zz -- top 3 emailed articles in NYTimes, Feb 6, 2009

lintelleUID: 2297267

resource: new york times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/opinion/05coontz.html?em

Till Children Do Us Part

HALF a century ago, the conventional wisdom was that having a child was the surest way to build a happy marriage. Women’s magazines of that era promised that almost any marital problem could be resolved by embarking on parenthood. Once a child arrives, “we don’t worry about this couple any more,” an editor at Better Homes and Gardens enthused in 1944. “There are three in that family now. ... Perhaps there is not much more needed in a recipe for happiness.”

Over the past two decades, however, many researchers have concluded that three’s a crowd when it comes to marital satisfaction. More than 25 separate studies have established that marital quality drops, often quite steeply, after the transition to parenthood. And forget the “empty nest” syndrome: when the children leave home, couples report an increase in marital happiness.

But does the arrival of children doom couples to a less satisfying marriage? Not necessarily. Two researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, Philip and Carolyn Cowan, report in a forthcoming briefing paper for the Council on Contemporary Families that most studies finding a large drop in marital quality after childbirth do not consider the very different routes that couples travel toward parenthood.

Some couples plan the conception and discuss how they want to conduct their relationship after the baby is born. Others disagree about whether or when to conceive, with one partner giving in for the sake of the relationship. And sometimes, both partners are ambivalent.

The Cowans found that the average drop in marital satisfaction was almost entirely accounted for by the couples who slid into being parents, disagreed over it or were ambivalent about it. Couples who planned or equally welcomed the conception were likely to maintain or even increase their marital satisfaction after the child was born.

Marital quality also tends to decline when parents backslide into more traditional gender roles. Once a child arrives, lack of paid parental leave often leads the wife to quit her job and the husband to work more. This produces discontent on both sides. The wife resents her husband’s lack of involvement in child care and housework. The husband resents his wife’s ingratitude for the long hours he works to support the family.

When the Cowans designed programs to help couples resolve these differences, they had fewer conflicts and higher marital quality. And the children did better socially and academically because their parents were happier.

But keeping a marriage vibrant is a never-ending job. Deciding together to have a child and sharing in child-rearing do not immunize a marriage. Indeed, collaborative couples can face other problems. They often embark on such an intense style of parenting that they end up paying less attention to each other.

Parents today spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years ago. The sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie report that married mothers in 2000 spent 20 percent more time with their children than in 1965. Married fathers spent more than twice as much time.

A study by John Sandberg and Sandra Hofferth at the University of Michigan showed that by 1997 children in two-parent families were getting six more hours a week with Mom and four more hours with Dad than in 1981. And these increases occurred even as more mothers entered the labor force.

Couples found some of these extra hours by cutting back on time spent in activities where children were not present — when they were alone as a couple, visiting with friends and kin, or involved in clubs. But in the long run, shortchanging such adult-oriented activities for the sake of the children is not good for a marriage. Indeed, the researcher Ellen Galinsky has found that most children don’t want to spend as much time with their parents as parents assume; they just want their parents to be more relaxed when they are together.

Couples need time alone to renew their relationship. They also need to sustain supportive networks of friends and family. Couples who don’t, investing too much in their children and not enough in their marriage, may find that when the demands of child-rearing cease to organize their lives, they cannot recover the relationship that made them want to have children together in the first place.

As the psychologist Joshua Coleman suggests, the airline warning to put on your own oxygen mask before you place one on your child also holds true for marriage.

Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history at Evergreen State College and the director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families, is the author of “Marriage: A History.”

lintelleUID: 2297267

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/opinion/06krugman.html?em

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.

Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.

It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy ... the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.”

Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap.

We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.

As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.

And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

lintelleUID: 2297267

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/asia/06japan.html?em

HAMADA, Japan — The Hamada Marine Bridge soars majestically over this small fishing harbor, so much larger than the squid boats anchored below that it seems out of place.

And it is not just the bridge. Two decades of generous public works spending have showered this city of 61,000 mostly graying residents with a highway, a two-lane bypass, a university, a prison, a children’s art museum, the Sun Village Hamada sports center, a bright red welcome center, a ski resort and an aquarium featuring three ring-blowing Beluga whales.

