This column by @ezraklein is very good and I agree with him 100% on policy -- we need a generous child allowance now. But I'm seeing this creeping argument on the left that it's just not important for women to work outside the home, and that's concerning.

Working 60 hours a week at two or three jobs? That's obviously awful. Being paid so poorly that you have no time for your family or leisure? That's not "dignity," that's exploitation. And it is single moms who bear the brunt of this.
But while the argument that at-home work is just as valuable as paid work may be morally correct, in our capitalist reality, not working outside of the home leaves women incredibly financially and physically vulnerable. It also leaves them isolated, depressed, and anxious.
@LindaHirshman1 wrote a whole book about this, but paid work is good for women. Not three jobs at $7.50 an hour to stay afloat. But work for pay, which offers a purpose outside of raising one's own children, and friends and coworkers and a $$ lifeline outside the nuclear family.
When women wind up financially dependent on men, good things do not follow. Of course there are individual stories of this working out just fine. But over the whole of a society, women as carers and men as earners is not a good system.
That isn't an argument against the child allowance. It is an argument against reframing the discussion as "there is no reason we should want women to work outside the home" when there are lots of reasons -- but we want that work should be reasonably time-limited and fairly paid.
We understand this when it comes to men, who rarely take the chance to parent full-time. The proportion of men who are solo fathers among unmarried parents has not changed since the late 1960s. Very, very few full-time stay-at-home parents are fathers.
It is also the case that whole societies lose out when women are primarily in the domestic and private spheres, while men are in the public -- it means men's experiences, assumptions and desires dominate our politics, our media narratives, our art, our culture.
Ezra is not arguing for a return to a traditional gender division of labor. But a lot of folks on the left, including some he quotes, seem to think that there isn't an issue with the traditional gender division of labor, because paid work can be exploitative & care work matters.
Paid work can be exploitative. Care work matters. It's also a bad system, for women & children & society as a whole, when women do the bulk of the care work for their own families in the private sphere, even if that work was better valued, & men continue to dominate the public.
Care work can also be (and often is) HUGELY exploitative. And the risk is higher when, as @LindaHirshman1 says, your husband is your boss -- the person who has total control over your financial stability, and there's no HR and little ability to change jobs or collect unemployment
All of which is to say: We should push for a child allowance because families need it. But we also need to push for universal childcare, paid leave that incentivizes men to take it & penalizes them when they don't, and fair pay including a livable minimum wage.
And I want to emphasize again -- this is a really good column and I am in near-total agreement with Ezra. Lavender, his main character, is also a telling one: She is ambitious, she wants to work, she wants to grow. But she doesn't want to be exploited and ground to the bone.
Anyway I wrote about this topic at greater length, in a different context, here: https://t.co/bkChS0eJLP

More from For later read

I’ve been frustrated by the tweets I’ve seen of this as a Canadian. Because the facts are being misrepresented.

We’re not under some sort of major persecution. That’s not what this is. A thread. 1/8


This church was fined for breaking health orders in Dec. They continued to break them. So the pastor was arrested and released on conditions of... you guessed it, not breaking health orders. And then they broke the health orders. 2/8

So then he was arrested and told he couldn’t hold church services in person if he was to be released. He refused. He’s still in custody.

Here is my frustration as a Christian in Canada:

1. They were able to gather, with some conditions. They didn’t like those. 3/8

2. He is not actually unable to preach. He is just unable to hold church services because they broke the conditions given by the public health office in Alberta. He says he can’t in good conscience do that, so they are keeping him in jail (because he will break the law). 4/8

3. This is the 1st article of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” 5/8

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🌿𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒓 : 𝑫𝒉𝒓𝒖𝒗𝒂 & 𝑽𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒏𝒖

Once upon a time there was a Raja named Uttānapāda born of Svayambhuva Manu,1st man on earth.He had 2 beautiful wives - Suniti & Suruchi & two sons were born of them Dhruva & Uttama respectively.
#talesofkrishna https://t.co/E85MTPkF9W


Now Suniti was the daughter of a tribal chief while Suruchi was the daughter of a rich king. Hence Suruchi was always favored the most by Raja while Suniti was ignored. But while Suniti was gentle & kind hearted by nature Suruchi was venomous inside.
#KrishnaLeela


The story is of a time when ideally the eldest son of the king becomes the heir to the throne. Hence the sinhasan of the Raja belonged to Dhruva.This is why Suruchi who was the 2nd wife nourished poison in her heart for Dhruva as she knew her son will never get the throne.


One day when Dhruva was just 5 years old he went on to sit on his father's lap. Suruchi, the jealous queen, got enraged and shoved him away from Raja as she never wanted Raja to shower Dhruva with his fatherly affection.


Dhruva protested questioning his step mother "why can't i sit on my own father's lap?" A furious Suruchi berated him saying "only God can allow him that privilege. Go ask him"
Tip from the Monkey
Pangolins, September 2019 and PLA are the key to this mystery
Stay Tuned!


1. Yang


2. A jacobin capuchin dangling a flagellin pangolin on a javelin while playing a mandolin and strangling a mannequin on a paladin's palanquin, said Saladin
More to come tomorrow!


3. Yigang Tong
https://t.co/CYtqYorhzH
Archived: https://t.co/ncz5ruwE2W


4. YT Interview
Some bats & pangolins carry viruses related with SARS-CoV-2, found in SE Asia and in Yunnan, & the pangolins carrying SARS-CoV-2 related viruses were smuggled from SE Asia, so there is a possibility that SARS-CoV-2 were coming from