Tricotomania and more

You may be aware that I am not a big fan of our current government. So you will be unsurprised to learn that I think some of their budget ideas are less than spectacular. Steph and I have been having an e-mail discussion about one of them and it occurs to me that some of it could be reproduced here.

The particular idea we have been fuming about is tax splitting. This is a proposal to allow couples to split their incomes between them before calculating income tax. The idea is that it reduces tax payable, particularly for couples where only one partner is employed. Neither of us is a big fan of tax cuts in general but we particularly object to the way that this proposal is being sold as a benefit to “families”. The fact is that like most Conservative tax cuts it is primarily beneficial to the rich, reducing revenue to the state that might then be available for helping actual families who might need it.

This press release from Queen’s University provides some interesting facts about tax splitting policies. It includes this summary of the (lack of) benefits:

Kathy Lahey, author of Women and Employment: Removing Fiscal Barriers to Women’s Labour Force Participation (Status of Women Canada, 2005) and an earlier study on the impact of joint taxation on couples in Canada for the Law Commission of Canada, says that when it comes to the income splitting benefit at tax time:

• only couples need apply
• only couples who can afford to live on one high income will benefit
• the higher that single income, the larger the tax bonus to the couple:
  • at $80,000 income, the tax bonus is approx. $3,500
  • at $140,000 income, the bonus is approx. $10,000
  • there is no upper limit on how high this bonus can go
  • it ‘s ‘upside down’
    • those who need it the least will get the most
    • those who need the most help will get none or the least

I had heard this $80,000 figure used in other examples. The point this specialist in income tax is making is that the benefit is pretty small at this level but it seemed like $80,000 a year is quite a lot of income for most folks. Off to Statistics Canada I go, where I discover that median income for couple families in Canada is $64,800. This means (for those of you whose statistical knowledge is rusty) that half of all couple families in Canada have an income of $64,800 or less. I bet that even at the median income the benefit of income splitting is tending towards negligible.

One should also keep in mind that many of those couple families will have two incomes, even if one of the incomes is greater than the other. Because we are not taxed at the same rate on all of our income, the benefit of income splitting will be less for those couples where one partner earns a relatively low salary because the income redistributed will not go into the lowest marginal tax rate but the next band up. Since the benefit is so small anyway, except for the highest earners, this policy will not make any tangible difference to their lives and certainly wouldn’t allow the lower income earner to stop working in favour of some unpaid activity even if that were her desire (and in the vast majority of cases it will be a her).

Thinking about the families that I know both IRL and on-line who have made decisions to have one partner be the primary earner while the other takes primary responsibility for children (including, perhaps, homeschooling), I note that many of them value family over paid work. They have deliberately chosen to live on a lower income in order to spend more time with their children and each other. In some cases, this has also meant that the primary earner is earning less than he could otherwise earn in order to work closer to home, or to work more family friendly hours. Many of the women, although prioritizing their children and home, also do some paid work either part-time for an employer or freelance.

None of these people would actually benefit from the tax splitting proposals that are being discussed. The lower income earner is already earning a substantial chunk of the income that is tax free or taxed at the lowest marginal rate. And the higher income earner is not earning very much (if anything) that is taxed at the highest marginal rate (in Ontario this kicks in at $115,739 if my calculations based on the 2005 tax tables are correct).

No, the main purpose of this particular tax proposal is to make a whole bunch of social conservatives think that the government is supporting their values, particularly around a traditional division of labour within couple families, while the Conservative government actually supports the rich folks that they usually support with no tangible benefit at all to most single earner couple families. I’m not a big fan of tax cuts (particularly in already low-tax economies like Canada and the US) but if you were going to go that route, it would be more beneficial to raise the income levels at which various marginal tax rates kicked in, than to provide cuts that have their main effect at higher income levels.

And if you wanted to promote policies that would allow families to spend more time together, particularly with their children, it would make more sense to focus on long-hours cultures, part-time working conditions, and wages. After all, some folks do their own form of income-splitting by dividing up the total work needed to earn enough to support the family between both adults so that both parents can be more involved in the lives of their children.

An associated point is that as taxpayers we might want to be concerned with the risks associated with particular policies in terms of future spending. It seems to me that it is not in the interest of the state to support single earner families. Time out of the labour market is negatively associated with income earning potential. Thus women who take substantial time out of the labour market are at greater risk of being dependent on government assistance if their relationship breaks down. Even part-time work that keeps up their skills and contacts will substantially lower this risk.