Nor is this remote port in western Japan unusual. Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery.

Now, as the Obama administration embarks on a similar path, proposing to spend more than $820 billion to stimulate the sagging American economy, many economists are taking a fresh look at Japan’s troubled experience. While Japan is not exactly comparable to the United States — especially as a late developer with a history of heavy state investment in infrastructure — economists say it can still offer important lessons about the pitfalls, and chances for success, of a stimulus package in an advanced economy.

In a nutshell, Japan’s experience suggests that infrastructure spending, while a blunt instrument, can help revive a developed economy, say many economists and one very important American official: Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who was a young financial attaché in Japan during the collapse and subsequent doldrums. One lesson Mr. Geithner has said he took away from that experience is that spending must come in quick, massive doses, and be continued until recovery takes firm root.

Moreover, it matters what gets built: Japan spent too much on increasingly wasteful roads and bridges, and not enough in areas like education and social services, which studies show deliver more bang for the buck than infrastructure spending.

“It is not enough just to hire workers to dig holes and then fill them in again,” said Toshihiro Ihori, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo. “One lesson from Japan is that public works get the best results when they create something useful for the future.”

In total, Japan spent $6.3 trillion on construction-related public investment between 1991 and September of last year, according to the Cabinet Office. The spending peaked in 1995 and remained high until the early 2000s, when it was cut amid growing concerns about ballooning budget deficits. More recently, the governing Liberal Democratic Party has increased spending again to revive the economy and the party’s own flagging popularity.

In the end, say economists, it was not public works but an expensive cleanup of the debt-ridden banking system, combined with growing exports to China and the United States, that brought a close to Japan’s Lost Decade. This has led many to conclude that spending did little more than sink Japan deeply into debt, leaving an enormous tax burden for future generations.

In the United States, it has also led to calls in Congress, particularly by Republicans, not to repeat the errors of Japan’s failed economic stimulus. They argue that it makes more sense to cut taxes, and let people decide how to spend their own money, than for the government to decide how to invest public funds. Japan put more emphasis on increased spending than tax cuts during its slump, but ultimately did reduce consumption taxes to encourage consumer spending as well.

Economists tend to divide into two camps on the question of Japan’s infrastructure spending: those, many of them Americans like Mr. Geithner, who think it did not go far enough; and those, many of them Japanese, who think it was a colossal waste.

Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state and making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs. Much of the blame has fallen on the Liberal Democratic Party, which has long used government spending to grease rural vote-buying machines that help keep the party in power.

But some Western economists who have studied Japan’s experience say the stimulus accomplished more than it is now given credit for. At a minimum, they argue, it saved the economy from an outright, 1930s-style collapse.

Moreover, they say, any direct comparison of Japan and the United States is inevitably misleading, because Japan has spent so much more over the years on infrastructure. Having neglected its roads, bridges, water treatment plants and more over the years, the United States is bound to generate a greater payback for such spending than would Japan.

Beyond that, proponents of Keynesian-style stimulus spending in the United States say that Japan’s approach failed to accomplish more not because of waste but because it was never tried wholeheartedly. They argue that instead of making one big push to pump up the economy with economic shock therapy, Japan spread its spending out over several years, diluting the effects.

After years of heavy spending in the first half of the 1990s, economists say, Japan’s leaders grew concerned about growing budget deficits and cut back too soon, snuffing out the recovery in its infancy, much as Roosevelt did to the American economy in 1936. Growth that, by 1996, had reached 3 percent was suffocated by premature spending cuts and tax increases, they say. While spending remained high in the late 1990s, Japan never gave the economy another full-fledged push, these economists say.

They also say that the size of Japan’s apparently successful stimulus in the early 1990s suggests that the United States will need to spend far more than the current $820 billion to get results. Between 1991 and 1995, Japan spent some $2.1 trillion on public works, in an economy roughly half as large as that of the United States, according to the Cabinet Office. “Stimulus worked in Japan when it was tried,” said David Weinstein, a professor of Japanese economics at Columbia University. “Japan’s lesson is that, if anything, the current U.S. stimulus will not be enough.”

