Perhaps the higher the cost of keeping a roof over one's families head, the higher the cost of medical care, food, transportation and the lower the wages, the more difficult it is for a man to meet his family's needs.
. . . which would tend to put the whole nation on welfare. Unfortunately, I don't think it is possible to ameliorate the problem - the more you make welfare accessible, the more addictive it will be.
There is something terribly wrong with an economy that can't reward workers with sufficient pay to make work more attractive than welfare.
It means, I think, that the only practical political attack on the problem is the one which is content to help and inspire the next generation to do better than its parents did.
A friend's father was an immigrant, with less than a high school education. He worked as a janitor and was able to buy, not just one home, but a vacation home as well. He had good medical benefits, a retirement plan, and SS. His mother worked seasonally for Dole, canning. His dad was able to spend plenty of time with the family because he only need one job. Most of the time his mother was home, cooking, cleaning and just being there for her two sons. It is not possible to do that well anymore, with the exception of a very few. The home he grew up in now sells for over a half of a million dollars, way beyond the reach of a janitor.
Our economy is out of whack, big time. The church can't make up for it. Most people are average, they are not stars, can't be stars no matter how hard they work.
When I was growing up, way back in the 50s, we were lead to believe that a large and strong middle class was unique to the US and was what gave our country stability - the idea being that doing a good job, even if humble, was rewarded with sufficient pay so that a man could support his family by the sweat of his brow. Ain't that way no more.
If you are correct and most Americans would tend to be on welfare, then our system has failed.
If you are correct and most Americans would tend to be on welfare, then our system has failed.
To say that "most Americans would tend to be on welfare" is no more than to say that everyone - not just Americans - is suceptible to the fantasy of the money tree. Everyone would like to win the lottery and have enough money to not need to do anything but tell others what you want, and have them do it. And to propose that welfare be increased is just a version of the money tree.Socialism in general is just the money tree fantasy. Which is really no different than the time travel fantasy of being able to go back and take advantage of a "second guess." Indeed people who propagandize for socialism are in fact doing nothing else but second-guessing the people who took risks - made decisions that might have been wrong - and prospered when others did not dare to try. After time has shown that their decisions were good, the "This problem, when solved, will be simple" rule applies. After the horse has won the race it's too late to bet on it, though.
Except as a way of aggrandizing its leaders at the expense of society, socialism doesn't work - precisely because it is based on second-guessing, and when you are actually in charge your first guess is the one that counts. The the blame-shifting sets in, and people who didn't have the authority (because the socialist leader got it all) get blamed when that first guess doesn't work.
Every four years the Democrats nominate someone for president, but they do not nominate a leader because they do not want a leader. Their system is all about the second guess, and that was painfully obvious with John Kerry's campaign - he wouldn't take a firm position on anything (except that everything was wrong, and it was all Bush's fault).
A friend's father. . . worked as a janitor . . . His mother worked seasonally . . . and [they were] able to buy, not just one home, but a vacation home as well. He had good medical benefits, a retirement plan, and SS.
[But now] The home he grew up in . . . sells for over a half of a million dollars, way beyond the reach of a janitor. When I was growing up, way back in the 50s, we were lead to believe that a large and strong middle class was unique to the US and was what gave our country stability - the idea being that doing a good job, even if humble, was rewarded with sufficient pay so that a man could support his family by the sweat of his brow. Ain't that way no more.
. . . Our economy is out of whack, big time. The church can't make up for it.
IMHO what is happening now is a rapid global democratization of opportunity. It represents the vindication, actually, of the vision of the framer of the Constitution, and it is a boon to mankind generally because a lot of people (Chinese representing a majority of them) are suddenly able to follow the American - the Adam Smith - model. Suddenly a couple of billion people who were locked out of the global economy by their own government are able, and willing, to make money.What to them is "money" is peanuts to your friend's janitor father, even now - but they make a comparison to where they were, more than to where some American is now or was in the past. So they're happy to work hard, and they do - they have mouths to feed but they also have hands to work, so the global economy becomes more prosperous. And America gets more prosperous too. But.
If I'm good at growing apples and oranges, and you aren't as good as me at either one but you are not as bad at growing apples as you are at growing oranges, do you just sit down and do nothing? No, what you will do is grow the few apples that you can, and trade me for some oranges. To do so, you will give me more apples than I think one orange is worth.That's called the law of "comparative advantage." And it explains why a perfectly good "apple growing" business in America can be put out of business by competitors in China who aren't doing anything particularly better that the American "apple grower" except putting the work of poor, unskilled people to the best possible use. And, over time, making those poor, unskilled people gradually less unskilled - and less poor.So even though you aren't as good as I am at growing apples, you still will cause me to concentrate on growing oranges, and let you grow most of the apples. I will end up with more oranges and more apples that way. And you won't have as many as me, but you will have more than you would by trying to grow the oranges when that is really hard for you to do.
What it means generally in America is that the price of "apples" goes down and the price of "oranges" goes up - "apple growers" go out of business but "orange growers" flourish and hire all the "apple growers." Which helps America generally but isn't much fun for American "apple growers." Unskilled workers in America are the "apple growers" - producing a real a "rich get richer" tendency here.
There is a different "rich get richer" tendency, no doubt, in China. There you would expect to see tycoons developing the new "apple growing" industries and getting filthy rich. Even though that would be a much more concentrated phenomenon in China, the few people getting Rockefeller rich would undoubtedly have high visibility there. Even though the predominant economic impact is that all the unskilled "apple grower" workers who had nothing now have a little, and the real prospect of more in the future.
Etc.
Bravo!
You just described the much-hated-by-liberals Leave It To BeaverTM family.
Several other factors have come about to destroy it:
Growth in bureaucratic govt.--quick what was the size of the entire US govt. last year, in inflation adjusted dollars, compared to 1960?
Corporate Greed--Bill Gates hiring extensively in India and China "to save money" while the company was sitting on $50 billion in CASH with almost no debt.
Feminists "insisting" that women work outside the home for "fulfillment", thereby denigrating the role of homemaker / mother, depressing wages so that men couldn't support a family on one income, and generating a need for "outside the home child care" -- which further enabled more women to leave the home, thereby further depressing wages.
Abortion on demand -- changed attitudes towards children, so more married couples decided to postpone children or not have them at all. This created societal pressures on others, since there were now more D.I.N.K's to rub your nose in their opulent lifestyles.
No fault divorce w/excessive aliimony/child support -- now women could destroy men's lives on a whim, too. Hint: fixing the slimebag man problem would have been a better solution than revenge.
Easy credit -- people get in debt above their heads by rampant consumerism or keeping up with the Joneses. Now both members of a household HAVE to work to make ends meet, since easy credit and so many other two-income households have raised prices for so many goods.
Apply, lather, rinse, repeat.
Cheers!