Bob, I will have to agree with you about conditions in the South during
the years in which I grew up. And I must admit that I moved away,
rather than trying to better the situation. And, perhaps what I see on
the news broadcasts is purposely selected to feed controversy. I did
program a couple of BBC news broadcasts into the DVR last night. Maybe
I can broaden my perspective.
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
On 9/11/2015 7:24 AM, Bob Whitmire wrote:
Hum. I'm not sure this discussion started with have/have not. Wasn't it
more about the just-plain-stupid tendencies among young men? One of Jeff
Foxworthy's "Hey, y'all, watch this!" moments?
I read a pretty extensive survey recently (sorry, I didn't note where for
later retrieval) laying out the profound misconceptions rampant among _all_
off us about welfare and public assistance. It would seem almost as many
liberals as conservatives believe far more people are riding to government
gravy train than actually are. As I recall, the actual number was somewhere
in the neighborhood of 5 percent. The overwhelming majority of people on
public assistance are _working_, many of them two or three jobs; many of
them live in areas where the only jobs available to them are in fast food
restaurants and convenience stores. In the urban world, you can lay this
squarely at the feet of white flight after passage of the Civil Rights Act
in the middle 1960s. White people left the cities, and _so did the decent
jobs_. Now, the decent jobs are pretty much gone in a whole lot of places.
You have to play the hand you're dealt. Under different circumstances I
might have been a looter or rioter, or under-paid, overworked cop, teacher,
social services employee, etc. But my circumstances worked out, though not
without their dicey moments, some of which extended over a number of years.
The fact is that a lot of people have it bad; it's not their fault; they're
doing the best they can--and they're being pilloried, denigrated and
devalued by the rest of society for not having the necessary equipment to
climb the mountain. (Yeah, I know, sometimes it _is_ their fault.)
I think we also make the mistake of looking back and seeing the past
through a bit of a nostalgic fog. When you and I were growing up, for
example, the American South had in place a system every bit as nasty and
dehumanizing as South Africa's apartheid. I remember, and I suspect you do
do, colored restrooms (if there were any), water fountains, waiting rooms
in bus and train stations and back rooms in restaurants--if people of color
even were admitted at all. These people who didn't even achieve the status
of third-class citizens, did the best they could do with _everything_
stacked against them. I dare say many of them did a hell of a lot better
than we did, given the relative merits of our situations.
There has never been a shortage of the lazy and the shiftless. There isn't
now. But there aren't as many of them as it sometimes seems when we watch
national television, and _especially_ if we listen to talk radio. I saw a
graph recently of American productivity and American income. The two lines
on the graph were intertwined until 1973. Then they started to diverge.
Productivity continued to rise. Income stayed and remains today toward the
bottom of the chart. Productivity is the highest it's ever been in the U.S.
Income growth is appallingly low. Yet we have presidential candidates
telling us we have to work harder for longer hours in order to achieve. We
_already are_ working harder for longer hours, but the money's not there
for 95 percent of the American people. If you add CEO salaries to the
graph, that particular line climbs off the chart. The whole social-economic
situation in this country is stacked against the majority of people. No
wonder some of them hoist the finger, or just say f**k it. I'd hoist my
finger, too. Sometimes I do. <g>
I could go on, but mercifully, I won't.
--Bob Whitmire
Certified Neanderthal
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 6:04 PM, Jim Nichols <jhnichols@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Chuck, I'm gonna chime in one more time. All of us who have commented on
the progress of our families would be classified among the "haves". Some
of AG's examples may fall in both the "haves" and "have nots", but the
shortcoming that I see most often falls among the "have nots". Many of
these people, perhaps for no fault of their own, have fallen into a
lifestyle that takes no responsibility for its actions, and that is getting
passed on, by example, to another generation.
I grew up in the 1930s, when people sought help from others as a last
resort, and tried their best to become self-supporting. I saw that first
hand. I seldom see that anymore.
--
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