Most Japanese economists have tended to take a bleaker view of their nation’s track record, saying that Japan spent more than enough money, but wasted too much of it on roads to nowhere and other unneeded projects.

Dr. Ihori of the University of Tokyo did a survey of public works in the 1990s, concluding that the spending created almost no additional economic growth. Instead of spreading beneficial ripple effects across the economy, he found that the spending actually led to declines in business investment by driving out private investors. He also said job creation was too narrowly focused in the construction industry in rural areas to give much benefit to the overall economy.

He agreed with other critics that the 1990s stimulus failed because too much of it went to roads and bridges, overbuilding this already heavily developed nation. Critics also said decisions on how to spend the money were made behind closed doors by bureaucrats, politicians and the construction industry, and often reflected political considerations more than economic. Dr. Ihori said the United States appeared to be striking a better balance by investing in new energy and information-technology infrastructure as well as replacing aging infrastructure.

Japan’s experience also seems to argue for spending heavily to promote social development. A 1998 report by the Japan Institute for Local Government, a nonprofit policy research group, found that every 1 trillion yen, or about $11.2 billion, spent on social services like care for the elderly and monthly pension payments added 1.64 trillion yen in growth. Financing for schools and education delivered an even bigger boost of 1.74 trillion yen, the report found.

But every 1 trillion yen spent on infrastructure projects in the 1990s increased Japan’s gross domestic product, a measure of its overall economic size, by only 1.37 trillion yen, mainly by creating jobs and other improvements like reducing travel times.

Economists said the finding suggested that while infrastructure spending may yield strong results for developing nations, creating jobs in higher-paying knowledge-based services like health care and education can bring larger benefits to advanced economies like Japan, with its aging population.

“In hindsight, Japan should have built public works that address the problems it faces today, like aging, energy and food sources,” said Takehiko Hobo, a professor emeritus of public finance at Shimane University in Matsue, the main city of Shimane. “This obsession with building roads is a holdover from an earlier era.”

The fruits of that obsession are apparent across Shimane, a rural prefecture about the size of Delaware where Hamada is located. Each town seems to have its own art museum, domed athletic center and government-built tourist attraction like the Nima Sand Museum, a giant hourglass in a glass pyramid. The prefecture, with 740,000 residents, even has three commercial airports able to handle jets, including the $250 million Hagi-Iwami Airport, which sits eerily empty with just two flights per day.

In Hamada, residents say the city’s most visible “hakomono,” the Japanese equivalent of “white elephant,” was its own bridge to nowhere, the $70 million Marine Bridge, whose 1,006-foot span sat almost completely devoid of traffic on a recent morning. Built in 1999, the bridge links the city to a small, sparsely populated island already connected by a shorter bridge.

“The bridge? It’s a dud,” said Masahiro Shimada, 70, a retired city official who was fishing near the port. “Maybe we could use it for bungee jumping,” he joked.

Koichi Matsuoka, a retired professor of policy at the University of Shimane in Hamada, said useless projects like the Marine Bridge were the reason that years of huge spending had brought few long-term benefits here. While Shimane has had the highest per capita spending on public works in Japan for the last 18 years, thanks to powerful local politicians like the deceased former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, its per capita annual income of $26,000 ranked it 40th among Japan’s 47 prefectures, he said. He said the spending had left Shimane $11 billion in debt, twice the size of the prefectural government’s annual budget.

Still, local officials in Hamada warn that their city’s economy will collapse without public works, though they recognize the spending cannot continue forever. They offered their own lesson to American communities in the Obama era: when you choose public works projects, be sure to get ones with lasting economic impact.

Among Hamada’s many public works projects, the biggest benefits had come from the prison, the university and the Aquas aquarium, with its popular whales, they said. These had created hundreds of permanent jobs and attracted students and families with children to live in a city where nearly a third of residents were over 65.

“Roads and bridges are attractive, but they create jobs only during construction,” said Shunji Nakamura, chief of the city’s industrial policy section. “You need projects with good jobs that will last through a bad economy.”

lintelleUID: 2297267

strait
n.
(Abbr. Str. or St.) A narrow channel joining two larger bodies of water. Often used in the plural with a singular verb.
A position of difficulty, perplexity, distress, or need. Often used in the plural: in desperate straits.
adj.
Difficult; stressful.
Having or marked by limited funds or resources.

hack·ney
n., pl. -neys.

