2025-12-26 20:00:00
似乎越来越多的年轻美国女性想要离开美国。11月的一项盖洛普民意调查发现，15至44岁的美国女性中有40%表示，如果有机会，她们会永久移居国外。这一比例自2014年以来上升了10倍，而且与其他美国人群体或其它发达国家的年轻女性不同。这些女性想要离开美国，部分原因可能与唐纳德·特朗普有关。盖洛普发现，这一趋势始于2016年夏天，即特朗普成为共和党总统候选人之后。在拜登总统任内，这一趋势继续上升，但支持国家领导的女性与不支持的女性之间，对离开美国的渴望存在25个百分点的差距。这表明，摆脱特朗普的影响在某种程度上是这些女性想要移居国外的诱因之一。
然而，想要离开美国的冲动有时也表现为看似与政治无关的形式。最近一篇BBC文章提到，一位31岁的女性在2021年从洛杉矶搬到里斯本。她说：“美国的工作与生活平衡并不强，我想要一个节奏不同、文化不同的地方，学习一门新语言。”在葡萄牙，她感觉“又找回了完整的自己”。的确，谁不想拥有比美国更好的工作与生活平衡？谁不想拥有比美国更完善的福利保障？在美国，人们普遍认为一切都要靠自己努力获得，包括育儿和医疗保障，而在其他国家，这些被视为政府应保障的基本人权。如今，育儿成本高昂，常常让至少一位家长的收入被消耗殆尽，这导致许多女性不得不退出职场。而产假政策很少被强制规定，白宫发言人卡罗琳·利维特甚至大肆宣扬她生完孩子三天后就重返工作岗位。美国的孕产妇死亡率是所有高收入国家中最高的，而且这种情况已经持续很久了。此外，随着堕胎权被推翻，女性在怀孕后若不想继续妊娠，却难以在安全合法的环境下做出选择。
因此，人们不禁会想：为什么不干脆离开？去一个不需要在工作和育儿之间做出选择的地方，一个可以摆脱资本主义压力和家庭生活负担的地方，一个既能生孩子又能有时间陪伴孩子的地方？
我们经常将逃离美国及其薄弱的社会保障体系视为一种解放和进步的行为，仿佛离开美国就能像詹姆斯·鲍德温那样在巴黎找到自由。然而，逃离工作与生活失衡的幻想在当代美国流行文化中却有着更黑暗的回响。从这个角度来看，逃离美国的幻想与传统妻子（trad wife）的幻想惊人地相似。
传统妻子的网络影响者已成为社交媒体上最热门的讨论对象之一，他们的内容既美观又具有政治争议性。传统妻子们分享她们作为全职妻子和母亲的生活，大多数受欢迎的创作者身材苗条、外表传统漂亮，她们会拍摄自己亲手为孩子制作最爱的麦片，甚至在阳光明媚的厨房里浓妆艳抹。更有争议的是，许多自称传统妻子的创作者提倡按照他们所谓的圣经原则生活，顺从丈夫，并思考女性不参与职场生活会有多好。
传统妻子的幻想与逃离美国的幻想一样，自2016年开始流行，当时传统妻子的原型人物Alena Kate Pettitt出版了她的第一本书《Ladies Like Us》。2020年，这些影响者的受欢迎程度从小众走向主流，因为居家的人群开始寻找方式美化并向往家庭生活的琐碎。
虽然传统妻子的幻想中包含对男性作为家庭唯一决策者的反对，但大多数女性却被她们所呈现的“平静、放松的生活方式”所吸引——一种早晨有足够时间亲手做麦片的美好生活。这种幻想的一部分是，女性可以在照顾孩子的同时，同时追求高薪职业。最成功的传统妻子影响者甚至能赚到足以购买昂贵电器的钱。这意味着，传统妻子的幻想与逃离美国的幻想一样，都是女性试图摆脱美国资本主义对她们的束缚。但两者之间有一个关键区别：对传统妻子来说，家庭和工作其实是同一件事。她的家庭就是她的工作，她的艺术，她的审美劳动。
在反女性主义的背景下，女性逃离美国的幻想和传统妻子的幻想都是一种逃避现实的方式。它们都试图解决美国资本主义对女性的双重束缚，即既要工作又要照顾家庭，而这两者往往相互冲突。这些幻想如今成为女性最普遍和强烈的幻想之一。圣诞电影产业显然意识到了这一点，因此在这一类型的电影中，对不满的城市职业女性来说，可能的两个幸福结局是：回到家乡，或成为某个宁静欧洲小国的王室成员。
自2016年“Access Hollywood”录音带发布后，美国经历了九年的动荡。特朗普当选总统后，女性在“Me Too”运动中爆发了强烈的抗议，七年后的今天，这种愤怒仍在持续。三年前，特朗普任命的最高法院大法官推翻了“罗伊诉韦德案”，剥夺了女性的联邦堕胎权。两年后，特朗普因性侵E. Jean Carroll被定罪，但一年后，他还是赢得了连任。
美国女性多年来积极参与了激烈的女权主义活动，她们起诉州政府和联邦政府，揭露雇主的不当行为并起诉他们，分享自己最私密的骚扰、虐待和歧视经历，甚至因此失去了工作。然而，这些努力似乎并未带来明显的成果。如今，在“Me Too”运动的反扑持续进行中，女性所探索的幻想更多地体现了一种疲惫的妥协——一种选择退出的幻想。
为什么不去想象离开职场？为什么不去想象离开家乡？如果现状无法改变，我们又何必继续战斗？如果这场斗争毫无意义，为什么不干脆退出战场？
Young American women, it seems, want out of America. A Gallup poll in November found that 40 percent of US women ages 15 to 44 say they would move abroad permanently if they had the opportunity. That percentage is up 10 times since 2014, and it is shared by neither other American demographic groups nor young women in other developed economies.
These women seem to want to leave at least in part because of Donald Trump. Gallup found that this trend began in summer 2016, shortly after Trump became the Republican nominee for president. It continued to climb during the Biden presidency, but there’s a 25-point gap in the desire to leave between those who approve of the country’s leadership and those who don’t. That suggests that getting away from Trump plays at least some role in the appeal of the fantasy of expatriating.
But the desire to leave America can also express itself in ways that sound, at first glance, apolitical.
A recent BBC article about the trend spoke to a 31-year-old who decided to move from LA to Lisbon in 2021. “There’s not a strong work-life balance in the US,” she said. “I wanted to live somewhere with a different pace, different cultures, and learn a new language.” In Portugal, she says, she feels “more like a whole person again.”
Well, sure: Who hasn’t wanted a better work-life balance than the one the US offers? Who hasn’t wanted more than a minimal social safety net; a capitalist hustle culture; and a guiding belief that everything must be earned, including things like child care and health insurance, which in other countries are considered human rights that the government will take care of for you?
It’s the child care, it seems, that is increasingly the last straw for women — the way it’s becoming both more compulsory and more difficult to do.
In the same article, the BBC quoted a 34-year-old who moved from the US to Uruguay after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. “I have children, and I don’t plan on having more, but the increasing governance of women’s bodies terrified me,” she said. She added, “People don’t realise how far behind the US is on maternal care, parental leave, and healthcare, until they leave the country.”
America is a hostile country if you’re having children. Child care is so expensive that it can eat up the salary of at least one parent, which frequently leads to women leaving the workforce to take care of their children. Parental leave is rarely mandated: Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has made much of her decision to go back to work three days after giving birth. We have the highest maternal mortality rate of any high-income country, and we have for a long time. And if, for all these reasons and many others, you get pregnant and you find that you’d prefer not to be, it’s become increasingly difficult to act on that choice in a safe and legal way.
So a person might wonder: Why not simply leave? Go somewhere that doesn’t make you choose between work and children, somewhere you can leave behind both the stresses of capitalism and the pressures of family life. Somewhere you can have kids and also afford to spend time with them.
We often talk about the idea of fleeing America and its feeble social safety net as a liberating, progressive act, as though by leaving the US a person has the chance to become James Baldwin in Paris. But the idea of escaping the work-life balance trap has darker echoes in contemporary American pop culture. When I think of the fantasy of the ex-pat through this lens, it comes to look strikingly similar to the fantasy of the trad wife.
Trad wife influencers have become some of the most discussed figures on social media, hitting the viral sweet spot of content that is both aesthetically soothing and politically inflammatory.
Trad wives post online about their lives as stay-at-home wives and mothers. Most of the popular ones are thin and conventionally pretty, and they post videos of themselves making their children’s favorite cereal from scratch, wearing full makeup in sun-drenched kitchens. More controversially, many creators who identify as trad wives promote the idea of living according to what they call Biblical principles, submitting to their husbands, and musing over how much better life is when women are out of the workplace.
