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'Family Values' Chutzpah

 
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Gatsby



Joined: 09 Feb 2007

PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 4:47 am    Post subject: 'Family Values' Chutzpah Reply with quote

Is there a future for families in the United States?

This commentator believes the disintegration of the American family is rooted in the economic uncertainty resulting from conservative economic policies.

So what else is new?

When both parents have to work full time to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads because of high taxes and low salaries, how do conservatives expect parents to properly raise children? And then they blame liberals for moral ills of children who do not have a parent to come home to after school.

Read the story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/06/AR2007030601600.html

excerpts below:

By Harold Meyerson
Washington Post
Wednesday, March 7, 2007; Page A17

As conservatives tell the tale, the decline of the American family, the rise in divorce rates, the number of children born out of wedlock all can be traced to the pernicious influence of one decade in American history: the '60s.

The conservatives are right that one decade, at least in its metaphoric significance, can encapsulate the causes for the family's decline. But they've misidentified the decade. It's not the permissive '60s. It's the Reagan '80s. ....

Over the past 35 years, the massive changes in the U.S. economy have largely condemned American workers to lives of economic insecurity. ....

In the brave new economy of outsourced jobs and short-term gigs and on-again, off-again health coverage, American workers cannot rationally plan their economic futures. And with each passing year, as their level of economic security declines, so does their entry into marriage. ....

Yet the very conservatives who marvel at the efficiency of our new, more mobile economy and extol the "flexibility" of our workforce decry the flexibility of the personal lives of American workers. The right-wing ideologues who have championed outsourcing, offshoring and union-busting, who have celebrated the same changes that have condemned American workers to lives of financial instability, piously lament the decline of family stability that has followed these economic changes as the night the day. ....

And it gets better ....


Last edited by Gatsby on Wed Mar 07, 2007 5:51 am; edited 1 time in total
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 5:15 am    Post subject: Have we forgotten about globalization? Reply with quote

Gatsby wrote:

Over the past 35 years, the massive changes in the U.S. economy have largely condemned American workers to lives of economic insecurity. ....


35 years? Hrmmm. Well, 20 years ago the PC created a revolution. 10 years later, ARPANET's brainchild allied with the PC to popularize the internet. Junk bonds became the model for lending to states in 1989, and countries became beholden to the international securities markets instead of giant banks.

Globalization has done more in the past 20 years to revolutionize the world than anything else. Conservative economic policy is just a reaction to that. High tariffs and protectionism accompanied by overly lenient unemployment benefits can sour a country on innovation and mobility of labor. Ask France about this matter.

I will admit the 70s was bleak for Americans. The 60s was an insulated time and a completely different economic world. Let us read this passage in that light:

Mayerson wrote:
Such was not the case for working-class Americans. Over the past 35 years, the massive changes in the U.S. economy have largely condemned American workers to lives of economic insecurity. No longer can the worker count on a steady job for a single employer who provides a paycheck and health and retirement benefits, too. Over the past three decades, workers' individual annual income fluctuations have consistently increased, while their aggregate income has stagnated. In the brave new economy of outsourced jobs and short-term gigs and on-again, off-again health coverage, American workers cannot rationally plan their economic futures. And with each passing year, as their level of economic security declines, so does their entry into marriage.


I have a real issue with someone decrying the loss of the American steel industry in the post-industrial, service and information-based international economy. Nobody can protect the American steel industry although politicians try their hardest and endanger enough FTAs with this nonsense.

I will agree that the Conservative Rhetoric embodying 'Family Values' is quite inane and hypocritical. I will agree that it is the present economy's demands that encourage young people to delay their marriage until their careers are stable. But conservative economic policy has at most mirrored the demand of the global economy. It is simply not fair to place the blame of the collapse of American family values on either the radicalism of the 60s or Reagan's economic policy.
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mindmetoo



Joined: 02 Feb 2004

PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:37 pm    Post subject: Re: Have we forgotten about globalization? Reply with quote

Kuros wrote:

I have a real issue with someone decrying the loss of the American steel industry in the post-industrial, service and information-based international economy. Nobody can protect the American steel industry although politicians try their hardest and endanger enough FTAs with this nonsense.


Seems to me the demise of the American steel industry is because the steel companies had always relied on protectionism to pad their profits, refused to invest in new plants and technology.

I'm entirely thankful "family values" gets little political traction in Canada. Just make sure there's a job for me, I'll manage my own family in the way I see fit, thanks.
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