Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Producing Jobs, Not Babies

Among the many solicitations for money that I have received recently was an appeal by a group that was concerned about population growth; it desired population control. Yesterday, the sub-head on a New Yorker article read: 


As the global population grows, we’ll have to find ways of feeding the planet without accelerating climate change.


These neo-Malthusian concerns are surprising to me because the media lately have been filled with stories about the complete opposite: the declining birth rate in this country (and elsewhere). For example:


Across most of the world, fertility rates are falling. As economies develop, fertility rates tend to decline — and when economies develop especially quickly, fertility rates often plummet to particularly low levels. In many countries they are already below 2.1 births per woman, the “replacement level” needed to keep populations steady from one generation to the next.

If current trends continue, by 2050 more than three-quarters  of countries will be below replacement-level fertility. By 2100, populations in some major economies will fall by 20 to 50 percent. (1)


Among the reactions to this trend is the pro-natalist movement—a “once-fringe movement claim[ing] having more babies is the only way to save civilization.” (2)


If there is a crisis because of too few people (rather than the historical Malthusian over-population doom story), the drive to increase births is completely wrongheaded. Let me explain.


From an economic point of view, what is a baby? A parasite. It demands food, clothing, constant monitoring, but since it does no work, earns no pay, it is a drag on the economy of the nation. Besides it often keeps its mother from pursuing her profession, causing a reduction in income for the family. (3)


In the United States, although so many right-wingers claim concern about unborn children, once the children are born, the concern falls away. Health care services and insurance coverage are under constant threat of disappearing. With anti-vaxxers in government health positions, vaccine guidance is questionable, leaving children exposed to many previously-defeated diseases. And if a child survives, it won’t be an asset to the economy for usually two decades or so (after finishing its education).


*


There is a counterbalance to the problem of a declining birthrate in the US. It is so obvious (but hateful to too many people): open the doors to more immigrants. Here are adults desirous of work (it is incredible that ICE drags people away from their jobs). When they tackle jobs that American citizens are loath to take, they add to the nation’s economy. And jobs are waiting:


Why Factories Are Having Trouble Filling Nearly 400,000 Open Jobs(4)


The Administration’s policies are stupidly counter-productive.


The president’s crackdown on immigration, which includes attempts to revoke deportation protections for migrants from troubled countries, may eliminate workers who could have filled those jobs.


And pace the pro-natalists, no wearer of a diaper can run a lathe or spot-weld a joint.

 


***


  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/world/americas/birthrate-fertility-feminism.html
  2. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/30/nx-s1-5382208/whats-behind-the-pronatalist-movement-to-boost-the-birth-rate
  3. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/opinion/motherhood-penalty-career.html?searchResultPosition=1
  4. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/business/factory-jobs-workers-trump.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

Thursday, June 19, 2025

Number One

We are honored today having the first President of the United States, George Washington, visiting our office.


Us: Mr. President . . .


GW: Stop! Since I am no longer President—and haven’t been for a long time—I do not use that title. People call me “General.” 


Us: Understood. What brings you to town today, General?


GW: Dentistry. I’m hoping that modern dentistry will relieve me of the problems I have with the wooden teeth I have now.


Us: You appreciate modern dentistry?


GW: As I understand it. I also hear good things about modern surgery—use of anesthesia to combat pain—but I’m not willing to have a part of my body sawn off just to test the theory.


Us: What is the biggest change in the country from the time of your term in office that you have noticed?


GW: “Big” is the right word. We were just a measly thirteen former colonies, and now America has fifty states—including one in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.


Us: What do you think about the suggestion that Canada should be the fifty-first?


GW: Never! A bunch of Tories! They had their chance to be part of our cause back in ‘seventy-six, but they skedaddled north of the border.


Us: Speaking of ‘seventy-six and the Revolutionary War, did you parade the troops after the victory at Yorktown?


GW: Not at all. We told the boys, “The war’s over. Go home.” The British and the Hessians liked to parade. Americans want to go home.


Us: Our present President has been selling all sorts of merchandise while in office—sneakers, bibles, and now cell phones. Did you ever avail yourself of the opportunity to cash in on your name—with say Washington tricorn hats or Washington cherry trees?


GW: What a disgraceful idea. A lowering of the most important office in the land to the hustling of a huckster. Never!


Us: Thank you for your time, General. One last question: a lot of hotels and inns have advertised that “George Washington slept here.” Is that true?


GW: Shh. Don’t tell Martha. 


Us: Goodbye, General.


GW: Goodbye. (Whispering) Do you want to buy a bridge?




Friday, June 13, 2025

Two Families

I can’t believe that in over 400 blog posts I haven’t once mentioned Anton Chekhov, to my mind one of the three best playwrights of all time.* Because of his early death, his oeuvre is unfortunately limited. The Cherry Orchard, his last play, is fittingly his masterpiece. Uncle Vanya, although I love the play, I could never teach because it always moved me to tears. Today, it is The Three Sisters, his next-to-last play that I wish to direct your attention to.


