controvercial thoughts stirred by Robert Reich's blog

Subject: Re: controvercial thoughts stirred by Robert Reich's blog


It's a pretty good bet that those born after 1970, have not a clue what the
American society was like just a few years earlier.
The world I grew up in seems to have been from another planet. I remember
delivering the Seattle Star, a daily paper, to homes filled with children
romping about in the yard, and older folks sitting on the front porches.
Mothers bustled about caring for the needs of the elders and the children,
preparing dinner for their husbands when they arrived home. Door to door
salesmen worked up and down the streets, selling everything from Fuller
Brush to Watcon's, to Americana Encyclopedias.
The Green Grocer drove a truck up and down the roads, parking at
intersections and opening up the side panels of his wagon to display the
fresh vegetables and fruits for sale. The bread trucks came along, too.
Fresh smelling bread and pastries waiting for eager housewives to buy. In
the morning the milk trucks rolled down the street leaving milk, butter,
cottage cheese and other dairy products in little insulated boxes on the
porches.
Even the meat truck took its turn driving around, bringing fresh product
almost to the front door.
And of course, on hot summer days you could always hear the tinkle of the
Good Humor wagon's bell, announcing delicious ice-cream bars, fudge bars,
sidewalk sundae's and popsicles.
Few women in these neighborhoods worked outside the home. Perhaps they
would do some volunteer work, but they made certain it did not interfere
with their household duties. If asked what they did, most would say, "I'm
just a housewife".
In most states a woman could be locked out of the house by an angry husband.
She had no claim to "his" belongings. If it seemed practical for the woman
to drive, the husband had to sign for the car.
Women all wore hats or scarves to church. This had something to do with Eve
having coaxed Adam into eating the forbidden fruit.
Attitudes were so very different that I won't even try to explain.
And we did have different values. We assumed that we younger folks would
finish school, college if we could afford it, get a job, marry our childhood
sweetheart, have children, and after some years we would be able to buy a
home similar to the homes of our parents. We would buy a second hand Junker
and do our own repairs until we could afford a newer second hand car. Most
of us moved our new brides into fairly plain apartments, picking up second
hand furniture to "make do" until we could afford better.
My first wife and I(1960-1970), picked up a clunky old TV from some family
member. Of course it was black and white. I never owned a color TV until
1979.
My first wife and I played lots of cards for entertainment. We had many
friends, other young couples, from church. We had card parties and thought
we were really living on the wild side when we bought 7 Up and wine and made
wine flips.
We walked a lot. We took up square dancing. We had picnics and watched the
local kids play ball in the parks. We could rent a row boat for a dollar
for the afternoon, and we'd row out to this little island and eat a basket
lunch, then row back home. I was a cub master and my wife was a den mother.
There was no pressure to keep up with the Jones'. But even back then the TV
was beginning to merchandise products in an effort to make us all want
whatever it was.
Today we are so conditioned that we don't even notice the onslaught. We are
bombarded over and over until it is part of us.
But there was a day...yes, there was a day!


Carl Jarvis




----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2014 12:13 PM
Subject: RE: controvercial thoughts stirred by Robert Reich's blog


Ted,

Once upon a time, probably before you were born, we were all satisfied with
less. We wanted to have adequate shelter, enough good food to eat, some
leisure time, entertainment. But it was Corporate America, through mainly TV
commercials, that convinced my children and all the generations that
followed, and members of my generation as well, eventually, that we needed
bigger houses, many TV's, hundreds of cable channels that cost money rather
than a few channels paid for by advertisers, several cars rather than public
transportation, central air conditioning, vacations on cruise ships, cell
phones rather than public pay phones, a computer in every household which
has to be replaced every fiveyears with smart phones and tablets in
addition, books purchased from Amazon rather than borrowed from our local
libraries, etc. It was the banking industry that convinced people that all
of the products being advertised could be their's for the asking if they
used credit cards, not one, not two, but numerous credit cards which kept
appearing magically in the mail. And then, since the credit cards weren't
sufficient, one could take out second mortgages or home equity loans in
order to have the money for things that used to be luxuries and had suddenly
become necessities. None of this was accidental. It was planned and executed
by banks and corporations in order to enrich a tiny slice of the population.
As for women replacing men in certain positions and causing the men's
salaries to drop, I think you need to give some specific examples of that. I
can give a reverse example. Social Work used to be a female profession. But
when I attended graduate school, in 1959 to 1961, we had many men in our
class. Interestingly, they were all concentrating in Administration with a
few concentrating in Community Organization. When they left graduate school,
they were going straight into administration where the salaries were higher
than they were for other social workers. The rest of us, who were women,
were going to be caseworkers or groupworkers. Most of us would be just
starting our careers with low salaries. In New York in 1961, a social worker
in a private agency received a starting salary of $5,400. A few women in my
class had been working for several years for public agencies which paid for
their graduate education. When they returned to work, they would receive
promotions and higher salaries because of graduate school attendance.
However, they were not going into administrative positions. I know a female
attorney who runs a branch office of a private law firm in New York along
with a male attorney. They do exactly the same kind of work and his salary
is approximately $20,000 a year higher than her's. Perhaps you have some
specific statisfics about the general employment picture, but my personal
experience has been that men continue to earn more for the same work than
women.