And the men who are earning salaries that would mean their families actually benefit from income splitting are more likely to be working long hours. This not only puts strain on their family relationships, it also means that they spend a lot of time with other people. Any woman who thinks she will benefit from this proposal should consider how much this government would support her if her high-earning husband runs off with his secretary and decides he doesn’t want to support her and her children any more. Not a pleasant thought, to be sure, but it does happen.

While individuals might choose to take on this risk themselves, it is not at all clear to me why the state should be encouraging this risky behaviour. The available data on the impact of divorce on women’s incomes, and the disproprotionate number of mother-headed families receiving government assistance should be a warning. You might also note that the median income for lone-parent families is only $29,500.

I read an article in The Walrus about recent findings in neuroscience regarding adolescents. There was a lot of interesting information in it, but you had to wade through a lot of tenuous conclusions as well.

The thing that struck me was the fact that teenagers sleep patterns are radically different from those of children and adults. To quote a little bit:

“In fact, because they are waking up when the world dictates — rather than when their bodies tell them to — teenagers are chronically sleep-deprived, which can have consequences ranging from superficial to severe.”

These effects include an inability to concentrate at the time of day they are being required to do so. And low retention of what they are exposed to. The REM sleep at the end of their natural cycle, which is the sleep they are missing by being awakened by alarm clocks and/or parents, is crucial to processing information taken in the previous day. Another effect is increased risk of depression.

And what conclusion does the author draw?

“But it’s not easy to fight nature; perhaps the best parents can do is to encourage a slowdown of activity at a reasonable time in the evening, keep technology out of the bedroom and caffeine out of the fridge, and let their kids catch up on weekends.”

Pardon me? The problem with this article is its relentless focus on parents as the major influence in their teens lives and the only people who can act on the scientific evidence being presented. Catching up on the weekends might work to compensate for the occasional short period of overwork but it is not a solution to chronic sleep deprivation. It seems to me that if “it’s not easy to fight nature”, then we shouldn’t set up a school system that requires us to do so.

If this scientific research data is indicating that it is perfectly normal for adolescents to be more alert later in the day and to want/need to sleep from sometime after midnight for about 9 hours, then why aren’t our policy makers acting on that evidence. The main thing that the “world dictates” for teens is that they attend school. So maybe highschool should start at noon instead of 9 a.m. (or earlier).

And if adolescents need 9 hours of sleep per night perhaps we should stop treating them as if they should be sleeping less than toddlers and start making fewer demands on them. The amount of homework required of teens, added to sports and/or cultural activities (which are increasinly squeezed out of the school day), volunteer activities (increasingly mandated for high school graduation as a means of encouraging good citizenship), and paid work (increasingly necessary to pay for college tuition), makes it pretty difficult for teens to find 9 hours (any 9 hours) to sleep in.

Of course this would require serious social change. It would mean treating teens as fully human beings with needs that we should take seriously rather than a bunch of lazy so-and-sos who need to be squeezed into a mold. (I’m going to leave aside the question of whether adults should be squeezed into that mold either except to say that I don’t accept that as an argument in favour of doing it to teens.) It would also mean looking beyond the parents for solutions to the problems of adolescence.

Some of you are probably noticing that this suggests another big advantage for homeschooling, and I would agree. However, I have heard homeschoolers (either electronically or in person) talking about getting their kids into a routine of getting up early or making sure their kids don’t sleep all morning. I have also heard homeschoolers argue that teens need to step up the pace if they are going to get into, and succeed in, college.

While it is important to prepare our kids to live in the world, it behooves us to pay attention to the scientific research on adolescent brains. Given that we have the flexibility to “school” at whatever time of day suits us, we should consider the benefits of allowing teens to wake naturally even if this means nothing of substance happens before noon. It might be that the time spent after noon will be more efficiently used.

Also, in my experience and discussions with others it appears that adults have different rhythms. Some of us are most productive early in the morning; others mid-afternoon; others in the early evening. Helping our kids to find their own peak time for productivity might serve them better in the long-run than trying to force them into a rhythm that doesn’t suit them. We can also help them see that they will have to adapt that rhythm sometimes.

