EconomistMom.com

I was signed up to attend this New America event this morning, called “Are Today’s Teens Better Off Than Their Parents?”  In fact, I had arranged to bring my 16-year-old daughter with me who sounded mildly interested when I invited her.  But my best laid plans fell through when I had to adjust to the last-minute changes in my daughter’s social calendar (I won’t elaborate).  So I ended up missing the event as well.  Oh, the irony!

I hope they’ll post a transcript so I can see what the consensus answer of the experts is.  I only know the answer to that question as it applies in my own family!

(photo of son Johnny, by daughter Emily)

The Wall Street Journal blog, “Real Time Economics“, points to a new economic analysis that is very interesting to me–more from my “mom” perspective than from my “economist” perspective.  The NBER working paper on “The Lengthening of Childhood”, by David Deming and Susan Dynarski, suggests that delaying the start of kindergarten might actually reduce overall human capital accumulation in the U.S., because, as WSJ blog paraphrases:

Kids who start school a year late have one year less schooling before they reach the age at which they’re allowed to drop out, decreasing their average educational attainment and widening the gap in learning between rich and poor. (Low-income teenagers are more likely to drop out.) And those who do stay in school enter the labor force a year later — decreasing their average lifetime earnings as well as their contribution to Social Security.

I am one of those who “redshirted” a child from school–having chosen to delay my son’s entry into kindergarten until he had turned 6 (in late July).  (The cut-off in Fairfax County, VA is September 30.)  Given my “mom” experience going through a decision process that was heavily influenced by my son’s preschool teacher (who made the compelling case that my son was not emotionally ready having been the youngest in his preschool class and the youngest, and only boy, at home–and didn’t I want to give him some chance of being a leader instead of a follower somewhere in his life?…), and then seeing the benefits of having given him that extra year (he’s been a strong leader in school ever since), I have to think that the NBER analysis, at least as described by the WSJ above, is missing a couple important factors in the suggestion that delaying school is a bad thing:

1. It assumes the annual productivity of schooling for the kid is independent of the extra year of maturity (or other psychological benefit from being an “older” kid rather than a “younger” kid in one’s grade)–so the kid might get one year less on a path that’s otherwise the same.  I would argue that there’s evidence (ok, at least my casual evidence) that a given amount of education provided to a more mature kid leads to a larger amount of “human capital” accumulated in that kid (higher quality “learning”), so that the human capital production function gets a sort of technology boost when kindergarten is delayed.
2. It assumes that the decreased years of schooling caused by drop out is caused by allowing the delay on the front end, rather than allowing the truncation on the back end.  In other words, if the problem is drop out, why can’t the rules for minimum drop-out age be changed to correspond to a minimum number of years of school–so that kids who delay kindergarten until age 6 would not be legally permitted to drop out of school until the usual age plus one? 

Oh, I know I should read the full paper and all the other analyses by education experts before I leap to these conclusions, but like I said at the start, I’m talking more from my “mom” perspective than from my “economist” one here, and I need to get home to my redshirted son, who I’m sure will graduate from high school (and hopefully, even more schooling) and be a very productive worker some day–I’m convinced even more productive than had I started him in school a year earlier.

Yesterday I was home with the kids (and dogs), and it went like this:

8:00 am:  take kid #1’s car to drop kid #2 off at her summer arts program (cost, $200+/week for 4 weeks, for $800+);

8:30 am:  drop kid #1’s car off at the Ford dealership for badly-overdue tune up/maintenance (initial quote, about $1500; later find out the alternator’s bad, so $2000 (but refuse to raise that to $3500 to get the AC fixed));

10:00 am:  bring kid #3 to her ballet camp (cost, $250+/week for 4 weeks, for $1000+);

10:30 am:  bring kid #1 to the oral surgeon to get 4 impacted wisdom teeth removed per our regular dentist’s orders (cost, $2745 out of pocket before our insurance, which the dentist does not participate in);

1:00 pm:  bring groggy kid #1 home to pick up kid #4 (who’s been home alone for awhile because I couldn’t get him to come with me for kid #1’s appointment), and bring kid #4 to the (same) oral surgeon to get 2 baby molars extracted per our orthodontist’s orders (cost, a mere $490, also out of pocket before insurance);

3:00 pm:  go out to fill prescriptions for kids #1 and #4 (out-of-pocket cost for the generic antibiotics, pain killers, and anti-nausea medicine, a shockingly low $4-$5 TOTAL);

3:10 pm:  while prescriptions are being filled, go to grocery store to buy lots of liquid and otherwise soft foods and somehow end up spending $150+ on juices, yogurt, applesauce, canned soup, and ice cream.

