Voices of Partnership

A Real Valentine’s Day Present

by Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis

Valentine’s Day is all about love. But the sad reality is that all the love women give as caregivers, both paid and unpaid, is not really valued – even though it’s indispensable for families, businesses, and the country as a whole. It’s high time we change this!

U. S. Census figures show that American women over the age of 65 are twice as likely to be poor as men of the same age. This is not only due to workplace discrimination. It’s because most of these women are or were either part or full time caregivers – and instead of pensions their reward is an old-age of poverty.

 
Even when caregiving work is done for pay, the wages are minimal. According to the U.S. Labor Department, the average pay for child care workers – the people to whom we entrust children -- is $10 per hour, with no benefits. By contrast, plumbers – the people to whom we entrust pipes – get $50 to 100 per hour. And we insist plumbers be trained, but not that all childcare workers be trained. This is not logical. It’s pathological.

It does not have to be this way. In Montreal, Canada, for example, because child care is government subsidized, it costs parents only $7 per day and is performed by highly trained, well-paid professionals. Not only that, Canada has maternal leave while the U.S. now stands as the only industrialized county in the world that does not ensure any type of paid leave for new mothers.

We’re told that our wealthy nation can’t afford to invest in such things. Actually, we can’t afford not to do so. In the post-manufacturing, knowledge/service era, our most important asset is what economists call “high quality human capital.” Neuroscience shows that the development of this high quality human capital largely depends on good physical, mental, and emotional care starting at birth. Study after study shows that high quality early childhood education is the best financial investments a nation can make. Economic inventions such as caregiver tax-credits, stipends to families, paid parental leave (for both mothers and fathers), and social security credit for the first seven years of caring for a child – whether the caregiver is a woman or a man – are already being used or developed in nations where “women’s rights” have made the most progress.

Societies where women have higher status and are almost half of the government (such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland), give more fiscal priority to caring policies AND regularly are in the highest ranks of both the U.N. Human Development Reports and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness ratings. Moreover, these nations have fared better at weathering the great recession.

This is all well known, but ignored by many policy-makers, who instead clamor for cuts in childcare and education. The Administration continues to focus on expanding jobs in manufacturing and in repairing our physical infrastructure – overlooking our human infrastructure, the needs of children and a growing elderly population, skyrocketing U.S. poverty rates (21 percent for all children and almost 40 percent for African American children), and that women are actually losing jobs even as unemployment rates are beginning to decrease.

“Although men lost 70 percent of the 7.5 million jobs that were eliminated between December 2007 and June 2009, men have won 92 percent of the 1.9 million jobs that have been created since then,“ Laura Flanders noted in a recent article, Rocky Recovery for Women. “From “man-cession” we’ve gone to “man-covery. One reason is that women represent 57 percent of workers in the public sector (compared with 48 percent in the private sector, where the gains are).”

Yet these public sector jobs are the ones our nation simply cannot afford to do without: the jobs of teachers, child care workers, health care workers, social workers, and others working in the growing “care economy” that are essential not only for human well-being, but also for our economic prosperity

Let’s use Valentine’s Day to tell our policy makers, including political candidates in both parties, that we demand a caring economy where the loving work of caregiving – whether done by a woman or a man -- is adequately rewarded in both our homes and workplaces.

The State of the Union: Our Real Social Wealth

By Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis

Next week’s State of the Union address offers President Obama the opportunity to talk with Americans about what our nation really needs. As we shift from a manufacturing to a knowledge and service economy, what we urgently need for both individual and national economic success is what economists call high-quality human capital. This requires investing in our most important American asset: our people. In economic terms, this translates into reversing the downward trend of U.S. international competitiveness. In human terms, it translates into ending enormous suffering.

It’s essential that the President clearly state that our nation’s economic success and the well-being of our people hinges on investing in the development of all our people’s capacities. In other words, our real wealth is not corporate profits or business wealth. It is our social wealth: American people’s capabilities.

