Will you visit the Obama museum?

Last updated on: January 11, 2018 at 9:43 am By Jane the Actuary

In the paper today, “Revised Obama center design seeks better fit with park and answer to critics.” Addressing criticism that their plans would undermine the serene landscape of historic Jackson Park, backers of the Obama Presidential Center on Tuesday revealed major revisions that include a sleeker version of the center’s controversial museum tower. The new tower design calls for a high-rise that would be taller, thinner and more transparent than a version unveiled last May, which was widely panned as... Read more

Some questions for agers-in-place — and movers, too

Last updated on: January 9, 2018 at 6:52 am By Jane the Actuary

So the other day I griped about aging-in-place, that is, staying in the Sacred Family Home, even if it kills you. And it occurs to me that, in trying to do some background reading, I didn’t see very much about what causes some people to take this approach, staying in the home even at significant cost, when that home is a two-story colonial in the suburbs, without walkable or mass transit access to shopping or community/social groups, and with maintenance/upkeep... Read more

Pretzel-making, or, fear not the lye!

Last updated on: January 7, 2018 at 9:14 pm By Jane the Actuary

If there’s one thing that’s ubiquitous in Germany but scarcely available here, it’s pretzels. Sure, it’s possible to find recipes for them, e.g., this recipe for Bavarian Pretzels at allrecipes.com. A fairly generic dough, and a dip in a baking-soda bath before baking. But when I’d made similar recipes, it came out, well, meh. I did some further reading and saw that what’s really needed is a lye bath, and I ordered a container of lye from amazon.com. But that... Read more

On legalizing pot

Last updated on: January 8, 2018 at 1:22 pm By Jane the Actuary

I wrote on twitter yesterday, The funny thing is, I have no strong opinion on what Congress should do about pot, but, whatever they do, it shouldn’t be to keep a law on the books that they themselves wish to be unenforced. And thought it would be useful to expand on this here, in light of the news last week that under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department chief withdrew federal guidelines that effectively limited prosecutions of businesses and... Read more

Quiz: when is a family not a family?

Last updated on: January 5, 2018 at 9:38 am By Jane the Actuary

Answer: when it’s a certain type of policymakers talking about women’s earnings, employment, and retirement. They measure women’s labor force participation. They discuss the long-term costs of forgoing employment, when their children are young. They worry that women have inadequate retirement savings, and measure their assets relative to men’s. These are all questions that are connected up not just with women being mothers, but being, still more often than not, for a significant part of their working (and parenting) lifetime,... Read more

White trash, Reader’s Digest, and tribalism

Last updated on: January 2, 2018 at 10:59 pm By Jane the Actuary

Richard Reeves’ Dream Hoarders, which I “book-reported” over the summer, writes about various ways in which the upper-middle-class perpetuates their class status into the next generation. I was skeptical about a fair bit of it, but in a recent article, “Trickle-Down Norms,” he carries forward the theme of the upper-middle-class separating themselves out from the middle- and working-class. Observing that Charles Murray and others call on the UMC to “preach what they practice” rather than being squeamish about saying that... Read more

About Sensitivity Readers

Last updated on: January 1, 2018 at 11:09 pm By Jane the Actuary

When I was a middle- and high-schooler, I read a lot of James Michener novels — Hawaii, Centennial, Chesapeake, Space, Poland and The Covenant are the ones I remember, looking at the Goodreads list. If you’re unfamiliar with his novels, they generally take the form of a narrative of several families, told over generations, centuries, or millennia, in a particular place; the stories of the individuals from those families intersect with the history and the historical figures of that place. My... Read more

It’s the governance, stupid! My recommended resolution for the Illinois state legislature

Last updated on: January 1, 2018 at 1:49 pm By Jane the Actuary

Imagine if your local school district promised its teachers generous raises — well in excess of what its property tax revenue could fund. Knowing that they’d all get voted out of office if they raised tax rates, the school board decided instead to fund it with a bond issue, coming due a generation or two in the future, after they’re all retired and living in Florida. “That’s absurd,” you say? “Government bonds are only for infrastructure-type uses, say, building a... Read more

I’m sorry, but “aging in place” is still is a piece of *@!%

Last updated on: December 31, 2017 at 2:28 pm By Jane the Actuary

Or, when public policy and family issues intersect. A recent article in the Tribune, “‘You can’t be lonely and be a healthy person.’ How seniors can combat isolation,” reported on the health issues related to social isolation of retirees, and some efforts being made to combat isolation. And, well, as I’ve mentioned periodically, my parents are the poster children for the issue of social isolation of retirees; they are financially well-equipped to move anywhere they choose but instead live in the... Read more

Is there a “retirement crisis”?

Last updated on: December 29, 2017 at 12:18 am By Jane the Actuary

So I’d been thinking, off and on, about the arguments that researcher Andrew Biggs has been making about retirement, in which, in various venues, he’s disputed the idea that there is a “retirement crisis,” or, at least, that it’s as bad as other experts say it is. (Turns out, I had written a blog post with this very title some two years ago.) I’d been meaning to dig up the various articles in which he makes his case and really... Read more