December 9

Well, it has been a while. I have busily ignored most of the political news. It looks like half of the politicians in Washington are very happy to stymie all activity so the majority party and Biden won't have any more achievements the voters might favor--while they tout the benefits of those achievements Biden has as if they themselves were responsible though none of then voted for the measures that benefit their constituents. The other half are increasingly frustrated with the intransigent opposition some of which comes from their own.

Pundits keep talking about the "labor shortage" or the Great Resignation, as some call it. Most attribute the phenomenon to "overly generous" government support (most of which have ended over the last few months). Of course, in the Repthuglican political theology, those lazy bums won't work unless they are hungry, or need some hovel to crouch in, or some rags to wear. Jan In SanFran quotes from a New Republic article on doctors who are both moving from their traditionally Republican orientation to Independent or, heaven forbid!!, to Democrat. The author made a point that most doctors are now employees of medical conglomerates and not independent small business people. We have watched that shift happening in our area. And that though half of medical school graduates are women they suffer from the same gender pay gap that afflicts women in other sectors--something like 30% of the pay their male counterparts in the same specialities with similar education and experience. Most of the pundits want to ignore those inequities. Nor do they want to recognize the difficulties of balancing familial obligations (a.k.a., child care or elder care) which fall most heavily on women. The old normal, where women worked outside the home and the family could afford child care, isn't going to come back. People are fed up with the notion that they should work themselves to death to make a living in an economy in which that has become work themselves to death to not make a living.

And the situation is made worse by widespread theft. I don't mean the recent spate of mass invasion of stores by gangs of shoplifters who make off with goods worth an amazing amount of money. Nor with the individual shoplifters like the one featured in this article. The article is only tangentially about that shoplifter. The far more egregious theft is from workers in the form of wage theft. (In case you wonder, I don't approve of theft on either scale. Whether "only" hundreds or thousands of dollars is involved or millions, the theft is wrong. But it is sad that the latter goes both unreported and, often, unpunished.)