Trad wife influencers, like the ex-pat fantasy, started trending up in 2016, when the prototype, Alena Kate Pettitt, published her first book, Ladies Like Us. In 2020, the popularity of these influencers crossed from niche to mainstream, as a population confined to their homes looked for ways to start romanticizing domestic drudgery.
The political stuff attracts attention, but it’s the aesthetic of the domestic work made beautiful and aspirational that maintains an audience. A 2025 study from King’s College London found that while only 7 percent of female viewers of trad wife videos approved of the idea of men as sole household decision makers, 79 percent were attracted to the “calm, relaxed lifestyle” trad wives appear to maintain — a life where you have enough time in the morning to whip up a scratch-made batch of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.
Part of the trad wife fantasy is the idea that while you get to spend unlimited time with your children, you are simultaneously pursuing a lucrative career. The most successful of the trad wife influencers can make astonishing amounts of money, enough to pay for those expensive Aga stoves. This means that the trad wife of fantasy is a woman who has escaped the trap of trying to have both family and work in the US, just like the ex-pat of fantasy. But there’s a key difference: For the trad wife, family and work are the same thing. Her family is her work, her art, her aesthetic labor.
Much has been written already about the escapism of the romantasy trend, and why it’s grown as a way to deal with the horrors uncovered by Me Too and its long, vicious backlash. Romantasy, as Daniel Yadin wrote for the Drift, allows its presumed-female readers the fantasy of opting out of unpredictable and potentially violent human men and going for fairies or gentle blue aliens instead.
I have begun to read the fantasy of fleeing the US and the fantasy of the trad wife as versions of the same escapism, translated to motherhood. Both fantasies thwart the trap American capitalism lays for all its women. They are about finding a way to have a job and have a family, and not let either one ruin your life.
They are also among the most potent and widespread of the fantasies with which women are presented right now. The Christmas movie industrial complex must realize this, which is why the two happy endings possible for the discontented city career girls of the genre are to either move back to their hometowns or to become royalty in small but idyllic European countries.
It has been nine years now since the publication of the infamous Access Hollywood tape was followed swiftly by the election of Donald Trump. It has been seven years since the outrage over Trump’s election powered the ferocious rage of Me Too. It has been three years since Trump’s Supreme Court appointees led the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, taking away women’s federally mandated legal right to an abortion. It has been two years since Trump was found criminally liable for the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll, and one year since America went ahead and elected him for a second term anyway.
American women spent years in furious feminist activity. Women sued state governments and federal governments; they exposed their employers and sued them, too; they told their most private stories of harassment and abuse and discrimination, risking their careers and sometimes outright losing them.
All this they did — to, in the end, little apparent result. Now, as the backlash to Me Too continues to play out, the fantasies women are exploring are all about a kind of exhausted resignation — an opting out.
Why not imagine leaving the workforce? Why not imagine leaving home? There’s no way to win, a woman might think, if we stay as we are. So if the fight is pointless, why not simply walk off the battlefield?
2025-12-26 19:30:00
2025年6月21日，华盛顿州西雅图市。| AFP/Getty Images 拍摄的图片
这次选举充满分歧，一位经验丰富的温和派候选人与一位新兴的进步派候选人竞争这座大型民主城市市长职位。起初，这场选举似乎势均力敌，但最终进步派候选人凯蒂·威尔逊（Katie Wilson）以压倒性优势获胜。她的成功得益于对住房可负担性问题的持续关注，以及在社交媒体上巧妙运用短视频策略。有人可能会误以为这是关于马曼迪（Mamdani）在纽约市的选举，但其实我是在谈论即将就任的西雅图市长凯蒂·威尔逊。
这位43岁的政治新秀将在下个月开始任职。她与Today, Explained的客座主持人阿斯特德·赫尔顿（Astead Herndon）进行了访谈，讨论了她的社交媒体策略、为什么她认为“丰裕”（abundance）这一新兴政治理念本身不足以解决问题，以及美国其他著名的新市长。以下是访谈的节选，已根据长度和清晰度进行编辑。完整播客内容更丰富，因此请在Apple Podcasts、Pandora和Spotify等平台收听。
对于那些不熟悉你的人来说，你能谈谈你是如何走到今天这一步的吗？这场选举是如何发生的，又是如何赢得的？
今年的竞选过程非常激烈。一年前的今天，我完全没有想过要竞选任何公职，更不用说市长了。过去14年，我一直从事社区组织和联盟建设，领导一个名为“公共交通乘客联盟”的组织。今年3月，我决定参选。2月，我们举行了一次特别选举，以批准为新的社会住房开发商提供资金的来源。去年，这个社会住房开发商得到了选民的批准。今年，有一个公民倡议，旨在通过向富裕企业征税来资助该开发商。而现任市长则是反对该措施的代表人物，但该措施最终以压倒性票数通过。这让我意识到，现任市长与西雅图居民在住房可负担性等议题上的脱节。我认为这是一个可以填补的空白。在这一年里，大家普遍认为他将轻松连任，因为他成功建立了被视为赢得选举所必需的商业和劳工联盟。因此，我决定参选，并很快意识到这是一场更广泛变革的一部分，就像纽约市的马曼迪一样，反映了人们在高成本城市中面临的住房危机。
你提到与马曼迪的比较，这在很多地方都经常出现。我们应该将这视为民主党寻求意识形态和代际变革的胜利，还是两者兼有？
我认为这涉及多个方面。首先，住房可负担性问题确实是关键因素。疫情后，我们经历了高通胀，而在像西雅图这样的城市，不仅低收入家庭感受到压力，就连拥有稳定工作的中产阶级也感到难以维持生活。住房、育儿、食品杂货和餐饮等所有开销都变得非常昂贵。因此，我认为这是当前局势的重要组成部分。此外，还有本地因素，比如我们正在经历日益严重的无家可归问题。西雅图的无家可归率甚至高于我们所在的城市。这也是一个关键因素。当然，还有代际变化的因素，以及对特朗普当选的反应。这可能与代际转变有关，人们正在寻找一种新的、更勇敢的领导方式，以应对当前的挑战。过去一年，那种以交易为主的传统民主党政治显然未能满足人们的需求，因此人们正在寻找新的方向。
你提到，你认为这种转变离不开你和其他人对住房可负担性问题的持续关注。你过去一直从事社区组织工作，似乎你一直在与这些问题打交道。那么，我们如何定义“可负担性”问题？是否包括住房成本、医疗费用等？你认为目前真正困扰人们的因素是什么？
我认为这包括所有方面，但在像西雅图这样的城市，住房成本是核心问题，也是政府可以采取行动改善的关键领域。我20年前搬到西雅图，我和丈夫带着行李箱乘坐阿姆特拉克列车，找到一个可以租住400美元一个月的公寓，或者只是在别人的地下室里住。我们找到了立足之地。但如今，这样的故事已经不可能了。这是一种高压环境。我想到2004年，当时400美元的租金听起来很划算，但那时人们感受到的是一种巨大的压力，每天都在努力工作以支付基本生活费用。我认为住房危机正是这种压力的核心。在像西雅图这样的城市，住房成本的增长速度远超通货膨胀和工资增长。
你提到你们在竞选中使用了一则关于披萨价格高昂的广告。你能谈谈你是如何将社区组织的经验转化为市长竞选的，特别是这则广告吗？
这则披萨广告很有趣，因为我个人并不是一个社交媒体用户。因此，我必须学会使用社交媒体并出现在视频中，这对我来说是一个挑战，但我成功了……我们都是YouTuber了！大家要适应这一点。我认为这非常重要，也是我希望在市长办公室中继续推行的理念。我们要能够与公众进行诚实的对话，向他们解释政策。这不仅仅是口号，而是要真正回答问题：为什么披萨的价格这么高？这和住房成本有什么关系？我们需要把选民当作成年人来对待，相信他们能够理解问题，并用几分钟的视频简单明了地解释清楚。但事实上，几分钟的视频可以传达很多信息。我认为这种公众教育和与公众进行真实对话，解释我们面临的挑战及其原因和解决方案，是非常重要的。这也是我想要在市长办公室中继续推动的。
我们曾与埃扎·克莱因（Ezra Klein）讨论过他的书《丰裕》（Abundance），书中提出了一些与我们谈话中相似的观点。其中核心论点之一是，蓝色城市的民主党未能满足选民的需求，他们更注重程序或官僚主义，而不是实际解决问题。你对这个观点有什么看法？
克莱因特别提到住房问题，认为人们需要接受供应端的视角，或者房地产市场的角色，以增加住房供应。你是否经历了这样的转变，还是你一直就持这种观点？
我觉得这本书的一些主题在西雅图其实已经存在多年了。我们这里有一个城市左翼群体，他们基本上支持“丰裕”议程，特别是在住房方面，他们清楚地认识到土地使用和规划法规在抑制住房供应方面的作用。他们完全支持改变这些法规以及简化许可流程。这在西雅图已经是一个长期存在的议题。我认为，书中关于问题源于善意的自由派和进步派所设立的规则和法规的观点，虽然有一定道理，但也有局限性。我认为还有其他重要的因素影响着问题的产生。我希望能听到你详细说明这些因素，以及你如何将这些因素融入你的政治理念中。
书中一开始描述了2050年实现“丰裕”议程后的生活，听起来非常美好。其中提到人们现在有更多闲暇时间，因为生产力大幅提升，工作周缩短了。但当我读到这一点时，我立刻想到，为了实现这种生产力增长，未来25年里，社会动荡和阶级斗争将不可避免。因此，我认为他们的叙述中缺少了一种权力分析。如果他们只是想表达“我们应该做些什么”，那这没问题。但如果他们试图用这个故事来解释一切，那么显然有些东西被忽略了。
你认为民主党在全国范围内为何与选民之间存在如此大的距离？你认为他们可以从像你这样的竞选中吸取什么教训？
我认为这与我们之前讨论的很多因素有关。现任市长在竞选期间建立了一系列支持他连任的利益集团，但他没有意识到他的选民正在为房租和育儿费用发愁，也没有有效地与他们沟通。因此，我认为关键在于真正理解人们的需求，并以他们能够共鸣的方式进行沟通。同时，要描绘一个我们想要并能够共同实现的未来。这种愿景必须是真实的，而不是经过市场测试、焦点小组打磨的咨询语言。人们想要的是真诚和正直，以及清晰的愿景，而这无法用金钱买到。
The election was divisive, pitting an established moderate against an upstart progressive in the large, Democratic city. For a while it seemed like it would be close, but in the end the progressive won definitively, powered by a relentless focus on affordability and adept use of short-form video.