The United States is already behind other developed countries in the measurements that reflect the real wealth of America -- not only international competitiveness but basic measures such as child mortality rates, poverty rates, our standing in educational math and science rankings, and the state of people’s health and well-being. Unlike our gross domestic product (GDP), which is rising along with Wall Street, these are the social wealth measures that we should be prioritizing. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz notes, instead of cutting health, education, and other such programs, we desperately need more public investments in education, research, and infrastructure.

A major step toward this change in national priorities is the development of more inclusive and accurate economic indicators than GDP -- social wealth indicators that assess the real state of our nation. We must show the general public and policymakers both the enormous “back-end” financial costs of failing to invest in people, such as more unemployment, poverty, crime, and despair, and the enormous social and economic benefits of investing in human capacity building so that our nation can weather the sweeping technological changes afoot.

As for our national debt, as another Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, and many other experts point out, it’s actually lower now than during WWII. Rather than increasing with big deficits, U.S. interest rates are at historic lows and U.S. bonds are still the safest investment, which is why so many foreigners also buy them.

Some people argue that foreigners who invest in the U.S. are reaping big profits, but as Krugman notes, “America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors.” However -- and this again takes us straight to the critical need to re-examine our national priorities -- U.S. corporations with foreign subsidiaries, from General Electric to Nike and General Motors, are not America. U.S. companies may be reaping big profits by investing in other nations, but by so doing they are creating jobs overseas and not for Americans.,

In short, these kinds of private investments are not the kinds of investments that will economically benefit people like you and me, or that will really benefit the American economy in the long term. What we actually need, and this is urgent given our decline in global competitiveness, is a massive national investment in the work of caring for people, starting in early childhood. This kind of public investment in our social wealth offers the greatest return in both out human and financial wealth.

As Krugman states, “the fault lies not in our debt, but in ourselves.” It’s up to us to demand changes to the ways in which we measure economic success by demanding more accurate indicators focusing on what really matters ou social ewalth. It’s also up to us to demand that corporations that are doing so well pay their fair share of taxes, so we can invest in the real wealth of America: our people. And it’s up to our President to level with the American people about what our nation really needs at this critical time.

