03-08-2020, 11:19 PM
(03-08-2020, 12:17 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Perhaps several people waving placards with what you put in boldface near homeless encampments or other areas of impoverishment is sorely needed. Would it be a significant wake-up call?
It isn't that simple. I could see some ghastly solutions, depending on the ideology. "Get them out of sight so that we don't need to look at them" could mean at the extreme sending them to concentration camps at which they are 'reformed' through labor -- if they are to have the privilege of survival. Such implies the criminalization of homelessness. Giving homes to the homeless is at most a temporary solution for those with big problems -- especially if the problem is pyromania.
Poverty is much of the cause, whether chronic unemployment or wages too low for settled living in the community. Where I live, the big farmers typically offer some sort of housing (like a room in a farmhouse on a farm that the farmer vacated when selling out to a bigger farmer... it is temporary housing, but it is far better than being exposed to the elements. Some farmers have built ground-level apartments suitable for families.
Employers who hire workers at abysmal wages might at some time be expected to provide housing for such workers. The alternative is to pay a living wage. Maybe we will have the expectation that anyone who employes workers for minimal pay has the responsibility to look out for their welfare.
If you want a structural cause for economic change that leaves multitudes out of work, then it is the decline of manufacturing as a share of American economic activity. American workers in manufacturing still had an economic advantage before the rise of the container vessel. It is not so much that the container vessel is efficient, but instead that it can be sealed all the way to some inland warehouse rather than being sorted out at some dock (and, yes, longshoremen were infamous for taking their cut of the stuff being sorted out). Pilferage used to be an implicit cost of importing anything small enough to steal. As long as that cost was significant, manufacturing in America was usually the best solution for all concerned. Today a port facility is where a container vehicle is transferred from a ship to rail or to trucks. Longshoremen no longer get to put their hands on the clothing, electronic goodies, toys, bicycles, ... whatever. The advantage to manufacture in very poor countries remains.
Quote:Not only are the days gone for the things you mentioned, but also for dreams of being able to expand your horizons by dabbling in mystical, spiritual or creative pursuits, which were very prevalent in my coming of age years. And, speaking of coming of age, are you seeing a subtle attempt to return the age of majority to 21?
Economically -- yes. If one needs a college degree just to get clerical work, then 21 is an economic 'coming of age' even if a cultural 'coming of age' through identity with mass culture happens decidedly earlier. Apprenticeships in skilled trades also take some time. In other things -- the legal age for tobacco use is now at 21. But note well: the hours spent at work are likely to fall because we no longer need to work so many hours to make the things that we used to. (Economic rents are a different matter, and those are likely to fall in any economic meltdown).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.