The Overspent American by Juliet Schor

I saw this book on my co-worker's desk and asked to borrow it. The book explores our consumer culture and admonishes it. It instead advocates a de-emphasis on materialism and a focus on simple living. While I'm sure I don't always live up to it, the ideals and values espoused in this book are so thoroughly internalized in my way of thinking that I found the book a bit boring.

I do not highly value stuff and I never really have. I have always valued life experiences and financial security more than stuff. While I certainly splurge on occasion and buy myself nice things, it is pretty much always after months of consideration and research and the items receive a great deal of functional use after their purchase. When I moved up here, I sold/ gave away a ton of stuff and it reinforced to me how easy it is to accumulate more stuff than you need- even though I already felt I was pretty non materialistic. I think a good amount of the stuff was accumulated when I had my own apartment and to some extent wanted to "fill it". And while it was nice to have that stuff, I think in the future I'm less likely to buy new furniture/ decorations/ etc.

This year I'm trying to live off of a VISTA living stipend which comes out to below minimum wage. While I'm close to living off of it, I am subsidizing it a touch with savings. I think my lower threshold for a content, non-deprived feeling living experience involves spending about $12,000 to $15,000 a year. When I was making money, I did spend more than this. And when I go back to making money, I'm sure I'll let more expenditures come- exotic travel, maybe a new gadget, etc., but I'd like to make some of my lifestyle changes more permanent. After selling so many books when I moved, I don't think I'm likely to buy books anymore when I know that libraries are perfectly capable of ordering any book I might want. Right now, spending $10 at the movies sounds like a crazy waste of money when I know it will be rent-able on DVD for $1 in just a few months. I very rarely eat out right now- something I spent over $1,500 on last year!!! I've started really thinking about how much gas costs and calibrating that in to decisions about going places- something I never gave any thought to before. And these little things add up. I most certainly want to keep my basic living expenses as minimal as possible. I love the concept of not being owned by your life style and having the freedom to not have money concerns have a large voice in life choices.

If these concepts don't resonate with you, you might enjoy The Overspent American. Otherwise, I say skip it.

The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap by Susan Pinker

I ordered this through Inter Library Loan and unfortunately only read half of it before I had to return it in order to avoid $1 a day late fines. Since I only read half of it, I've debated whether or not to post an entry on it, but I've decided to go for it.

The book makes the claims that the biggest reason for the gender gap in pay has to do with women opting for more emotionally rewarding careers/ lifestyle choices than men. I found this argument to be quite salient. While there's no question in my mind that in some work environments sexism is probably alive and well, it seems to be pretty rare. In my experience, those women who are good at what they do and want to work 60+ hour a weeks seem to receive raises and get promotions just as easily as the men doing those things. But it does seem that there are fewer women willing to do that then men.

Pinker furthers her case by pointing to education statistics versus workplace statistics. More women are educated than men. On average, women do better in school, across the board, than men do. Many ivy league schools now have "reverse discrimination" in that while trying to keep an equal gender balance, the average male resume is less impressive than the average female resume. About half of all law school grads are female, but only about 1/4 of practicing lawyers are female. The academics clearly show that ability is far from the issue, and yet most women do not go after the most lucrative careers.

The book goes further to blame this difference on innate biology. It states that estrogen tends to create minds that are more empathic and social whereas testosterone tends to create minds that are better at single minded focus. She cites many studies that are pretty fascinating to support this. One study measured fetal testosterone levels in boys throughout pregnancy and found a direct inverse correlation between how much testosterone they had and their later verbal skills. Those with the most testosterone spoke later and with fewer words than those with less testosterone.

While I think she convincingly makes her case that men and women are biologically shaped to be a bit different, I do think she undersells the role that social and pragmatic concerns have on the gender wage gap. If a woman is socially considered to be more responsible for raising children than men, is it any surprise that she's less likely to work crazy hours and is more likely to value lower stress careers and more flexible work environments?

Overall, I recommend the book. I wish I'd read the second half and could more thoroughly expound on her ideas. But from what I did read, I enjoyed the way she meshed her ideas and case studies with genuine scientific studies and statistics. It certainly is an interesting angle from which to look at the issue.