Economists May Contribute to a “Lost Decade” for America

Mark Weisbrot The Guardian Unlimited, January 10, 2012 See article on original website The American Economic Association’s annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction.  Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating in an interesting panel on “The Economics of Regime Change,” when I stumbled over to see what the big budget experts had to say about “The Political Economy of the U.S. Debt and Deficits.” The session was introduced by UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, who put up a graph of the United States’ rising debt-to-GDP ratio, and warned of dire consequences if Congress didn’t do something about it.  Yawn. But the panelists got off to a good start, with Alan Blinder of Princeton, former vice-chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, describing the public discussion of the U.S. national debt as generally ranging from “ludicrous to horrific.”  True that.  He asked and answered four questions:  (1) Is there any urgency (to reduce the deficit or debt)?  No.  The government can borrow short term at negative real interest rates, and long-term at about zero.  The world is paying us to hold their money. That is anything but a debt crisis. The Fed is out of bullets, he said – referring to the fact that the U.S. Federal Reserve had lowered short-term rates to zero and had used quantitative easing to help keep long-term rates low.  So we need more fiscal stimulus, preferably spending that focuses on actually creating jobs. Amen. (2)  Should we focus on the next decade? No, he said, and noted that the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) budget deficit projections over the next decade are about 3.6 percent of GDP, which is not much to get agitated about.  Also true. (3) Is government spending the problem?  No, he said, it’s health care costs, and mainly the rising price of health care (i.e not the aging of the population).   Most important truth yet !  (More on this below). (4)  Is the public really up in arms about the deficit?  No, actually theycare more about the economy and jobs.  As they should. Blinder concluded that since this is an election year, we can forget about having any fact-based discussion of these issues in 2012.  Happy New Year, he said, and the audience laughed.    Well that was refreshing, I thought -- an economist telling the unvarnished truth to hundreds of his people at the annual meetings. But a rapid descent into Hell was imminent. Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin was next, talking about the need to “repair” Social Security and Medicare.  The United States has all the characteristics of countries that run into trouble, he said. Then he warned that the U.S. is going to end up like Greece.  This is one of the dumbest things that anyone with an economics degree can say. Hello, Mr. Holtz-Eakin!  Have you ever heard of the U.S. dollar, the world’s key reserve currency? The United States is not going to end up like Greece any sooner than it will end up like Haiti or Burkina Faso. A country that can pay its foreign public debt in its own currency and runs its own central bank does not end up like Greece.  In fact, even Japan is not going to end up like Greece, and Japan has a gross public debt of about 220 percent of its GDP, more than twice the size of ours and vastly larger – again relative to its economy -- than that of Greece.  And the yen is nowhere near the dollar in its importance as an international reserve currency.  But the Japanese government is still borrowing at just 1 percent interest rates for its 10-year bonds. At this point it was clear that this panel, other than Blinder, was living in a dystopian fantasy world. Next up was Rudy Penner of the Urban Insitute, another former CBO director. His perspective was not much different from that of Auerbach or Holtz-Eakin.  He complained about the polarization of the political process, which prevents the two major parties from reaching an agreement.  It’s not partisanship, he said – House Speaker Tip O’Neill and President Ronald Reagan knew how to be partisan but they were able to reach agreement on the 1983 Social Security package and the 1986 tax reforms.  And yadda yadda.  He might have added that we have had 25 years of lying about Social Security since then, and even Reagan didn’t dare try to privatize Social Security.  And of course Social Security can currently pay all promised benefits for the next 24 years without any changes. These arguments about polarization really beg the question.  From the viewpoint of the 99 percent, it’s not polarization, but weakness in defending our interests that is the problem.  President Obama compromised much more than he should have last year, offering cuts to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for a long-term budget deal.  The 99 percent are just lucky that the Republicans are too extremist to make this kind of a “grand bargain” with Obama. The last panelist was Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, another former CBO budget director and Fed vice-chair, as well as a member of the President’s (2010) National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.   She agreed with Blinder that we need more stimulus.  But we can only get this if we agree to long-run spending cuts, including Social Security, of course.  Yuck. This is a political strategy that is sure to end in disaster, given the prevailing state of misinformation and disinformation. During the discussion, Blinder – who identified himself as a Democrat – expressed his frustration in not being able to convince fellow Democrats to cut Social Security.  Double yuck. The average Social Security check is about $1,177 a month,  and a majority of senior citizens are getting most of their meager income from Social Security. Why these people insist on creating more poverty among the elderly, especially when the program is solvent for decades to come, is beyond me. I got to ask the first question for the panel.  I called attention to Blinder’s presentation of the long-term budget problem as almost completely a problem of the rising price of health care.  I pointed out that you could take any country with a life expectancy greater than ours – including the other high-income countries – and put their per capita health care costs into our budget, and the long-term budget deficit would turn into a surplus.  My question was simple: Are Americans so inherently different from other nationalities that we can’t have similar health care costs?  And if not, then why are we talking about long-term budget problems instead of how to fix our health care system? None of the panelists offered a serious answer to this question.  Auerbach, the moderator, said that other countries have rising health care costs, too. And some of the others said or implied that health care costs were rising at an unsustainable pace worldwide. But this is nonsense.  The United States pays about twice as much per person for health care as other high-income countries – and still leaves 50 million people uninsured. This is a result of a dysfunctional health care system that has had health care prices rising much faster than those of other high-income countries for decades.  What the budget hawks are basically telling us is that we must assume that insurance and pharmaceutical companies will have a veto over the provisions of health care reform for decades to come.  And that therefore we must find other ways to make up for these excessive costs, including cutting Social Security and other government spending, and pushing us into higher rates of poverty and inequality than we already have.  And even worse in the short run, all this crap about the deficit and the debt will be used to block the necessary stimulus measures – “stimulus” has already become a dirty word that Democratic politicians are afraid to utter.  This means high unemployment and a lot of unnecessary misery in the world’s richest country for the foreseeable future. A dismal performance for the dismal science, on some of the most important issues of the day. Of course there are other economists, including Nobel Prize winners such as Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, and Robert Solow (full disclosure: the latter two are members of CEPR’s advisory board), who would offer more sensible views.  But this panel was, sadly, representative of economists with the most influence on public policy.  With a brain trust like this, a lost decade for America looks likely – unless the citizenry can steer a different course.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

