Category Archives: Greatest Generation, Boomers, Millennials, Alphabets

Who Helps the Poor When Religious Institutions Vanish?

A church in the Seattle area has opened its parking lot for homeless car owners to park at night. The church rents portable toilets for them. A church member opens the doors of the church for two hours on weekday mornings and evenings so occupants can use the bathrooms and kitchen, useful for those who have school or jobs.

Some in Seattle have called for more parking places for the homeless. One of the reasons cited for the lack of spaces, at least in church parking lots, is that many congregations are shrinking in size, along with their budgets for staff, extra utilities, and services.

Religious institutions have provided help for the poor since the first churches in the Near East took up collections for needy brothers and sisters. Monasteries and nunneries provided refuge for the destitute and dying during the Middle Ages.

We are familiar with the caricature of the Victorian do-gooder, more interested in saving souls than in physical sustenance to the poor. Religious leaders, however, prodded secular society toward fairer treatment of the poor, not to mention the end of the slave trade.

Working through government for humane change is as important now as then. However, one result of that shrinking church membership mentioned above is that fewer Christians are around to take up the slack when secular institutions fail.

 

Teaching Americans to Work the Chinese Way

Recently, Chinese businesses have invested in the United States. Reasons include the strength of the U.S. economy, recent actions of the Chinese government concerning their currency, and a possible U.S. trade agreement with Asian nations that excludes China.

One area of Chinese investment is the American textile industry. Textile jobs migrated decades ago from New England to the South to find cheaper labor and then to Asia for the same reason. Many U.S. workers lost their jobs when mills closed.

Now workers are finding jobs as the Chinese invest in the textile industry in places like North Carolina. Chinese supervisors mention, politely, that American workers sometimes work differently from Chinese workers. For example, Americans don’t always arrive at work on time.

An economic mixing of cultures occurred earlier when Japanese and Germans invested in factories for their cars to be made in the United States.

Such diversity happens because most communities accept foreign investment when it encourages jobs and economic growth, regardless of differences between nationalities. Even former enemies (i.e., the United States and Vietnam) have found common ground in an economic version of the global village.

 

Did You Know Students Used to Be Able to Pay for College with Summer Jobs?

As legislators in Washington State craft a final budget, it appears that tuition at state colleges and universities will be cut by 5 to 20 percent. The move is almost unique among states. Educators said it was long overdue. Tuition for Washington state-funded higher education has risen 34 percent over the past five years.

How was the tuition drop funded? By closing tax loopholes, including a preferential business and occupation tax for royalty income, and an increase in penalties for late tax payments.

Some parents remember when they earned enough at summer jobs to see them through college without future-mortgaging debts. No more. The children of wealthy parents have always been able to obtain higher education. So have a few very brilliant young people with scholarships.

Surely we know that a broad spectrum of our youth need advanced education if the nation is to succeed economically and socially. One way to do this is to lower costs to levels middle class families can afford.

Someday, it may be possible for students once again to pay all their college tuition with income from summer jobs.

 

Bypassing the Corporate Culture

I live in a collection of communities on part of an island in Puget Sound. The area is referred to as “the South End of the Island,” a distinct semi-rural area that excels in bypassing the corporate culture.

In its early days, the few settlers were mostly farmers and loggers. Their connections with the mainland (“over town”) were limited, since travel between the two places was (and is) only by ferry. In the post World War II era, hippies and other malcontents discovered the South End and encouraged its eccentric bent.

Some of the hippies left. Others became responsible citizens, but the culture of nonconformity endures. Recently, a group discovered that, by banding together, they could loan money to small businesses sometimes bypassed by normal lending channels.

New small businesses include a variety of enterprises: a bakery, a pub, a shop selling local foods and goods to the tourists who flock here in the summer, and a small Latin American restaurant. One of the more recent requests is from a businesswoman with expertise in the travel industry who sees the South End as a perfect place to conduct bicycle tours.