Cancer Milk by Seth Luther

I learned on my first day that one of my co-workers, a former VISTA, had written a book. It was described as being like Kurt Vonnegut's work. Since I read almost everything Vonnegut ever wrote, I figured I might like it and asked to borrow.

It was fun and totally lived up to the Vonnegut comparison. Lots of random stuff happening that somehow comes together to form a quasi-coherent story. The devil's son decides to spread cancer to the world and a boy who talks to goats must go to the goat home planet to find the cure to cancer. It was fun and I enjoyed. :)

Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America by Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas

At my work, there is apparently a list somewhere of recommended reading that will help you understand the business. One of my coworkers had this book in their collection and mentioned it was on the list so I asked to borrow it.

The basic premise of the book is that every place has it's ambitious, non-ambitious, and those in between. In small, rural areas, the ambitious leave and those who stay have few and poor opportunities available to them. The book further comments that the small towns have designed the system in such a way that those from "good" families will be the ones that succeed and others will be looked over.

The lack of opportunities struck me a bit because people really don't make much here. Working the grant department, grants often have people's salaries listed in them if the grant is paying part of their salary. So I know what many people make. People with master's degrees are barely getting $30K. $50K puts you at the top of the pack. Admittedly, this is a non-profit, but my roommate has bemoaned the extreme lack of good paying jobs and it seems to be a common issue. Jobs are key to a successful economy and rural areas just don't have too many. That said, I don't know that there really is a "fix" to it as the book suggests. Let's say you got two really highly skilled companies in to a rural area and supported the schools in such a way that they were making enough skilled workers. What happens when one goes out of business or moves? Those skills aren't easily transferred in a rural area. Since employers can disappear at any time, it makes since that highly skilled jobs are concentrated in urban areas where workers have a multitude of places that they can turn to in case something happens to their employer. It also makes sense that rural areas tend to be concentrated with low skilled jobs that most people could potentially do. While it's unfortunate for those people that technology has made their jobs so extremely low skilled that they now pay very little and have fewer job opportunities in total, I feel like this book is largely bemoaning change. It's important to recognize the downsides of technological advancements and a service based economy and that's what I got from this. There are people out there whose lives are worse off because of things we largely see as positive and it would be great to help them. I am not convinced though that most rural towns truly can be revived to thriving economies.

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

This is a truly fantastic book. It's written by a Behavioral Economics professor and is all about the irrational idiosyncrasies of human nature. He explains dozens of fascinating experiments he conducted in which people consistently behave in ways that are "unexpected", at least from a rational viewpoint.

I initially heard of Dan Ariely by reading Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, which cites some of his work. While Nudge was interesting, I think that this book has the interesting aspects of Nudge in far greater depth and lacks all of the boring parts. While the first chapter or two was largely a repeat of what I read in Nudge, the rest of the book really expanded on the ideas.

One of my favorite chapters was "The Cost of Social Norms: Why We Are Happy to Do Things but Not When We Are Paid to Do Them". In it, he claims that there are essentially two tracts by which we evaluate things- market norms and social norms. We are all social creatures and are happy to do favors. But if you put a price tag on that favor, we stop seeing the situation as social and we most certainly want to be paid what we're worth. Ariely performed an experiment in which he first asked students to perform repetitive, menial tasks for $.10, then for $.50. As typical market theory suggests, the $.50 group was motivated to work harder and performed more tasks. They then asked a group to do the same tasks as a favor, with no mention of a reward and that group worked the hardest and performed the greatest number of tasks. Which just shows the incredible motivational factor of social norms. He then introduced gifts in to the equation for the unpaid group- Snickers bars, Godiva chocolates, and nothing and found that all groups still performed quite highly and very similarly. Then he did the same, but referred to the gifts as a "fifty cent" Snicker bar and a "five dollar" box of chocolates. This language changed their motivation from a social arena to a market arena and their performance was reduced to what it had been at the cash level. I find this absolutely fascinating and totally believable.

