Tag Archives: Economy

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New study: women economists more likely to support higher taxes and bigger government

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From liberal USA Today.

Excerpt:

A lot depends on whether the economist is a man or a woman. A new study shows a large gender gap on economic policy among the nation’s professional economists, a divide similar — and in some cases bigger — than the gender divide found in the general public.

[…]Female economists tend to favor a bigger role for government while male economists have greater faith in business and the marketplace. Is the U.S. economy excessively regulated? Sixty-five percent of female economists said “no” — 24 percentage points higher than male economists.

[…]The genders are most divorced from each other on the question of equality for women. Male economists overwhelmingly think the wage gap between men and women is largely the result of individuals’ skills, experience and voluntary choices. Female economists overwhelmingly disagree by a margin of 4-to-1.

More findings:

  • Health insurance. Female economists thought employers should be required to provide health insurance for full-time workers: 40% in favor to 37% against, with the rest offering no opinion. By contrast, men were strongly against the idea: 21% in favor and 52% against.
  • Education. Females narrowly opposed taxpayer-funded vouchers that parents could use for tuition at a public or private school of their choice. Male economists love the idea: 61% to 14%.
  • Labor standards. Females believe 48% to 33% that trade policy should be linked to labor standards in foreign counties. Males disagreed: 60% to 23%.

According to a recent research paper, single women tend to vote for bigger government in order to have security.

Excerpt:

Giving women the right to vote significantly changed American politics from the very beginning. Despite claims to the contrary, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue, and these effects continued growing as more women took advantage of the franchise. Similar changes occurred at the federal level as female suffrage led to more liberal voting records for the state’s U.S. House and Senate delegations. In the Senate, suffrage changed voting behavior by an amount equal to almost 20 percent of the difference between Republican and Democratic senators. Suffrage also coincided with changes in the probability that prohibition would be enacted and changes in divorce laws.

[…]More work remains to be done on why women vote so differently, but our initial work provides scant evidence that it is due to self-interest arising from their employment by government.The only evidence that we found indicated that the gender gap in part arises from women’s fear that they are being left to raise children on their own (Lott and Kenny 1997). If this result is true, the continued breakdown of the family and higher divorce rates imply growing political conflicts between the sexes. 19

A recent New York Times poll found that Obama led Romney by 29 points among single women, whereas Romney has a slight edge with married women.

I think one of the reasons why single women are so willing to look to big government as a substitute for a husband is because lately they seem to be struggling with 1) the ability to choose a good man by evaluating him rationally and objectively, and 2) the willingness to sacrifice and compromise in order to keep a good man. In my experience, single women today seem to be concerned that men might somehow place obligations on them that might limit their automomy with respect to the pursuit of happiness. That is why they often (but not always!) delay marriage and focus on their careers, and often vote for bigger government to provide them with a safety net. I think that women spend their 20s trying to drift into marriage by working on their careers and by having a good time with the wrong sort of men – men who don’t perform the traditional male roles. Single women vote for bigger government because deep down they know that the binge drinking and the hook-up sex are not likely to find a good man and produce a lasting marriage. But they just can’t stop themselves from having “fun” – big government is their safety net for their own choices with men.

I was having a conversation with a Christian woman on the weekend about Christian women and the men they choose to pursue.  She said that divorce was not something that she was worried about because she had undertaken a careful study of men and marriage and she knew how to choose the right man for the job. She said that she was very clear on what men are supposed to do in a marriage, and that she had confidence in her ability to assess men for those duties. Secondly, she said that she knew what her responsibilities were as a woman in a marriage towards a man, and that she had complete confidence in her ability to perform those duties, based on careful, study, planning and training.  I was impressed because she was taking responsibility to make good decisions and to perform her duties, and she had confidence that this would reduce and even eliminate the risk of divorce. But I doubt that she would say that she learned these things from the secular culture, and probably not even in the church.