The South End experiment is only one example of how ordinary Americans are trying new ways of doing things that don’t depend on huge amounts of money or mass consumerism.

We Didn’t Worry About Cyber Warfare When We Used Typewriters

I typed my undergraduate college term papers on a portable typewriter. By the time of my graduate studies, I typed my work on a miraculous invention called the desk computer. No carbon copies. Mistakes easily corrected.

When I began a job as a computer programmer, we used a huge mainframe to take over mundane accounting and other tasks. Then networking and the Internet revolutionized what was already revolutionary.

Smartphones, tablets, and the Internet became as much a part of our lives as television and automobiles did in earlier years. We take them for granted. What company, even a small one, doesn’t have a web site?

These inventions cover the globe. Multitudes now have access to them. They include hackers and the foreign groups accused of stealing information from millions of government employees, contributing to mixed feelings toward these postmodern creations. They bring added vulnerabilities, including cyber warfare.

But even as we encourage the necessary technical skills to protect ourselves, we have deeper needs, lost sometimes in the pursuit of our digital tools. They include more face-to-face communities as well as educational opportunities for all our children. In this age, every adult needs education and training, not just a few favored computer techies.

 

Does Permissiveness Disadvantage Poor Kids More Than Rich Kids?

Ross Douthat, columnist for The New York Times, explores the consequences of a “no rules” culture on working class Americans.

“ . . . our upper class should be judged first . . for failing to take any moral responsibility (in the schools it runs, the mass entertainments it produces, the social agenda it favors) for the effects of permissiveness on the less-savvy, the less protected, the kids who don’t have helicopter parents turning off the television or firewalling the porn.”

The abandonment of marriage has harmed working class Americans more than the privileged. The rate at which children are born to unmarried parents has risen drastically, but especially among working class Americans. The higher income parents in our society are more likely to be married. If they divorce, courts oversee custody and child support.

Among unmarried parents, the father is more likely to skip his responsibilities any time he decides to, with no divorce court to oversee child support.

The permissive, less attached partner arrangement has proved devastating for those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. And, as Douthat suggests, the culture shapers, who tend to be the more well-off, bear a great deal of responsibility for the consequences.

 

When the In Group Becomes the Out Group

Political parties do it. Religious institutions do it. Corporations do it. When a formerly influential group loses power, it often responds by fighting to retain that power.

Wiser ones use the opportunity afforded by lessening influence to regroup and search out core principles instead.

Almost everyone in America used to believe in religion as a force for good. Most were members, at least in name, of a religious group. Now something like thirty percent and growing no longer count themselves as religious. A few are atheists, but atheists impart to religion a certain honor by reacting to it. Most of the nonreligious no longer react against religion. They simply ignore it.

Our situation has parallels with the world of the early Christians. Their rulers, the Romans, provided security and a certain measure of economic prosperity. Various philosophies encouraged cynicism and skepticism for old ways. Those with means to do so often lost themselves in an unending search for pleasure. Spiritually, it was a wandering age, like our own.

The religious movement known as Christianity offered a revolution based on a loving community that shared rather than sought power, wealth, or pleasure. Indeed, its founder had refused a political kingdom. It was the ultimate out group. Yet it appealed to more and more, outlasting the Roman empire.

A renewal of that same spiritual revolution goes beyond bemoaning how immoral our society has become. It does not seek political power. Rather it lives in the now, not some supposedly golden age of the past. It seeks to understand and meet needs and hurts of the now.

 

Wanted: Alternative Career Cycles

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, head of the Ruth Institute, made an interesting observation at a conference on demography and public policy. As women have entered the labor force, they have tended to fit themselves into a man’s career cycle.

When mostly men made up the labor force, the energy of young adulthood was the driving force in careers.

Young adulthood, however, is for women the ideal time to birth and rear children. Women are fitted with a biological clock that men don’t have.

We’re all different, of course, with different reactions to the seasons of life. Some women successfully birth and rear children in their thirties or even early forties. Others manage both career and family in their younger years. Some careers lend themselves to work at home or part time hours. Nor are all women called to become mothers.