Olga, Masha, and Irina, the title characters, together with their brother, Andrey, are members of a gentle family left behind in a provincial Russian city after their father, an army general, died a year before the play begins.


During the course of the play Andrey marries Natasha, a jumped-up peasant, who eventually dominates the household. We join the play in Act III [translated by Gerard R. Ledger].



ANFISA. (Exhausted.) Dear Olya, my dearest one, don't get rid of me, please don't get rid of me!

OLGA. What nonsense you are talking, nanny. Nobody is going to get rid of you.

ANFISA. (Puts her head on Olga's breast.) My dear child, my darling one, I toil away, I keep working… But I'm getting weak, and everyone is saying 'She should go'! But where would I go to? Where? I'm eighty years old. I'm in my eighty second year.

OLGA. Sit down nanny. You're tired, you poor thing. (Makes her sit down.) Rest awhile, nanny dear. How pale you are!


(Natasha enters.)

. . . 


(Coldly, addressing Anfisa.) How dare you sit down when I am here! Stand up! Leave this room!


(Anfisa leaves. A pause.)


I don't know why you keep that old bag. I just don't understand.

OLGA. (Horrified.) Pardon me, but I also do not understand…

NATASHA. She's absolutely no use here. She's a peasant and she ought to go and live back in the country. Why all this . . . cosseting? I like to see order in the house. . . . 

[S]he could easily live at home in the country.

OLGA. She's been with us for thirty years.

NATASHA. But look, now she's incapable of work! Either I do not understand you, or you deliberately choose not to understand me. She's not fit to do any work, she only sleeps and sits around the place.

OLGA. Then let her sit.


*


Can there have been a more humane line in literature than “Then let her sit”? Contrast this with Natasha’s response:


NATASHA. (In astonishment.) What do you mean 'Let her sit'? She is after all a servant. (Tearfully.) I do not understand you, dear Olga. I already have a nanny, there is a wet nurse, we have maidservants, we have a cook… Why should we need this old woman? Why? Why?


Transactional Natasha considers only her “need.” Anfisa is old and redundant; thus, she should go. 


***


A new biography of William Buckley, Jr. has unfortunately brought his face back before the public. I wrote about him previously here: https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2018/10/charming-billy-consciences-and.html


Buckley acknowledged that he benefited from a pampered life:

It simply happens to be the case that I have never in my entire life been without servants, maids, and chauffeurs.**


Growing up, Buckley and his nine siblings lived on an estate populated with “tutors, workmen, groomsmen for the horses, a French mademoiselle, and Mexican nanas.” ***


Visitors to the household remarked on the relaxed atmosphere of the Buckley estate: It was 


alive with pranks, schemes, hilarity, and strife. . . . Buckley’s prep school roommate described “a vast gaggle of smiling, brilliant children, all chattering—in several languages—at once, playing the piano, but, above all, laughing with each other … the whole place rang with music and laughter.”

But it wasn’t all sweetness and light. 

One night in 1937, four of Bill’s older siblings burned a cross outside a Jewish resort in Amenia, New York. Bill was upset that he hadn’t been included.**

Years later, his sisters defaced a nearby Episcopal church.***


In 1954, Julia Child 

received a letter from Aloise Buckley Heath, a fellow Smith College alumna and the sister of William F. Buckley, Jr., the prominent conservative author and proponent of McCarthyism. Heath had written to Child, and to other Smith graduates, urging them to withhold donations to the institution until the college had sacked five professors suspected of being Communists. An enraged Child replied, “In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and our freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.”****


So what are we left with? Charming Billy and his smiling, chattering siblings were at bottom a bigoted, anti-democratic clan. Louis Menand summed up Buckley, Jr. as follows:


Since democracy is pretty much the essence of the American experiment, it seems fair to say that Buckley was, at bottom, anti-American.

This is often the case with people who make a big show of patriotism. We can “make America great again”—if we only get rid of due process, or judicial review, or the separation of powers, or birthright citizenship, or the freedom of the press. We might be great if we got rid of some or all of those things. But we would no longer be America.** 


***


* Shakespeare and Sophocles are the other two.


** https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/02/buckley-sam-tanenhaus-book-review


*** https://newrepublic.com/article/195954/buckley-conservative-intellectual-laid-groundwork-trump


****https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-passionate-progressive-politics-of-julia-child?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_SundayArchive_Free_060825&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9e28e3f92a40469f7ada2&cndid=52968002&hasha=4610757384ecaf1ad328813857abb8ad&hashb=8bdf3de145843e1362a258a3e93c74dacad1e748&hashc=14e046c1e18a50fd0321258d2762b948a226611f7a6f74ee556142b582bf4a85&esrc=&mbid=mbid%3DCRMNYR012019&utm_term=TNY_SundayArchive_NonPaidSubs