Mommy Does Economics!
Aug. 26th, 2006 07:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraOn the drive to school, Robin and I listen to the radio, the morning news crew debating the pros and cons of Plan B.
Plan B is the code name for the morning after pill that will soon go on sale at a pharmacy near you. Personally I don't understand why birth control pills require a prescription while abortofacients are dispensed over the counter, but my quibble is one of logic only. I absolutely support a woman's right to abortion on demand. Still, it would be better – wouldn't it? – if the unwanted pregnancy had not occurred in the first place. So erecting a barrier to access for contraception and none at all for early abortion is just a loopy incentive structure.
"What's abortion?" Robin asks.
I explain.
He wrinkles his nose in distaste. "That's disgusting."
"Why do you say that?"
"Well, if you had had an abortion, then I would never have been born!"
And there you have it in a nutshell: the primal male argument against a woman's right to choose. I'm quite sure if you injected George W. Bush with sodium pentothal – or Clarence Thomas or any of the other prominent political abortion opponents – stripped away the various substrata of Old Testament fossilized thought and the medico-legal jaw waggling over definitions of life and death, it would always come down to one thing – the simple fear that if their own mothers had had that choice, maybe they wouldn't be here today!
Robin and I have all our most interesting conversations in the car.
He came back from the east coast with a bad cough, which I tried to ignore for a week because I'm a bad mother and more to the point, a broke mother entirely without health insurance. Finally one morning the cough got so bad though that I carted him off to the Doc In the Box.
"What's health insurance?" asked Robin.
I explained.
"Well, why doesn't everybody have it?"
"Well, because we live in a country with a particular economic system called capitalism."
"What's capitalism?"
I was gonna struggle with this one. "Capitalism is kind of like a big Farmers Market where everyone has something out on the table," I said. "There are other economic systems too. One of them is called socialism. In socialism, the government is kind of like a parent and provides a lot of the things that you have to buy on your own under capitalism."
"Like health insurance?" Robin asked.
"Like health care," I said.
"So socialism is better," said Robin.
"Not necessarily," I said. "Think about it. If everyone is getting the same thing from the government, then there's really no incentive to work especially hard because it's not as if working especially hard is going to earn you extra points."
"Which system do you like better?"
"Capitalism," I said. "But see the thing in capitalism is that people have to want to buy what you're selling for you to get ahead. So in this country at least selling people stuff they really don't want or need has become something of a science. That's called marketing. Marketing makes people feel like they're not cool or sexy or smart if they don't buy what you want them to buy. So the people who end up selling the most are not the people who work the hardest or who have the best stuff to sell, but the people who are the best at marketing. And a lot of times the people who work the hardest don't get anywhere."
"Like you, Mom," Robin said softly.
I sighed. "Yes. Like me."
Plan B is the code name for the morning after pill that will soon go on sale at a pharmacy near you. Personally I don't understand why birth control pills require a prescription while abortofacients are dispensed over the counter, but my quibble is one of logic only. I absolutely support a woman's right to abortion on demand. Still, it would be better – wouldn't it? – if the unwanted pregnancy had not occurred in the first place. So erecting a barrier to access for contraception and none at all for early abortion is just a loopy incentive structure.
"What's abortion?" Robin asks.
I explain.
He wrinkles his nose in distaste. "That's disgusting."
"Why do you say that?"
"Well, if you had had an abortion, then I would never have been born!"
And there you have it in a nutshell: the primal male argument against a woman's right to choose. I'm quite sure if you injected George W. Bush with sodium pentothal – or Clarence Thomas or any of the other prominent political abortion opponents – stripped away the various substrata of Old Testament fossilized thought and the medico-legal jaw waggling over definitions of life and death, it would always come down to one thing – the simple fear that if their own mothers had had that choice, maybe they wouldn't be here today!
Robin and I have all our most interesting conversations in the car.
He came back from the east coast with a bad cough, which I tried to ignore for a week because I'm a bad mother and more to the point, a broke mother entirely without health insurance. Finally one morning the cough got so bad though that I carted him off to the Doc In the Box.
"What's health insurance?" asked Robin.
I explained.
"Well, why doesn't everybody have it?"
"Well, because we live in a country with a particular economic system called capitalism."
"What's capitalism?"
I was gonna struggle with this one. "Capitalism is kind of like a big Farmers Market where everyone has something out on the table," I said. "There are other economic systems too. One of them is called socialism. In socialism, the government is kind of like a parent and provides a lot of the things that you have to buy on your own under capitalism."
"Like health insurance?" Robin asked.
"Like health care," I said.
"So socialism is better," said Robin.
"Not necessarily," I said. "Think about it. If everyone is getting the same thing from the government, then there's really no incentive to work especially hard because it's not as if working especially hard is going to earn you extra points."
"Which system do you like better?"
"Capitalism," I said. "But see the thing in capitalism is that people have to want to buy what you're selling for you to get ahead. So in this country at least selling people stuff they really don't want or need has become something of a science. That's called marketing. Marketing makes people feel like they're not cool or sexy or smart if they don't buy what you want them to buy. So the people who end up selling the most are not the people who work the hardest or who have the best stuff to sell, but the people who are the best at marketing. And a lot of times the people who work the hardest don't get anywhere."
"Like you, Mom," Robin said softly.
I sighed. "Yes. Like me."
