The Death of Macho
foreignpolicy.com
foreignpolicy.com
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Firstly, on the Great Depression in 1933
The Great Depression did not threaten or undermine "...the male breadwinner model of the family..." economic model. It undermined the ANY breadwinner of the family economic model. The author falls into an intellectual trap that many of us fall into from time to time. We equate the suffering of the day to some well known hardship of the past. However, the reason that the hardship of the past is so well known is because it was a hardship greater than any that had come before it, or since. Subsequent generations have found it to stand the test of time, and our posterity are likely to find it to stand the test of time as well. Apart from the fact that statistics were calculated differently back then, so that 25% Great Depression unemployment rate means nothing in our terms, there was much less to go around to start with. So while I was not there, I have very little doubt that the situation today would have to deteriorate a good deal before we could say we went through anything approaching the level of deprivation that the Greatest Generation lived through. And, believe me, that is true whether you are a man or a woman, black, white or polka dot purple.
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Secondly, just a pet peeve of mine. We have a tendency to create bubbles to drive our economy. The bubble I see forming right now is in the health care industry. For instance, because of the overbuilding of hospitals, we are already beginning to see the start of the health care bubble bursting. In Houston, I know of several hospitals that have laid off large numbers of workers. In addition to entire new hospitals being moth balled. Yes, that's right, I mean there are buildings that cost between US$300 and US$800 million to build. They were completed recently in Houston's Medical center area. And, yes, they are sitting empty with no people in them. Bing or Google Baylor College of Medicine if you want an example.
Houston is not the only place this has happened, or will happen. Many cities seem to want to replace their jobs base with jobs that cannot be outsourced, and are well paying. Jobs in female dominated fields like, say, nursing. However, this just sets up another bubble. Like in Houston, most of these facilities are financed through bond issues or philanthropy. Both of which are drying up at a fairly fast clip right now. Which is why the government is so anxious to throw money into health care. The bubble is beginning to pop, hospitals are mothballed, and a lot of the people in those female dominated fields are starting to be laid off.
A lot of it is just plain old overbuilding. I've personally done a good deal of number crunching on the national level in this field. Take an analysis of Cleveland health care market for instance. Total patients required to be served in the strategic plans of Cleveland's hospitals: ~250,000. Population of Cleveland: ~500,000. Now to be fair, Cleveland Clinic expects to pull a large population from outside the area, but that population is only so large. And it is impacted by the fact that all of the other cities in the country are trying to do the same thing. Similar story all over the country, obviously Houston, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, deep south, west, everywhere.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Don't even get me started on the outlooks for bio sciences, pharmaceuticals and nano tech. Suffice it to say that I believe the coming right sizing of these industries will be fairly violent. I could be wrong however, the government is trying to pump a lot of money into them. That doesn't make these entities economically viable however, it just means they will have guaranteed access to finance as long as the government can afford it.
Anyway, I think it morally unconscionable to be encouraging women to go into these fields when we have numbers right now pointing to the likelihood of non trivial layoffs in the near future. It is akin to having encouraged homeownership when it was clear that stormclouds were forming.
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Lastly, the author seems to fall victim to the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle. <<See Wikipedia for a definition of that logical fallacy>>. The author asserts that men have only 2 options, go with the flow, let the woman be the breadwinner and do more house work. Or fight the changes that the author assumes the men don't like. I won't get into why I believe neither of these methods would work very well. I mean really, a single income in this economy? But how about the men consider getting a job as a teacher AND doing a little housework? Just because you are the breadwinner, I don't see any reason you can't do laundry every now and again.
While Salam's article is interesting, he seems to ignore the fact that even a Great Recession is a tiny blip compared to the deeply-rooted biology behind the male drive to take risks for access to females.
But everything will recover eventually and when it does those same people who bankrolled the risk takers in the first place will again be looking for ways to beat the market. Which will again mean investing is those who take risks. If you need proof of that ask yourself this question
"how long did it take after the 90s dot.com bust for investors to start pouring money into web startups again?"
As long as there are rich people not satisfied with a standard market return there will be risk takers and as long as there are risk takers there will be "Macho" men.
(and Women. I'm man enough to say I know a few women who could kick my @$$)
Or, rather, we tend not to hear about or remember the failures...
The set of people who take risks will contain most of the total successes, but it will contain most abject failures, too. The set of people that don't take risks get a more mediocre result, on average.