Mamdani? New York? You must be confused — I’m talking about Seattle mayor-elect Katie Wilson.
The 43-year-old political neophyte, whose term begins next month, joined Today, Explained guest host Astead Herndon to talk about her social media strategy, why she thinks the popular new political strategy known as abundance is insufficient on its own, and the other most famous new mayor in America.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Can we get a sense of how you arrived at this point, for those who are unfamiliar with you? How did this race come to be, and how did you win?
It’s been a wild ride this year. One year ago today I had absolutely no thought of running for any elected office, let alone mayor.
I’ve spent the last 14 years as a community organizer and coalition builder running an organization called the Transit Riders Union, and I jumped into this race in March. In February, we had a special election on approving a funding source for our new social housing developers. So we had this social housing developer in Seattle, which was approved by voters last year. And this year, there was a citizens’ initiative to enact a tax on wealthy corporations to fund that social housing developer. And our current mayor was kind of the face of the opposition campaign to that measure, which passed by a landslide in February.
So to me, that kind of showed that our current mayor was very out of touch with the challenges that Seattle residents are facing around affordability and specifically housing affordability. And I realized that there was a lane there.
I think coming into this year, everyone basically assumed that he was going to coast to reelection, because he’d been very successful at building the kind of institutional business-labor coalition that’s considered necessary to win an election in Seattle.
And so I jumped in and quickly realized that it was part of a larger moment, with Mamdani in New York City and the affordability crisis that people around the country, and especially in high-cost cities like Seattle, are facing today.
You mentioned the Mamdani comparison, which I know has happened frequently. Should we see this as a kind of win for Democrats seeking ideological change, generational change — or is it both?
I think there’s a lot of aspects to it. I think that the affordability crisis really is a big part of this. Coming out of the pandemic, we saw these high rates of inflation, and it’s gotten to the point where in cities like Seattle, it’s not just the lowest-income households that are feeling the pinch. People who have decent jobs, who consider themselves to be middle-class, are just looking around and saying, “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on in this city.”
Housing costs, child care costs, grocery costs, restaurant costs — everything is so expensive. And so I think that’s a really important part of the moment that we’re in.
There’s also local factors, and here in Seattle we have an escalating homelessness crisis. Our rates of unsheltered homelessness are just off the charts, even compared to our peer cities. And so that was also a factor here.
And then obviously there’s kind of a generational aspect to this, and there’s to some extent a reaction against Trump’s election. This is maybe related to the generational shift, where people are looking for a new, bolder kind of leadership that can meet the moment. There’s a certain kind of transactional establishment-Democratic Party politics that obviously failed to meet the moment last year that people are kind of reacting against, and looking for something new.
You mentioned that you think this doesn’t happen without the kind of focus that you and some others have put on the question of affordability. I wanted to go back to your history in community organizing. It seems as if you’ve been living with these issues for a long time.
How will we define the affordability issue in general? Are we talking housing costs, health care costs? What do you think is under the umbrella that is really pinching people right now?
It’s really all of the above, but I think in cities like Seattle, housing is really at the core, and it’s also at the core in terms of the levers that the government can pull to make things better.
I moved to Seattle over 20 years ago, and my husband and I rode the Amtrak with our stuff in boxes and found an apartment, or just a room in someone’s basement, that we could rent for $400 a month and got part-time jobs, and [we] kind of found our feet.
That kind of story is just not possible today. It’s this kind of pressure-cooker environment.
Yeah, I was thinking, $400. Great!
I mean, this was back in 2004, but there’s this sense of just immense pressure where you’re just hustling 24/7 just to pay your basic bills. And I think that the housing crisis is really kind of at the core of that. Again, in cities like Seattle where housing costs have risen much faster than inflation, much faster than wages.
I want to also ask about how you translate that into a campaign: Activating people as a “coalition of renters” — a term I’ve heard people use — and bringing folks to the ballot box is a little bit of a different thing.
One of the things we noticed was a campaign ad that you ran about a high cost of pizza. Can you tell me how you took your focus as a community organizer and translated it into the mayoral race? And specifically about that ad?
The pizza ad, I’ll say — it is funny because I’m totally not a social media person in my personal life at all. And so then having to become a social media person and be in videos was a little bit of a thing for me, but I did it and with some success …
We’re all YouTubers now! Get used to it.
I think it’s so important — and this is really something that I hope to carry into the mayor’s office — that we’re able to really have an honest conversation with the public where we’re educating people about policy. And it’s not just about slogans. It’s actually about, okay: Why is the cost of pizza so high? How is this related to housing costs? And we have to treat voters like adults and believe that they can actually understand things, and you need to make things simple enough that you can explain it in a few-minute video. But you can actually communicate quite a lot in a few-minute video.
I really think that that kind of public education and having a real conversation with the public about the challenges that we’re facing and why they exist and what the solutions are — I think that’s super important, and I think that that’s something that I really want to continue for the mayor’s office.
We talked to Ezra Klein about his book Abundance, and it made an argument that rings true to some of our conversation. One of its core points is that blue cities have not delivered for their constituents, and that they prioritize things like process or red tape over the kind of delivering that you’re talking about.
I wanted to know what you thought of that argument. He specifically makes one point in relation to housing, saying how people need to embrace the supply side, or the role of real-estate markets, to build new housing supply.
Is that a transition that you had to come to, or was that something that was natural to you to see?
I feel like some of the book’s themes are not at all new in Seattle for some years. We’ve had an urbanist left in Seattle that’s basically on board with the abundance agenda when it comes to housing, that really recognizes the role that zoning and land use laws have played in slowing housing production. And that [group] is 100 percent there on changing those laws and on permit reform. That’s something that has been in the air here for some time.
I do think that there are some limitations in the kind of desire to have this narrative around our problems, [that they exist] because well-meaning liberals, progressives put all these rules and regulations in place. I think there’s a lot of other big factors too that are also important.
I would love to hear you draw out what you think are some of the things that go beyond that, and the ways you try to shape your politics around other forces too.
They begin the book with this description of life in 2050 once the abundance agenda has been achieved. And it sounds great. And one of the things that they mentioned is that we have a lot more leisure time now. The work week has been shortened because productivity is so much higher. And when I got to that, I just immediately began thinking of the level of social upheaval and frankly, class struggle that would have to take place in the next quarter-century in order for major productivity gains to actually result in a shorter work week.
So I think there’s just a power analysis maybe that is a little bit missing from their narrative, which is fine if they’re just aiming to be like, “Here are a few things that we should do.” But if they’re pitching it as more of a story that explains everything, then I think that there’s definitely some things that are missing.
Why do you think national Democrats were at such distance from their own voters in the last year, and what do you think they should take from campaigns like yours?
I think it goes back to a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about. To use this mayoral election as that capsule, the incumbent mayor had kind of built all the interest groups around him who were going to support his reelection, but he didn’t realize that his constituents were worried about paying the rent or paying for their child care, and he wasn’t speaking to that effectively.
So I really think it’s about really just understanding where people are at and speaking in a way that resonates with them, and also painting a picture of a future that we want and that we can build together. And there needs to be this sense that you actually believe in it.
