Top Chef's Tom Colicchio On Women, Cuisine, and Social Justice

I sometimes think about cancelling cable to save money and brain cells. Unfortunately there are a few shows on cable that make this a really hard plan for me to implement, Battlestar Galactica, The Colbert Report, Project Runway, and Top Chef chief among them. As you may have heard by now (spoiler alert) Stephanie won Top Chef on Wednesday night, making her the first woman in four seasons to do so. Throughout the season, the female contestants never let us forget about the boys club that exists not just within the show's history but in restaurant culture generally. "It would be so great to have a woman win this season," they would say. "It would be so cool to have three women in the finals."

Tom Colicchio, one of the show's judges, blogs about the dearth of women in professional kitchens and why Stephanie's win is significant (skip to page four for the quoted bits):

It used to be for lack of opportunity, but I don’t think that still applies today. None of the great American chefs (or at least not the ones I respect) have a glass ceiling in their restaurants. Quite the opposite: We like to hire women because they work hard without any of the competitive, macho bulls**t you often see among their male counterparts. The women I’ve hired help each other, don’t jockey for position, and work until they drop. So if the opportunities for advancement that make up the early part of a top chef’s career are there, why aren’t women availing themselves of them?

Because the perception of opportunity, on the part of women themselves, hasn’t kept pace. Women are reluctant to enter the culinary world because they believe (and this is not unjustified) that a cooking career is incompatible with raising children, which leaves those of us who want to hire, promote, and mentor women with a slimmer field to choose from than we’d like. And to an extent, they're right: The bottom line is our society does not yet provide women in the workplace with the type of social supports, like high-quality subsidized child care or extended parental leave, that allows them to fully go for it, and the impact this has on the scope and depth of a career is profound. Right or wrong, men plunge into their careers without much thought about how they’ll navigate the work/family balance. They assume someone -- spouse, parent, paid caregiver -- will materialize to take care of it (and usually someone does.) This one assumption opens up an entire world of possibility to a young person in a way that can’t be overstated. Ask yourself how many female Ferran Adrias, Thomas Kellers, or Joel Robuchons have chosen a different path -- say, catering or opening a bakeshop -- because it seems more family friendly? These may be great career choices, but they aren’t the breeding grounds of culinary legend.

So yeah, some of this seems oversimplified to me. Surely it isn't the case that all women want babies and therefore they don't become chefs. And the whole "women play nicer than men" bit is naive. But the lack of social supports for parents, gendered expectations about who ought to be doing the nitty gritty of parenting, and the effect those factors have on career self-selection and career success sound pretty well grounded to me.

I haven't found that level of macroawareness on network yet. So the cable stays for now.

If You're Getting Your Financial Advice From Cosmo, Just Stop.

The latest issue of Bitch (No. 40, the Genesis issue) carries a piece by Latoya Peterson on the difference in the financial advice doled out by mainstream men's magazines as compared with mainstream women's mags. The article isn't online yet, you'll have to check it out yourself at the bookstore or library.

Peterson observes that women's mags assume their readers just haaaate thinking about money. I mean, ew! right? Instead, they focus on things women can buy with their money. Maybe on bargains, maybe on designer splurges, but Marie Claire seems to think the purpose of money is to spend it clothing and accessories for yourself, and not for longterm stability or goal attainment. Maxim, juvenile as it may be in other respects, interviews financial authors, provides investment (rather than merely saving-and-spending) advice, and career development insights.

There are bright spots out there. Peterson mentions emerging publications aimed at female entrepreneurs like Pink and BeE, and established Black-targeted magazines like Essence, which do a better job addressing money matters by assuming that women have financial needs that go beyond mere retail. But we can put "does a crap job at financial education" on my list of issues with mainstream women's mags.

On Presidential Wealth, and Federal Tax Policy, and The Columnist Who Cried Hypocrisy

It's presidential campaign season, which means it's once again time for largely innumerate journalists to read the tea leaves of candidates' financial disclosures in hopes of finding something--anything!--juicy enough to hold their largely innumerate readers' attention. Look, here's some dirt on Barack Obama's stash o' cash! And here's a peek behind John McCain's financial curtain! I'm not sure why anyone thinks this is a useful exercise. What value do we take from this armchair analysis, anyway?

One, we confirm that the candidates are far richer than most of us are. Just like pretty much every other person ever elected to national office. Wealth and power are strongly correlated, no surprise there. We don't learn with much specificity at all just how much richer than the average American they are; each category of assets is disclosed by a range (say, $1million to $5million) instead of with specificity. Add up the low end of each range and you get a very different picture than if you add up the high end of that range. So either specificity is not important, in which case we learn what we already knew (to quote Dave Chappelle's Rick James bit, "I'm rich, bitch!"), or specificity is important, in which case we don't get it because of how the disclosures are structured.

