I thought I was reading Matt Levine’s take on the sanctions the US is placing on Russia, but it’s me and I connect everything to care work, so here we go:
“One great theme of the post-2008 financial world is that money is a social construct, a way to keep track of what society thinks you deserve in terms of goods and services. That has always been true, but modern finance has made it more obvious. I think that 15 years ago it was easier to think that money was an objective fact. Money is a kind of stuff, you might have thought, stuff with some predictable value that you can exchange for goods and services, and you can acquire a quantity of it and then you own that money and can use it however you like to buy things.
But the response to the 2008 global financial crisis, and to its later European aftershocks, made it clear that something else was going on. Who has money and what they can do with it can be adjusted by the actions of central banks and national treasuries; banks can be bailed out; costs can be socialized. The fiscal response to Covid-19 reinforced this point: Money is a tool of social decision-making, not an objective thing that you get through abstract merit.”
This is why the American media generally depicts Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and other men with enormous sums of money, as people to be admired and emulated.
“What I want to suggest is that society is good, that it is good for people (and countries) to exist in a web of relationships in which their counterparties can judge their actions and punish bad actions. If money is socially constructed and property is contingent then money is a continuing, dynamic, ever-at-risk reward for prosocial behavior.”
Maybe the argument for why we need to pay all care workers a living wage, regardless of whether they’re paying for a family member or a client, is not because they save insurance companies (and the government) loads of money or because they’re doing important work.
Maybe the better argument is that if we want to live in a country where we view the lives of the disabled and the elderly as worthy, we need to pay people — not just a survival wage or even a living wage, but a cushy wage — to do this work.
A lot of careers pay more than care work. Most care work is still unpaid. When money is a demonstration of our values and is a reward for prosocial behavior, that pay differential sends a powerful message.
A fairly common theme in the groups is feeling guilty for not having a clean home. In my fantasy world it would be normal to have friends come and help us with household chores. Mostly because I am one of those weirdos who feels better if I can tidy things and want to be able to fold my friends laundry and wipe down their baseboards without it being a thing.
It's not me judging them, because how neurotic do I have to be to be distracted from enjoying quality time by my burning desire to wipe down their cabinets? Plus, when people are busy, coming over to help them fold laundry means I get to spend more time with them.
Anyway, Kathryn Jezer-Morton has a great piece on the impossibly clean homes we see on social media.
Nikhil Krishnan reminds us that US health insurance is one of those coupon books kids used to sell as fundraisers, a bunch of checked out admins with fax machines, and a pot of carefully guarded money with some bells and whistles tacked on to disguise how much of a janky mess it is.
That pile-o-faxes sure does churn out cash, so insurance companies don't have much incentive to improve the experience of patients.
I'm going to have to update my will again to include this piece from Daniel Lavery.
The clubhouse model of community mental health support is really cool and NYC is expanding it.
What does it mean to follow the science? Right now opposing groups claim to be following the science as they go in very different directions.
Caring Across Generations is sharing the story of family caregivers in the US. You can check out the videos on YouTube and submit your own.