32 - JD Vance - American Dreams and Nightmares: Difference between revisions

But why is it not a reasonable thing to say, “we should, as a policy, as a pro-family policy, make it easier for parents of small children who want to spend more time at home to do it”? Like, why—that seems to be a thing that's reasonable. And to acknowledge that if you do that, probably more women than men are going to take advantage of the option to spend a little bit more time at home as opposed to a little bit less time at work. Or of course, you probably know this, but one of the takeaways of family leave policies in Europe, especially in northern Europe, is that the more generous the family leave policies are, the more that women over time tend to withdraw from the workforce. And one of the theories for why is, you know, they actually enjoy spending time with children. And if it's economically feasible, a lot of people choose to spend time with their kids instead of at work. That is a reasonable thing for people to choose to do. And there are actual critics—especially on the Right, by the way, but I think you see it, you're starting to see on the Left as well—there are critics on the left who say about those policies that they're anti-feminist and pro-patriarchy, because their long-run effect is to enable women to make preferences that they apparently actually have. Now, and here's another, here's another version of this that I'm, like, really—that really, really bothers me. So my friend Oren Cass, who you've spent some time with—I think he's a brilliant, brilliant sort of right-of-center policy thinker—he's made an argument that one of the goals of American economic policy should be not just higher consumption, meaning more money in people's pockets to buy things, but a well-functioning labor market. This is one of the things that Oren is really into. And his argument is that a well-functioning labor market, especially for men, is a major driver of whether families are intact and stable. In other words, for whatever reason, whether it's biology or culture, when men lose their jobs, divorce rates go up, addiction goes up, family trauma goes up.