{"id":3411,"date":"2015-12-15T09:02:57","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T15:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=3411"},"modified":"2015-12-15T09:02:57","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T15:02:57","slug":"todays-recommended-reading-merkel-religion-and-family-life-and-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/12\/todays-recommended-reading-merkel-religion-and-family-life-and-debt.html","title":{"rendered":"Today’s recommended reading: Merkel, religion and family life, and debt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yeah, three wholly unrelated topics for this morning that came across my twitter feed and\/or the morning newspaper:<\/p>\n

1) \u00a0\u201cMerkel Aced Her Most Important Speech<\/a>,\u201d as reported at Bloomberg View: \u00a0Angela Merkel on Monday gave a key speech to party leaders (well, some 1,000 of them) setting out her policy with respect to the flood of asylum-seekers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to significantly reduce the number of refugees,\u201d she said, arguing this would be for the good of Germany, given the difficulty of integrating so many people, and for the refugees themselves.<\/p>\n

And, knowing full well she\u2019d be quoted on it for years, she repeated her rejection of \u201cMultikulti,\u201d a derogatory term for multiculturalism. \u201cWhoever seeks refuge with us, must respect our laws and traditions and he must learn German,\u201d Merkel said. \u201cMultikulti leads to parallel societies, and Multikulti thus means living a lie.\u201d Merkel\u2019s message to the newcomers is that those who fail to integrate won\u2019t be tolerated. This is perhaps a grim promise of future clashes and deportations, but it\u2019s also the inevitable flip side of \u201cWe can manage it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Here\u2019s Der Spiegel\u2019s German reporting<\/a>, which I haven\u2019t yet read myself.)<\/p>\n

Will Merkel achieve the integration agenda she\u2019s set out? \u00a0To say it\u2019ll be a challenge is putting it mildly. \u00a0But she is at least well aware of the difficulties ahead.<\/p>\n

2) Via the Washington Post, \u201cThe latest social science is wrong. Religion is good for families and kids.<\/a>\u201d \u00a0Key quote:<\/p>\n

On average, religion is a clear force for good when it comes to family unity and the welfare of children \u2014 the most important aspects of our day-to-day lives. Research, some of it my own, indicates that on average Americans who regularly attend services at a church, synagogue, temple or mosque are less likely to cheat on their partners; less likely to abuse them; more likely to enjoy happier marriages; and less likely to have been divorced.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The author cites further research on other metrics in which religious-service-attending families are, on average, better off than non-attenders, and children from those families have a greater degree of \u00a0\u201cprosocial\u201d behavior.<\/p>\n

3) \u00a0Also via the Post, but appearing in the Chicago Tribune as a syndicated feature, \u201cDon\u2019t stress about your debt. Go ahead and go broke in your 20s. \u00a0I didn\u2019t wait for a grown-up job to finance the life I wanted.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

The title of the piece is an effective summary of the piece, in which the author, now in her 30s, describes a decade spent accruing debt while unemployed and travelling, with no regrets.<\/p>\n

I had absolutely no time constraints, and no responsibilities to anyone. I figured as I got older, it would be harder for me to travel. Life would get in the way, so why not go now, and worry about the debt later? So I did just that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, her story doesn\u2019t hang together. \u00a0Graduate school in Italy? \u00a0Travel to Australia and Europe, and the beaches of California? \u00a0Happy go lucky, until she maxed out her credit card, then paying down a debt of $14,000, while continuing to travel, and emerging debt-free at age 31? \u00a0How can you fund your travel, plus your ordinary living expenses, with only $14,000 in debt? \u00a0Was the bulk of the spending actually funded by the good ol\u2019 Bank of Mom and Dad? \u00a0Was there more work, and less fun, than she describes as the case? \u00a0Heck, even if you let the interest accrue, there are still minimum monthly payments which are pretty tricky if you have no cash at all.<\/p>\n

But this is one story of an emerging new genre \u2014 at least it seems to me that I\u2019ve read something similar in Slate (bonus points if you can find it as I can\u2019t at the moment): \u00a0\u201cdon\u2019t bother saving, at least not until you get to be older! \u00a0Enjoy your youth!\u201d, which is a Bad Thing even if I don\u2019t have savings statistics at hand.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yeah, three wholly unrelated topics for this morning that came across my twitter feed and\/or the morning newspaper: 1) \u00a0\u201cMerkel Aced Her Most Important Speech,\u201d as reported at Bloomberg View: \u00a0Angela Merkel on Monday gave a key speech to party leaders (well, some 1,000 of them) setting out her policy with respect to the flood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nToday's recommended reading: Merkel, religion and family life, and debt<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yeah, three wholly unrelated topics for this morning that came across my twitter feed and\/or the morning newspaper: 1) \u00a0"Merkel Aced Her Most Important\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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