What Taylor Swift Can Teach Us About Economics

M.H.: And also because I think in the field of economics, we’ve focused so heavily in modern economics on efficiency, and we really have done a disservice in terms of helping the larger society understand issues of initial endowments. And you know, if you’re born into a family in poverty, it’s not going to be as easy for you to pick yourself up by your bootstraps as it might be if you were born into a wealthy family. I think that women get this so much more than men because we’ve been ignored for so long within our economic statistics and economic foundations, so much of our labor isn’t accounted for.

M.P.: Speaking of that, Vice President JD Vance has talked about how he wants to see more babies in America. And at the same time, the Trump policies all make it harder for women to have careers and for people to have economic stability. What do you as an economist make of these kinds of contradictions?

MH: The JD Vances of the world, and the Trumps of the world, they really struggle with something that I call care privilege. Care privilege is: You are an able-bodied adult, but yet you have your care needs being met by other people. So somebody’s washing and ironing your clothes, somebody’s cooking your meals, somebody’s taking care of your children. And there’s a lot of folks with big amounts of care privilege on the Hill, as well. I think that they really struggle to understand the realities of the people who provide care in this society and in this world. When you are somebody who has lots of care privilege, and you don’t have to think about the hit you might have to take to your income for having children, or the hit you might have to take to your sleep, or your ability to have some leisure time … when you have lots of care privilege, you don’t think about those things and you don’t understand them. And so when you speak about things that are related to caregiving, like raising the next generation and having children, oftentimes what you’re saying misses the boat, because it’s very off-kilter from the realities of people who are actually providing care in society.