a paycheck for every at-home dad
Now Playing: Mr Mom by Lonestar!
Topic: music
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At-Home
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At-Home
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My son keeps asking me to play that Mr
Mom song by the country band Lonestar, so I re-checked
Billboard magazine?s Hot
Country Singles & Tracks , and it popped up to # 7 after
hitting the top spot in recent weeks. A University of
Minnesota college student, Nick Woomer, also checked out the song and
wrote this neat piece
on it in his college rag. After he offers these lyrics: ?There?s bubble gum in the baby?s hair/ Sweet
potatoes in my lazy chair.? he notes, By the song?s end, our
narrator realizes he?s been a little too cavalier about jobs traditionally
done by women ?Baby, now I know how you feel/ What I don?t know is how
you do it.? He then writes:
What can we learn from this dumb
little ditty? A lot, although two particular points stick out: First, ?red
staters? recognize there is high social value in unpaid labor (homemaking,
coaching your child?s baseball team, generic volunteer work, etc.). Second,
?red staters? love to spend quality time with their children ? in fact,
it?s probably their cardinal value..... What this suggests is that
?radical? ideas ? correctly packaged and effectively communicated ?
could potentially seem very appealing to ?red staters.?
Take Universal Basic Income: The
proposal that every person in the United States (from Bill Gates to the homeless
guys begging for change outside the liquor store) should receive an
unconditional income ? regardless of whether he or she works. What kind of
person would buy into a crazy idea like this? The kind of person who can relate
to a song like ?Mr. Mom,? that?s who ? and a lot of academics (as
you?ll see if you visit the United States Basic Income, Group?s Web site at www.usbig.net.)
He argues that
although there would be freeloaders in the system (they would be
sitting around and smoking pot
all day)
1.Universal
Basic Income would be at a low enough rate so that people who wanted a more comfortable
lifestyle would have to work for it.
2. Almost everyone would have a lot more quality
time to spend time with family and friends.
3. Would
create Massive pressure on
employers to make their employees? lives easier.
This is indeed
a modest proposal, and although I don't see the "Woomer Bill" passing
any time soon it's great to hear this voice of the future. Stay tuned,
I'll let you know if it passes in 2030.
Parents on
strike update: As of This morning, those striking parents from Florida
are still camped out in their yard till the kids clean their rooms.
Erin Ailworth of the Sun Sentinel
gets
this latest statement from mom and dad, "We'll be fine unless it
goes down to 20 below," said Cat Barnard, 45, who, along with her husband,
has spent the week camped out on the driveway in protest of their two messy
kids, Ben and Kit. After all, 56-year-old Harlan Barnard said, he and his wife
have four things to keep them warm: their orange and green Ozark Trail tent with
its wind shield, their snug sleeping bags, a comfy air mattress and each other.
Instead they joked, "Welcome to 'Lifestyles of Those at the End of Their
Rope.' "