Nevertheless, women remain the life producers. Get rid of motherhood and we become extinct. For the first few years of a child’s life, the mother appears the more essential parent for the child. It’s suggested that children who are breast fed for up to a year have an advantage over those who are not.

Perhaps we should make it easier for those women who choose motherhood to do so in early adulthood. After early nurturing, fathers might take on more child care while mothers add other interests, including careers. That would vanquish the “empty nest” syndrome as well as encourage men into a more balanced life. The old pattern of the career cycle may be outdated, even for men. Or for singles who want permission to drop out once in a while.

 

Do You Have a Home to Take You In?

An adult cousin of mine developed rheumatic fever many years ago. With financial resources dwindling, his wife drove him and their two little girls back to her mother’s farmhouse in Tennessee, where she had grown up. Her three brothers were supportive. They stayed until my cousin recovered. He resumed his livelihood, and the family returned to a normal lifestyle.

Home, the saying goes, is where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

This homespun saying has never been true of all homes, of course. Some families experience rifts that separate them. However, a great many of us head home to family when trouble strikes: death of a spouse, illness, divorce, financial reverses.

What will happen as families have fewer and fewer members? What happens after young adulthood when parents die or become incapacitated? More families have only one child. What happens when we do not have brothers, sisters, or cousins to lean on in hard times?

The lack of brothers and sisters, of kin, may leave us short of homes to take us in when trouble strikes. We will need to develop communities that support members during those times, not only physically but emotionally as well.

 

Education or Welfare?

At one time in my life, I worked for The Coca-Cola Company as a computer programmer. During a training course, we toured a bottling plant. I was amazed at the small number of workers needed to operate it.

Over the years, inventions from tractors to bottling machines to computers have revolutionized our ways of making a living. The days are long gone when most workers earned a living on a farm or in a factory. Even white collar jobs like paralegal work may be performed by computers.

Nothing in our postmodern lives presumes to take the place of parents for teaching life skills like self-discipline and curiosity, but our educational system bears the responsibility for teaching vocational skills.

Michael Moritz, a successful investor in many Silicon Valley enterprises, has donated much of his fortune to educational institutions. In an interview for Foreign Affairs (January/February 2015), he talks of government’s responsibility “to provide a fantastic educational system so that people have the skills and wherewithal to be able to make a living for themselves in a world where manual labor is no longer valued.”

Such education requires funding. Are we willing to pay for it? Or do we want to see more aimless, unemployed citizens? Your call.

 

College Dorms, Nunneries, and Monasteries

In my senior year in college, I became engaged to be married. My friends in the women’s dorm celebrated by throwing me in the shower. The ritual was practiced every time one of us in the dorm became engaged.

We spent a lot of gab time, too, into the late hours or on weekends. We developed friendships and shared our hopes.

I remember those days when I think about women and men who miss some of that non-romantic, same sex friendship by pairing off into couples too early.

I didn’t grow up in a Christian tradition that called some into “vocations” as lifetime disciples of the church, practicing celibacy. Still, those ancient traditions might offer ideas for young and new adults.

Young women and men could be guided into adulthood within a community of their own sex for a few years, perhaps overseen by caring adults. A kind of community to practice discernment, if you will.

The calling would not be permanent for most, though a few might remain in the community. It could provide a place for those singles who choose less than lucrative careers to serve others, who want encouragement to lead a life less devoted to consumerism. It could also offer a refuge for those attempting to find their place after a divorce or other loss.

The trail from childhood to adulthood winds longer in our developed societies. Perhaps an intermediate community after the family could aid some to better negotiate the transition.

 

Two-Parent Families Stage a Comeback—in Seattle?

