Hi friends,
Summer is in full swing for us during June. The girls had a good time at summer camp, and we all took some time off to go to the annual Woodbury reunion. The kids had tons of fun with their cousins, and the adults had tons of fun chasing the kids around. My three year-old Lincoln slipped off when we were packing up on our last day at my in-law’s cabin and had a close encounter with a trash-scavenging black bear. Thankfully, Lincoln did not try to pet the bear, but had the presence of mind to come back inside and tell me that he “was scary of the polar bear that’s black outside.” Dan and I were both like what?! We ran outside and sure enough there was a big ol’ black bear ambling off to wait until we left to get to the garbage cans. So that was exciting. Thankfully, we ended the reunion with only one trip to the ER for stitches on my nephew’s face, and we didn’t have to rush home to take Lincoln to the ER again for a breathing treatment for a bad case of coup like we did last year. As I said, exciting times, and the kids had fun.
Anyway, I realized that I hadn’t read any nonfiction books in a while and had a backlog of one that sounded interesting, so I focused on those in June. Some of them were really good and others I have already largely forgotten as I do with most nonfiction books. In any case, let me know what you think of these books and if you have suggestions for future reading.
Best,
Tonya
Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces that Shape Your Life by Alex Mayyasi
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Recommendation: maybe just listen to the podcast?
Review: I have already largely forgotten most of this book, which is why I changed my rating from 4 to 3 stars. It’s a collection of podcast episodes compiled and modified to accommodate the written word form as opposed to the spoken word. As such, there isn’t a real cohesive feel to the book. It feels like a bunch of podcast episodes strung together. The one that stood out the most to me was about the cost disease of services because it explains why childcare costs haven’t decreased with the costs of all goods and many other services with technological advancements made in the last 100 years. Mayyasi explains that service sectors that require people, like healthcare and childcare, actually get more expensive as the economy grows with technological advancements that otherwise make many jobs much more efficient. No matter how amazing the next AI model is, it’s not going to be able to replace the 58 year-old mother-of-four with decades of childcare experience that is currently teaching my three year-old in his preschool class. Instead, as the economy grows the salaries to pay these teachers increase, or should increase, to keep pace. This “cost disease” has a simple remedy in advanced economies that is already applied for children ages five and up, subsidized services. I read another book this month, Raising a Nation by Elliot Haspel, that goes seriously in depth about why Americans should subsidize childcare for all families, but the underlying economic argument remains that even as goods get cheaper and other workers get more productive with technology, service-intensive industries like childcare and healthcare will only continue to get more expensive while providing the same level of service. More to come later on that point, but for now, I’ll just leave it and say that this book was interesting, but forgetful, and would probably be better as a podcast.
Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and Dawn of AI Warfare by Katrina Manson
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes, if you’re interested in the Defense Industrial Base
Review: I finally decided that I need to learn something about AI, so naturally, because I’m me, I chose to start with a book about how the Department of Defense has struggled to procure and apply AI tools that have the potential to dramatically change nearly every aspect of warfare. Manson only lightly touches on the ethical implications of killer robots, and this reporting mainly focuses on the story of a large defense acquisitions program called Project Maven. I may not know much of anything about AI, but I am an expert in government acquisitions after spending over a decade providing oversight of these programs to Congress. That being said, I was 0% surprised that the arcane, byzantine, overly-complex, and archaic system that the government uses to build and buy weapons for our warfighters had several failed attempts at adopting AI and is still struggling with it. A lot of the narrative of this book focuses on Colonel Drew Cukor who Manson paints as an embattled program manager fighting not with adversaries abroad, but with the bureaucracy of the Pentagon itself to adopt AI tools into Marine intelligence systems. It’s a good read, but again I’ve already largely forgotten the details.
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: I decided again that I needed to learn more about AI, so I turned to Harari. Sometimes I think that Harari over-generalizes with his historic analyses to the point of being inaccurate, but he is very good at telling stories that resonate. In this book, Harari emphasizes a few points that I found compelling. The first was that the key to maintaining democracy amidst the rise of alien AIs is to double down on building and maintaining strong, self correcting institutions. He talks about how many religions struggle to adapt to changing times because they claim both infallibility and unchangeability. This observation made me grateful to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where we believe in continuing revelation that allows the institution to change and evolve as needed, although not without struggle. Harari tells the story of how Facebook algorithms can be partially blamed for inciting and fanning ethnic violence in Myanmar in 2016, which I hadn’t realized before. Turns out that giving a non-human intelligence a singular goal to increase user engagement results in the wrong kind of engagement for building peaceful societies and solving complex problems. Harari emphasizes that we have no idea what the future will look like and how AIs will shape it but that the best thing we can do is to build, and where needed, maintain self-correcting institutions like democracies that can regulate these new intelligences. So far, we have struggled to do that, but I know well that the gears of policy change move slowly until they don’t. This is a good and helpful read, and I would recommend for anyone who wants to learn more about how we can or should respond to AI.
Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History by Helen Zoe Veit
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Recommendation: read the cliff-note version
Review: I expected that this book would have helpful skills and techniques that I could use to help discourage the pickiness that I see in my own children. My expectations were not met, and I’m not sure if that’s the fault of the book’s marketing or my own obliviousness before picking it up. In any case, this book is more a history of how children’s diets have changed in American since the 1800s. Turns out that back then kids were considered voracious and omnivorous eaters who just ate what their parents ate. There was not such thing as kid menus, or foods marketed to kids in part because there were no mass marketing campaigns funded by international corporations focused on increasing consumption and profits. Also, there were no shelf-stable, cheap, and easily accessible snacks that kids could take with them everywhere and munch between meals. As I sit here typing this, I can hear my own kids ruining their own dinners behind me with a bowl of Cheerios. Although I don’t think this book taught me a lot about how to fix my own family’s pickiness, I did feel a good amount of relief when I realized that I wasn’t just fighting my own stubborn seven year-old, I’m also fighting an entire society’s worth of expectations around children’s diets and hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing directly towards children. So that didn’t solve my problem, but now I feel better about it because I understand that it’s not all my fault. Take that judgy baby boomers…
Trash: A Garbageman’s Story by Simon Pare Poupart (translated by Pablo Strauss)
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: This book was awesome. Like 99% of people, I spend little to no time thinking about where the bins and bins of waste my family produces ends up, and even less time thinking about the people that move it there. That changed when I read this memoir of Simon Pare Poupart, a career garbageman in Quebec. Poupart is an excellent and engaging writer, and this book changed the way I view the world and how I handle my own garbage. Everyone should read it. It immensely increased my respect and admiration for those who get little to no recognition for their vital role in keeping our cities and suburbs livable. Also, it’s immensely readable, even in translation. I highly recommend.
Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History by Guy Lawson
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: This was a book club pick for my team at work which focuses on government defense procurements. I actually missed the book club, but thought it sounded interesting. I was right. This story illustrates so many things that are wrong about the defense acquisition world. One thing that Lawson emphasized was how the government uses contractors to do its dirty work and then penalizes those who do it. In this story 20-something-year-old aspiring gunrunners from Miami beach, Efraim Diveroli and his sidekick David Packouz, start bidding on multi-million dollar contracts to supply arms to the Afghanistan national army in 2006. I know that seems like a lifetime ago considering the situation there now, but back then the US government was spending billions to rebuild Afghanistan and arm its government. Wild. Enter Diveroli who obsessively bids on these contracts in between bong hits while nurturing dreams of becoming a fabulously rich and dangerously cool international gunrunner. Diveroli and company run into trouble when the supplier they contract with in Albania provides them with decades-old Chinese made munitions. While the ammo is perfectly serviceable, the surprising and logic-defying problem arises when Congress passes a law prohibiting the US from buying any Chinese weapons, even those made decades ago and sitting around in Albanian caves. With no other options, Diveroli and co. decide to repackage the ammo and ship it to Afghanistan anyway. The receiving Army officials have no problem with the ammo apart from there not being enough of it to arm the Afghans in their summer fight against the Taliban. That doesn’t stop an intrepid and rules-obsessed auditor bureaucrat from opening an equally-obsessive investigation into Diveroli. The idiosyncrasies and sheer idiocy of a giant bureaucracy is on full display here as the Army in Afghanistan begs for more Chinese-made Albanian-sourced ammo, and the Army in the states investigates, seizes, and prosecutes Diveroli for providing it. There was also a whole plotline focusing on the Albanian mafia and corruption there too, which resulted in one of Diveroli’s former business partners being found dead under mysterious circumstances. Eventually, the New York Times starts investigating and Diveroli ends up on the front page, but not for the right reasons. He gets prosecuted and serves jail time, and well, we all know what happened in Afghanistan. This is a great read, and Lawson is a great reporter and story teller. The only bad thing was that there was no one to root for in the story. Diveroli is extremely unlikable as he abuses and pushes away everyone around him, alienating business partners all around the world. I don’t know how much has changed in the past 20 years in the international arms world, but it still seems like the same problems that led to this laughable catastrophe likely still exist today. Sigh.