I noticed this morning that Sarah posted something relevant to my post on Remembrance Day. She was motivated more by her ongoing thinking about the Amish response to the school shootings and how we train ourselves to respond peacefully to pain inflicted upon us. But her post has wider applicability. I think I will check out the book she mentions.

Today is Remembrance Day. On the anniversary of the armistice in WWI, we stop to remember all who have died in that war and others. Remembrance is important but I find Remembrance Day deeply problematic. The narrative of WWI and those that followed seems to have been distorted. What we get is nationalism, heroism, and victory.

I was in the Canadian War Museum the other day and after we’d looked at the exhibition we came for (Clash of Empires, an excellent joint Canadian-American exhibition about the Seven Years War, aka the French and Indian Wars) we had a quick walk through the rest to see what we might come back for. We stopped in the section on the Somme to examine a diagram of the battlefield that was on the wall behind an actual German machine gun. I was explaining the diagram to Tigger and described our troops as “the British”. A veteran who was volunteering that day came up and insisted that it was the Canadians, that we served as Canadians and fought for Canada.

This was irrelevant to the point I was trying to make (and that the display was trying to make), which was that our troops (however you call them) were marching across a field as if to meet a similarly armed enemy but that they were marching directly into overlapping machine-gun fire and that they were channelled into that fire and kept in that fire by barbed wire. I was explaining how the orders these men were following were based on an earlier model of war (with which we had some familiarity since we’d been talking about it in relation to Washington’s defeat at Fort Necessity in 1754) that was unsuited to the situation in which they found themselves (a problem Washington also faced). Also, unlike in earlier wars (like the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, 1759), the generals were not in that muddy field dying with the men.

What I didn’t say, but is also true, is that Canada was not in the first world war as Canada because we were a colony. We may have fought as Canadian divisions. We may indeed have won some important battles. But we were there as a British colony. Britain declared war. That war did play an important role in Canada’s increasing independence from Britain, but I’m not sure that is the main point that we are remembering today.

And as far as I can tell, most of those who died (on all sides) in that war (and any war) were not particularly heroic. Mostly they were cannon fodder. Or machine gun fodder. Way too many people died in WWI. They died because the generals had a plan for how they were going to fight the war, and they insisted on following the plan even when the technology had changed and thousands of men were being ruthlessly gunned down by overlapping machine-gun fire in muddy fields hemmed in by barbed wire.

Furthermore, all of those men died more or less for nothing. Barely 20 years later, the same countries were again at war over more or less the same thing. And that thing was not freedom. It was empire. Who had how much of Europe, Africa, Asia, etc.

Which brings me to the rewriting of WWII history. No one went to war to save the Jews. In fact, most of the countries we call the Allies were almost equally anti-semitic. Ghettos existing in many more countries than just Germany. And many of the Allied countries, Canada included, refused to take in Jewish refugees until fairly late in the war. I would wager that if all Hitler did was send Jews to concentration camps, there would not have been a war. And yet to talk to children today, you would think that the whole war was fought over how horrible Hitler was to Jews.

WWII was fought because Hitler sought to reestablish Germany’s empire. He invaded Poland. He invaded Austria. Britain and Russia were concerned for the balance of power in Europe. They had their own empires (in which, incidentally, they oppressed their own “others”). They had suppressed German imperial ambitions once and had no intention of letting them expand again. And they were prepared to sacrifice thousands to secure their own imperial interests.

Most of the soldiers that we remember today were not heroes. Most of them, on all sides, were decent human beings who served their country when called. Who volunteered for the military largely because they needed a job. Who were required to serve in the military and had the misfortune to be of age during wartime. Yes they valued freedom. But most of them died for the interests of the few, the rich, the powerful.

Those who are serving today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever else there is war, are serving for similar reasons. They are not morally suspect. But neither are they heroes. They are men and women doing a job. A tough job. A dangerous job. But a job which is primarily about securing the interests of the few, the rich, the powerful and suppressing the enemies of those interests. Their service is being described as the defence of freedom, but that defence is ideological whitewash. The simultaneous erosion of civil liberties in the US, Canada and Britain exposes the lie.

Those soldiers deserve to be remembered and I observed the 2 minutes of silence in their honour today. Not to remember just the Canadians, just the heroes, or just the victors. But to mourn the many who have lost their lives unnecessarily, in support of the ambitions of powerful men. And to remember those who continue to risk their lives for such ignoble causes.