Seattle familySeattle is a hip city, known for the nation’s highest minimum wage, recycling, and the number of young educated elites moving in. Odd that recent census data shows Seattle with the highest percentage of children in married-couple households in the fifty largest cities in the U.S. (Seattle Times, December 28, 2014)

Seattle edged out more conservative urban areas like Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs. Seattle is one of only three cities that has increased the percentage of married households since 2000. (Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Georgia, cities with a large percentage of urban professionals, also showed increases.)

One reason, observers say, is that couples in Seattle tend to be highly educated with well-paying jobs. This would suggest that if we want to encourage family stability, we should provide quality education for all our children and jobs with adequate wages for their parents.

 

American Prosperity Through the Family Photo Album

Wilhite Family 1An ancient photograph inherited from my mother shows her mother’s family gathered for a family photo on their farm in Tennessee. One child is barefoot. Grim faces stare at the viewer.

Wilhite Family 2Also passed down is another photo portraying most of the same family members grown older, with spouses and children. They are now nicely dressed like any middle-class family of the time would be. All, including the children, wear shoes. Their greater prosperity is apparent.

That progression of pictures depicts the journey of many Americans from the late 1800’s through most of the twentieth century. The story is of whole generations lifted from a subsistence lifestyle.

Today, figures indicate not just a halt to that growth but a reversal. Inequality has also increased between the wealthy and the rest of Americans. These trends were in place before the recession that began in 2008.

As the employment rate picks up, we need to insure that the wages of working Americans support a decent standard of living.

 

Boycott of Violence?

The drama club at Marysville-Pilchuck High School performed a play, as do many high school drama teams. But this high school is the place where a student recently shot five of his friends during a lunch hour, then killed himself.

The drama group had finished the last rehearsal for the play just before the tragedy occurred. The play contained violence. After the shooting, the group decided the portrayal of violence would remind too many students of the event which tore apart their world.

So they rewrote the script to take out all references to violence. It was voluntary, of course, a recognition that even simulated violence can overwhelm.

Admittedly, the events at the high school are not common. Yet they are becoming more common. And those of us not directly affected by an incident see it in the news and experience it vicariously.

Who knows how far voluntary boycotts of violent entertainment might curtail the current rise in violence itself?

 

Great Gatsby Déjà Vu?

 

The Great GatsbyTwo economists in the United States (Emmanuel Saez and Edward Wolff) have delved into wealth accumulation, using historical figures. In the 1920’s, the bottom 90 percent of Americans only held 16 percent of the country’s wealth. By the 1980’s however, the middle class made impressive gains. Their percentage rose to about 36 percent of the country’s wealth.

After that, the percentage for the middle class began to fall and is now approaching the percentage in the 1920’s.

Meanwhile, the very rich (not the 1 percent, but the .01 percent) now control about 11.2 percent of total wealth, back to the 1916 figure.

A return to the era of the Great Gatsby?

 

Last Bulwark Against the Dark Side

According to reports, buying drugs is easier than ever before because of the Internet. So is prostitution. The same technology that allows you to order a meal from your favorite restaurant allows you to order other things as well. Law enforcement finds it more difficult to track the darker trades because of anonymous software and diverse ways to hide transactions.

At the same time, traditional authority is breaking down. Cartoons used to picture teenagers tying up the family phone for long conversations with friends. Now members of the Zits age engage each other through smart phones and Facebook. Parents find it more difficult to know who their children’s friends are or what meetings they might be arranging or whether their texts deal with bullying, sexual propositions, or simply homework.

Churches and religious institutions have lost credibility. Even in Iran, mosques are losing their power to prohibit. The old authority isn’t in place, in the West or elsewhere.

What’s left? Self-discipline, it would appear, is the only thing that works against the dark side. Parents can teach it to their children in their early years, but only if they themselves practice it.

 

 

Violence as Addiction

This time it happened closer to home, a small town we pass through from time to time. A young man shot four of his fellow students in a high school cafeteria, then himself. The shooter had been, to all appearances, a popular and well-adjusted young man.

