by Heather Blanco
If the idea of a 14 Trillion dollar United States national debt is not already mind-blowing, just think about the number of American workers needed to pay down the bill.
American women are not having children at the rate they once did. Anyone considering the mathematical implications of this on debt repayment would start to realize that the situation of fewer workers and higher deficits calls for a fundamental overhaul of the entire system.
Recently our politicians have produced glossy budget projections, ‘blueprints’ for how America reinvents itself as a credible, powerful, ethical, rich nation. These plans extend out 5, 10, 20, even 70 years.
I have not read them but its probably safe to say that the budgets are creative agendas laden with super-capitalist speculation and delusion. In other words, works of utter fantasy. They presume the birth of numerous humans and a sustained allegiance to the current economic ideology.
While the current budget debates center around the issues of taxation, spending and printing money, the smartest guys in the room are failing to include into their calculus one key component:
Who is going to make the mythical characters in the script come to life?
The Politics Of Making People
It is presumed – as has been for eons – that women would mindlessly birth the requisite population to carry on the system as we know it. A mother’s work in this way has been and continues to be taken for granted.
The advent of birth control, women’s influx into the workforce, improved women’s rights and reproductive protections requires all of us to rethink how future workers could realistically rid the U.S. of it’s current debt obligations and sustain the current economic structure.
Because educated women lack incentives to keep births at replacement levels in the U.S., the powers that be have been relying on an alternative method of population growth: the migration of immigrants into the U.S. They have been catered to as consumers and exploited for cheap labor. They provide a market base for our economic system to continue. They were allowed in for years deferring the day for our flawed system’s collapse.
Unfortunately, while immigrants and their children have propped up the economy (along with American working mothers), they and their babies are perceived as ‘alien’ in spite of at very least, a maternal commonality. This disconnect has allowed other Americans — including American mothers — to de-humanize them while they do much of our nation’s dirty work. Yet, legal citizens and illegal immigrants are in similar circumstances when it comes to raising children in America. We all know it’s harder than it should be. Why are we not more united under the banner of motherhood?
The unifying plight of mothers is that each knows what it takes to make a human body, to feed it, clothe it, care for it. Mothers are key in raising nurtured dignified, respected, educated, thriving, healthy people. We have a vested interest in establishing the direction of the American lives we create.
Regardless if one identifies red or blue, it’s time to focus on the lives today of our mothers and children. The children of immigrant mothers and American mothers are facing a similar future. We are all tethered to an economy and politics that relies on the making of people — but as mothers, we bear little to no influence on processes that will determine our national fate. It’s time for that to change.
Now, I realize there is a great sense of doom upon us. Too many Americans and politicians are acting like Armeggedon is an immediate and inevitable fate, foregoing their personal responsibility to planning for a sensible and bright future for all Americans. Thus, one may argue that debt collection by the government is not high on the future list of priorities. Next year is 2012. Maybe this is why the Republican budget goes out ‘to infinity and beyond’.
But babies continue to be born to mothers full of hope. I don’t think that the smartest people ever to live were on the planet thousands of years ago. Mothers have birthed generations with courageous spirits, passionate hearts and sensible minds since ancient texts were written. Modern thinkers — which includes many mothers — must continue to explore solutions to problems that will be with us in the future. One such problem is the national debt.
The making of people starts with mothers and their authority over that process. If we want a quality and educated future workforce, to be free of national debt and a peaceful world politicians would do well to consult with those experienced in the act of making people.
Heather Blanco writes about the “offensive” nature of motherhood and what should be done about it at www.ultimateoutcast.com. She is a mom, wife and full-time working professional highly engaged in social, economic, political, religious, cultural and sexual issues affecting mothers around the world. For more information on the “Mama Capitalist” visit www.ultimateoutcasts.com