Macro N Cheese

Recently our friend Bill Black introduced us to June Carbone. He suggested she could tell us how the job guarantee fits into cutting edge research on the family. June holds the Robina Chair in Law, Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota Law School and writes about the intersection of family, the economy, and politics.  In this episode, June takes Steve through the evolution of the American family as it transitioned to meet the economic needs of modern society. She says what excites her is not so much what things are, but why they change. When the US was founded, it was an agricultural society. The foundation of the colonial era family was the farm, owned and controlled by men and primarily a self-contained unit.  Industrialization and urbanization disrupted the system. The entire economy became dramatically more insecure, with boom-bust economic cycles. Women are no longer helping in the fields. They are the moral centers of the family. What's their job? Well, we think of it as sp