• often Hackney A horse of a breed developed in England, having a gait characterized by pronounced flexion of the knee.
• A trotting horse suited for routine riding or driving; a hack.
• A coach or carriage for hire.

tr.v., -neyed, -ney·ing, -neys.

• To cause to become banal and trite through overuse.
• To hire out; let.

adj.

• Banal; trite.
• Having been hired.

spout

v., spout·ed, spout·ing, spouts.

v.intr.

• To gush forth in a rapid stream or in spurts.
• To discharge a liquid or other substance continuously or in spurts.
• Informal. To speak volubly and tediously.

v.tr.

• To cause to flow or spurt out.
• To utter volubly and tediously.
• Chiefly British. To pawn.

n.

• A tube, mouth, or pipe through which liquid is released or discharged.
• A continuous stream of liquid.
• The burst of spray from the blowhole of a whale.
• Chiefly British. A pawnshop.

dis·mal
adj.

• Causing gloom or depression; dreary: dismal weather; took a dismal view of the economy.
• Characterized by ineptitude, dullness, or a lack of merit: a dismal book; a dismal performance on the cello.
• Obsolete. Dreadful; disastrous.

e·mas·cu·late
tr.v., -lat·ed, -lat·ing, -lates.

• To castrate.
• To deprive of strength or vigor; weaken.

adj. (-lĭt)
Deprived of virility, strength, or vigor.

dec·i·mate
tr.v., -mat·ed, -mat·ing, -mates.

• To destroy or kill a large part of (a group).
• Usage Problem.
  • To inflict great destruction or damage on: The fawns decimated my rose bushes.
  • To reduce markedly in amount: a profligate heir who decimated his trust fund.
• To select by lot and kill one in every ten of.

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Dictionary
slump (slŭmp)
intr.v., slumped, slump·ing, slumps.

• To fall or sink heavily; collapse: She slumped, exhausted, onto the sofa.
• To droop, as in sitting or standing; slouch.
• • To decline suddenly; fall off: Business slumped after the holidays.
  • To perform poorly or inadequately: The team has been slumping for a month.
• • To sink or settle, as into mud or slush.
  • To slide down or spread out thickly, as mud or fresh concrete.

n.

• The act or an instance of slumping.
• A drooping or slouching posture: read defeat in the slump of his shoulders.
• A sudden falling off or decline, as in activity, prices, or business: a stock market slump; a slump in farm prices.
• An extended period of poor performance, especially in a sport or competitive activity: a slump in a batting average.
• See grunt (sense 5).

san·guine
adj.

• • Of the color of blood; red.
  • Of a healthy reddish color; ruddy: a sanguine complexion.
• Archaic.
  • Having blood as the dominant humor in terms of medieval physiology.
  • Having the temperament and ruddy complexion formerly thought to be characteristic of a person dominated by this humor; passionate.
• Cheerfully confident; optimistic.

deflation
sustained drop in the general price level in the economy

boost

v.tr.

• To raise or lift by pushing up from behind or below. See synonyms at lift.
• • To increase; raise: boost prices; efforts to boost participation in the program.
  • To assist in further development or progress: a bill intended to boost local charities.
• To stir up enthusiasm for; promote vigorously: boosted their school with rallies and fund drives.
• Electricity. To increase the voltage of (a circuit).
• Slang. To steal or rob, especially by shoplifting or pickpocketing.

v.intr.
Slang. To engage in stealing, especially shoplifting or pickpocketing.
n.

• A push upward or ahead.
• An encouraging act or comment.
• An increase: a big boost in salary.

tran·scend

v., -scend·ed, -scend·ing, -scends.

v.tr.

• To pass beyond the limits of: emotions that transcend understanding.
• To be greater than, as in intensity or power; surpass: love that transcends infatuation. See synonyms at excel.
• To exist above and independent of (material experience or the universe): “One never can see the thing in itself, because the mind does not transcend phenomena” (Hilaire Belloc).

v.intr.
To be transcendent; excel.

par·ti·san
n.

