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Some Splainin' To Do

By Contrarian on Sun, 04/09/2017 - 6:06am |

More important, this minimizes the undeniable fact that Trump's "win" was premised on explicit appeals to white nationalism and overwhelming support from white men. Needless to say, tens of millions of women, people of color, immigrants and LGBTQ, the ones whose rights are threatened, feel differently, despite the self-serving statements of the octogenarian socialist from Vermont.

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Women in STEM + Men in Nursing & Teaching?

By Contrarian on Fri, 12/12/2014 - 6:47am |

There's been a ton of ink spilled recently about the dearth of women in STEM fields and there's no shortage of people advocating strategies for significantly increasing the number of women who enter these fields. I was thinking about this yesterday while reading Jeff Guo's Washington Post article about the expanding gender gap in the attainment of college degrees and the theory that it's due to career choice. He mentions the speculation (from Goldin, Katz, and Kuziemko) that this is just a result of natural differences making themselves evident. However, like those who discount the idea that the STEM gap is attributable just to 'boys are better at math,' I've always considered it highly doubtful that this is what is really driving the disparity.

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What Social Security Isn't

By Contrarian on Wed, 02/03/2010 - 5:42pm |

I agree with Deadman that "the idea of social security is to provide the elderly with a baseline level of resources so they don't become impoverished".  I think that a major reason that Social Security reform is the "3rd rail" of politics is that so many people disagree with us.  If you listen to the AARP crowd, they are adamant that this is not the case. 

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