And to hope for peace.

In addition to starting new lace project, I have picked up the sweater I was designing for Tigger. I blogged about an earlier version here (scroll down to the paragraph beginning “Second, “). The idea was to design a ribbed sweater with a cable medallion that looked like the ribs were crossing each other in a basketweave, with a V-neck taking that shape upwards. It looks like I originally planned 3/4 sleeves but this has gone out the window.

I started this when I got some blue chenille yarn. I was thinking of those ribbed chenille sweaters you often see in the Gap (at least in the kids section) and went from there. But the chenille was a nightmare to knit with and impossible to get even tension with in ribbing and I abandoned that idea. I did, however, work out a few things about the design before I did so.

Last Xmas I bought some very nice Rowanspun DK in a sale with a plan to revive this design in that yarn. I even started it, swatching in stockingnette to determine an appropriate needle size last February, and then casting on a sleeve as a ribbing-in-the-round swatch. I have a vague memory of blogging about the fact that doing this means resigning yourself to potentially knitting 3 sleeves, which I did, but I can’t seem to find that now and don’t fancy searching all my posts for it. I stopped working on this sweater in the early summer, I think.

So I picked up the second (probably 3rd but I think I ripped the first sleeve/swatch) sleeve half-knit and tried to work out where I was going. I found some notes suggesting how often I was decreasing (and I did eventually check that with the completed sleeve though not before I had knit about 40 rounds). Of course, children grow so I checked that it still fit and though it was tight, I figured it would do and kept going. I decided that the finished sleeve was long enough to go to the underarm and that I’d finish the second one and then knit the body, later joining them to knit in the round with raglan shaping.

I measured Tigger’s chest and waist to determine how many to cast on for the body, started then ripped out when I realized that I needed to have a number that would put 2 purl stitches at the centre front and 2 knit stitches at the side “seam”. When I got to the point where I wanted to measure to see if I was almost where I needed to start the medallion or join the sleeves, I measured it against a ribbed, cotton turtleneck she has that fits well and had some concerns that maybe I should have made this a bit bigger around. But I’m knitting blythely on.

I did some calculations about row gauge, depth of armscye, depth of the v-neck, height of the medallion, etc. and planned out the medallioin placement, and decrease schedules for the raglan shaping and the v-neck. I’m not sure that the cable looks right. The purl ground at the edges looks odd to me but Tigger says it looks good so I’m leaving it. I’m also not sure how else I would do it. I might rip back if I had an alternate plan but I don’t so we’ll let it go.

I discovered this evening that I did the math wrong on the raglan shaping. I’ve decided not to rip back but adjust the schedule to get the right number now. This means I’ve done widely spaced decreases for the first part and will decrease every second round from where the medallion ends. I hope that looks okay. I did remember that I’ll be picking up and knitting on a bit of something around the neck (there is a contrast band at the bottom so I want to add the darker blue at the neck, too).

To sum up, the current situation is that I have serious concerns that this sweater will be too small (as in too tight), I’m not sure the medallion looks right, and I may have screwed up the raglan shaping in ways that will look seriously funny. I’m continuing to knit this sweater because for some reason I think I won’t be able to make a definitive judgement on any of those issues until I can view a completed sweater on a child. At that point, I will have to decide what to do. If the only problem is the size, then I have a smaller child in mind who might like the sweater. If either the medallion or the raglan shaping or both don’t look right, then I will probably try to work out what to do differently, write all that down (I wouldn’t blame you for laughing there, given my track record), rip and try again. For some reason the thought of that doesn’t make me want to scream.

I do not have a photo for you and it is now evening and I suspect any photo I take is going to be woefully inadequate given the combination of the light conditions and my poor photographic skills. I’ll let you try to imagine what I’m doing and give you a photo later.

I was just looking for something in an old post and found a post saved in draft from over a year ago which contained this quote.

The God of Genesis did not behold the creation and declare that it was “excellent.” Sometimes “good” is good enough. Thomas H. Benton (Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 11)

Seems to be a nice complement to that recent post.

The carnival is up. At least one person forgot to submit her post so you might want to check that out, too.

A couple of months ago I published some thoughts on work. Today I was reading an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education* about women scientists. It resonated strongly with many of my own views on work-life balance but one section in particular stood out.

