About Care Talk
Welcome to Care Talk! This blog was founded by Nancy Folbre to engage researchers, students, journalists, and others interested in the “care sector”– an important part of our economy devoted to the direct care of others through the family, the community, the market, and the state. In collaboration with Jocelyn Olcott and the Revaluing Care in the Global Economy network, the blog now features posts by researchers working in the quantitative and qualitative social sciences as well as the humanities to explore the problems of 1) how to measure economic contributions made by families and communities; 2) the shortcomings of the standard “business model” based on profit maximization and consumer choice as a means of delivering effective care services through the market; 3) poor institutional design in the U.S. public sector, which often fails to deliver equitable, efficient, or politically sustainable systems of care provision; and 4) the analysis of alternative models for ensuring equitable access to and valuation of both paid and unpaid care.
Coronavirus and the Fragility of the U.S. Economy
The Roosevelt Institute organized a twitter chat on Friday, March 29th and invited me to participate, along with about twenty other people (under the hashtag #ProgressingAhead).
Not O.K., Boomers (with postscript)
I must be a boomer, because I can never remember the difference between Generations X, Y (Millennials) and Z.
Greta on Fire
Greta Thunberg is highlighting a point that most economists have missed: climate change is happening so rapidly that it is threatening the economic prospects of children already born, children who lack the political or economic power to fully represent their own interests, but are fully capable of anger, outrage, and protest at the complacency of the older generation.
Beyond the Margins 1.0
With a hat tip to one of the first feminist economics conferences, (“Out of the Margin” in 1993), I’m inaugurating a mini-series on miscellaneous outrages, Beyond the Margins.
Basic Incomes for Whom?
Whatever you think about Andy Yang, you gotta love his slogan: Make America Think Again, acronymized as MATH. Yang has helped publicize the concept of a universal basic income, or UBI, and that concept itself is encouraging America to think harder about social policy.
Daedalus and the Patriarchal Labyrinth
The Winter 2020 issue of Daedalus on “Women and Equality”
Populist Prism, Patriarchal Facet
Populism relies on a complex coalition based on gender, race, and citizenship, as well as class. No one has explained its racist facet in the U.S. better than Ta-Nehisi Coates. Its other facets also deserve serious attention.
What IS the Economy, Stupid
A lean, bald-pated, drawling political strategist from Louisiana named James Carville helped Bill Clinton win an election in 1992 by reminding campaign staff of the importance of “the economy, stupid.”
Quantifying Care
17th International Experts Meeting on Time Use and XX International Meeting on Gender Statistics, September 10-13, 2019, in Aguascalientes, Mexico
Pinko Economics
Globally, most center-right parties are labeled blue, but in the U.S. today, Republicans are red, and Democrats are blue. Why? Because the major television networks decided around 2000 to standardize their visuals that way on election night.
Revaluation not Devaluation
I invoke a billionaire investor to call your attention to a particularly important divergence between value and price–the low wages of care.