America is about getting your nut. Parenting matters — until it gets in the way of that.

I saw this in an article recently:

We’ve been saying this — not really doing very much about it, but at least saying it — for generations now. The thing is, America is not really designed to benefit moms and even non-rich parents in general. Kids are a virtue we hold up when it’s convenient for the conversation, or when we reach the age where all our other friends are doing it, or in the name of our personal relevance. In reality nothing about policies benefits families in the modern economic and labor climate, unless you’re already rich.

America is about getting your nut, almost to a fault.

A few years back, 60 Minutes did a profile on west coast U.S. homelessness, specifically in the Seattle area. Here’s that link. Homelessness is a big problem, and, regardless of how you feel about the quality of 60 Minutes journalism, the fact is that most of their pieces are 14 minutes or so. It’s very hard to unpack an issue that big in 14 minutes, but damn if Anderson Cooper wasn’t going to try. In the context of Seattle, these “big three” reasons emerged →