This is not just like, message-tested, focus group-tested, consultant speak, or whatever, that you’re putting out into the world, but it’s actually something that you believe in and that you feel yourself. People want that genuineness and that sense of integrity and vision, and that’s what wins. That’s something you can’t buy.
2025-12-26 19:00:00
2025年对求职者来说是自大萧条以来最糟糕的一年。LinkedIn作为美国职业人士的窗口，今年常常显得更像是一个延伸的团体心理治疗会，而非一个社交网络平台。人们在浏览时不断看到关于求职困难的抱怨，比如简历被AI筛选系统无声地过滤掉，或者雇主在面试中途“消失”不回复。那些在头像上挂着“#OpenToWork”绿色标志的用户，也纷纷诉苦，表示投递了数十甚至数百份简历却毫无收获。
关键要点：
一位用户写道：“在经历了近八个月的失业和持续的求职挣扎后，我决定接受Trader Joe’s的全职工作。”LinkedIn上的专业人士并非在夸大其词，2025年确实是自奥巴马担任总统以来最差的求职年份。在经济不确定性加剧的背景下，招聘速度降至过去十年最慢，不包括疫情初期。
目前，美国的就业增长几乎停滞，联邦储备局（Fed）甚至认为可能根本没有新增就业岗位。即使不考虑联邦政府的裁员，根据劳工统计局（BLS）的数据，自5月以来，美国每月仅新增约5万个工作岗位，这是自2010年以来最差的表现。而由于BLS难以准确计算企业初创和倒闭的影响，实际新增岗位可能比官方数据低6万左右。
然而，实际情况可能比这些数字更严峻。尽管经济总体增长健康，但就业市场却显得异常低迷。这主要是由于特朗普的政策影响，包括移民政策收紧和关税政策，导致某些依赖外籍劳工的行业难以招聘。例如，建筑行业今年几乎没有新增员工，而失业率却接近历史最低点，这可能与特朗普的驱逐政策有关。
此外，特朗普的关税政策也对制造业和批发零售业等产业造成冲击，导致整体就业增长放缓。虽然目前尚无法确定这些影响的具体程度，但经济学家普遍认为，关税在其中扮演了重要角色。同时，美联储对降息的谨慎态度也影响了企业的招聘意愿。
尽管如此，一些经济学家认为，这种招聘放缓更多是由于疫情后企业过度招聘，现在正在调整。他们指出，许多公司正在收紧招聘，以应对之前过度扩张带来的压力。
与此同时，人工智能（AI）也对就业市场产生了一定影响，尽管其影响尚未广泛显现。据咨询公司Challenger, Gray & Christmas的数据，AI被认为是今年约5.5万次裁员的原因之一。然而，这些裁员数量在整体经济中仍属较小，且部分企业可能只是用AI作为裁员的借口。
对于未来，虽然经济和就业市场尚未明显恶化，但一些迹象表明情况可能继续恶化。例如，非裔美国人的失业率上升可能成为劳动力市场恶化的早期信号。此外，企业对明年毕业生的招聘预期也不容乐观。
总之，如果你有工作，就紧紧抱住它；如果没有，就继续祈祷LinkedIn上的“神明”能为你带来转机。
There is no better window into the soul of America’s striving professional class than LinkedIn, a site that this year often seemed less like a networking platform than an extended group therapy session.
To doomscroll through it was to encounter one post after another about the barren landscape for job hunters — laments about resumes silently filtered out by AI-powered gatekeepers and employers ghosting candidates midway through their interview process. Users with little green “#OpenToWork” banners on their avatars — the cheery mark of the damned — commiserated about sending dozens if not hundreds of applications out into the ether without luck.
“After nearly eight months of unemployment and a nonstop corporate job search in this brutal job market, I’ve pivoted,” began one such note. “I’ve made a decision to take a full-time role at Trader Joe’s.”
The LinkedInners were not entirely imagining things: 2025 was by many measures the worst year to be looking for a job since Barack Obama was still in the Oval Office. Amid an atmosphere of economic uncertainty, hiring ground to its slowest pace in over a decade, excluding the first months of the pandemic. It was a tough time to find new employment whether you were a manufacturing worker, a 20-something just out of college, or one of the many “innovative project managers” or “skilled PR pros” who have frayed their nerves fruitlessly updating online resumes and refreshing their “top job picks for you” tab.
“If you need a new job right now — whether you’re a recent grad or have been unlucky enough to suffer a layoff — the market is bad,” Guy Berger, a workforce economist at Guild, told me. “Arguably not just bad, but terrible.”
US employment growth has been weak at best for most of this year — and possibly nonexistent, if you believe the Federal Reserve. Even if you set aside the federal workforce, which now has a smoking, DOGE-shaped crater in it, the US has added just 50,000 new jobs per month since May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That would be its worst stretch since 2010, aside from the early days of Covid-19. (With the federal cuts, we’re adding a paltry 17,000 a month.)
But the reality may be even grimmer than those official figures let on. Fed chair Jerome Powell has said that the government may actually be overstating its tally of new jobs by about 60,000 per month, because the BLS has had trouble accurately accounting for the impact of business startups and closures. We won’t know for sure until the agency releases revised data down the line, but for now, the upshot is that employers’ payrolls are either barely growing or outright shrinking.
Meanwhile, unemployment is rising — meaning an increasing number of people want work but can’t find it. The jobless rate hit 4.6 percent in November, up 0.6 percentage points since January.
That number is still reasonably low by historical standards, at least for now. But there’s another reason why life has seemed so tough on job seekers: For over two years, the US has been stuck in what economists describe as a “low-churn” rut, where employers are neither firing nor hiring very many workers.
This point has often been a matter of confusion, thanks in part to highly publicized mass job cuts at tech giants, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Intel, as well as other major companies like UPS. But despite occasional news stories suggesting otherwise, layoffs are up just slightly from 2024 nationwide, and are still below the levels of 2019, when the labor market was widely seen as in great shape, according to the federal Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey.
The problem, rather, is that companies just aren’t making a lot of job offers these days. This year, the nationwide hiring rate — which essentially measures how fast employers are growing headcount — eased to its slowest speed since the post-Great Recession malaise of 2013, based on a six-month rolling average.
The unemployment rate has risen faster among young college graduates than it has for young workers without a bachelor’s degree.
That’s created a two-tier economy of sorts. If you have a job, things aren’t so bad. Some people might feel a bit stuck — which is why the phrase “job hugging” took off this year — but the median American who stayed put at their workplace saw their wages grow by 3.8 percent this year, solidly above the rate of inflation, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
But if you don’t have a job? Then there’s a decent chance you’ll be locked out in the cold for a bit. Imagine a nightclub where the bouncer is only letting in VIPs, not many people are leaving the building, and the line outside is gradually getting longer as more partiers get stuck outside the velvet rope. Then you’ll get the picture.
“The labor market always feels different for those who have a job versus those who don’t,” said economist Jed Kolko, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “But the gap is much bigger than usual.”
The vast majority of the hiring rate’s decline took place between 2022 and mid-2024. This year, it slipped just slightly more, with the six-month average dropping to 3.3 percent in October from 3.4 percent in January. But as the period of sluggish hiring has stretched on, more and more people are starting to feel its pinch, “The effect of it is cumulative,” Kolko said.
The environment has been more unusually rough for some groups than others, which may help explain the mood among professionals on LinkedIn in particular. The unemployment rate has risen faster among young college graduates, for instance, than it has for young workers without a bachelor’s degree, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and for the former now looks similar to 2013. As of the third quarter of this year, the unemployment rate for Americans with an advanced degree averaged its highest in at least a decade (once again, excluding the early pandemic months). Several sectors heavy on white-collar workers — information (which covers the big tech companies announcing layoffs), financial activities, and professional and business services — have all lost jobs over the past six months.
But the increasingly tough hiring environment has hit blue-collar workers too. The manufacturing industry has been shedding jobs outright, and unemployment is jumping faster in the sector than in the economy as a whole. The unemployment rate among Black Americans, who are less likely than average to have a college degree, has shot up rapidly.
Some indicators do paint a slightly less dire picture for job hunters than the raw hiring rate. For instance, the share of unemployed workers who find jobs each month is about on par with late 2016. A handful of specific industries are still in perfectly fine shape, too. Health care and private education have added 345,000 jobs over the past half year, essentially making them responsible for all net job growth in the economy. As usual, it’s not a bad time to be in medicine.
Still, the consensus among economists seems to be that the job market is relatively fallow, especially compared to the giddy post-COVID hiring boom. It’s a somewhat odd situation, given that economic growth has been pretty healthy. (Gross domestic product just clocked its best quarter since late 2023.) But there are several potential causes for the dip, at least some of which can be traced back to our current president.