Don’t Do It All. Do Just Enough.

Challenge the idea that you must be some type of Superwoman: Be an X-Gal instead! Prioritize, and place realistic expectations on yourself and those around you, and then work hard to achieve the important things in your life. A female scientist in my building has the following mantra: “Near enough is good enough.”

We’re not advocating mediocrity here. We can achieve excellence by doing just enough to accomplish a particular goal, celebrating our achievement, and then moving on to the next goal.

Although the author is talking about her scientific goals, this could apply to anything that we do. You could always make your house a little bit cleaner, but is it clean enough? Do you need to make fabulous meals every day or can you cook something nutritious and tasty (meet your goals) that is also simple and quick? You can prepare learning materials for your kids forever, but are they good enough?

On that last one, I recall that a former colleague of mine would stay up until the wee hours of the morning writing lectures and preparing for a class and then be terribly frustrated that her students didn’t get it. I refused to stay up late (as much out of laziness as anything), and did much less preparation for my class. I also wasn’t going to become an expert in every theorist on the course just to feel confident teaching that theorist, so I devised a method in which the students would know more than I did by the end of the semester. My students did amazingly well. My course design was praised by colleagues and the external examiner for bringing out excellent work in my students. Although my motivation was to limit the amount of time I spent in preparation, the result was a better pedagogy. Sometimes we can overprepare.

The culture of overwork is rife in North American society. In this context, it is easy for us to always feel like we aren’t doing enough; to focus on what could be better. But most of us are doing a lot of what we do well. If we focus on what we are doing right, we will feel better about ourselves and probably feel more motivated to do more things right. We should also stop thinking that we should spend more time improving the things that we don’t do well or do not enjoy doing. Maybe some of those things can either not be done, or be done by someone else who has those skills and enjoys those tasks. We don’t have to do it all.

There is another piece of advice in this article that has wider application.

Get at Least One Hobby That Is Not Work Related.

Sarah has a very interesting take on this. While she is baffled, quite rightly, by moms who want something “just” for themselves, she provides useful advice on how to have a life that isn’t “just” about being a mother and/or a wife. Each of us would have a different approach to this but the point that you need something that you find relaxing and enjoyable in your life and that you make sure you fit it in.

*I think this is a free article but if you can’t access it and want to read it, let me know and I can e-mail it to you from the site.

Since I’ve finished Concert in the Park, I decided that I needed another lace project on the needles. I enjoy knitting lace and I like to have something complicated in the WIP pile. So I cast on for Lunna.

I had purchased this pattern and some J&S cobweb singles to knit it with during the summer after a discussion on my knitting list. I think Ted might have suggested that it looked like a good introduction to Shetland lace. I usually find Ted’s advice rather good and spent some cash.

So yesterday I got out those skeins of yarn and wound them into balls. Easier said than done. The yarn is a bit sticky (not a bad thing when knitting lace; you don’t want dropped stitches running away too quickly after all) and extremely thin. I’m pretty sure dental floss is thicker. So it must be done rather slowly and carefully and it still breaks. Some swearing might have been involved.

Then I started knitting. It goes kind of slowly just because the yarn is so fine. I’m enjoying the pattern. I’m also thanking whichever fairy whispered in my ear that I should count the number of boxes in the chart because there are 63 and the instructions say to cast on 67. Having counted before knitting the first pattern row (there are 8 plain rows to start) saved me the frustration of ripping that row out to get the pattern centered properly.

I have now knit 40 rows and twice I have had to tink back to repair yarn that broke when I was trying to do a K3tog. Very frustrating. I’m glad I know how to spit splice. After the first time it happened, I’ve been being extra careful but this yarn isn’t called cobweb weight for nothing and some spots are incredibly thin. Getting the needle through 3 stitches at once can put a little strain on it.

The second time it happened was much more frustrating as a couple of the stitches ran back a bit before I could catch them (with a paperclip which is very handy for holding dropped stitches where they are until you can sort them out). I had to tink back about 4 rows to get it sorted out. But that is much better than starting all over again.

Here is a not that great photo of where I am now. The colour isn’t quite that pink (it was called lavender but is not as blue as I expected lavender to be). And that photo doesn’t show you much of the stitch definition. What can I say. I am not a photographer. It is not daylight. But you folks keep asking for photos. So you’ll have to content yourself with this for now.