When the obvious, easy, or simple solution isn't

I like to think of myself as a rational, logical being. Someone who values facts over fiction or emotion. Who goes looking for the truth -- and the most obvious or straightforward or simplest solution to a problem.

I'd like to think that I am not alone. But increasingly, I feel like I am alone. A Vulcan among... Earthlings. And I simply don't understand (well, I do, but I don't) the following.

Guns. They are a problem. A big problem. Personally, I think ownership should be highly restricted, as gun ownership is in the UK. That isn't going to happen here in the good ole U.S. of A. But why can't we at least mandate background checks, 24-hour waiting periods, strict (low) limits on ammunition, and severely restrict the ownership of weapons that inflict mass destruction? The only arguments against doing these highly logical things, which, long ago even the NRA supported, is purely political -- and irrational (or emotional).

Healthcare. Everyone should have it. And it should be simple to get and to keep and to administrate. This is not a fantasy. It is totally doable. Except for politics and an irrational fear of government or governance.

Taxes. You like having drivable roads, safe bridges and tunnels, good schools, your mail delivered to your door (or mailbox or post box)? You want to feel protected in case of attack, be it by man, things man-made, or nature's fury? You need to pay taxes. As my late father, a registered Republican, used to say, "If everyone paid their taxes, we'd pay less in taxes." So true.

But the tax code is so frickin' complicated, and changes every year, and there are so many loopholes, it's no wonder people don't like taxes -- and think they are unfair. Is it so hard to come up with a simplified system where everyone pays his or her fair share? (Apparently the answer is "yes." Not because it isn't possible to create such a system but because it is politically impossible to implement such a system.)

Decent-paying part-time work. It's been over 40 years now since Women's Liberation movement and women began entering the workforce in large numbers. And yet the government and business have done very little to accommodate, aid, promote or recognize the changing nature of families or the reality that many (most?) women now work, or want or need to work.

What happened to flexible hours? Telecommuting? Job sharing? Why haven't more (most) businesses created part-time tracks for women and men, or made it easy(ier) for employees to telecommute or work flexible hours?

Btw, I'm talking for men and women here. It's been 40 years, people. We are losing too many good, smart women -- mainly moms (and daughters of aging parents) -- who want to work but don't want to or can't work 50 hours a week at a job an hour or more away. And too often those jobs barely pay for childcare. It shouldn't, and needn't, be this way.

Childcare. Good help shouldn't be so hard, or expensive, to find. Governments, schools, and businesses need to do more to help working families by providing safe, affordable places for children to go after school and during school holidays when or if their parents are working. I know good, or decent, affordable childcare exists in some places, but it needs to be universal.

Climate Change (the condition previously known as Global Warming). The climate has been changing. And not for the better. Things have been heating up (though it often doesn't feel like that here in the Northeast). And we are losing land and lives.

And we humans are not helping. Indeed, we are the problem. Or a big part of it. But we could be the solution. Except most of us are too selfish or self-centered to give up our SUVs and gas-guzzling/emissions spewing vehicles, or to drive less, or to live in smaller houses closer to one another, or reduce our consumption of products that pollute the environment.

Sadly, if everyone just did a little bit -- drove more fuel-efficient cars, turned down the AC just a bit, used energy-saving light bulbs and remembered to turn off the lights and their TVs and other things when not in use, re-used and recycled -- we could slow down climate change.

I could go on, but I won't. I need to conserve my energy.

W(h)ither feminism?

So yesterday I took the teenager for her quarterly haircut and overheard the following conversation between her and her hairdresser, a lovely young woman in her late 20s who has been working since she graduated from high school and is about to be married to her long-time beau:

The Teenager: When I graduate [from college], I'm going to live on Hawaii -- and in Paris. And you can come stay me!

The Hairdresser: Well, I'm going to live on Hawaii, too, so I won't have to stay with you.

The Teenager: Awesome! Well, you can come visit me in Paris!

The Hairdresser: That would be great!

Me: And, um, how exactly are you going to maintain homes in both Hawaii and Paris, Teenager? Are you going to be someone's private chef? [The Teenager is an excellent cook and wants to become a nutritionist and private or personal chef when she graduates from college, or graduate school.]