Two, we learn whether a candidate is invested in nasty, earth destroying, human rights abusing companies, either with individual stocks of through mutual funds. OK, that's interesting, and certainly juicy in a wonk-meets-US Weekly sort of a way. I like to judge people as much as the next opinionista. But precisely what that tells us in the policy dimension is unclear-- for example, both Obama and McCain have recently sold off funds that include companies doing business in Sudan. That doesn't tell us how their administration would address Darfur. Maybe it tells us they're interested in divestiture as one of many tools for political pressure and social change, and that they'll use the office of the president to stop the violence and to get the truth and reconciliation ball rolling; maybe it just tells us they don't want to get asked about Darfur on the campaign trail because genocide is so damn depressing and embarrassingly enough they aren't planning on doing anything about it. Regardless of what a candidate's financial disclosure says, people of good conscience should be asking the candidates "How would you use the resources and power of the United States to stop genocide, in Darfur and elsewhere?" No one gets a pass on genocide, for pete's sake. But financial disclosures don't provide us with a deeper way of asking that question.

That's about it, so far as I can see.

Tom Middleton, however, seems to believe we can add a third item to the list: Oh noes, the tax-and-spend liberal invests in tax-free accounts! The hypocrisy! The humanity! The humocrisy! To the pillory with him!

Here's the scoop. At the end of 2007, Obama (or the Obamas; it's not clear from the article whether the account is joint) has between $1m at $5m in the Northern Municipal Money Market Fund.* It's his largest investment account, and because it includes assets like municipal bonds, it's largely tax free. Those types of investments are also some of the lowest-risk funds out there, which is just possibly maybe the tiniest bit relevant, considering the Obamas did not grow up wealthy, did not inherit or marry wealth, have in fact only come by most of their wealth relatively recently, and didn't even pay off their student loans until the royalties on his bestsellers hit their bank account, so possibly there's some element of wanting to play it real safe-like. Pop-psych notwithstanding, given the fact that Obama has said he would propose various "tax increases" (or, in less biased language, stop exempting certain types of income from taxes for certain high-income individuals), does his investment in tax-free funds present an appearance of hypocrisy? What a profoundly stupid question, thank you for asking, Tom. No, it does not. Here's why.

In the scheme of things, tax-free or tax-advantaged municipal investments (typically for physical infrastructure, like roads and bridges, or institutional infrastructure like schools, or for budget-balancing or debt repayment) are the types of investments that are socially beneficial. When a city or county can't afford these types of investments or expenses on their own, they turn to bonding, and in order to get people to buy the low-yield bonds instead of higher-potential stocks or mutual funds, government uses the carrot of tax incentives. It is responsible social policy to incentivize desirable behavior.

If Obama were proposing to begin taxing income from bonds, notes, and the like then yes, that would be hypocritical. But Middleton (and others who have jumped on the imaginary hypocrisy wagon train) is confusing apples with oranges despite the fact that they look, smell, feel, and taste very different. It's not his fault. Some conservatives have been brainwashed into believing that a tax is a tax is a tax. Those are not the people I want in charge of anything. Those people do not understand, or they willfully ignore, both nuance and logic, and they care only about scoring cheap points with other people who do not understand, or who wilfully ignore, both nuance and logic. Middleton implies that in order to be logically consistent, a person who wants to eliminate one tax exemption must work to eliminate all tax exemptions, lest they be a hypocrite. That's the definition of a logical fallacy. It's equivalent to saying that someone who wants to raise school district taxes must want to tax all the money in your 401(k) and Roth IRA, too. It's just a fantastically ill-conceived statement.

Obama's proposal to stop exempting high earners from paying their fair share of a 12.4% Social Security payroll tax (currently, income over $102,000/year is not subject to this tax) is a different animal entirely from rolling back the policy of not taxing income from bond investments. The former would proportionately spread the load among all taxpayers for a defined social program of general benefit; the latter would disincentive a socially useful incentive program to the point where bonding would no longer be a viable method of public financing, and would push money to a general fund with no guarantee of social benefit. Apples, meet oranges.

And underlying all of this is an idea that progressive values and a desire to strengthen the social safety net carries with it an obligation to give the government as much money as possible. Wrong for two reasons. First of all, I'm not especially interested in maximizing my tax exposure under the current regime given that something approaching half of all revnues paid fund militarism and fearmongering. Second of all, and this is especially so for those of us who do not have million dollar investment accounts, there is no social safety net. Not really, nothing beyond the kindness of other people, and the one you are able to create for yourself. It would be great if there were, but until that day shows up, there's no conflict between progressive politics and tax-advantaged investing.

Go ahead and hate on Obama's Social Security tax proposal; go ahead and hate on the failure to tax bond income. (I am not going to waste my time hating on either, because they both make a great deal of sense to me.) But do it honestly, and make sure your criticisms pass the smell test.