Let’s see, that’s about $7200 worth of family infrastructure spending!  Not exactly a “typical day” for our family, but it’s proof that one really has to be rich these days in order to have kids (especially that many kids).  (At least I didn’t really spend anything on the dogs yesterday, although my old beagle made sure that I spent time cleaning up his evening “accident”–to make it a pretty typical day in that regard…) 

Fortunately, it turns out our very generous dental insurance (courtesy of the Federal Reserve) will reimburse us for 90% of those dental expenses I paid up front, even though the oral surgeon “does not participate” with any insurance plans.  I didn’t find out the high reimbursement rate until this morning when I called our insurance company.  Yep, I had made and gone through with the appointments knowing in advance that the surgeon did not accept insurance, knowing the cost was estimated at $3000-$3500 for the two kids, and yet not knowing how much our insurance would cover for us.  Why?  Well, the “mom” in me was obviously more in charge than the “economist” in me, going through that simple, irrational, two-question test:  (i) is there any possible benefit associated with the expenditure (is marginal benefit positive)?, and (ii) do I have the money to pay for it? 

A week ago I was at my regular dentist for a checkup and mentioned that our favorite oral surgeon (and the one our dentist had referred us to) was no longer participating in any insurance and how much we had to come up with in advance to pay for the treatments.  My regular dentist said she knew of other oral surgeons that she thought did still participate in insurance that she could refer us to instead.  But then when I mentioned that we already had appointments (with nonparticipating oral surgeon) for the following week (and which I had easily scheduled just the week before) and how both kids were already overdue and could not afford to wait until August when cheerleading and fall baseball started (so it seemed they had to have it done ”now or never”), my dentist said “oh, well, you’ll never get an appointment with that little notice with [that oral surgeon who takes insurance].”

Plus, we already knew and liked this (nonparticipating) oral surgeon–we’ve been his patients for many years.  He’s got such a pleasant chairside manner for someone who’s putting you through torture…

And there you have it–back to my earlier point about why health care will always be unreasonably expensive.  I can’t shop for my family’s health care the way I love to comparison shop for other things.  There will always be people like me who are willing to pay unreasonably high prices for high quality (good and fast, and familiar) health care, even without the reality or awareness of third-party payments to hide the true prices.  And for the others who will not, or cannot, pay those unreasonably high prices– well, they just have to wait an unreasonable amount of time for an appointment.

For a few weeks now, I’ve been meaning to write about CBO’s recent work on controlling health care costs, and this morning it was an article in the New York Times by Gina Kolata and Andrew Pollack (I think to appear in the Sunday paper) that reminded me.

CBO Director Peter Orszag has recently testified on the problem of rising health costs and the best policy strategies for pushing back on that trend (or as Peter puts it, “bending the growth curve”).  On his Director’s blog he summarized that (my emphasis added): 

• The single most important factor influencing the federal government’s long-term fiscal balance is the rate of growth in health care costs, caused largely by rising health care costs per beneficiary.
• The significant geographic variation in per capita health care spending across the United States suggests substantial inefficiencies in health care today and an opportunity for reducing health costs without adversely affecting health outcomes.
• These inefficiencies are perpetuated, in part, by a lack of clarity as to what insurance costs and who ultimately pays those costs– especially with regard to employer-provided health insurance.
• Providing more information on the “comparative effectiveness” of alternative medical treatments, and changing financial incentives that encourage providers to engage in expensive treatments and procedures may help shift professional norms to improve efficiency and restrain cost growth.
• Increased transparency with regard to specific medical services may not lead to reduced health care expenditures, however, because consumers generally don’t make independent decisions about what services to purchase from whom, particularly in an emergency. In addition, many health care markets are relatively concentrated, and in those settings, increased price transparency may lead to higher, rather than lower, prices for specific services by facilitating collusion among providers.

I would add that even without the third-party payment problem (which obscures the true cost of health care from the suppliers and demanders of that health care), and even when consumers are making their own, “independent decisions” about their health care purchases based on really good, objective information on the benefits and costs of various forms of health care, there would remain a big reason why demand for certain types of health care, and hence the market prices for such care, would be irrationally high.  That is that people cannot dispassionately, objectively, make rational economic choices–weighing costs against benefits–when it comes to life-and-death decisions.