The Teenager: No, I'm going to marry a rich man!

[Over 40 years of feminism flashes before my eyes -- and dies.]

Me: How about you become the rich woman?

The Teenager: ---

Me: Never be dependent on someone else, Teenager. Even if you do marry a rich man, work or make sure you have your own money.

The Hairdresser vigorously nods. The Teenager does not reply.

For those of you wondering where she got this idea, it wasn't from me. (I've been working since I was a teenager and have worked all of her life, albeit mostly from home and part time recently, though that hasn't been entirely by choice.) And she's not the only young woman -- far from it -- who dreams of marrying a rich man, or the man being the rich one.

Ladies, where did we go wrong?

What happened to paying your dues?

[Alternate title: Hey you kids, get off my job!]

Back when I graduated from college, in the late 1980s, most of us college graduates felt lucky to get a job, any job, especially us liberal arts college graduates who wanted to go into advertising, or marketing, or public relations, or publishing.

We were THRILLED to get a job as an editorial assistant, or assistant media relations buyer, or marketing assistant -- heck even a receptionist or mail room clerk, if it meant we could get our foot in the door at some swanky advertising agency or magazine.

And the pay? Puh-lease. My first job, as an assistant editor (fact checker) at a New York magazine, didn't even come close to the cost of tuition at my private liberal arts school -- or allow me to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. But man was I happy to have gotten it, especially after not being able to even get an interview at any of the other places I had applied.

Indeed, all of my friends who were lucky enough to find jobs in NYC and Boston right after school, working for slave wages, living with their parents or several roommates, were thrilled to have a job. Sure, we would have liked to have made more money right out of school, but everyone knew you had to work your way up the corporate ladder -- pay your dues, and in five or seven or 10 years you would be a senior whatever, making a living wage. That's what people did back then.

How times have changed.

Today, actually I would argue since the mid-1990s, youth and chutzpah are rewarded and age and experience are seen as negatives -- with mothers who took a few years off to raise a family and fifty- and sixty-something men and women with years of experience making a fraction of what many (most?) of today's twenty-somethings are making, or commanding, and often being the first to be "downsized" (laid off, fired) when times get tough. Though this may have changed somewhat after the recession of 2008.

I blame it on the rise of the Internet -- the "dot com" phenomenon of the mid/late 1990s -- and social media, the "dot coms" of the mid/late 2000s.

Suddenly, we went from a society or culture that valued age and experience to one where technology was king, and any peasant who could create a dot.com, or website, or code, no matter how stupid or unprofitable the idea, was practically handed a bag of money -- and a big title.

Pity those poor slobs over 30 (like me, and pretty much everyone I knew) who had spent the last eight, or six, or however many years toiling away at this job or that, paying their dues, as they had been told they had to do to get ahead, who suddenly found themselves outranked or outpaid by hordes of twenty-somethings with no experience, no social skills, and in many cases no college degree but who could code or design a website.

Indeed, although I had a job at the time, as an editor, making a decent (for an editor) wage, I remember my husband saying to me that I should learn web design or coding -- and feeling too old at 30.

Though not that long after he made the suggestion, I left my job at the publishing company and started writing about technology.

Fast forward approximately 15 later.

I still write about technology. Only today, now in my 40s, I make 50 percent LESS (and that's being optimistic) than I did when I started out. Even though I have way more experience. But just try finding a decent-paying job when you are a forty-something. (Especially if it involves writing. Apparently a skill no longer deemed important by society.) And it's worse if you are older.

Btw, I'm not the only one who feels this way. Just talk to any forty- or fifty- or sixty-something who has had to look for a job the last 10 years or so, and he or she could probably tell you how hard it is -- and that they lost out to someone much younger. Or if they did find a job, how it paid much less than their last one -- and their boss is young enough to be their kid, or grandkid.

And don't get me going off about social media -- Twitter, YouTube, etc. -- and all of these so-called social media experts and consultants and YouTube stars. (Hey, you kids, get off my computer!)

Granted, age, or experience, or years on the job/at a company shouldn't be the only qualification for a job or a promotion, as it was when I first entered the work world. But surely age and experience should count for something, at least as much as having a cat with a popular YouTube channel or Twitter feed, right?