I cannot imagine the anguish and soul searching that is occurring among families and friends. The tragedy touches anyone who was close to the shooter or the two friends who have already died or the two still in hospital, one remaining in critical condition. It will haunt the living for the rest of their lives.

No use to speculate on the motives of this particular young man. Let the families have their privacy.

Looking through my newspaper’s weekly movie guide a day or so later, however, I noticed how many of our movies are rated “R” due to violence. Is the violence we choose to call entertainment related to the increasing number of people, whether mentally ill or not, who use a gun to work out whatever is bothering them? We seem to be as addicted to violence as we are to drugs.

 

Men’s Liberation

Society was challenged in the 1960’s by a new movement, known as women’s liberation, to eliminate discrimination against women. The women’s liberation movement, in tandem with new methods of birth control, changed the status quo in less than a generation.

Unfortunately, the movement took on an “us/them” focus when a “we” focus would have better served it. The men needed liberating, too.

Women would win by assuming the career-centered lifestyles of their male counterparts. In fact, the men’s lives weren’t all that healthy or affirming. Women sometimes exchanged drudgery for drudgery.

Even when men take on their share of housework and childcare, many couples face a chaotic race to fulfill their obligations—to family and community but also to inner selves. The necessity for all adults to work forty hours or so each week in a usually distant work place results in unintended consequences. It robs us of the ability to carry on other pursuits. Previously, women tended to be the ones who kept lives on an even keel. When women entered the work force in large numbers, a necessary function went missing.

During the pre-recession period of full employment and a booming economy, it’s too bad we didn’t consider shorter work weeks while liberating women and men. Too bad we didn’t give them a shared chance at both jobs and a life beyond the rat race.

 

Income Redistribution or a Year of Jubilee?

 Income redistribution is a hot button issue. Is it communist? Something that would destroy capitalism? Or is it like those taxes we pay for public schools, paid even by those who have no children?

What about an updated Year of Jubilee? The Biblical passage of Leviticus 25 called for a “Year of Jubilee” every fiftieth year in the ancient Hebrew nation. Simply stated, land bought from others (and presumably used to increase the wealth of the buyer) would be returned to the original owner that year.

Obviously, such a practice would be difficult to carry out in modern society. What it suggests is the principle of sharing the means of producing wealth with those who have lost out in society’s economic scramble. They get another chance to compete.

The Year of Jubilee didn’t condemn wealth, nor the creation of wealth. But the chance to produce wealth is to be shared with the less fortunate for the good of all. Rather than direct payment, it meant giving them the means to make their own wealth. Today, it could mean investment in a superior education for every child or an economic system which rewards honest labor with honest wages It’s one solution for the tendency of money to accumulate more and more in the hands of a few. Pay it ahead.

 

What the Empty Crib Means to Us

 In P.D. James’ novel, The Children of Men, couples are no longer able to conceive children. The novel introduces us to a society that lost the ability to produce offspring after the current generation of young adults. A wistful, lonely, alienated people remain in this childless world.

Though it is doubtful we will ever reach the circumstances portrayed in this book, some developed nations (Japan and Italy, for example) are seriously concerned about enough children not only to support the elderly but also to supply enough citizens to assure a vibrant society.

Parenthood is the unsupported career. Though an emotionally involved parent is in a sense always attached to a child, the most physically taxing part of the career is over with by the time the child is five or six. By the time the child reaches ten or so, the parents have shaped most of his or her character.

Back when families had five or ten or more children, parents spent the majority of their lives at the job of parenthood. Nowadays, birth control allows most adults to have children only if they’ve chosen to—at least, if they recognize the responsibility procreation requires.

We don’t support parenthood like we used to, for various reasons. Many choose not to be parents, a responsible decision. However, for those who do choose or who want to be parents, society is geared toward discouraging them at every turn.

Since most young adults require full-time jobs to meet financial needs, adding children to the picture is challenging to say the least. And in an age when money assumes the most important means to the good life, raising a child bites a chunk out of that.

Cheers to the last person in America in hopes they will have fun with their selfies.