Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 193 Editor's Choice: 72
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The Weakness of a Service Economy
[Read the article: The Starbucks economy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Back when journalists were telling us outsourcing and layoffs weren't so bad, the spiel was that the US has a "service economy" and we should all be happy - those jobs are worth more! Except, the problem is, when times get tough, these are the first things people cut from their budget. Whether it's a latte or home improvements or even going to the doctor - it becomes a luxury compared to paying the rent and putting food on the table. I think that's one reason this recession is going to be difficult, because so many Americans have "service jobs" these days, and those jobs are going to be the first to go.
Not sure what the alternative is, though - I'm one of those high tech science workers that are supposedly in short supply, and I'm seeing jobs in my field going overseas just like factory jobs. And if the service jobs disappear too, because there aren't enough people left with money who can afford to buy those services - what's left?
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Think Life, Not Job
[Read the article: I'm a med student, but my boyfriend has just a high school education]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What kind of life do you want? Not just your job, but how do you see yourself living ten years from now, twenty years from now. Do you see yourself having a family? Working long hours as a doctor? How do you imagine spending your time?
If you really love your career and want to devote yourself to it, that may mean sacrifices in terms of time with your family, if you want to have children in the future. If you marry someone with the same priorities, you might have more in common, but you'll also do a lot more juggling and struggling to fit everything in. On the other hand, if you spend your life with someone whose career is less driven than yours, you may be able to balance home and family more easily. (It's not as if he's working at McDonalds and playing video games in his parents' basement, at least by your description - he seems responsible, just not that involved in his career.)
Maybe this isn't your vision of the future. Maybe you want something different. But think about what you want out of life and how this guy might fit into your vision of the future. Not just about what you would do if you were in his place. One of my friends from graduate school married a guy who works a seasonal blue collar job. His approach to his career is completely different from hers - for him, it's just a job - but their life is really happy, partly because they balance each other.
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Who's Fascinated By The 60's?
[Read the article: Through a bong, darkly]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who's fascinated by the 60's? Baby boomers. As usual, the baby boomers look back on their own idealized pasts, and assume everyone else finds it as fascinating and monumental as they do.
I was born in 1970, and I don't know anyone my age who is "fascinated" by the 60's. No one younger, either. It's a part of history - there were some good things and some bad things, but it wasn't the pinnacle of life on earth, the way some boomers think it was. The only time I think about the 60's is when the clothes come back in fashion.
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Not Just Factories
[Read the article: The decline and fall of the American empire of debt]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sylvain, what concerns me is that it's not just manufacturing jobs that are going away. We're also sending research, intellectual property, and other jobs overseas. A lot of drug research is moving to China, for example, while American scientists are being laid off. It's only going to increase.
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What Rate
[Read the article: The American way of debt]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I also wondered about the 18% rate. Is that the average rate people are paying on credit cards? I'll bet the people with higher balances are paying a higher rate and the people with low or no balances are paying a lower one. When I went into debt a few years back (no late payments, bankruptcy or other problems, just a big chunk of debt compared to my income), my rates were yanked up to almost 30%. Once one card does it, they all do it, whether you've had a problem with that card or not - most credit card companies check your credit score monthly, and raise your rates accordingly. It's in the fine print. I had no choice since no other card would give me a lower rate.
Once I paid it down, I started getting those 1.99% offers again, but it was when I had the highest debt that my rate was the highest.
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Not Our Problem
[Read the article: Iraq: The ten commandments]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Although I mostly agree with these "commandments", I'm a little queasy about the first rule, "It is immoral and illegal to attack a state that has not attacked you." This seems obvious when we think about Iraq. But it also means that we would ignore the next Darfur, Rwanda or Bosnia, and say "oh dear, it's just not our problem". Is that what we want?
You might be able to argue that by NOT having another Iraq, we save more lives overall. We just have to consider those lives lost in other places to be the unfortunate price. Maybe, eventually, other countries or the UN would take action (although given the inaction of the UN and Europe on Darfur, I have my doubts). And the US certainly doesn't have a great track record when it comes to this kind of thing - there have been a handful of successes but a lot of failures.
But I hate to think that our catastrophic adventure in Iraq would lead us to look at babies thrown in bonfires in the next Darfur and say "not our problem".