I think that a family making decisions about health care spending, particularly end-of-life health care spending, is a lot like a parent making decisions about spending money on their children towards activities that might be considered “investments” in their kids (music lessons, sports training, braces, SAT prep classes, etc.).  Instead of following economic theory and consuming the amounts of these goods and services that equate marginal benefit to marginal cost (thereby maximizing net benefit), parents tend to go through the following calculus… Question 1:  Is there any reason to believe there’s any chance of some positive benefit to this activity, however small or uncertain–i.e., is MB>0?  Question 2:  Can I somehow afford it–i.e., does buying it fit in my budget constraint?…

To think any other way than this “irrational” way–i.e., to think more “rationally” like an economist, comparing (equating) the marginal benefit to the marginal cost (stopping oneself from consuming any more of these services once the benefit seemed low relative to the cost), would seem immoral–or at best a big time shirking of parental duty.  Because if you are a parent, you want to feel like you’ve done everything you could have to give your kids the best life possible; you don’t want to think that your being “cheap” caused your child’s life to end up falling just short of their “potential.”  (I have done a lot of informal polling on this issue with many fellow parents, including usually-rational economist parents, so I know this phenomenon to be true.) 

The New York Times article highlights this phenomenon as it applies to health care spending (more specifically the demand for prescription drugs), in its story on the costly cancer drug, Avastin.  Here are some relevant passages:

If Avastin were inexpensive or if it cured cancer or even held it at bay, as the drug Gleevec does for blood cancer, few might care. But like a half-dozen or so new biotechnology drugs with a similar combination — alluring promise, high price and only arguable benefits — Avastin raises troubling questions:

What does it mean to say an expensive drug works? Is slowing the growth of tumors enough if life is not significantly prolonged or improved? How much evidence must there be before billions of dollars are spent on a drug? Who decides? When, if ever, should cost come into the equation?

For a patient like Ms. Reeh, fighting for her life, the cost is not the main concern. If her insurer did not pay, she said, she would go into debt, find a way to raise the money.

But some in the pharmaceutical industry worry that such prices will raise concerns about whether the drugs are worth it, leading to a backlash like price controls or restrictions on use.

Roy Vagelos, a former chief executive of Merck who is considered an elder statesman of the industry, said in a recent speech that he was troubled by a drug, which he would not name but which was a clear reference to Avastin, that costs $50,000 a year and adds four months of life. “There is a shocking disparity between value and price,” he said, “and it’s not sustainable.”

…

The problem is largely one of cost.

…

The drug’s price, as charged by Genentech, can be $4,000 to more than $9,000 a month, depending on a patient’s weight and the type of cancer. Avastin’s cost to patients and insurers can be much higher, though, because doctors and hospitals buy the drug and then sell it to patients or their insurers, often marking up the price. So the $2.3 billion that Genentech recorded in sales of Avastin represents only part of what Americans spent on the drug last year.

… 

Medicare requires that the doctor or hospital buying Avastin be paid an amount equal to Genentech’s average selling price plus a markup of 5 to 6 percent. Of that amount, Medicare pays 80 percent and the patient pays 20 percent. Doctors and hospitals typically do not make much money on Avastin for Medicare patients, and can even lose money if they buy the drug at a price that is higher than average. But patients can end up paying thousands of dollars a month. Some have supplemental insurance to take care of it; others do not.

…

Other countries have different views about whether Avastin is worth its price. An institute that advises the British government on which drugs to pay for recommended against it, saying that the drug was not cost effective based on its cost per year of life extended.

In the United States, Genentech argues that it puts patients first, with free drugs for those who have no way to pay for them and donations to charities that can help with payments. It also capped the price for a year’s supply of Avastin at $55,000 (not counting markups by doctors and hospitals) for patients with incomes of less than $100,000 a year.

But progress against cancer has a price, the company says.

“The quest is to eliminate the disease,” Arthur D. Levinson, Genentech’s chief executive, said at an annual investor meeting. “And, yes, there is going to be a cost to that.”

…

Dr. Winer says that when he is not sitting in front of a patient, he thinks about whether drugs like Avastin are worth it to society. But when facing a seriously ill patient, who, based on clinical trial results, might benefit — even if only a little — from Avastin along with chemotherapy, he has to think about his patient’s needs.

“I can’t say, ‘Let’s not use Avastin; it’s a very expensive drug and I am worried about the cost to society,’ ” Dr. Winer said.

And so, Dr. Winer said, the answer you get when you ask whether drugs like Avastin are worth it very much depends on whom you ask.