Almost every expert who spoke with Vox said that Trump’s immigration crackdown has weighed on overall job growth, since some industries that traditionally rely heavily on nonnative workers are seemingly struggling to hire. Take construction. The sector has barely added employees this year, and the unemployment rate among America’s hardhats is near rock bottom. That suggests contractors may be straining to find hands amid the White House’s deportation push.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s analytics, told me that “even if the economy was humming along, we’d only be creating 50,000 to 75,000 jobs a month” thanks to the lack of immigrant workers. There simply would not be enough new labor supply to add more.
Employers are predicting an even worse hiring environment for next year’s class of college grads.
Of course, we’re likely creating far fewer jobs than that right now according to the Fed, and unemployment for native-born workers has been rising, which suggests immigration can’t be the whole story.
Many economists believe Trump’s tariffs are also partly at fault. Proving it is difficult though, in part because growth has held up so far despite Trump’s assault on the global trade system as we know it. But they note that tariff-exposed industries like manufacturing and wholesaling have struggled, while overall job creation dove almost immediately after Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April. The stop and start early rollout of the tariffs may have also delayed some of their impact until later in the year.
“We’ll need more careful research to untangle it all, but it seems very likely that a nontrivial portion of the slowdown is due to tariffs,” said Adam Ozimek, the chief economist at Economic Innovation Group, a Washington, DC think tank. He also suggested that the Fed’s caution about cutting interest rates has weighed on hiring.
The more general sense of upheaval under Trump has also made some executives gun-shy about hiring. Back in May, about 40 percent of companies surveyed by the Atlanta Fed said that they were scaling back their hiring plans due to uncertainty around government policy. Tariffs were by far the most frequently cited factor, but federal spending, monetary policy, and regulations also came up. (Which isn’t shocking — just consider all the renewables businesses that have had to rip up their plans this year as the administration has gone to war on the industry.)
Others are a bit less apt to blame Trump’s policies. Kolko, a former Biden official, played down the impact of tariffs, noting that most of the decline in the hiring rate took place well before the administration’s trade war. Instead, he argues that companies are more likely just tightening their belts after overhiring as the economy reopened from Covid. At the time, workers were scarce and companies were desperate to pin down as many as possible.
“You actually need a period of below-normal hiring if you’re compensating for a period of overhiring,” he said.
Finally, there’s the role of the machines, which is still being hotly debated. Companies have cited artificial intelligence as a factor in about 55,000 layoffs this year, according to the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That’s a relatively small number in the scheme of the economy, and it’s unclear how many of those firms are simply gesturing at the technology as a way to justify actions they would have taken anyway. Economists, for their part, have yet to find any evidence that AI has had a broad impact on the job market yet, despite many of the more dire predictions about the imminent extinction of white collar labor.
Still, a recent draft paper by Stanford University economists suggests that the rise of large language models has crimped entry-level hiring in certain fields, such as computer coding and marketing. Chatbots aren’t taking over the economy yet, but there’s a chance they’ve begun narrowing the base of the corporate funnel.
And what about next year? It’s not clear the economy or job market are getting rapidly worse, but there are some caution signs. The rising Black unemployment rate may be a leading indicator of deterioration in the labor market. Employers are predicting an even worse hiring environment for next year’s class of college grads. The share of companies saying they plan to hire in the coming months has barely budged, according to a recent ManpowerGroup survey of 6,000 businesses.
In short, if you’ve got a job, keep hugging it. And if not, keep praying to the LinkedIn gods that something pops up.
2025-12-25 21:21:07
编辑注：12月25日早上8点（东部时间）：本文是为了节日季重新发布的。它最初于2020年发表。尽管如今“圣诞节提前”（Christmas creep）现象已从万圣节开始，但真正的圣诞节季节实际上从圣诞节当天（12月25日）才开始。这是基督教传统中“12天圣诞节”的起始日，也是那首让人耳熟能详的圣诞颂歌的名称来源。以下是关于这首歌和这个节日的一些你可能不知道的事情。
“12天圣诞节”是基督教神学中一个时间段，标志着耶稣诞生与三博士到来之间的时期。它从12月25日（圣诞节）开始，到1月6日（显现节，有时也称为三王节）结束。在圣诞节前四周的星期日开始的四个星期被称为“将临期”（Advent），从圣诞节前四周的星期日开始，到12月24日结束。一些家庭选择通过庆祝不同圣人的节日（包括12月26日的圣施洗约翰）以及安排每天的圣诞活动来纪念这12天，但对许多人来说，圣诞节当天之后生活就恢复如常了。
“12天圣诞节”也是一首圣诞颂歌，歌词讲述了一位“真爱”在12天内送给歌手的各种礼物。每一节都建立在前一节的基础上，这使得它在长途旅行中成为一种非常有效的烦人工具。
如今大多数人熟悉的版本从以下歌词开始：
第一天圣诞节，
我的真爱送给我
一只在梨树上的鹧鸪。
随后，歌词每天增加一个礼物，直到第12天，所有礼物都被提及：
第2天：两只斑鸠
第3天：三只法国鸡
第4天：四只歌手鸟
第5天：五条金环
第6天：六只下蛋的鹅
第7天：七只游泳的天鹅
第8天：八位挤奶的女仆
第9天：九位跳舞的女士
第10天：十位跳跃的男爵
第11天：十一支吹笛的乐手
第12天：十二位敲鼓的鼓手
这首歌的历史并不清晰。最早已知的版本出现在1780年的一本儿童书籍《Mirth Without Mischief》中。2014年，该书的第一版在苏富比拍卖会上卖出了23,750美元，但你也可以在亚马逊上购买电子版。
一些历史学家认为这首歌可能起源于法国，但大多数人认为它最初是作为一种“记忆与惩罚”游戏，歌手通过背诵歌词来测试对方的记忆力，如果出错则要接受惩罚，比如亲吻或做某事。在不同的时期，歌词版本也有所不同。有些版本提到了“正在捕猎的熊”或“正在航行的船”，有些则将礼物的赠送者改为歌手的母亲，而不是“真爱”。早期版本中提到的“四只colly鸟”是一个古英语词汇，意思是黑色的鸟（即黑鸟）。一些人认为五条金环实际上指的是环颈雉的特征，这与早期歌词中的鸟类主题相呼应。
无论如何，我们今天所熟知的版本是由一位名叫弗雷德里克·奥斯特的英国作曲家于1909年创作的，他为这首歌谱了曲，并修改了歌词（将“colly”改为“calling”），还添加了“five go-old rings”这一拉长的发音。
网络上流传着一种流行理论，认为“12天圣诞节”的歌词是基督教的隐秘教义，旨在帮助基督徒在遭受迫害时学习和传播信仰。根据这一理论，歌词中的各种礼物分别代表了基督教的教义，如：
当然，鹧鸪代表耶稣基督。然而，这一理论在仔细分析后显得并不合理。事实证明，这首歌的礼物与基督教的“等价物”并无关联，因此它并不适合作为学习基督教教义的工具。此外，如果基督徒真的因为迫害而不得不隐藏信仰，他们也无法庆祝圣诞节，更不用说唱圣诞颂歌了。著名历史学家威廉·斯图德韦尔（William Studwell）也反驳了这一说法。他在2008年对《宗教新闻服务》表示：
这首歌最初并不是一首天主教歌曲，无论你在网上看到什么。……中立的参考书籍都指出这是无稽之谈。如果真的存在这样的教义工具，那它也是从最初的世俗歌曲演变而来的。它是衍生的，而不是源头。
抱歉，我打破了你期待的圣诞趣闻。顺便一提，“Ring Around the Rosie”也不一定与黑死病有关。
要计算“12天圣诞节”中所有礼物的费用，我们可以参考PNC金融服务集团自1984年以来每年发布的“圣诞价格指数”（Christmas Price Index），该指数根据当前市场价格计算歌曲中所有礼物的费用。考虑到当前的通货膨胀率，今年的礼物费用格外高昂：2022年的总费用高达45,523.27美元，比2021年的价格上涨了10.5%。如果你单独计算每项礼物的每一次出现（总共364次），费用则高达197,071.09美元，比去年上涨了9.8%。
随着黄金和肥料等物品价格的上涨，五条金环（价值1,245美元，上涨了39%）和那只著名的梨树上的鹧鸪（价值280.18美元，上涨了近26%）的费用也显著增加。不过，有些东西的价格一直没变，比如联邦最低工资自2009年以来没有上涨，因此八位挤奶的女仆的费用仍保持在相对低廉的58美元。
不过，无论费用如何，真的给某人送所有这些礼物可能并不是个好主意；想想那些鸟粪吧。
“12天圣诞节”的结构非常适合改编和恶搞，因此出现了许多版本。例如，杰夫·福克斯沃西（Jeff Foxworthy）的乡村版、Twisted Sister的重金属版，当然还有《芝麻街》（Muppets）的版本（由约翰·丹佛演唱）。
此外，有人尝试通过食物来诠释“12天圣诞节”，比如将魔鬼蛋（deviled eggs）与“下蛋的鹅”联系起来。还有“12天圣诞节饮食”计划，该计划由《大西洋》（The Atlantic）的奥尔加·哈扎恩（Olga Khazan）在2013年尝试过。她计算了歌曲中提到的每种鸟类的卡路里含量，并通过各种活动（如挤奶、跳舞、跳跃和敲鼓）消耗的卡路里来抵消。结果发现，尽管这些鸟类的卡路里含量很高，但与典型的美式节日大餐相比，反而更少一些。她总结道：
如果你一天内吃掉所有提到的鸟类，包括环颈雉派，但不包括其他菜肴的配菜，再减去挤奶、跳舞、跳跃和敲鼓所消耗的卡路里，你总共摄入的净热量是2,384卡路里。这比典型的美式感恩节晚餐（约4,500卡路里）要好得多。从相对角度来看，这似乎更合理，因为如果你想通过唱这首歌来消耗一顿饭的热量，你必须反复唱300遍，大约需要17.5小时的圣诞颂歌演唱。这显然是一个没人会欢迎的礼物。
更新：2022年12月1日，上午11:05
本文最初于2020年发表，现已更新为包含PNC 2022年的圣诞价格指数数据。
Editor’s note, December 25, 8 am ET: This story is being republished for the holiday season. It was originally published in 2020.
