America is a sick society

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-01-2017, 01:39 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: America went from being a rural society  in which many were farm workers to an industrial society in which far fewer people worked on farms. What happened to all the farm workers? They went into manufacturing which paid better and more reliably. The transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy did not go so smoothly. Just look at all the urban wrecks -- Springfield, Massachusetts; Camden and Newark, New Jersey; Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; Detroit and Flint, Michigan; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Birmingham, Alabama...

It's been long enough ago that people don't seem to remember how ugly the Gilded Age was for many.  It was a time of booms, busts and ugly working conditions.  I'm not saying the transition to a service economy is clean and seamless.  Hardly.  I just wouldn't say that the good old days were anything like ideal.

I recently watched a PBS TV special on this wonderful town with marble quarries and all sorts of craftsmen high grade and low.  They showed pictures of men cutting and moving large marble blocks with animal, steam and manual labor.  You ever wonder where the Gettysburg monuments came from, or the old mausoleums or even the cobblestones?  Those were the good old days?  And this was a 'lucky' town with unusual raw materials that allowed a local industry to complement the usual sweat shops...