The Economy is Like Teen Sex

This column by Judith Warner about the "Myth of Lost Innocence" in many ways sounds like a metaphor for the U.S. economy. A nugget:

In each of these examples, real problems – that some girls are engaging in too-young, risky and degrading sex, that some children are being stressed excessively and stifled by nonstop structure, that some boys (poor and minority boys) are doing badly in school, that some children are getting really reckless mental health services – are grossly simplified and, via the magical thinking of dogma and ideology, are elevated to the level of myth. Real complexities and nuances – details concerning exactly which children are suffering, flailing or failing, and in what numbers, and how and why, and what we can do about it – are lost.

Worth reading for the metaphors and some of the interesting statistics and trends.