It might seem unbelievable given that the “Christmas creep” now begins before Halloween, but the true Christmas season actually starts on Christmas Day itself. That’s right: December 25 marks the official start of the 12 days of Christmas, the Christian tradition that shares its name with a relentlessly stick-in-your-head Christmas carol.
Here are a few things you may not know about the song and the season.
The 12 days of Christmas is the period in Christian theology that marks the span between the birth of Christ and the coming of the Magi, the three wise men. It begins on December 25 (Christmas) and runs through January 6 (the Epiphany, sometimes also called Three Kings’ Day). The four weeks preceding Christmas are collectively known as Advent, which begins four Sundays before Christmas and ends on December 24.
Some families choose to mark the 12-day period by observing the feast days of various saints (including St. Stephen on December 26) and planning daily Christmas-related activities, but for many, things go back to business as usual after December 25.
“The 12 Days of Christmas” is also a Christmas carol in which the singer brags about all the cool gifts they received from their “true love” during the 12 days of Christmas. Each verse builds on the previous one, serving as a really effective way to annoy family members on road trips.
The version most people are familiar with today begins with this verse:
On the first day of Christmas,
my true love gave to me
a partridge in a pear tree.
The song then adds a gift for each day, building on the verse before it, until you’re reciting all 12 gifts together:
Day 2: two turtle doves
Day 3: three French hens
Day 4: four calling birds
Day 5: five gold rings
Day 6: six geese a-laying
Day 7: seven swans a-swimming
Day 8: eight maids a-milking
Day 9: nine ladies dancing
Day 10: 10 lords a-leaping
Day 11: 11 pipers piping
Day 12: 12 drummers drumming
The history of the carol is somewhat murky. The earliest known version first appeared in a 1780 children’s book called Mirth With-out Mischief. (A first edition of that book sold for $23,750 at a Sotheby’s auction in 2014, but you can also buy a digital copy on Amazon.) Some historians think the song could be French in origin, but most agree it was designed as a “memory and forfeits” game, in which singers tested their recall of the lyrics and had to award their opponents a “forfeit” — a kiss or a favor of some kind — if they made a mistake.
Many variations of the lyrics have existed at different points. Some mention “bears a-baiting” or “ships a-sailing”; some name the singer’s mother as the gift giver instead of their true love. Early versions list four “colly” birds, an archaic term meaning black as coal (blackbirds, in other words). And some people theorize that the five gold rings actually refer to the markings of a ring-necked pheasant, which would align with the bird motif of the early verses.
In any case, the song most of us are familiar with today comes from an English composer named Frederic Austin; in 1909, he set the melody and lyrics (including changing “colly” to “calling”) and added as his own flourish, the drawn-out cadence of “five go-old rings.”
A popular theory that’s made the internet rounds is that the lyrics to “The 12 Days of Christmas” are coded references to Christianity; it posits that the song was written to help Christians learn and pass on the tenets of their faith while avoiding persecution. Under that theory, the various gifts break down as follows, as the myth-debunking website Snopes explained:
2 Turtle Doves = The Old and New Testaments
3 French Hens = Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues
4 Calling Birds = the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists
5 Golden Rings = The first Five Books of the Old Testament, the “Pentateuch,” which gives the history of man’s fall from grace
6 Geese A-laying = the six days of creation
7 Swans A-swimming = the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments
8 Maids A-milking = the eight beatitudes
9 Ladies Dancing = the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit
10 Lords A-leaping = the Ten Commandments
11 Pipers Piping = the 11 faithful apostles
12 Drummers Drumming = the 12 points of doctrine in the Apostle’s Creed
The partridge in the pear tree, naturally, represents Jesus Christ.
This theory seems tailor-made for circulation via chain emails, but it actually makes little sense once you examine it. Snopes has a great explanation of the many, many holes in its logic. The most egregious: First, the song’s gifts have nothing to do with their Christian “equivalents,” so the song is basically useless as a way to remember key pillars of the faith. And second, if Christians were so restricted from practicing their faith that they had to conceal messages in a song, they also wouldn’t be able to celebrate Christmas in the first place — much less sing Christmas carols.
The late historian William Studwell, known for his Christmas carol expertise, also refuted the coded message idea. As he told the Religion News Service in 2008:
This was not originally a Catholic song, no matter what you hear on the Internet. … Neutral reference books say this is nonsense. If there was such a catechism device, a secret code, it was derived from the original secular song. It’s a derivative, not the source.
Sorry to spoil your dinner party fun fact; while I’m at it, I might as well tell you “Ring Around the Rosie” isn’t about the Black Plague, either.
To calculate the cost of all the gifts in “The 12 Days of Christmas,” I’ll turn to the PNC financial services group’s annual Christmas Price Index, which PNC has been putting out since 1984; it calculates the cost of all the gifts in the song based on current market rates. Given the current pace of inflation, this smorgasbord of gift-giving is extra-costly this year: The total for 2022 comes to a whopping $45,523.27, up 10.5 percent from 2021 prices, or $197,071.09 if you count each mention of an item separately (which would amount to 364 gifts in all) — a 9.8 percent increase from last year.
The rising price of items like gold and fertilizer means those five rings ($1,245, a 39 percent increase) and the infamous partridge in a pear tree ($280.18, up nearly 26 percent) are costlier than ever. Some things haven’t changed at all, though — as the index points out, the federal minimum wage hasn’t increased since 2009, meaning the rate for eight maids a-milking is holding steady at a relative steal of $58.
No matter the cost, though, actually giving someone all this stuff is probably not a great idea; just think of all the bird poo.
The structure of “The 12 Days of Christmas” lends itself easily to parodies, of which there have been many. There’s Jeff Foxworthy’s redneck version, Twisted Sister’s heavy metal take, and, of course, a Muppets version (featuring John Denver):
Others have attempted to interpret the 12 Days of Christmas via food, with dishes like deviled eggs representing geese a-laying and so on. Then there’s the “12 Days of Christmas diet,” which the Atlantic’s Olga Khazan attempted in 2013. She calculated the calories in a serving of each bird mentioned in the song and offset them with the calories burned by the various activities (milking, leaping, etc.). Turns out all that poultry is somehow less indulgent than the typical American holiday meal. She sums up:
If you ate all of the birds in one day, including the pheasant pie, but not including all the trimmings for the other dishes, and subtracted the energy you expended milking, dancing, leaping, and drumming, you’d have consumed 2,384 net calories. That’s really not bad, considering the average American Thanksgiving dinner adds up to about 4,500 calories.
It seems even more reasonable, relatively speaking, when you consider that if you wanted to burn off your meal by just singing its namesake tune, you’d have to make it all the way through the song roughly 300 times — about 17.5 hours of caroling. And that’s a gift I doubt anyone would welcome.
Update, December 1, 2022, 11:05 am: This story, originally published in 2020, has been updated with the 2022 numbers from PNC’s Christmas Price Index.
