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Friday, January 2, 2009
What is the single biggest issue facing women in 2009?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
The economy is the most important issue for women, but Obama’s New Deal 2.0 approach risks making it worse, not better! Moreover, although Andy sincerely believes Obama’s massive public-works stimulus package can be used to create jobs for women, it will most likely do the reverse.
Primarily because so many businesses and households are struggling, finding the money to pay for the necessary massive new taxes will sabotage the very private sector engine than can power us out of a recession. And women will suffer most: not only do they have less margin (as Andy notes), but women are far more likely than men to be the independent contractors or part-time employees who are first to go when a company is forced to cut costs.
Too many people don’t understand that businesses paying new taxes means cutting costs elsewhere — especially for the small businesses who employ half of all workers. Now, having spent years working on Capitol Hill and for the Fed, I have a lifelong respect for public servants. But it’s just a reality that most have little or no private-sector experience. If our incoming president had ever run a business there is no way he’d propose massive government works as a means of “stimulating” the economy. He might still propose limited public works in specific areas but would more likely rely on tax cuts to jump-start private business and promote hiring.
Instead, as Cesar Conda explained in an excellent October 2008 National Review article, Obama’s tax hikes — such as for the “stimulus package” — stand to most hurt the small business sector that creates 75 percent of our new jobs.
I know this all too well. As a small business owner, I employ eight terrific part-time women — and this year I also have to somehow find an extra $10,000 for the poorly designed Alternative Minimium Tax that is increasingly pouncing on average Americans like me. Since, like most business owners, I have no extra cash lying around, I have no choice but to lay off one of my staff and use what should have been her salary to pay that tax increase.
That stark, depressing, unintended effect will be repeated endlessly under the “stimulus package” — and is the reality that big-government proponents simply do not understand.
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Commentary
By Andrea Cornell Sarvady
The single biggest issue facing women in 2009? Probably the same issue that most concerned women in 1929—ain’t nostalgia grand?
This time around, our plummeting economy has affected a working world filled with women as well as men, and there wasn’t anyone during the holidays who wouldn’t have picked job security over a new Guitar Hero waiting for them under the tree. (Well, maybe Guitar Hero is a bad example — it rocks! But you get the idea.)
Tough times all over, yet women enter this troubling financial cycle already behind the guys. Over a quarter of all U.S. households are headed by a woman, and those families earn and save less than all other households. In addition, single women have a median net worth that is about a third of the $93,000 national average.
Given these added challenges, can women keep up with their bills? Maybe, but it’s their long-term health that seems to be falling by the wayside.
The American Psychological Association conducted a stress survey last summer which showed than more women than men (84 percent to 75 percent) expressed fears about the economy, with new physiological and emotional symptoms attending that worry — and that was before the Dow played its own swan song.
It gets worse: moms are cutting back on health care, both for themselves and their families, right as the added stress makes them ripe for the number-one killer of women, heart disease.
Riding somewhat to the rescue is a solution right out of the Depression-era playbook; building jobs by building bridges and roads. Yet as Linda Hirshman wrote recently in the New York Times, women only make up 9 percent of the work force in construction, and few are trained in alternative energy, the other major public works job source. She points out that growth in education and child care jobs, also promised by this administration, would put many more women back on the payroll.
I understand the grumbling about turning into the Socialist States of America — really, I do. But desperate times call for inclusive measures. I hope that when the new administration creates a plan of attack for Depression 2.0, they remember that women need jobs too, for very health of our nation. Wouldn’t that rock?