“A person who hasn’t been affected by cancer will say, ‘Gee, why should we pay for an expensive treatment that doesn’t extend life when we have other needs?’ ” Dr. Winer said.

A person like Ms. Reeh will have a different response. She does not want to give up Avastin.

…

Ms. Reeh says she knows her cancer may very well kill her eventually. But what is it worth to feel better again?

“It’s really about living and not waiting to die,” she said.

And what if 5 percent of Avastin patients live a lot longer than they would have without the drug?

“I might be in that 5 percent,” she said.

The other way to think of our irrational consumption when it comes to our health care and our children might be that we do think about equating marginal benefit to marginal cost, but the marginal benefit of these things is perceived as close to infinite–whether it’s because when you have very few days left, each day is worth so much more (take any positive number and divide by a number that approaches zero), or because when you’re spending on your children you feel as if you’re effectively facing an “infinite horizon.”

In any case, there’s plenty of reason to believe that even without markets distorted by third-party payments or government subsidies, there would be plenty of people in the free marketplace who would have virtually unlimited demand for such services (and the means to afford it), so there’s plenty of reason to believe that things like cancer drugs and SAT prep tutoring will remain very expensive. 

I mean “trust fund” in a “public accounting” sense rather than “personal estate” sense… My husband and I have no personal wealth to put into a real trust fund…

My 15-year-old daughter was complaining to me last night about how her 16-year-old sister is making “like $150 per week” at Baskin Robbins, how she’s quite jealous of that and wants to find a job, too.  I started to explain to her that besides the fact that she would not be able to drive herself to a job, I really needed her to help around the house (now that we no longer have an aupair), and that that’s why she’s getting a pretty nice allowance lately.   She then correctly pointed out that she has not literally been “receiving” allowance lately because of my casual accounting system, where she typically gets NO cash at all each week, because I have been buying her photographic supplies and clothes each week and keep saying I consider it “a wash.”

She said she knows that it’s pretty much a wash, but that it’s a wishy-washy wash (my translation), so it doesn’t feel like she’s getting paid an allowance.  I think there’s some analogy that I could make to the idea that tax expenditures (the government devoting resources to tax reductions) aren’t viewed the same as other forms of government spending (and in fact aren’t treated at all the same in the budget process), but my daughter then took my analogy-oriented mind in a whole different direction by suggesting:  “why don’t we set up a fund?”…

I said ”do you mean literally set up a fund, or just set up a fund as an accounting device?”–and my 15-year-old knew exactly what I meant and immediately said she just wanted the latter–a way of keeping track of the weekly pluses and minuses to her “fund,” so she could see her credits for her weekly allowance and her debits for the goodies I was buying.  She said she’d then feel as if the allowance system was more tangible and more fair (whether on my end of the transaction or hers), and that she’d also then have more incentive to do the work around the house.  In fact, she suggested that I give her a specific list of chores and special cleaning and organization projects to do each day and each week, so she could check tasks off the list so that I (and she) would know she was deserving, and entitled, to her weekly allowance to be credited to her ”Fund.”  And she could check the balance in her “Fund” each day or week and feel good about her contribution to the household economy and the benefits she was receiving in return.

Does this sound a little like the Social Security Trust Fund to you, too?

I then told my daughter that if we go ahead and set up this more explicit accounting mechanism for her allowance, and the more explicit conditions for her to be “entitled” to that allowance, that I would really need to monitor and enforce how this system was working, because if, for example, she wasn’t really cleaning the bathroom, then our family finances would require that we reduce her allowance so that we could afford to hire a housekeeper to come in every couple weeks or so.  In other words, we’d need to revisit the terms of our allowance agreement (the structure of the flows into and out of her “Trust Fund”) in the context of the entire family budget–our full complement of needs and our full complement of means.

And she seemed totally fine with that idea. 

Such wisdom from my 15-year-old… (and all my kids are very smart–have I mentioned?) 

Now, I trust that readers don’t need me to spell out how this parallels the debate on the need (or not) to reform the Social Security system in the broader context of our longer-term fiscal challenge.  I’ll be more directly explaining my perspective on the issue later, anyway. 

So I think we’re actually going to implement this “Allowance Trust Fund.”  I know, I know, I have the benefit of being able to start this Trust Fund from scratch, and that’s what makes it totally different from dealing with the Social Security Trust Fund.  Not to mention the fact that this Trust Fund will be managed by more a (neat and easy) “benevolent dictatorship” rather than a (messy and complicated) “democracy.”  Still, it’s kind of a groovy little personal experiment, don’t you think?