* I'm working from the article because I can't find his most recent financial disclosure online in my quick googling, and therefore can't verify whether this is all correct as Middleton reported.

Quick Hits Tuesday 10 June 08

Where have I been? If only I could remember. It's been a whirlwind of work, homefixing, getting sick and getting better. But I'm back, and it's Tuesday, which means it's time for another linkalicious roundup.

Queercents interviews trans activist Donna Rose for its Ten Money Questions feature. Rose observes, "Finances play a huge role in activism. In fact, I could argue that activism is as much about money as it is about creating change. The sad fact of the world is that things "cost", so to be able to travel, to be able to make the proper connections, to be able to hire staff, publish materials, pay for the day-to-day expenses of doing business – it all takes money."

A roundup of financial programs for single moms at Personal Finance Hacks.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act prevents employers for firing a woman because she has had an abortion.

Breaking: Women Increasingly Choose Dead End Jobs Over Dead End Relationships. Via The Onion

Many interesting comments when Feministe asks for input on a feminist approach to economic justice. I hate to spoil the ending, but it's sprawling, complicated, contentious, and no one has the answer. Correlation and causation are confused, as are individual versus systemic problems underlying the uber-problem of poverty, but if you're in the mood for thinking hard this is not a bad thread to peruse. See also Too Poor To Parent, an Alternet excerpt on the racially disparate rates at which children are placed into foster care. Note to self: check the full article out in the Spring Ms. Magazine.

Question 1: Are you investing for retirement. I hope so. Question 2: Are you investing aggressively enough? To wit: "Controlling for age, income and education, the study concluded that women choose more conservative investment strategies, and that this is the primary reason why women can expect to have less retirement savings than men. The effect is compounded because women make less, retire earlier and live longer than men." Women are socialized to be more risk averse than men, but they are precisely the group that most needs those higher returns. It's only complicated if you make it complicated, I promise.

Same-sex spouses can't have spousal IRAs. Not even if they're legally married, because IRAs of all stripes are governed by federal law, and the feds don't recognize same-sex marriage, and the applicable federal law was written by haters. Drat it, DOMA! Via Ms. Micah.

Reappropriate notes that "manimony" (a stupid, stupid word made up by someone with adspace to sell, meaning alimony paid by a woman to her former husband) is on the rise. I'd add that alimony, as distinct from temporary spousal support or child support, is increasingly outdated and increasingly disfavored by the courts, but to the extent that it's still being granted to anyone, it's only fair.

File under: "Pretty privilege, teeth". Via Freakonomics.

More On The Pay Cut: Planning For A Long-Term Job Change

We all know people, or at least stories about people, who leave their lucrative jobs to follow their hearts, making less money but being far happier in the long run. In my last post, I talked about the fact that I was considering applying for a job that would involve taking a pay cut for a couple of years, but that would give me more flexibility down the road. No big updates on that job yet. I applied, and I have already been contacted by the person doing the hiring, who told me he was glad I'd reapplied and that he'd be in touch in July when he's ready to start scheduling interviews. So that's a good sign. I got so excited thinking about this job, and what it could mean for me, that I decided I should apply for a few more similar positions, just in case this one didn't come through. Eggs in multiple baskets, etc.

But what is the long-term game plan? It's my career, I should be thinking about this over the long haul, not just the couple of years this job would last. In talking to one of my recommenders for this job, my dirty little secret came out. I want to be a law professor. Eep! I said it. Low(er) pay, long hours, constant pressure to publish, those few horrid and overly entitled law students who can't be bothered to show up to your class but have time to bitch during your office hours when their grades are too low. What's not to love about that? Lots, honestly, but for me those aspects are outweighed by the facts that I love to read and write about legal theory, I love teaching students who are engaged with the material, and I love (and miss) the intellectual stimulation of a college campus. I think about my life as a lawyer and I think, "this will be worth it when I can retire early." I think about life as a post-tenure professor and I think, "so long as I am in good health, why would I want to retire?" That's a good sign about the direction I'd be happiest with in my career.

PF advice tends to assume that unless she screws it up or the economy goes to hell, a person's income will trend upward over her working life. That right out of school, you won't be making very much, but that economic growth and promotions and salary negotiations will gradually improve your situation. I'm looking at the opposite situation, in which my salary just out of school is really high, but falls sharply a few years out as my career path shifts. By the numbers, this choice is idiotic. As a human being with an emotional life not denominated by dollars, it's a wrinkle, but one that has workarounds.

So as I am thinking about this job change, and the job changes I hope to make down the road, two questions are at the top of my mind. First, what can I do to give myself the best possible set of credentials to go on the teaching market in three years? And second, what can I do now, as a high income earner, to improve my financial situation and ease the transition to a permanently lower paying job for which I may need to be geographically flexible?