Holiday Gift Ideas From the Center For Partnership Studies

This is a time of year when many of us are looking for meaningful gifts. When I ask one of my colleagues at CPS what present would make her happy, she always says she would like a more just, less violent, more caring world. As you know, that's just what we're working on at CPS through our Caring Economics Campaign (CEC) and ourStop Violence Campaign (SAIV). 

Many of you have supported this work by donating to CPS in response to my email last month -- and I want to tell you how much this means to me personally. If you have not yet done so, you still have time to make a year-end contribution - which you could make as a gift to a friend or family member via a donation in their name. I promise your donation, no matter what its size, will make a big difference. We accomplish amazing things with a minimal budget and an exceptionally productive team dedicated to laying foundations for a world where every child can realize her or his potential. 

For instance, this year women and men from 12 nations (on all continents) took our Caring Economics and Empowering Women online leadership training programs, and are now reaching thousands of others. Here are just a few comments:
*    "...great course!"  - Caroline, Canada
*    "...a perfect training program." - Micki, Reading, PA
*    "...absolutely recommend this program and already have." - Maura, Portland, OR
*    "I am so grateful."  - Jeanette, New Zealand
*    "The people I connected with in this program were amazing!"  - Bernice, Ireland
*    "...gives me hope that we can reach across the oceans and take the hands of others in need, to extend our caring beyond borders." - Eve, France

We're working hard on Social Wealth economic indicators with the Urban Institute and the State of the USA to show the enormous return from investing in the real wealth of our nation and our world: people and nature - and will hold a major event on this in Washington DC in 2012.

Our Alliance for a Caring Economy (ACE) just launched. ACE is a major coalition of children's advocates, think tanks, women's organizations, socially responsible businesses, environmental organizations, faith based networks, and others, starting with those representing 30 million people that endorsed the report that CPS commissioned last summer from the Urban Institute, The State of Society: Measuring Economic Success and Human Well-Being.

All this groundbreaking work is only possible because of foundation funding anddonations from individuals like you! 

Here are some more gift ideas:
*    Give The Chalice and The Blade -- just out in Kindle and NOOK with a brand new epilogue.
*    Make a scholarship gift for our Online Leadership Training Certification Program. 
*    Give yourself or a loved one the gift of this fabulous online leadership program. Click here for the 2012 schedule.  
*    Gift one of my books, audios, or videos, such as:
The Real Wealth of Nations -- hailed by Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu as "a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking."
The Chalice and The Blade -- hailed by Ashley Montagu as "the most important book since Darwin's Origin of Species" and by Isabel Allende as "one of those magnificent key books that can transform us."
The Power of Partnership -- hailed by Christiane Northrup, M.D., as " a brilliantly accessible plan for transforming ourselves and our world."

I also recommend 3,000 Years of Love: The Life of Riane Eisler and David Loye -- the story of our 30+ years of adventures together --  by my partner, the social psychologist David Loye.

• For the children in your life, I recommend:The Warmest Place by Licia Rando -- beautifully written and illustrated, conveying the most important message of all: what matters most is love.
• For pre-teen girls, a subscription to New Moon magazine -- I have been giving it for years, and the girls (and parents) love it.
• For parents, you can download -- for free -- our acclaimed Caring and Connected Parenting Guide (also by Licia Rando)  -- endorsed by Dr. Brazelton, Dr. Siegel, as well as two Nobel peace laureates.
• For teachers, here are some more ideas: The award-winning Tomorrow's Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education for the 21st Century(the book or DVD).  

These are all gifts that not only give reading, listening, or viewing pleasure but will also further our common wish to build a better future for ourselves, our children, and generations to come. 

Please join me in working for a better future for us all. Again thank you for your support. Our CEC director, Kim Otis, and the other members of our CPS team join me in wishing you a wonderful holiday season!