2025-12-25 21:20:45
今年最后几天感觉有些奇怪。编辑注：12月25日早上8点东部时间，这篇文章因节日季重新发布。原文最初发表于2024年。大约在我7岁那年，洛杉矶的公立学校实行了“全年制”课程安排。对我所在的公立小学来说，这意味着暑假变短了（真扫兴），而寒假则变得特别长（同样扫兴）。那年，我的父母让我参加了一个名为“冬季营”的活动，这类似于夏令营，但乐趣少很多。那一年是厄尔尼诺年，持续的降雨让游泳池变成了令人不适的绿色。我实在不记得我们大多数日子都做了些什么，可能就是做了很多手链，还互相争吵。为了改变一下日常，营地组织了一次观鲸之旅（1月是加利福尼亚南部灰鲸的季节）。但刚一出海，就遇到了一场巨大的风暴，船摇晃得非常厉害，几乎所有人都吐了，唯独我没有。别以为我幸免于难：雨下得很大，我的衣服被淋湿得透透的，结果裤子在大家面前掉下来了。我们根本没有看到鲸鱼。总之，这些日子说明了寒假对孩子们来说可能很奇怪：虽然有家庭聚会和节日庆祝，但同时也可能因为学校放假、天气不好、活动不多而显得无聊。在很多地方，现在积雪已经不足以支持传统的冬季活动了——你真的无法用“冬日混合”来堆雪人。有一年，我带着大孩子在零下气温中艰难地前往便利店，只为逃离家门。情况确实可能很糟糕。对于这一年最后这些短暂而奇怪的日子，我唯一能给的建议就是以你所能想到的方式好好珍惜它们。我们家庆祝圣诞节，所以我的孩子们这周会打开礼物，然后可能把礼物的碎片到处乱扔。我两岁的孩子总是不停地喊：“万圣节！”然后在被纠正后，默默地感叹：“万圣节已经结束了。”我理解，我其实也喜欢圣诞节，但说实话，我也不得不承认自己也喜欢万圣节。无论你是否庆祝节日，记住，这些是日历上最黑暗的日子，无论天气如何，日子已经一天天变长了。如果你还能睡得着，那就去睡吧。带孩子们去看夜空，这个月金星非常明亮，而且不是无人机。如果他们比较安静，可以带他们去观鸟。我会在1月2日跳过周四，但1月9日我会回来和你们一起。感谢过去几个月一直阅读这篇文章的各位读者（以及寄来问题、推荐播客和讲述孩子们在玩具堆里冬眠的故事的朋友们），我将在新的一年再见！## 我在读什么 学区正在为应对特朗普政府可能的移民政策收紧，组织家庭法律权利研讨会，并培训教职员工如何应对ICE特工到校的情况。《74》杂志整理了2024年教育领域的图表，包括有关疫情学习损失和儿童智能手机使用的数据。Ulta Beauty公司开始销售装有玩具版美容产品的神秘球，这可能是为了吸引备受追捧的Sephora青少年群体。根据合同，我们允许继续阅读圣诞书籍直到12月31日，之后我的丈夫会把它们收起来，保存11个月。我小儿子特别喜欢《选一棵圣诞树》这本温馨的押韵故事，讲述如何装饰圣诞树，以及《圣诞老人是怎么从烟囱爬进来的？》这本书（剧透：它并没有回答这个古老的问题）。## 读者来信 我收到了很多关于澳大利亚禁止儿童使用社交媒体的提问，新年我将探讨这种禁令的利与弊。在报道这一话题时，我非常期待听到你的看法：你身边的孩子是否从社交媒体中受益？我们总是听到很多关于社交媒体的负面影响，我非常好奇它的正面效果。欢迎通过[email protected]与我联系。
Editor’s note, December 25, 8 am ET: This story is being republished for the holiday season. It was originally published in 2024.
When I was about 7, Los Angeles public schools shifted to a “year-round” schedule. The effect, for my elementary school, was a shorter summer break (boo), and an extra-long winter break (also, it turned out, boo).
That year, my parents enrolled me in “winter camp,” which was like summer camp but less fun. It was an El Niño year, and the constant rain turned the swimming pools into an unwholesome shade of green. I honestly don’t remember what we did with most of our days; probably we made a lot of lanyards and argued with one another.
In an effort to mix things up, the camp arranged a whale-watching trip for us (January is gray whale season in Southern California). But as soon as we got out to sea, an enormous storm kicked up, buffeting our boat to such a degree that every camper except for me threw up. Lest you think I was spared: My clothes became so waterlogged in the rain that my pants fell down in front of everyone. We did not see any whales.
All of this is to say that winter break can be weird for kids: There are often family visits and holiday celebrations, but it’s also a time when school is out, the weather is bad, and there’s not always much to do. In a lot of places, there’s no longer enough snow for the winter activities of yore — you really cannot build a snowman out of wintry mix. One year, I took my older kid on a desperate trudge to the dollar store in subfreezing temperatures just to get out of the house. Things can get rough.
I have no advice for the short, strange days at the end of the year other than to honor them in whatever way you can. We celebrate Christmas in my family, so my kids will be opening presents this week, and then probably strewing pieces of them liberally about the house. My 2-year-old keeps exclaiming, “It’s Halloween!” and then, when corrected, quietly lamenting, “Halloween all done.” I get it — I like Christmas fine, but I kind of prefer Halloween, too.
Whether you’re celebrating anything or not, remember that these are the darkest days of the calendar, and whatever happens with the weather or everything else, the days are already getting longer. Maybe get some sleep, if you can. Take your kids out to look at the night sky — Venus is really good this month and is not a drone. If they are reasonably quiet, take them birdwatching.
I’ll be skipping Thursday, January 2, but I’ll be back with you on January 9. A big thank you to everyone who’s been reading (and sending in questions, podcast recommendations, and stories about kids hibernating in nests of toys) these last few months, and I’ll see you in the new year!
School districts are preparing for potential immigration crackdowns from the Trump administration, by hosting seminars for families on their legal rights and training staff on how to respond if ICE agents show up at school.
The 74 has a roundup of charts that defined education in 2024, including data on pandemic learning loss and kids’ smartphone use.
Ulta Beauty has started selling mystery balls with toy versions of beauty products inside, possibly as a way of courting the coveted Sephora tween demographic.
We are contractually allowed to continue reading our Christmas books until December 31, at which point my husband will sequester them for the next 11 months. My little kid especially enjoys Pick a Pine Tree, a sweet rhyming story about tree decorating, and How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney?, which (spoiler) fails to answer that age-old question.
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Australia’s move to ban kids from social media, and in the new year, I’ll be looking into the pros and cons of such bans. As I report on that, I’d love to hear from you: Have the kids in your life experienced any positive effects from social media? We hear so much about the negatives that I’m very curious about the flip side. Get in touch at [email protected].
2025-12-25 20:00:00
2025年10月30日，副总统JD·范斯在华盛顿特区白宫西翼外举行新闻发布会。在2024年大选成功之后，范斯进入白宫，准备推动变革，全力支持唐纳德·特朗普，并在社交媒体上发布自己想要的内容。然而，范斯作为曾经的“反特朗普”保守派，如今却成为MAGA（特朗普主义）的潜在继承人，他真正希望美国变成什么样？随着中期选举的临近，他是否会开始疏远特朗普？主持人诺埃尔·金采访了 Politico 记者伊恩·沃德，探讨了范斯上任一年来的表现，以及这对我们理解特朗普政府之后共和党可能走向的启示。以下是采访内容的节选，已进行删减和润色。完整播客内容更丰富，可在Apple Podcasts、Pandora和Spotify等平台收听。
从2024年底开始，范斯的网络形象开始出现各种恶搞，比如“大头”、“跳舞”、“戴小帽子吃棒棒糖”等。起初这些是对他的一种嘲讽，但范斯却欣然接受。一个著名的例子是，他在万圣节装扮成一个恶搞形象，戴着大眼睛的帽子，与人合影并上传网络。范斯是千禧一代的一员，成长于博客和早期社交媒体的高峰期，他深刻理解当前保守派政治的主流来自网络。因此，他通过参与这些网络文化，表明自己是右翼核心圈的一员，并且比老一辈政治家更懂网络政治。
范斯于2025年1月20日就职。他上任初期的成就包括协助特朗普推动一些颇具争议的提名，如彼得·赫格赛特、罗伯特·弗兰克尔和图尔西·加巴德。这些提名的通过被视为他的重大胜利。此外，他在欧洲的行程也颇具影响力，例如在慕尼黑安全会议上的演讲，他几乎摧毁了五十年来的美欧合作传统；在巴黎的演讲则阐述了政府对人工智能的立场。这些举动显示了他愿意进入这些领域并打破现状。
2025年2月，特朗普与乌克兰总统泽连斯基在椭圆形办公室会面，尽管这本身可能不是大新闻，但范斯在其中扮演了重要角色。当时，泽连斯基前来签署一项关键矿产协议，但会面迅速演变为特朗普和范斯对泽连斯基的批评。范斯认为欧洲受益于美国主导的国际秩序，但同时他也认为这种秩序损害了美国蓝领阶层的利益。他将欧洲和乌克兰视为“寄生者”，没有对美国工人阶级表示感激。
6月，以色列与伊朗爆发了为期12天的冲突，范斯支持特朗普使用“ bunker buster”（ bunker buster 是一种穿透力极强的炸弹）对伊朗进行打击。尽管范斯公开表示支持，但据称他在幕后反对美国直接介入该冲突。他随后提出了所谓的“特朗普主义”理论，为这些行动提供正当性。
9月，保守派人物查理·克里克被暗杀。范斯与克里克关系密切，克里克曾是最早发现范斯作为保守派新星的人之一，并将其介绍给特朗普的团队。克里克去世后，范斯主持了他的节目，坐在旧行政办公室大楼的办公桌前，面对镜头发表讲话，背景是美国国旗，场面非常有总统气派。他还将克里克的死亡归咎于左翼政治暴力，认为这是比右翼暴力更大的问题。
10月，一个年轻共和党人小组聊天记录被泄露，其中包含大量种族主义和反犹言论。范斯对此事有所介入，他淡化了这些言论的严重性。同时，右翼认为过去五年到十年，共和党在“取消文化”面前退缩了，而范斯等人则试图推动一种文化转变，即无论言论多么冒犯，都不会放弃自己的人，同时积极对抗媒体中的“敌人”。然而，几周后，当 Tucker Carlson 采访了对纳粹感兴趣的尼克·弗兰克时，范斯却保持沉默。尽管如此，他仍在进行联盟管理，认为弗兰克虽然观点极端，但拥有大量年轻男性支持者，这对MAGA的选民联盟至关重要。他虽然批评了弗兰克，但并未真正将其排除在保守派联盟之外。
范斯在中期选举中将扮演什么角色？我认为他会外出宣传一些经济成就，尤其是移民问题。目前，移民问题似乎是将MAGA联盟维持在一起的关键议题。他们将重点强调非法越境人数的大幅下降，以及在大规模驱逐方面取得的进展，尽管这些措施引发了争议。
范斯是否计划在2028年竞选总统？按照惯例，人们不会在成为总统候选人之前谈论自己的总统野心。范斯清楚这一点，并表示目前他的重点不是总统竞选，也否认自己在寻求这一职位。但显然，所有人都认为他是2028年总统竞选的潜在继承人，他将是该党提名的候选人。
人们是否喜欢范斯？目前民调并不乐观，因此很难了解选民的真实想法。我经常想到社会学家马克斯·韦伯，他研究过“魅力型运动”的结构，以及魅力型领袖如何选择继任者。这一过程对魅力是否能传递给继任者至关重要。我认为范斯能否巩固MAGA基础，取决于他如何获得提名。是特朗普的背书，还是让党内不同派系竞争，如范斯与鲁比奥、德克·克鲁兹之间的较量？如果后者发生，范斯将面临更大的挑战。
After a successful 2024 election, Vice President JD Vance came into the White House ready to shake things up, support President Donald Trump at all costs, and post whatever he wanted online.
