JohnnySwims

       The Onion article “ American Express Launches Small Sweatshop Saturday ”, creates a parody of a news promo of a “charity campaign” that American Express is running. It focuses on a supposed interview with American Express CEO Stephen Squeri, he talks about how sweatshops are the “key to boosting economic growth” and how he “feels great” supporting  “a local employer”. This brings a tone of irony to the piece, with the reader hearing an argument remise of the rhetoric that corporations use to prove their supposed charitable nature. Linking sweatshops to economic growth shows the sacrifice that much of the privilege we enjoy in Western societies from our highly evolved market economies is built on the exploitation of others. Similarly, there’s a theme of situational irony in this quote, where he feels better about himself for supporting an exploitative cycle of labor, focused on overworking people as if they’re expendable.  Later in the article when ...

  The COVID-19 pandemic established new norms for American society, particularly related to the way that work and the economy became structured. The stereotypical division of stay-at-home moms and working dads seems to have shifted, remote work threatens to usher in the age of the stay-at-home dad. The lockdowns during COVID forced remote work, and remote work has become particularly attractive for working professionals with kids at home. Over 60% of all people who worked remotely over the pandemic wish to continue working remotely full time, often citing benefits like more time with kids and cost savings. However, the division of people with the option of working from home isn’t equal. Women are more likely to be nurses, teachers, or secretaries, all jobs with a greater demand for in-person work. This has increased the likelihood that men stay at home, taking care of kids and the house, while the women go out for work. Additionally, since remote work can be done from anywher...

There Is No Unmarked Woman, by Deborah Tanner, uncovers a societal double standard about the way that women, in a society largely run by men, are viewed in daily interaction. Every single action taken by women is flagged as an indication of their true personality, unlike the anonymity granted to men in the same settings. When I first read this piece, the point that caught my eye wasn’t exposing subliminal sexism in society, or the upending of the biological pattern, but rather the application of signaling the piece brought up.      Signaling, a concept I’ve discussed on this blog before, is the idea that anytime two people interact, they enter into a contract. In the contract, you’re either the agent (the person trying to sell something) or the principal (the person looking to buy something). Applying this to Tanner’s example in the conference setting, each person entered a contract with the other. Economically speaking, it’s advantageous to “mark” each person, as both ...

    Minor Feelings  by Cathy Park Hong changed my perspective on the importance of literature and writing about race. Before reading Minor Feelings  I felt a bit of distance between the literature that I had previously read on the Asian experience in America. The stories were always told by children of non-immigrant Chinese parents, growing up in the Chinatowns of America.The idea of having a generational barrier between the kids and the parents, and the divide between unfamiliar American ideas and the familiar Chinese tradition was bogus. However, Minor Feelings  was a fresher take on the Asian experience, with Cathy Park Hong immediately echoing a lot of the doubts I had about Asian literature in America. It introduced a flavor of the Asian experience that I had grown up with, immigrant parents who weren't always fully integrated into American pop culture and customs.          The book also sparked a conversation I had with my sister, ...

     An interesting portion of The Best We Could Do is on page 286 when Thi’s parents are allowed to take classes as part of a government program to earn certificates for future employment. This would help them replace the degrees they had earned in Vietnam that employers wouldn’t recognize. They would take various classes on computers, programming, math, etc. excelling at all of them and earning the credits. Later in their life, these classes were critical for them to gain jobs as part of the American workforce and help them support their family. The question posed by this section is in what way did taking these classes truly benefit them when looking for a job?      Traditional thinking says this: the answer is obvious, of course taking those classes helped them earn a job by teaching them new skills and improving their knowledge. Education is one of the determinants of the productivity of labor, an economic concept that measures the value of the output ...

  A topic explored throughout The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui is the idea that our circumstances often shape who we become later in life. This theme serves as an extension of the nature vs. nurture debates, where people wanted to see whether a person's genetic disposition or environment had a greater effect on their life. Although the consensus is that both factors play a vital role in a person's development in life. I share a view, and I believe Thi Bui would agree, that nurture plays a bigger role in a person's life than nature does. To understand this complex relationship between nature vs. nurture, I believe that this debate is best represented in terms of supply and demand. Although some might object saying how economics, a field dedicated to the study of money and finance, allows for the representation of this nuanced situation. The truth is economics, although often associated with money, is more the study of people and how they make the many decisions that they e...