News

Obama administration warns contractors to delay layoffs to after election

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This is currently the top story at Fox News.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration has doubled down on its plea to defense contractors not to warn employees about possible layoffs due to looming budget cuts —  going so far as to offer to cover legal fees in compensation challenges.

The move drew a stern rebuke Friday from South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune, since federal law requires employers to give notice if mass layoffs are likely.

“For the second time, the Obama administration has now encouraged government contractors to ignore the WARN Act and hold off on warning employees about possible layoffs due to the looming sequestration cuts,” Thune, lead author of the Sequestration Transparency Act, said Friday.

The offer to pay the legal fees was included in a memorandum issued by the administration Friday that also restated the Labor Department’s position from July that contractors should not issue written notices to employees because of the “uncertainty” over the across-the-board cuts to the defense budget and other federal spending that will occur Jan. 2 unless Congress reaches a new deal.

The notices are required under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and generally require employers with more than 100 employees to provide 60-day notices of “mass layoffs if they are reasonably foreseeable.”

[…]Rep. John Kline, chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, suggested last week that the Labor Department is trying to conceal the full impact of the cuts.

“The Labor Department is trying to hide the consequences of sequestration from workers,” Kline, R-Minn., said in a letter to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

So the administration is more concerned about being re-elected than with the cuts to an already weakened defense industry.  The focus is always on rhetoric and perception with these Democrats, never on substance and doing what’s right.

News

New study: more Americans dying from suicide than from car crashes

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From the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Suicide is the cause of more deaths than car crashes, according to an alarming new study.

The number of people who commit suicide in the U.S. has drastically increased while deaths from car accidents have dropped, making suicide the leading cause of injury death.

Suicides via falls or poisoning have risen significantly and experts fear that there could be many more unaccounted for, particularly in cases of overdose.

The results were compiled using National Center for Health Statistics data gathered from 2000 to 2009.

Researchers noted a 25 per cent decrease in fatal car accidents, medicalxpress.com reported, while deaths from falls rose 71 per cent, poisoning 128 per cent and from suicide 15 per cent.

[…]Previous research has suggested that suicide rates go up during recessions and times of economic crisis.’Economic problems can impact how people feel about themselves and their futures as well as their relationships with family and friends,’ Feijun Luo of CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention told Bloomberg.

‘Prevention strategies can focus on individuals, families, neighborhoods or entire communities to reduce risk factors.’

Suicide is now the most frequent cause of injury deaths, followed by car crashes, poisoning, falls and murder.

The study also looked at gender and race, concluding that fewer women died from the four main causes than men.

Men especially are the hardest hit, because in a recession, they have a lot of anxiety about their provider role.

NBC News explains:

Middle-aged men from disadvantaged backgrounds are 10 times more likely to commit suicide, often because they have lost a sense of identity and masculine pride, researchers said on Thursday.

In a report commissioned by the British helpline charity the Samaritans, health experts explored why men in their 30s, 40s and 50s are at such a substantially higher risk of ending their own lives.

The findings suggest suicide is not simply a mental health problem, the researchers said, but also one of men’s place in societies and of societies’ inability to adapt to men’s needs when trying to deal with depression, anxiety and other problems.

[…]”The changing nature of the labour market over the last 60 years has affected working class men,” it said. “With the decline of traditional male industries, they have lost not only their jobs but also a source of masculine pride and identity.”

The World Health Organisation estimates that every year, almost a million people commit suicide – a rate of 16 per 100,000, or one every 40 seconds. It also estimates that for every suicide, there are up to 20 attempted ones.

Men are more likely to commit suicide than women in almost every country in the world, and the WHO says the main risk factors are mental illness – primarily depression – and alcohol abuse, as well as violence, loss, abuse and pressures from cultural and social backgrounds.

The Samaritans study found that in Britain on average about 3,000 middle-aged men from disadvantaged backgrounds kill themselves each year.

I can’t speak for everyone, but it seems obvious to me that a lot of people, especially young people who have college debt and can’t find jobs, need to be asking themselves an important question: are you better off now than you were four years ago?