But what does Vance — the former “never Trump” conservative who has maneuvered, at least for now, into the position of MAGA heir apparent — really want the country to look like? And with a potentially difficult midterm season approaching, will the vice president begin to distance himself from Trump?
Host Noel King spoke with Ian Ward, a reporter at Politico, who covers conservatives and the American right. They discussed the highs and lows of Vance’s first year and what it tells us about what the Republican party could look like after the Trump administration.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
From late 2024 onward, you see memes of Vance: huge head, dancing, little boy hat, lollipop. It starts as a way to mock the VP. But he doesn’t treat it like that. What does he do instead?
He’s embraced it. One notable example: there’s this famous meme of the vice president, overweight with long curly hair and big bulging eyes, that started circulating around the election. And for Halloween this year, Vance dressed up as that meme and took a picture with big bulgy eyes and posted it online.
He’s part of the millennial generation that grew up at the peak era of online blogging and sort of early social media. I think he understands really innately that conservative politics are flowing upwards from the internet at this point. So by engaging with some of those memes, he’s signaling that he’s in the engine room of the right and that he gets it in a way that an older generation of politicians didn’t.
He comes into office January 20. What do some of his early wins look like?
He was deputized very early on to shepherd some of Trump’s more controversial nominees through the Senate —people like Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., or Tulsi Gabbard. So that was a big win for him.
“I think everyone understands that he’s the heir apparent and that it’s his nomination to lose in 2028.”
A second one was his trip to Europe. He gave two very notable speeches there, one at the Munich Security Conference where he basically torpedoed 50 years of transatlantic collaboration, and one in Paris where he laid out the administration’s view on AI. And those both showed that he was willing to enter into these spaces and disrupt a status quo that in his mind wasn’t working.
In February, President Trump met Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. Might have been not a big story, but it became a big story in part because of the role that JD Vance played. Remind us what happened.
Zelenskyy was in town to finalize a critical-mineral deal. The meeting in the Oval Office between Trump and Zelenskyy and Vance and a couple other Cabinet members very quickly devolved into Trump and Vance berating Zelenskyy. Vance has an idea that Europe has benefited tremendously from the international order governed by American military and economic hegemony.
At the same time, I think he thinks that that international order has harmed the type of working-class blue-collar American that he grew up with in Ohio. These are the people who actually fight the wars. They’re the people who’ve borne the brunt of the de-industrialization that’s accompanied economic globalization.
So I think, in his mind, Europe — and Ukraine by extension — are sort of freeloaders who are leeching off working-class Americans and not thanking them for it
And then in June, we have this “12-day war” between Israel and Iran, and JD Vance defends Trump when he drops the bunker buster bomb. How does Vance navigate his clear and obvious disdain for foreign wars with President Trump?
All signs indicate that behind the scenes he was advocating against direct US intervention in that conflict. But once it became apparent that Trump was going to intervene, Vance publicly fell in line. After the strikes in Iran, Vance articulated what he called the “Trump Doctrine” to justify these strikes.
It all goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning, about him as not just a defender but a kind of explainer and justifier. It’s not really sufficient in his mind to defend these things; he wants to offer a kind of intellectual rationalization or justification for them.
In September, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. What was Vance’s relationship with Charlie Kirk, and what did you see him doing in the aftermath of the killing?
Kirk and Vance were very close. Some reporting came out after Kirk’s death that Kirk was actually one of the first conservatives to identify Vance as a rising star, that he eventually introduced him to Donald Trump Jr.’s team and vouched for him as a legitimate convert to the MAGA movement.
He hosted Charlie Kirk’s show a couple days after his death, sitting behind his desk in the old Executive Office Building, delivering a straight-to-camera monologue with an American flag behind him. It looked extremely presidential. He sort of led the charge in positioning Kirk’s death as a consequence of rising political violence on the left, which he said is a much larger issue than right-wing political violence.
In October, some messages from a Young Republican group chat were leaked and there was lots of racism. There was open antisemitism. JD Vance involved himself in that story. How so?
He downplayed the nature of those statements. More broadly, there’s a sense on the right that, for the past five or 10 years, Republicans have sort of laid down and let what they call “cancel culture” take over. Vance and others are trying to effectuate a kind of broader cultural shift where they’re going to say, No matter how offensive a comment was, we’re not going to give up one of our own, and we fight back against our enemies and our perceived enemies in the media.
Does that extend to the next skirmish? Because a few weeks later, Tucker Carlson interviews Nazi-curious Nick Fuentes and doesn’t ask him any hard questions.
Yeah, he stayed sort of conspicuously quiet in that whole controversy.
At the same time, he is doing some coalitional management here. I think he rightly recognizes that Fuentes, despite his very odious views, has a very real and very mobilized following of young men that MAGA desperately needs to keep in its electoral coalition. He’s called Fuentes some names, but he’s made no real effort to actually banish him from the conservative coalition.
What role do you think the vice president is going to play in the midterms?
I think you’ll see him out on the trail selling some of these economic accomplishments. Definitely talking a lot about immigration. I think immigration is at this point really the issue that’s holding the otherwise somewhat fractious MAGA coalition together.
And I think they will run, very prominently, on the very precipitous drop in illegal border crossings. And also whatever progress they’ve made on the mass deportations, despite the controversy that’s kicked up.
What has JD Vance said about whether or not he plans to run for president in 2028?
The decorum, of course, is not to talk about your presidential ambitions until you’re actually a candidate for president. Vance clearly understands that and has said it’s not my focus right now and denied that he’s angling for it. But I think everyone understands that he’s the heir apparent and that it’s his nomination to lose in 2028.
Do people like JD Vance?
The polling is not very good on this, so it’s hard to peer into the electorate.
I think a lot these days about the sociologist Max Weber, actually, who wrote about the “structure of charismatic movements” and the way that charismatic leaders end up anointing successors. The process of anointment matters a lot for whether the charisma rubs off on a successor. I think a lot of that question hinges on how exactly Vance ends up securing the nomination.
Is it an endorsement from Trump? Does Trump throw it open to a factional fight in which someone like a Vance and someone like a Rubio and Ted Cruz have to duke it out, where some of the dirty laundry coalitionally is aired out? Then it’s a much harder task for Vance to consolidate the MAGA base behind him.