I think that this chapter fascinated me so much because of my current work in Americorp. While I do get a menial living stipend, I am essentially a volunteer. I am operating on a social level. Many people who do Americorp end up in the non-profit sector and so the thought has been floating in my mind about whether or not that is something that I want to do in a year when my service is done. And in general I keep leaning towards probably not. This chapter completely explained why. When I think of working in the non-profit sector as a volunteer, it's social and I don't need real payment. If I were to think of it as a career, I don't think I would feel the same way. I would think of the market value of my time and skills and want to be paid accordingly. And I think that would mean not working in the non-profit arena. What can I say? I'm irrational- and predictably so. :)

Each chapter of this book presents equally fascinating and thought-provoking experiments. I could go on and on citing incredibly cool experiments that he performed, but you'd be better off just reading the book. It's pretty great.

Welcome to Montana!

I arrived in Great Falls, MT last Monday night. After unpacking all day Tuesday, I headed off to Helena for the Americorp Pre Service Orientation that lasted from Wednesday to Friday. It had all of the other Americorp VISTA members that had volunteered to serve in Montana for the year. I'm not sure what I expected, but I was really impressed with the people. Everyone was really accomplished. One girl had just gotten back from Ghana where she'd been on Fulbright scholarship to study the impact of culture on teaching methods. Another had been teaching in the Republic of Georgia. One guy had served in the Peace Corp. Just really cool people. The highlight of the event was one morning where we all sat in a circle and discussed our views on the causes of poverty. There were such a variety of backgrounds and experiences that it was fascinating to listen to.

On Friday, when we'd finished all the instruction stuff, they put us on a bus and

took us to the capital building to take our VISTA oath. The governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, actually did our swearing in, met us, and did a little Q & A session. It was pretty neat. The guy is quite a character. He takes his dog, Jag, with him everywhere. I got to pet Jag! Two ladies from my work who used to be VISTAs were insanely sweet and had driven up for my swearing in. After everything was done with Orientation, I met them at a restaurant and they gave me tips on adjusting to Montana. Interestingly, they're involved in policy initiatives and go to Helena a lot and we're friendly with several members of congress. I'm impressed with how accessible their state government is. Of course with so few people in the state, I guess sense.

When I got back to Great Falls, I got to be impressed with how much I lucked out in getting a nice and helpful roommate. We went and saw a movie on Saturday and afterwards he invited me to go dancing. He took me to a country themed bar that had a dance floor and live music. He'd gone there the week before and made friends with people, so we sat with them. I was shocked at how much the guys liked to dance. And I'd never seen dancing like this. I was really bad at first because I kept trying to anticipate what was going to happen. Then I got some pointers on how to follow and I think I improved. I took a video of the incredible dancing, but sadly it's too dark to show up on the compressed Blogger video tool. I think this link might work though: http://picasaweb.google.com/lauraah/MontanaAsOf01272011?authkey=Gv1sRgCMbGlYaI_bnOYg#5567095690430026658 Those two people were in our group and the guy was a genuine cowboy!

The next day, some people from work were having a football party to thank a bunch of volunteers who were going to be helping people with their taxes. The host, my current boss, lives just a bit out of town and here is the view from her back porch.

It was a really good week! This week I started work and it's been a bit slower, but good so far. The guy I share an office with and work with is really nice. He teaches at the local college and is in charge of their speech and debate team so he seems insanely busy. He's smart and a bit on the awkward side, so I think we'll get along just fine.

Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card

For the long trip up, I bought the audiobook of Orson Scott Card's Pathfinder. I'd heard good things about it and I have to say it was pretty decent. It is the first of a series so I kinda wish I'd waited to read it as I'm sure it'll be years before the next one comes out, but it was good for the car ride over.

OSC's later books have all been extremely preachy to the point of not being enjoyable. While this still had his trademark preachy issues, they weren't even remotely a focus which made it easy to enjoy. The book deals with kids with special abilities (it is an OSC book!) and in this one, time manipulation is a feature. While the exploration of the possibilities of time travel sometimes got extremely detailed to the point of being indulgent, I'm interested in reading the next one whenever it comes out.