Warmly,

Riane Eisler
President,
Center for Partnership Studies

 

#HERVotes Blog Carnival: Extend Unemployment Insurance!

Welcome to the #HERVotes Blog Carnival, this time focused on the need to extend unemployment insurance. Why? One reason is that far too many children in our nation (nearly 1 in 4) live in families who are struggling to put food on the table because of poverty.

And for them, this holiday season will be a tough one.

So now is certainly not the time to throw even more families into poverty. But that is what will happen in just a few short weeks if Congress doesn’t act. The clock is ticking for millions of American families desperately looking for jobs who will lose unemployment insurance on December 31st, right after Christmas.

Families like Karoline’s, who writes:

“My husband lost his job in July. He is college-educated with 10 years of experience in the engineering field. He should be able to find another job. Unfortunately, although he has had several interviews, he has been unable to find full-time work.”

And families like Teresa’s:

“I lost my job of over 20 years in retail I went back to school and earned a Bachelor’s degree but I still can’t find a job–help!”

There are 1.8 million families hanging on the edge waiting for Congress to act as the clock ticks down for those who want to work, but can’t find jobs.

Waiting.

Let me just state the obvious: We can do better. Our nation’s priorities are out of whack. The true measure of our success is whether families like Karoline’s and Teresa’s can make it – not just only whether corporations have record profits. It’s critical that both businesses and families can thrive in our nation. Yet we are out of balance.

There’s more wealth in our country than ever before, yet most Americans never see it.

• Between 1979 and 2009, the richest 5% of American families saw their real incomes increase 73% while the poorest Americans saw their real incomes decrease by 7%.
• And in 2010, the wealthiest 1% of Americans took home 24% of all U.S. income.
• In fact, the wealthiest 1% of American families now own more than one third of the nation’s net worth, and the top 10% owns more than 70% of the nation’s net worth.
• Sad but true, the gap between the wealthiest 1% and the rest is greater now than even during the Great Depression.

When greedy corporations rig the economy, America loses.

Right now, every day, American families are facing decisions between putting food on the table, paying the rent, buying school supplies, and obtaining medical care and prescription drugs. This is no time to leave those who count on unemployment insurance out in the cold.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

America didn’t become strong by putting families last. When times are tough, instead of cutting back vital programs, we need to make sure that families are protected so that we can rebuild the economic engine of our future. Policies like extending unemployment insurance will immediately help keep 1.8 million families afloat–and will also support our struggling economy.

How does extending unemployment insurance help our economy? Studies show that the money received as part of unemployment insurance is usually spent right away, and as a result, an independent study found that every $1 spent on unemployment insurance stimulated $2 in growth in the U.S. economy.

Our country is a nation of neighbors helping each other–and we can’t let families down when they’re already struggling. And families are truly struggling: The Census data released last month showed that nearly one in six American women are living in poverty, and 22% of children are living in poverty. On top of that bad news, there are 25 million Americans who want to work, but who can’t find full-time jobs.

Families should be able to work hard and get what they need — a good job, food on the table, good health, and a safe place to call home.

America offers freedoms and a democracy unlike anywhere else in the world. And through our democratic process, we together have the power to rebuild our economy so both businesses and families can thrive. But too often we assume we are powerless, so we don’t act as if our voices matter. They do.

It’s time to step back and remember that we together can help those whose blessings are less abundant this year. That starts by ensuring that families who rely on unemployment insurance don’t lose their lifeline. Let’s raise our voices together to make sure Congress doesn’t forget how many of us are suffering and that we urgently need them to act — right now.

Read more: http://www.momsrising.org/blog/hervotes-blog-carnival-extend-unemployment-insurance/#ixzz1gbsDF4Dn

by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner

Since 2006, MomsRising has been working to bring together millions of people who share a common concern about the need to build a more family-friendly America. Our members are bringing important motherhood and family issues to the forefront of the country's awareness. Together, we are working to create both cultural and legislative change, on both the national and state levels.

