--- In AsburyPark@yahoogroups.com, "oakdorf" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> You had (and HAVE) a family unit. How many do in AP.. or for that
> matter,in the US? Kids (african american, whites, etc) can't be
having
> kids for the fun of it. With it, comes a responsilbity of the
PARENTS,
> not a sitter, daycare etc.
The reasons are multi-fold. One is the loss in this country (over the
past 5-6 decades) of unskilled jobs that paid a fair wage. An
interesting read is in the current issue of Rolling Stone about
income inequality. Here's an excerpt.
"But in the 1970s, inequality began increasing again -- slowly at
first, then more and more rapidly. You can see how much things have
changed by comparing the state of affairs at America's largest
employer, then and now. In 1969, General Motors was the country's
largest corporation aside from AT&T, which enjoyed a government-
guaranteed monopoly on phone service. GM paid its chief executive,
James M. Roche, a salary of $795,000 -- the equivalent of $4.2
million today, adjusting for inflation. At the time, that was
considered very high. But nobody denied that ordinary GM workers were
paid pretty well. The average paycheck for production workers in the
auto industry was almost $8,000 -- more than $45,000 today. GM
workers, who also received excellent health and retirement benefits,
were considered solidly in the middle class.
Today, Wal-Mart is America's largest corporation, with 1.3 million
employees. H. Lee Scott, its chairman, is paid almost $23 million --
more than five times Roche's inflation-adjusted salary. Yet Scott's
compensation excites relatively little comment, since it's not
exceptional for the CEO of a large corporation these days. The wages
paid to Wal-Mart's workers, on the other hand, do attract attention,
because they are low even by current standards. On average, Wal-
Mart's non-supervisory employees are paid $18,000 a year, far less
than half what GM workers were paid thirty-five years ago, adjusted
for inflation. And Wal-Mart is notorious both for how few of its
workers receive health benefits and for the stinginess of those
scarce benefits."
Many men who did not have skills or higher education could no longer
find jobs to support a family and simply left. It then becomes
intergenerational.
Then we have the failures of the welfare system. Great idea but poor
execution.
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