• A fervent, sometimes militant supporter or proponent of a party, cause, faction, person, or idea.
• A member of an organized body of fighters who attack or harass an enemy, especially within occupied territory; a guerrilla.

adj.

• Of, relating to, or characteristic of a partisan or partisans.
• Devoted to or biased in support of a party, group, or cause: partisan politics.

em·bark

v., -barked, -bark·ing, -barks.

v.tr.

• To cause to board a vessel or aircraft: stopped to embark passengers.
• To enlist (a person or persons) or invest (capital) in an enterprise.

v.intr.

• To go aboard a vessel or aircraft, as at the start of a journey.
• To set out on a venture; commence: embark on a world tour.

blunt (blŭnt)
adj., blunt·er, blunt·est.

• Having a dull edge or end; not sharp.
• Abrupt and often disconcertingly frank in speech: “Onscreen, John Wayne was a blunt talker and straight shooter” (Time). See synonyms at gruff.
• Slow to understand or perceive; dull.
• Lacking in feeling; insensitive.

v.tr.

• To dull the edge of.
• To make less effective; weaken: blunting the criticism with a smile.

dol·drums
pl.n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb)

• • A period of stagnation or slump.
  • A period of depression or unhappy listlessness.
  • A region of the ocean near the equator, characterized by calms, light winds, or squalls.
  • The weather conditions characteristic of these regions of the ocean.

budg·et
n.

• • An itemized summary of estimated or intended expenditures for a given period along with proposals for financing them: submitted the annual budget to Congress.
  • A systematic plan for the expenditure of a usually fixed resource, such as money or time, during a given period: A new car will not be part of our budget this year.
  • The total sum of money allocated for a particular purpose or period of time: a project with an annual budget of five million dollars.
• A stock or collection with definite limits: “his budget of general knowledge” (William Hazlitt).
• Appalachian Mountains. A wallet or small pouch.

v.tr.

• To plan in advance the expenditure of: needed help budgeting our income; budgeted my time wisely.
• To enter or account for in a budget: forgot to budget the car payments.

v.intr.
To make or use a budget.
adj.

• Of or relating to a budget: budget items approved by Congress.
• Appropriate for a restricted budget; inexpensive: a budget car; budget meals

co·los·sal
adj.
Of a size, extent, or degree that elicits awe or taxes belief; immense. See synonyms at enormous.

grease (grēs)
n.

• Soft or melted animal fat, especially after rendering.
• A thick oil or viscous substance, especially when used as a lubricant.
• • The oily substance present in raw wool; suint.
  • Raw wool that has not been cleansed of this oily substance.
• Slang. Something, such as money or influence, that facilitates the attainment of an object or a desire: accepted some grease to fix the outcome of the race.

tr.v., greased, greas·ing, greas·es. (grēs, grēz)

• To coat, smear, or soil with grease: greased the pie pan.
• To lubricate with grease.
• To facilitate the progress of.
• Slang. To kill. See Regional Note at greasy.

suf·fo·cate

v.tr.

• To kill or destroy by preventing access of air or oxygen.
• To impair the respiration of; asphyxiate.
• To cause discomfort to by or as if by cutting off the supply of fresh air.
• To suppress the development, imagination, or creativity of; stifle: “The rigid formality of the place suffocated her” (Thackeray).

v.intr.

• To die from lack of air or oxygen; be asphyxiated.
• To feel discomfort from lack of fresh air.
• To become or feel suppressed; be stifled.

bleak1 (blēk)
adj., bleak·er, bleak·est.

• • Gloomy and somber: “Life in the Aran Islands has always been bleak and difficult” (John Millington Synge).
  • Providing no encouragement; depressing: a bleak prospect.
• Cold and cutting; raw: bleak winds of the North Atlantic.
• Exposed to the elements; unsheltered and barren: the bleak, treeless regions of the high Andes.

saavedroUID: 2423190

这是什么？？？    没有问题了？？？

lintelleUID: 2297267

的确没有。aw不是在讨论他们不了解美国时事热点，美国人的思考方式吗，我正寻思找个方式带大家多做阅读，同时尝试以美国人的方式思考社会。这些都是实验帖子。