a safe, legal abortion or because she saw a creepy pro-life billboard. In fact, it would seem that she kept me because she wanted me. Sometimes baby-eaters do stuff like that.
Pro-life is an interesting term, actually. The men and women who are truly pro-life are awesome. You can tell they’re awesome because they do such things as help pregnant women access prenatal resources and help parents locate health care, childcare and other support they need. Rather than guilting women or taking away their rights, some pro-life organizations also look at more successful ways of lowering the number of abortions, such as educating people about using birth control and preventing unwanted pregnancies. Avoiding unwanted pregnancies means fewer abortions, which means everyone wins. Go ahead and give the people who fall into this category a high-five. I like them.
Interestingly enough, though, many people who call themselves pro-life would more appropriately fit under the title of anti-choice. I’ve noticed that a solid chunk of the people who claim to be pro-life actually do more to reduce my autonomy than to increase the chance of life or the quality of life of my future children.
If you’re confused about whether you’re pro-life or anti-choice, here’s a litmus test: Are you forcing your religious convictions on me? Then you are anti-choice. Are you harassing a woman entering Planned Parenthood, intentionally and cruelly making a difficult day harder for her? Anti-choice again. Do you feel that cells in my body have more rights than I do? Anti-choice. Are you holding up a sign that confuses the terms “zygote,” “embryo” or “fetus” with an incorrect term like “baby” or “child?” Well, that doesn’t make you anti-choice as much as scientifically inaccurate and rhetorically misleading. But you still don’t qualify as pro-life. Boom. Roasted.
Moreover, when women are no longer able to get abortions for life-endangering pregnancies, it seems less pro-life and more pro-death. Also falling under pro-death: limiting safe and legal abortions for women, causing an increase in illegal “back alley abortions.” According to the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, 47,000 women worldwide died from unsafe abortions in 2008, not including the women with serious infections and lifelong physical and emotional scars. Don’t limit my right to a safe abortion and tell me you’re pro-life. Just don’t.
I’ll be real with you, pro-life bumper sticker. If I were to have any other kind of medical procedure and you interfered with it, I would judge you hardcore. There is, for instance, no need for you to protest my knee surgery with offensive signs. If you attempted to pass legislature to make knee surgery more difficult to get, then that would be a jerk move. Ditto in trying to ensure that my insurance wouldn’t cover that knee surgery. When it’s all said and done, I feel like you have no business being involved in my knee surgery at all, really. Seeing, you know, as it is a private medical procedure and also not your knee.
So how do we meet in the middle when you think I’m a baby killer and I think you’re laying claim to my uterus? You may be able to tell from aforementioned comments that I have a few opinions on abortion, and I am not free from blame when I say that as students at Drake, we have polarized the issue to the extent that almost all we can do is close our minds. The crosses in Helmick Commons last year signifying “dead babies” was probably not the most persuasive gesture Drake Respect for Life could have imagined (especially since I find it presumptuous that my embryo would have a cross. Are all “dead babies” automatically Christian now?). Likewise, if you’re one of the people who took those crosses or otherwise destroyed that display, you did absolutely nothing but prove your intolerance to other points of view. Good work, kids.
I would like to call a truce of sorts. As pro-choice Drake students, is it possible that we don’t tear down signs that promote Respect for Life and its events? In fact, what if we go to the events and try to understand their members’ perspectives? They had a non-polarizing speaker come to campus last year that said women don’t have access to or knowledge of resources and options besides abortion. What up, compromise? At the same point, it would be nice if the most recent pro-life speaker on campus didn’t lump together homosexuality, abortion, child abuse and the Holocaust. I can’t say those arguments convinced me of anything besides a misunderstanding of every issue, ever.
What if we had conversations around abortion instead of debates? Discussion around the issue of abortion is important, whether it is in classes, in print or in chalk. Perhaps we could see each other as intelligent and opinionated individuals instead of monsters. It would be nice to see collaborative programs educating students about reproductive rights and issues, and it would be great if you stopped assuming things about my mom. I dream of a day when outspoken pro-choice supporters and passionate pro-lifers can walk hand-in-hand and be judged not by their stances on abortion, but by their willingness to open their minds and respect each other’s seriously misguided perspectives.
Boom. Put that on a bumper sticker.
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