Mothers of the Century (21st)

Prepare to be impressed with yourselves, girls.  The US Census Bureau just put out new numbers on maternity leave and employment which show we’ve spent the past 40 years investing wisely in ourselves.  First time mothers are more likely to have at least an undergrad degree by the time they give birth, now at an average age of 25.  In fact, if a woman delays her first birth until age 30, she’ll probably join the 43% of mothers with a college degree.  Teen pregnancy has dropped from 36% in 1970 to 21% in 2007.  Births to women over age 35 have gone up by a factor of eight.  Delaying pregnancy and gaining education are two of the best things women can do for themselves and their children, and we’re doing it.

Just about three quarters of new mothers are employed before they give birth.  More than half are working full-time.  Sixty-six percent work during their pregnancy, but among the over-30 first-time  mothers, 80% worked while pregnant.  Overall, women are working much longer into their pregnancies.  Once they deliver, about half receive some kind of paid leave, but how much pay and for how long is not recorded, as there is no requirement that they receive any paid maternity leave at all.  College-educated, older, and full-time employed mothers are the most likely to use some form of paid leave.  Having only a high school diploma, working part-time and being a younger mother are characteristics suggesting paid maternity leave is not an option.

If a woman was employed before giving birth, there’s a 59% chance she’ll be clocking back in by the time her baby is 3 months old.  Almost three quarters of new mothers are back 6 months after, and nearly 80% are back one year after the birth.  Obviously, those most dependent upon their own earnings  returned to work the most quickly, but those lacking a high school education are not likely to return to work even when the baby celebrates his or her first birthday.  Women with college degrees or higher, and who had some paid maternity leave, are likely back by the five month mark.  Most women who go back to work do so at the same employer, and 75% of them work the same number of hours they did before becoming mothers.

Taken all together, pregnant women are now more likely to be better educated, older, and employed when they give birth.  They go back to work in a matter of weeks or months after delivering, and they mostly stick to their pre-baby work hours.  Considering how a baby turns your life and your household upside down, that’s nothing short of extraordinary.  Notwithstanding the fact that the employment world was most definitely not designed with us in mind, and still stiffs us on wages, we continue to show up, work hard, deliver the goods, and push ourselves, all while keeping the lid on the pot at home.  All this, and without the supports the rest of the modern world sees fit to provide, like paid leave for both parents without regard to income level, decent childcare, part-time employment standards, alternative schedules, and the ability to ask for a flexible schedule without fear of being fired.  Not to mention pension credits for the years spent caregiving.  And yet, mothersare the ones who say they feel guilty.  Astonishing!  Where’s the public outrage?  Do you feel even just the slightest bit taken advantage of?

“Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

by Valerie Young

Valerie Young is the Advocacy Coordinator of the National Association of Mothers' Centers' initiative, MOTHERS (Mothers Ought To Have Equal Rights). Find me on Twitter @WomanInDC and Facebook Valerie Young.

Send a Thank You to Pelosi!

Child care is a critical need in a caring economy. For some families it can be too costly, in some cases as high as paying for college. With our colleagues at Momsrising we would like you to send a thank you to Congress Woman Nancy Pelosi for making child care a priority. In a caring economy this would be a simple process. 

Send it from here . Thank You!

“The Wealth of a Nation Starts in a Woman’s Womb”

When we are mothers we have access to important insight, wisdom and compassion. For that reason ,we must insert ourselves into these broader conversations.  And we must do so fearlessly.”  

I recently discovered a motherhood blogger who styles herself “The Ultimate Outcast”.  Like me and a lot of women, she read Ann Crittenden’s “The Price of Motherhood and found some of her own story in its pages.  ”My feelings about motherhood and the economy, my sense of marginalization, were so validated when I read the book.  Most importantly I learned important contradictions in the way the economic system works.”   She’s from the West Coast, and my inside-the-Beltway focus was pleasantly shaken up by her approach:

The patriarchal system of “policy-making” alone will not get us anywhere. Moms have to play in the mud a bit, get dirty, do the unexpected, start controversy after controversy. But back it all with smart, reasoned logic and economic arguments. We can do this!  For example, gay-rights issues became front and center overnight because provocative people like Ellen and gay relationship circumstances became a force in our culture. In 10 short years, same-sex policy changes are strong and underway. Gay culture has gained an exceptance and advocacy that 15 years ago no one would have dreamed of. I see the same opportunity for mothers and care-givers today. Culture first, then politics, then economics.

