Adults used to compete in trying to give as much as possible to children, bragging about sacrifices of time, effort, and money to ensure that children had a wonderful time and a bright future.
At least in Maskachusetts, things shifted in 2020. The state was a wide-open playground for adults, with “essential” liquor and marijuana stores open to record-breaking sales and Tinder receiving record usage. The bureaucratic grinches, however, came up with almost daily schemes for taking things away from children: schools (closed for over a year in Boston), playing with friends, after-school sports, playgrounds, freedom to breathe during sports (mask requirements both indoors and out), birthday parties with more than a handful of guests (illegal home gathering), etc.
Is it fair to say that adults are still competing in the Grinch Olympics? From “As Young Kids Get Vaccines, a ‘Huge Weight’ Is Lifted for Families” (NYT, 11/25/2021):
When the pandemic came for Georgia, Lauren Rymer had to make a snap choice: her mother’s safety or what she believed was best for her young child.
She locked down her family for the better part of last year, living with her mother, Sharon Mooneyhan, who has multiple sclerosis, and protecting her by keeping her son Jack, 5, out of kindergarten to avoid routine household exposure to Covid. “I didn’t want my mom to miss out on being with her only grandchild,” Ms. Rymer said.
So school was scrapped for mushroom hunts in the forest between her work Zoom calls, Legos and an intergenerational exploration of a backyard chicken coop. The upside was that she and her mother would not have to live in fear of a life-ending snuggle at bedtime.
But grandma had multiple sclerosis and that means instant death if infected with SARS-CoV-2, right? From the National MS Society:
Current evidence shows that simply having MS does not make you more likely to develop COVID-19 or to become severely ill or die from the infection than the general population.
Every parent claims to be altruistic, which conflicts with the conclusions of labor economist Claudia Goldin in “Parental Altruism and Self-Interest: Child Labor Among Late Nineteenth-Century American Families”:
Nonaltruistic behavior by parents was pervasive. Even among families with positive assets, child labor was common…
The labor market evidence suggests that parents were willing to accept large reductions in their own wages to secure employment in areas having abundant child labor opportunities. They were implicitly willing to sell the labor services of their children very cheaply, indeed at a rate that suggest they placed very little value on the foregone schooling (and future income) of their children. … Neither did they permit children to retain their earnings for future use. The children were simply worse off…
The empirical results suggest that parents did not have strong (economic) altruistic concerns for their children. … the family provided little in the way of offsetting physical asset transfers (in the form of gifts and bequests) to compensate children for their lost schooling and future earnings. The increased family income was apparently absorbed in higher current family consumption.
I.e., the parents wanted money to spend on themselves. (Modern edition: family court entrepreneurs will never accept money to be placed in trust for a child’s adult use, but instead want cash that the adult plaintiff can spend right now (in West Virginia, however, child support of more than $24,000 per year per child generally will go into a trust).)
Is it fair to say that the first two years of 14 days to flatten the curve have brought out the most Grinch-like behavior among American adults for at least the past 100 years?
Separately, Merry Christmas! Floridians go all-out decorating with winter-themed China-made outdoor items. Icicles, North Pole signs, snowflakes, snowmen, etc. are all on display as one walks around in shorts and a T-shirt in the 78-degree sunshine. Below is a rare example of a geographically appropriate Christmas display (the alligator), juxtaposed with what is typical (note You Know Who in the background behind the polar bear).
What is a grinch? This may be an Americanism; it is certainly not a UK commonplace word.
Now that you’ve asked, it turns out that the Grinch has roots in a now-banned book (Scrambled Eggs Super!). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinch
For an introduction to this character, I recommend the 1966 cartoon.
@Bernie: Begin here. Great song.
Is it fair to say that the first two years of 14 days to flatten the curve have brought out the most Grinch-like behavior among American adults for at least the past 100 years? Yes!
The erudite Grinches on NPR were talking about this yesterday, noting the higher incidence of stress and the other traumatic effects on school age children, particularly those who missed 1st Grade and are now finding Pandemic School more difficult. But the one thing they’ll never do is blame their own policies. There IS NO accountability when it comes to Randi Weingarten. She’s UNTOUCHABLE.
Of course it will mean more money is needed to “fix” the problems with all these screwed-up kids that they caused. Themselves! On purpose! It’s going to take a lot of money, that’s for SURE. But we’ll never mention who did it, and there will NEVER be any accountability, at least on National Public Radio, because it was done in the interest of SAFETY for the CHILDREN.
Get with the program, Philip! What kind of crazy man are you?
It’s a big experiment in Collective Stupidity and Societal Costs, Philip. Harvard will have a concentration in the aftermath of their decisions for future higher administrators. So many problems to fix! The most important one is to make sure there are no more “gifted” or “talented” students – they’re obviously the ones whose parents had the means to avoid Randi Weingarten’s Diktat; therefore they are unfairly privileged. If you create an entire new class of emotionally-disturbed, scholastically impaired and newly-retarded kids, you can’t have anyone who escaped that SAFETY you imposed go and jump over them in line just ’cause their parents had money and/or the chutzpah not to listen to Randi!
https://ibb.co/mCvCcH2
I suspect that SAFETY of the CHILDREN would’ve been downgraded to “not endangered” if the school admins and teachers were paid only when they show up for work. Just like the people whose children they are supposed to teach.
In order to impress the urgency of the situation on children, I suggest buying Duck And Cover masks:
https://www.redbubble.com/i/mask/Bert-the-Turtle-says-Duck-and-Cover-Badge-style-by-vaultworkshop/59660047.9G0D8
For the patriotic dog, a KN-95 mask is in order. They’ll wear it and love every minute of it:
https://www.rover.com/blog/k9-mask-for-dogs/
So far among my family members whom I have ever seen in person, the person who achieved in his life the most had completed 5 grades of elementary to secondary religious schooling and started working at age of 12 as a carpenter apprentice. Which did not prevent him from learning on his own and getting specialized education and over-achieving in his later life. I think that starting to work young has its many advantages.
And, referencing past Philip’s posting, for those who start working early voting age can start as early as 21, no need to wait till age 40 when millennials could become mature enough to vote.