Having been a homemaker and a mother, I can certainly attest to how tedious
the chores can be at times and how lonely it can be to be alone at home with
a toddler. But that's one side of the experience, and not the entire
experience, and no matter what job you have, it does become tedious and
boring at times. Nevertheless, the tasks of caring for children and a home,
of holding it all together, are necessary. Someone has to do them if we're
going to have children and live in families. And choices have to be made.
But we can't freely make choices when the value of our money diminishes and
the necessities of life are all privatized and become more and more
expensive. If we had a high quality public child care system like they have
in France, family life would be supported and women could choose to work,
perhaps part-time if they chose to, but we're far from that and from the
public's willingness to pay for the high quality services that we want for
our children.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of ted chittenden
Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2014 1:52 PM
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
Subject: Re: controvercial thoughts stirred by Robert Reich's blog

Miriam:

First, and most importantly, this is not all part of "some diabolical social
plan" as you put it; rather, it is the belated realization that 1) we can't
have it all; and 2) every path we choose has both strengths and weaknesses.
Let's look at the latter point in a little more detail.

1) The reason that salt was initially added to food was to keep it (mainly
meats) from spoiling. More salt was added as people found they liked the
taste of salt, just as they liked the taste of sugar and fats. What we have
discovered, however (and I commented on this in an earlier post), is that
having all of the salt, sugar, and fats you want at any given time isn't
good for you--it can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and an early death.
But we are ruled by our emotions, and we love the taste of these foods (and
our businesses make sure they make the taste just right so we will come back
for more and increase their profits), and we are now hooked on them, for
better or worse.

2) You mentioned the upside of women staying at home, but there were also
some big downsides. Many married women found that taking care of children a
husband all the time without getting any reward was boring--cleaning and
cooking are tedious tasks (as a blind male, I have done both). They wanted
out of their imposed-by-males isolation and into the mainstreams of social
and political life. They didn't want marriage to be the end of their
productivity (save for the reproduction of children). So many sought out
work during the 1960s and 1970s, and this was part of a larger process. The
problem was (and what I am going to say is very controversial) that the
number of available jobs did not expand to accommodate all of the women in
the workforce. Yes, there was some expansion; but what really happened was
that when men and women begin applying for basically the same number of
available jobs, then employers found they didn't have to pay the men so
high--the supply of available wo!
rkers had shot up by 30 or 40% with the new female entrants into the market
for jobs and the result was that the salaries of males fell (in freemarket
terms, the supply of workers became much greater than the demand for them).
This trend has continued with NAFTA and the offshoring of jobs in which the
employees didn't have to see their customers face-to-face, and I predict
this trend will continue without abatement in the future.

But the whole truth is that because of the number of available hours in a
day and the demands on their times, neither working women nor working men
(think about it) can really get all they aspire for, and ultimately, they
will have to make the choice as to whether to keep on being the corporate
person with increasing job responsibilities and less leisure time or become
full-time parents with little or no real money available to do the kinds of
family things that many families used to do. Unfortunately, we haven't
learned this lesson yet.
--
Ted Chittenden

Every story has at least two sides if not more.
---- Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
First, for the record, I believe that women should be able to freeely choose
whether or not to devote their lives to a career, homemaking, childdrearing,
or one or more of these choices. But a sentence in Robert Reich's piece
caused me to remember that there was a time when a family could live
comfortably on the salary of one person, usually, the husband's. He worked
away from home. The wife was at home and her day was full. She cooked the
meals. Until the food industry seduced her into using more and more
processed convenience foods, she cooked meals with wholesome, natural
products. My awareness of how this began to change in the 60's was raised by
reading Ssalt: Sugar: Fat. But as women had less and less time, it became
easier to use the food, corrupted by salt, sugar, fat, and chemicals, that
the food industry was pushing. When women were at home, there was time to do
the errands, make the necessary phone calls, supervise children's
activities, create a comfortable and welcoming home environment, maintain
friendships, visit the children's schools, volunteer one's time to worthy
organizations, etc. And that meant that you didn't have to do all the
errands on weekends. You could do them during the work week. And that meant
that many businesses could be closed during weekends which meant that
everyone could count on two days off, two days of leisure and relaxation to
be spent with family and friends. Mothers were at home when children came
home after school. And then women began to work. At first it seemed like
they were working because they were now freed to do so. Being a working
mother was now respectable. But what really happened was that the husband's
salary was worth less and less. Little by little, it became apparent that a
family needed two incomes in order to live comfortably. That meant a lack of
time to cook good food, to spend with children, to do errands, to care for
the home, to enjoy leisure. to socialize with people, to talk on the phone.
Necessary work that used to be done by volunteers, work to help in the
community, now has to become paid work. But somehow, there is never enough
money to pay for it so many community services have disappeared. Because
both parents work, arrangements have to be made for who is responsible for
getting children to school and for caring for them after school or during
the times when children are off from school. Part of the family income must,
therefore, be set aside for child care, and parents need to find people whom
they feel they can trust to care for the children. Weekends are taken up
with doing the errands for which there's no time during the week. How
convenient that we have email and texting because no one chats on the phone
anymore. Plans have to be made way in advance for a leisurely weekend,
usually away from home and the pressures of everyday life.

I'm wondering if the women's movement and the simultaneous drop in value of
middle class incomes is a coincidence or if the convergence is a result of a
diabolical social plan. It's also interesting that the poor have always had
to deal with some of these issues, lack of time, poor quality of food,
concern about child care. Now, people who consider themselves to be middle
class or more economically advantaged, are facing these issues without
realizing how much the social fabric has been damaged.

Miriam

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