(if requiring is too strong a word… perhaps strongly encourage? it takes a lot of work for our american lifestyle to exist. i honestly don’t know if it is stable in the long run… we consume way too much here, and don’t contribute enough.)

You know what scares the crap out of me? The fact that kids can grow up under the wings of great parents who do everything “right” and still turn out to be freeloading crapheads in a good economy with plenty of opportunity. Of course, no parent or parenting style is perfect. But isn’t that scary? Ay, yi, yi. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be s l a c k e r s.

PS Laurie, this is an awesome post. One of your best.

About earning the right to slack, all I can say is the two art forms I care the most about – music and novels – would be dead in the water if there weren’t a way for people to spend a few years un- or grossly under-employed while they get started in their craft. The fact that most wannabes fail doesn’t void the fact that most of the successes need to go through a period when you can’t tell whether they’re really talented or not.

As for employment for women, I look forward to hearing your ideas on that. My impression is that unemployed women don’t represent the threat of criminality or war that unemployed young men do, but impoverished women imply impoverished children. Furthermore, educating women and giving them economic power seem to be two preconditions for a whole lot of other public goods, including child health, stabilization of birth rates, reducing domestic violence, and much more. But you knew that.