Benjamin Kline Hunnicut is professor of leisure studies at the University of Iowa, which sounds mildly ridiculous. Maybe that’s the problem, because we’ve become accustomed to thinking that everyone should be enjoying the fruits of full employment. In any case, it is odd that the Republicans are behaving as if we should all be working all the time when their main message seems to be that things have gone to hell ever since women got control of their reproductive systems, joined the workforce, and stopped being home for the kids when they get out of school. If some women (and men) are now able to get their health insurance on the exchanges instead of from dead-end jobs they don’t even want, then maybe we’ll have fewer latch-key kids.
Theoretically, there should be more work available for people who need it for the wages instead of just the health coverage. That would create a more rational allocation of labor and a happier workforce, would it not?
Of course, the answer to BooMan’s rhetorical question is “yes.” Sadly, those who follow the conservative movement are not responsive to calls to consider the many holes in their critiques and policy positions.
Yes, the GOP is absolutely willing to shame parents for not watching their kids 24/7 AND shame them for not working full-time jobs. Oh, and they are shamed by implication for not being entrepreneurs (“job creators”), and for wanting to enjoy a dignified retirement once they finish raising the kids (20-year pensions are destroying our country!). And if their children commit a crime once they achieve adulthood, or they just fail to achieve the American Dream, that’s the parents’ fault as well as the kids’.
The GOP’s response to the fact that their Reagan Revolution and current Randian Revolution have made it much more difficult for all our kids to achieve the American Dream? Quit your whining! People had it much worse during the Great Depression, and they didn’t ask for any help from the government!
Oh, wait.
I’m so confused, I thought I was supposed to be all barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, so I set up a Christian Mingle account to get that going, but now they’re telling me that if I do that I’m a lazy communist, so I’ve gone back to hanging out in random north woods biker bars looking for my baby daddy. I wish they’d just make up their mind.
“I wish they’d just make up their mind.”
They have a mind? Who knew?
Of course, leisure studies is a professional field that trains people for careers in parks management, museum management, recreation program administration, and so on. Training people to work… in the leisure industry.
In my grandfather’s day, he was home to supervise the kids after school. He put them to work plowing and cultivating the cotton crop or other chores. No latch-key kids then.
If all of the couples had one or the other quit employment and the other dropped back to one job, wages would rise from the labor shortage. That’s one of the counter-intuitive things about the economy.
Came across this tweet …
○ My Baby and AOL’s Bottom Line
Well, obviously we should expect no consistency from ideologues. The Republicans are the people who want a small, limited government that makes sure not a single person crosses a 2,000-mile border without written permission.
But it seems like maybe this argument that not working is immoral is kind of a fallback position after the initial lie that the ACA was going to KILL 2.5 million jobs was so thoroughly debunked. It’s like, “OK, uh, but it’s still a bad thing, because, uh…”
I’m also amused by their claims about all the jobs Keystone XL will create. There’s not point denying that building a massive oil pipeline will create jobs, but I’m not sure why investing in infrastructure only creates jobs when it has to do with fossil fuels. Once you’ve conceded that you can create jobs by building things, why not build things that are actually worth building?
You guys don’t seem to understand that if a woman needs to work, that shows that she’s a bad woman whose lusts have led her to partner up with a layabout who can’t earn enough to support a family. Therefore she AND her kids need to be punished by her having a crappy job that keeps them apart but doesn’t provide them with health insurance, except Obummer wrecked that last part, and now these sluts are all going to be happy, dammit, and we upstanding moral folk will continue to be sad.