Today my husband and I celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, while out in Nevada and Arizona with our four kids.  So here’s the latest photo of this 20-year-old “human infrastructure” project I’ve been working on–with a lot of help from my husband, of course.  (That’s Lake Mead in the background, taken right before we saw the Hoover Dam.)  Note that I am the 3rd-shortest person in the family, with only my 9-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter still shorter than me, so I’ve managed to construct pretty tall projects just like the Hoover Dam area’s been doing.

My family leaves for a week in Arizona tomorrow.  A few weeks ago I brought up the issue of what I was going to do with my three dogs–whether I might actually put them up in a doggie resort of sorts, such as a place nearby called “Dogtopia.”  A Dogtopia publicity guy even commented on that post, thanking me for putting in a plug for them–and even a link.  (Did he offer me a discount in return, though?…So this time, no easy link…)  One of my (human-childless) budget-expert friends even revealed to me that he brings his doggie children to Dogtopia regularly.

Well, our doggies are not going to Dogtopia, because when I looked into the cost, I realized that if we brought the dogs there, we’d be spending more on lodging on a per capita basis per dog, than per human.   Yes, I’m serious.  I mean, I love my dogs, but I’m not that crazy about them.  I actually think they’ll be happier to stay in our home and our backyard anyway, with our home-from-college neighbor looking after them.  (The other weird thing about these big “dog resort” places is that they’re almost all completely inside big hanger-type, warehouse-style buildings that the dogs must get used to as their indoor and outdoor world… They have fake grass and fake trees so that the dogs will still feel “at home” when they have to pee underneath a roof instead of under the sky…. I mean, how could I pay more per dog for that kind of “scenary” than what we’re paying per human to stay near the red rocks of Sedona?)

Will be writing from the road this coming week, laptop in hand, kids and hubby beside me.

Well, it’s been a month since I launched this blog, and I have to say it’s been a lot of fun, and thanks to all of you visitors out there who have been so supportive and have helped to bring the “contagion” of the blogosphere to my little space.  I love that I have increased the population of the blogosphere…and not just by adding my mom, really!  ;) 

Tomorrow I’m the “guest blogger” on the AGA Weblog–that’s the blog of the Association of Government Accountants.  Even if it doesn’t exactly sound like your kind of place, I’ll ask you to please visit it tomorrow anyway.  It’ll also be good to draw the government accountability types to this website, to show them how I’m trying to get the message to more ”ordinary people.”  (Maybe they will share it with their moms.) 

I get much more excited about the visitors that I recruit from the rest of my varied life, like Lisa, the pharmacist mom from West Virginia, whom I met at the yoga workshop this past weekend, who only knew me as a fellow yogi, who in random small talk with me about our drives to Pittsburgh on Sunday morning commented on the condition of the interstate highways, to which I asked “did you hear the NPR story this morning on dams?”, to which she responded by going on about how neglectful our country’s been at keeping up our infrastructure, and then ended with a rather breathless “…and what about the federal debt–all that money we’re borrowing!“  You can imagine how my face lit up, and how at that moment I realized that Lisa had amazing insights as the pharmacist mom and citizen mom she is, and that I wanted to keep up my connection with her.  I told her about what I did as my “real job” and about EconomistMom.com, and that evening she told her WVU daughter, who coincidentally has been assigned to read Freakonomics for one of her honors courses.  The fact that Lisa and her daughter have promised to visit is what has made this blogging experience so wonderful to me–even just one month into it.

Yesterday I put in another application to be one of the blogs featured on BlogHer (the “community for women who blog”), because I had to rack up at least one month of blogging history, with a decent frequency of posts, before they’d consider me.  (I obviously haven’t had any trouble with the frequency thing.)  …UPDATE (4 pm):  Hey, BlogHer just added me to their roll! 

A few weeks ago I had found this directory/ranking of economics blogs by Aaron Schiff, based on “Technorati” ratings, which I have to admit I do not understand and am having trouble finding explanation–even on Technorati’s site.  But in Technorati rating terms (whatever those are) I’m like 140-something out of the 250+ economics blogs listed, and I think those ratings might be based on traffic over a more-than-one-month (maybe two-month?) period, so given that I’ve only been out there for half the time, well, that seems pretty decent.  Of course, I’m not even listed on Brian Gongol’s directory/ranking of economics and business websites, so I just sent him an email today to ask him to please consider me.