Raising a Nation: 10 Reasons Every American Has a Stake in Childcare for All by Elliot Haspel
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes, everyone should read this book
Review: This book convinced me to become an activist for universal childcare. Of course, considering my familial circumstances, I didn’t need much convincing. By the time my youngest child starts kindergarten, we will have spent so much money on childcare that we could have easily paid off the mortgage on this house. I have a 1 and 3 year-old both in full-time center-provided childcare, and while I am generally very pleased with the level of service and care that they receive, paying their monthly tuition is far and away our family’s biggest expense. I’m counting down the months until my three-year-old will be eligible for the 15 hours a week of free daycare that Colorado provides all children the year before they enter kindergarten (13 months) and the months until he starts kindergarten (25), and I’m only paying for one kid to be in full-time care. I also have a list of home and other projects that are awaiting this reallocation in our budget. Even with all of that, Dan and I are the “lucky” ones that we can afford full time childcare for two kids and found a daycare center that has space for both of them. In this book, Haspel lays out the case for universal childcare in 10 compelling chapters and lessons.
Buckle-up, Buttercup, because I have THOUGHTS.
Here are some of the arguments Haspel makes for universal childcare that I found most compelling:
It can help raise the declining birthrate: For those who bemoan the “selfish” millennials and Gen Z’ers who are delaying or not having children, universal childcare can help solve that problem. Haspel notes that, “Even nations with the best child-care systems in the world have seen birth rate declines. But good child care has been shown to help mitigate and slow the rate of decline….One 2024 paper found that even modest reductions in child-care costs can have significant impacts on reducing the gap between desired and realized family size, boosting fertility rates by around 13 percent.”
It’s a small token of appreciation for the immense sacrifice that’s required of parents. Haspel notes, “Child-care funding is not something to be reluctantly handed out by legislators busy with other priorities; it is owed to parents who are, every day, thickening the threads on the skein of American society.”
It will reduce turn-over and allow childcare providers to make decent living. Haspel says, “Child-care compensation ranks in the lowest 5 percent of all occupations. There is, however, no way to elevate the child-care profession without immense amounts of public money flowing in every year.” At one center our children went to, my oldest had four different teachers in the six months she was enrolled there. We moved to a new center with much more staffing and management stability because of the turn-over, which is directly tied to the abysmal wages that these teachers make. Just as it’s fiscally impossible for all but the top 1% to afford a personal teacher for their school-age children, it’s fiscally impossible to expect the parents alone to bear the costs of teaching their not-yet school-age children. This is why we have a publicly subsidized education system. There is broad agreement that everyone benefits from an educated population and that it’s foundational to a functioning democracy, and as far as I can tell, the decision to start that education at 5 is fairly arbitrary.
It will vastly decrease poverty. Haspel notes that, “Establishing a good child-care system, particularly one without loads of red tape, would be one of the strongest antipoverty measures America could take.” As a Christian, I see this argument as particularly compelling as I’ve made covenants to help “bear one another’s burdens that they may be light.” I consider it a central tenet of my faith to help those less fortunate than myself, and I will gladly pay into a publicly funded childcare system for the rest of my life, even long after my own family no longer needs it.
Childcare is the perfect example of a broken market where capitalism has created horrible outcomes. Nowhere has this become more evident to me than in the acquisition of our own childcare provider by private equity. What the heck is private equity doing in childcare? Haspel notes that, “private-equity-backed for-profit chains—companies like KinderCare and Primrose—have quietly opposed child-care bills that come with conditions attached to public funding that threaten a profit-maximizing business model. The very fact that private equity is a major player in child care speaks to the danger of overly casting child care as a service that should reside in the business environment.” Private equity is known for driving business into the ground trying to wring every cent from them on the way. We have been lucky in that so far our newly private-equity owned childcare provider has so far chosen to retain the management and all the teachers willing to stay on, and we haven’t seen a decrease in the quality of care provided to our children, but I am extremely concerned about it. Haspel says, “in a misguided attempt to keep government away from the family, America has allowed the callous market to dictate how parents raise their children and live their lives.”
Universal Childcare would benefit parents who choose not to work while their children are young. Universal childcare as envisioned by Haspel would provide care part-time and as-needed to parents who choose not to work as well. Everyone has occasions arise when they need childcare and would have access to it as well with much less hassle and stress.
All that being said, universal childcare doesn’t come cheap. Haspel estimates, “a clear-eyed assessment of a system built off the principles described here yields a sum more in the range of $250 to $300 billion a year. (Remember: The United States spends over $800 billion a year on both K–12 education.)” Considering that the current administration is requesting $1.5 trillion for the upcoming year just to spend on the Department of Defense, I’m convinced that the problem is not one of affordability but political will.
In our neighboring Boulder County this fall, there’s going to be a question on the ballot proposing a property tax that will end up being about $110 a month for most property owners to support their childcare providers including by raising wages, fully-funding their income-based assistance program, and increasing daycare capacities. I’m really hoping that this initiative passes and interested in starting a similar effort in Broomfield county where we live. In the absence of federal and state action, I think starting at the community level is better than nothing.
So yeah. 5 stars. I recommend that everyone read this book.