My economic ideas are to sell motherhood to society the way banks sell their products, and everyone else sells sex. The financial system dispenses the wealth of our nation through banking and financial policy.   What if we were to create a society that understands the wealth of a nation starts in a woman’s womb — not in a bank, boardroom or Congress?   Why not argue for the immediate and direct circulation of public funds into the hands of unpaid family care-givers? With certain controls, this could be an excellent lift to the economy. But any concept that is going to have any affect has to be sold to America the good old fashioned-way, saciously and surreptitiously, but glamorously. I’m 33 years old and grew up in a country that used sex to sell everything but motherhood. I want to flip that concept around. Using provocative images on billboards and ads — just get people talking, first. Make people uncomfortable, then teach them. 

Readers, what do you think?  Should mothers and family caregivers abandon the glacially slow policy approach?  Would an edgy, in your face campaign using media to provoke discussion and even outrage be more effective?  Can we publicly leverage our motherhood for social change?  Should we?  Post your comments and let me know.

by Valerie Young

Valerie Young is the Advocacy Coordinator of the National Association of Mothers' Centers' initiative, MOTHERS (Mothers Ought To Have Equal Rights). Find me on Twitter @WomanInDC and Facebook Valerie Young.

 

The Debt, Women and Our Future

by Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis

What do women really want from our President? This is a question President Obama should be asking if he wants to keep his job for another term — which hinges on the women’s vote. His campaign emphasizes the appointments of very talented women: Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Elizabeth Warren to launch the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and other outstanding women to top Cabinet posts; such as Secretaries Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius, and Hilda Solis.

But such accomplishments do not begin to go far enough. For one thing, by authorizing major cuts to traditionally women’s jobs in education, health care, and family planning, the President allowed an assault on women’s economic status and health-care access. Moreover, he allowed opponents to divert the conversation about economic recovery from the millions of unemployed and the massive increase in Americans in poverty to an obsessive focus on reducing the deficit through government program cuts. And because women comprise the vast majority of public-sector teachers, nurses, social workers, caregivers, and others being laid off, women are now bearing the brunt of job losses.

These shortsighted and cruel cuts are not only harming millions of people and their families; they will soon harm us all. With health, education, and poverty alleviation programs being scrapped, our nation is undermining the most important asset for our economic future: the “high-quality human capital” economists tell us is essential for success in our post-industrial knowledge/service economy. Yet instead of educating the public about this, the Administration has itself started to talk about job creation exclusively in the private sector – with no mention of the havoc being created by gutting employment in the public sector, or of its dire future consequences.

Instead, the Administration joined “the sky is falling” talk about the deficit, failing to point out that our federal debt (roughly equal to our annual GDP or about $14 trillion, a ratio of 1-to-1 according to the most alarmist calculations) is actually far lower than our debt to GDP ratio during World War II. It is also far lower than that of many other countries. Japan had a 2.25-to-1 debt to GDP even before the massive earthquake and tsunami disaster. Certainly we have to watch our national debt, especially because so much of it is owed to foreign nations. But it must not be used as the rationale for cutting essential services or for a wholesale firing of public employees, much less as an excuse for demonizing unions, without which we would not have had a middle class.

As television and radio host Larry King stated recently, “The average guy isn’t sitting today in a diner going ‘Oh, the deficit.’” Instead we’re supposed to genuflect to the “wisdom” of the old boys clubs on Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce about the importance of addressing the deficit through spending cuts alone to jobs which provide needed human capital. Continued focus on cutting teachers, health care workers, and other traditionally female jobs will not address the stalling of the economy, but instead will mean a lot more pain and no gains for a lot more people both in the short and long term.