It’ll be interesting to see who “accepts” me first–the women’s blogging community, or the economists’ blogging community.  (Oh, and by the way, when I sent an email last month to workingmother.com’s “MomBlog” managers, I didn’t even get a reply–so I’m not doing very well with the moms’ blogging community, so far.  But I’m persistent and not easily discouraged…)

One month old in the blogosphere, and I feel like I might be the equivalent of a one year old, if I translate to the human lifespan equivalent.  So it strikes me that my “blog age” in “blog years” might go something like the translation one does to figure out “dog years”–I think that’s something like for the first two chronological years, one month is like one year, and then after that, one year is like seven years?…  So by the time you get to ten chronological years, that’s a fairly long life (translates to 80 years if you do that math)–whether you’re a dog or a blog.  Sort of seems about right, doesn’t it?

(Actually, it takes my blogging to get me to do important research like this.  I found this “dog years calculator”–yes, really!–on the web that says that the first two years are equivalent to 10.5 dog years, and then the rest are equivalent to 4 dog years each… so under that math, a 10 year old dog, or blog, is really only slightly more than middle-aged, or 53.  I think I disagree with that at least for dogs who weigh more than 10 pounds, or blogs who have authors that have more than blogs as their livelihood.)

So thanks for visiting and reading, everyone.  I’d really love to hear from you more, via your public comments here.  In particular, I’d really love to know who’s out there?–what kind of diversity I’m drawing.  Because it’s not so much whether I’m mentioned in the Wall Street Journal or how high my economist-blog rankings are that matter to me (which seems based mostly on how many other economists are visiting here), but how many people are visiting and reading who would not otherwise think about economic policy or fiscal responsibility as relevant to their daily lives.  So please “talk to me” here!

Today was my mom’s 75th birthday.  My mom’s been an avid reader of my blog, and both my parents are totally fascinated with my blogging, so tonight I let them watch how I do it, and we tried out the nifty built-in webcam that’s built into my new laptop.

I’m visiting them sans the rest of my family, here in the Cleveland area, while I’m doing yoga during the day in Pittsburgh.  It’s been a good few days where each day I spend a few hours driving and listening to NPR, a few hours doing yoga, and a few hours spending unusually high-quality time with my parents.  (I think the last time I spent time alone with my parents was just after I got engaged and took a trip with my parents to Mexico.  That was 22 years ago.)  I’ve got a couple more days here before I head back home on Tuesday night, so that’s a couple more days of blogging from Ohio.

I was blissfully oblivious to all the bad economic news that came out today, until this evening when I got to read and watch the news…  Wow.

The unemployment spike is especially troubling, and now five straight months of job losses.  And then there’s the price of oil and, gee, the stock market pretty much freaked out today, didn’t it?  Maybe we really are in a recession, after all…  Economists keep changing their minds about this, and any official call from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) doesn’t typically come until after the recession’s over.  Want to know more?  Go visit the NBER’s business cycle dating page (…sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?).

I spent the day driving to Pittsburgh for the first day of a yoga conference (I’m a yoga teacher in one of my other lives), so instead of fretting about today’s bad economic news, I was getting in touch with my inner self.  Then tomorrow I start a few days of commuting between yoga in Pittsburgh and visiting my parents in the Cleveland area.  While I’m visiting with my parents, I’ll be pretty oblivious to the longer-run economic problems our country faces as well, because our family faces no such demographic challenge.  My mom is celebrating her 75th birthday on Sunday, and my dad is almost 76 and is still working full time.  They don’t yet need me or my sister to support them–in fact, I doubt they ever will need my financial support.  (They’ll always need me for technological and other miscellaneous “support.”)  And of course, I have four children, which is not just good for supporting my own old age but is also my little contribution toward the Social Security crisis.  In fact, kid #1 is already paying Social Security taxes at her Baskin-Robbins job.  (I’m pretty confident she’ll eventually have an even better, more productive job later in her life, but she already views her job as much more productive than mine.  By the way, she highly recommends the “tropical ice” flavor.)

And getting back to today’s bad news, economists are saying (on Wall Street Journal blog) that my daughter’s recently acquired Baskin-Robbins job is actually related to the spike up in the unemployment rate, as more teens and young adults are looking for summer jobs and entering the labor force.  But that doesn’t necessarily soften the bad news–because the fact that so many of these young people are suddenly desperately seeking summer work, compared with years past, could just be yet another sign of a recessionary economy and the financial straits American families currently find themselves in.