I was talking to a supporter of Hugo Chavez (she has lived in Latin America, but not in Venezuela) and Bernie Sanders the other day. She expressed disappointment and surprise that her middle-aged sister had married a middle-aged artist with no track record of financial success. “He’s as poor as a church mouse,” she noted. She was generally approving of the man’s personality and character.
She buys into the idea that some citizens should work harder than others and, through a Chavez- or Sanders-conceived redistribution scheme, support those who don’t work as hard. But she doesn’t want her sister to work harder than her new brother-in-law.
Readers: Is there any inconsistency between her political and personal views?
[Separately, note that while the marriage might not last, the sister’s obligation to support the arts could very well continue. Under Massachusetts family law, for example, given a gender-blind judge, he will be the “dependent spouse” and his entitlement to alimony could begin after a day of marriage and, given a favorably disposed judge, extend until her death (the Legislature has suggested limits to judges based on what attorneys call “time served” but judges have felt free to ignore those limits). Under Florida law, if the artist sues her after seven years of marriage he is on track for “permanent alimony.” Under California law, he needs to wait for ten years to be presumptively entitled to a permanent meal ticket (see 0:45 of this video (credit: GermanL) for a reference to this rule).]
Karl Marx investigated the financial position of his daughters’ suitors very thoroughly. So understanding the deficiencies of capitalism doesn’t prevent you from trying to insulate your loved ones from them.
He’s clearly a burden on society if he’s not making enough money to be redistributed.
“Is there any inconsistency between her political and personal views?”
To begin with, other than 60s potheads, who says that the personal IS the political. Just as hardcore bra-burning feminism mutated into champagne/ lipstick ditto, so did the rest of us long evolve away from that…
To better understand the dilemmas of Victorian (and any era) fathers needing to validate their daughters’ choice of husbands, study e.g. “The Daughter,” a 1979 novelization of the life of Karl’s youngest Eleanor Marx, by Judith Chernaik. Kirkus Review didn’t think much of it, but, on the strength of their conclusion “feminists in search of tragic heroines may find this a readable enough slice of inspiration,” it should still be of interest to here present newly transgendered Danielle.
There’s also a more striking, dreamy, yet absurdist, treatment of her, the 1966 “Game in Heaven with Tussy Marx” by Piers Paul Read (as it predates the Internet, I can’t find any reviews of it apart from author’s own promo. He’s a solid pen-wielding craftsman though).
Finally, there’s a fairly new, if allegedly too hagiographical, biography of Eleanor. A review of it in The New York Times carries this winged aside “Need anything more be said to justify 200 years of struggle to establish women on something that resembles a level playing field?” (the field being conjugal love), enough said.
One of the assumptions in your article (maybe not central to your point) is that people who work harder make more money than people who work less hard. How monotonic of a correlation is this? Can I assume that if people work hard then they will be make (enough) money, and that people who make more money than me do so because they work harder than I do?
As you’ve written in your essay about why women should not pursue careers in science, it doesn’t seem that you believe this to be universally true. i.e. graduate students in science work quite hard and don’t make much money, because what they are working on might be completely useless.
YZ: “worker harder” is probably inapt, as you point out. The artist might be painting 23 hours/day, for example. “Work in a field that is a second or third choice because it pays better and work longer hours in that not-very-enjoyable field in order to earn more” is what I meant. For the artist this might mean switching from painting 23 hours/day to doing bookkeeping 12 hours/day or cleaning out drains 8 hours/day.
Right, so when you express it that way (which, by the way, takes more than 10x as many words), it becomes less obvious what the correct answer is. Do I want hardworking people to work harder so lazy people can be lazy? No. But people don’t get paid for working hard. They get paid for doing something that someone else is willing to pay them for. Sometimes the taxpayers are paying (e.g. paying teachers to educate people) or influencing people’s willingness to pay (e.g. by subsidizing corn farms and making beef and soda so cheap, thereby increasing the number of willing to pay McDonald’s to pay its workers).
So it gets complicated to judge people’s career choices. To address your point: Can one politically believe in redistribution but still want your self and friends to be financially responsible? I think so. It annoys me when my friends who work as educators complain about not being able to afford the things and lifestyle they would like, because it seems to me that they made their choice of career with full knowledge that those careers don’t pay well. However, I think those same friends who teach college kids about how to practice safe sex should be paid more than they are, and would gladly pay more taxes from my large income if it went to paying them more, instead of to subsidizing McDonalds.
I think if I was in the position of your acquaintance, my level of disappointment with my new brother in law would depend on how good I thought his art was.