We’ve got to also debunk clichés about a typical American family sitting around the dinner table being better at understanding how to balance a budget than officials in Washington. In reality, most Americans’ mortgages average about $172,000 – more than four times the $40,000 average annual salary. College students also amass heavy debts with student loans, but few would encourage young people to forgo the enormous future value of a higher education. Moreover, businesses routinely take on substantial debt in order to invest in future research and development that produces a high return. As Sally Kohn reported in her USA Today op-ed, “IBM borrows twice as much money as it earns annually. Boeing borrows four times more than it earns. JP Morgan Chase… borrows 50 times more than it earns … If the U.S. were borrowing anywhere near as much as Chase bank, we’d have legitimate reason to worry. But in general, borrowing money is necessary to invest in the future — whether the future of a business or the future of a nation.”

With the recent announcement of an opening for a new Chair of the President’s Council on Economic Advisors, there is an opportunity for the Administration to re-direct the conversation to what has been ignored at our peril: the urgent need for investing in our nation’s human infrastructure. And choosing a woman who understands these vital matters could go a long way to applying the fundamentals of economics in a more balanced way. We need the voices of women to talk about what really counts: increasing the real wealth of our nation by investing in its human beings.

Irreparable Human Deficit Looms in Wake of Budget-Cutting Frenzy

by Riane Eisler and Renee Redwood

Investment in human infrastructure is essential for success in the post-industrial economy. Gutting social programs such as Medicare is behavior that borders on the criminal.

A financial debt can be paid. But the debt we'll owe our children if investments in health, nutrition and education are slashed is irreparable. Investment in human infrastructure is essential for success in the post-industrial economy, and this should be our policymakers' guiding economic principle.

It's up to us to ask the hard questions: Why are we being told we can't raise taxes on the rich, but must cut wages for teachers, nurses, child-care workers and others on whom our future depends? There is no evidence that lower taxes on corporations and millionaires raise all boats, or that massive cuts in social services have ever helped people in developing nations rise from poverty. The opposite is true. It's countries like Canada, Sweden, New Zealand and Finland that have made commitments to caring for future generations that have risen from poverty to prosperity.

Why are we told that cutting social programs is the road to prosperity, when our past prosperity was the result of the very opposite?

At the beginning of the 20th century, except for the super-rich, the United States was what we today call a developing country. Our general living standard was abysmal: child and general mortality rates were extremely high, as was poverty. Then we invested in prenatal and child health care such as vaccines; abolished child labor; mandated not only primary, but also secondary public education; and promoted college education through the GI Bill for returning soldiers. These kinds of government expenditures, along with Social Security, Medicare, Head Start and other government programs to care for and educate our people had a huge return on investment for our people and nation.

Today, largely as a result of retrenching in such public expenditures, the U.S. has higher child mortality, maternal mortality and poverty rates than any other developed nation. According to a 2007 UNICEF study, the U.S. ranked 24th of 25 developed countries with children living below the national poverty level. By comparison, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Spain topped the list. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that poverty afflicts roughly one in six American children -- some 13 million youths, a figure that's expected to rise as poverty trends continue to soar.

In 2009, more than 4.4 million single mothers earned wages below the national poverty level and were barely able to supply their children with basic needs. That number of women had increased 6.7 percent compared to the previous year, according to census figures. The kinds of cuts now proposed -- especially cuts to programs to help impoverished families with children -- will push us down even further.

By contrast, investing in education, health care, child-care and eldercare drastically reduces unemployment, poverty, public assistance, spending on prisons -- and at the same time provides a trained work force and higher tax base. According to a March NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 37 percent of Americans believe job creation/economic growth is our nation's No. 1 issue, and only 22 percent named the deficit/government spending as the top. What's more, while Americans find some budget cuts acceptable; they adamantly oppose cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and K-12 education.

That's because most of us know that our most important assets are our people. If we don't invest in human infrastructure, we cannot be economically successful.

We urgently need a realistic long-term perspective on how national and state deficits are calculated. The human capital deficit created by cutting social programs will be irreparable. By contrast, benefits to individuals, families, businesses and society at large from investment in human infrastructure will accrue for generations.

This post was posted on Alternet on May 19, 2011