The mills (and manufacturing in America in general) is more complicated than just NAFTA. Robotics took away a lot of jobs starting in the 1970s.
Having lived in a textile area all my life, I can tell you that automation DID take a toll on the manufacturing world -- the mill stopped hiring as many people, young people couldn't gain entrance to the lifestyle their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents had live . . . but the mills also didn't lay people off, didn't disrupt the economy of our entire area until NAFTA.
No offense, and maybe it's because I'm a crazy Yankee,
but I think that is kind of a romanticized view and I don't think that sounds so great...to me it is almost reminiscient of economic slavery...remember when people used to say how plantation owners cared about their slaves, and the slaves were taken care of and happy? (Of course slavery was a million times worse.) The system you are describing was set up to benefit the mill owners, and it became a cycle for the workers' kids, as you said. No education, no prospects besides working at the mill? The owners had a built in work force within walking distance. Of course, once it was no longer financially advantageous, it sounds like the "older brother" bailed on them, though. What happened to the "moral duty" you describe?
My grandparents came over as immigrants with very little education, my grandfathers both worked in a shipyard and my grandmother came over at 14 and worked as a maid for a wealthy family in NYC. They eventually were able to purchase their own homes, one set had 11 kids and one set had 7 kids, all the kids were educated, some went to college, vocational training, etc. They definitely struggled economically, but they wanted their kids to do better, and each successive generation has done better. (Whether that will continue, I don't know.)
Remember, these are stories told to me by much-older, now-deceased relatives -- I know they were very satisifed with their lot in life. Your view may be different because you're a crazy Yankee, and your family has always viewed the world in terms of city, jobs, and small spaces.
Your NYC ancestors had access to jobs. They had access to transportation. They had access to education. My grandmother says that when she was a girl (she was born 1913), her father "went to town" every couple months. Making such a trip required about three days of travel and sleeping in his wagon. They had a traveling preacher who came through once a month, and everyone in the area traveled to him and made a whole day's event of it. I'm not sure when they first owned a car, but they were middle-class farmers with LOADS of land. They weren't poor. Jobs for farm kids? At best, a young man could hire himself at planting, harvesting, or haymaking. College? They had land, they had everything they needed . . . but cash money? No one had that -- at least not much. My grandparents both went to college; they were each the only sibling to do so, and it was considered an immense stretch for them.
So for those people, with those options, moving to the mill town looked like a pretty good choice. Their livelihood wasn't subject to the weather. If they stayed on the farm, they weren't going to have money -- ever -- AND as more and more families raised large numbers of children to adulthood, what the land could produce could support fewer and fewer people.
Does that mill life look attractive to us today? No. To people who have access to education and opportunities, it does look like economic slavery. But to them, with their options, in they heyday of the mills, it looked like an option equal to staying on the farm . . . but with the benefits of medical care, holidays off, and guaranteed retirement.
For people in that generation, it was a pretty good choice.
What changed the situation? Social morals changed, other options became available (for example, the two world wars and Vietnam took many of the young men away to the military). The Union changed things. For a long time, the South was very, very anti-Union. The owners (and most workers) took the viewpoint that we're family, we take care of each other -- we don't need someone else telling us what to do. But many people wanted the mill owners to provide all the benefits they'd provided for years (free housing, medical care, etc.) AND ALSO pay more money. It wasn't economically feasible; the product wouldn't sell for enough money to make that happen. So really, it was lots of changes /evolutions in the fabric of society that "did in" this social system.
The working poor for the most part I think do not have the resources to rise about their situation, while the middle class does. And I think this applies to their children as well as they are taught so differently. Instead of being a system that's based upon work I think in many ways our system is also based on a level of knowledge that many people simply don't have. And by the time people go to teach them it, it's too late or there's just no way to overcome what they were taught growing up.
I agree somewhat. With public schools, need-based financial aid for college, and many other safety nets in place these days, the working poor have the tools with which to move up in the world. However, those who've come from generations of working poor don't always see those things as choices. I'm thinking of a couple relatives of mine. They tend to see a college degree and a professional job as "good luck" rather than the product of years of effort.
Also, today's success can't be passed on to children in the same way it was in the past. I said in my above post that my 1900-s era relatives were middle-class farmers who owned lots of land. That land was passed on to their children, and many generations used that same land to live the same lifestyle their parents lived. In a city, I'd imagine the details varied: Probably a man started a grocery store or a five-and-dime, and after he built that business up, he passed it on to his children. Today the world-of-work focus has shifted, and most of us are not self-employed. Today it takes knowledge and education to move ahead in the world, and we can't pass our college degrees on to our children. That's a huge shift.
I think you're right on the money here....that the last 20 years or so was an historical aberration.
I think you're right. The last 20 years -- I'd probably say 30, possibly 40 years, but let's not quibble -- have been markedly different in the world of work (and in social affairs too), and we tend to lose track of the fact that our recent past is not at all representative of our entire history. Also, many of the things that've happened in the last couple decades are not sustainable. For example, the average American's personal debt.
Divorce has sky-rocketed since the 50's and it is probably the number one factor in why people stay poor (myself included) . . . My advice? Choose your partner wisely. Live with them a year or 2 before you make it legal. Wait to have kids until your mid-twenties or later. And lastly....PRAY that your partner in life has the same morals/values that you do and will be willing to work through those hard times......because the alternative option means even harder times.
We've all been focused on discussing work . . . but you're absolutely right to say that social changes have bled over into financial issues and work concerns.
Divorce is a huge obstacle to financial success, and I think even those of us who haven't been through it could enumerate the ways in which it's more expensive than staying together.
I disagree that living together is the answer. I'd point out that statistics have shown for years that you have a greater chance of staying married if you don't live together prior to marriage; and that as this practice has grown more common, the divorce rate has grown higher. Also, I'd say do more than pray that you've chosen wisely. Too many people are too anxious to marry, too concerned about offending/running off that potential partner, and they don't discuss the tough questions ahead of time -- so that's how, for example, a saver marries a spender (or something simliar). They figure that they'll work those things out later, and then later they realize that they had wildly different opinions about children, housing, vacations, even fidelity.
I didn't say his book negated Nickel and Dimed, just that he tried a different way with a different result. I believe that was my point..there is no 'single bullet' answer and I think Adam was very compassionate in the way he saw that many didn't have the skills, motivation or mind set that would allow them to appoach things his way. And he also made note that much of these issues were caused by upbringing, poverty cycle, drug and alcohol abuse or flat out the inability to look past a single day and be able to put off gratification. I have read both and feel that Adam had less of a bone to pick and really was much more open to seeing things in any light than the Nickel and Dimed author was, as her POV seemed pre set and became a self fulfilling prophecy.
I havn't read his book, but I suspect (note the portion I bolded) that I'd agree with his theories.
It's not politically correct to say that poor kids do worse in school, but it's true for many of them -- not the whole group, of course; after all, I was a poor kid, and I did great in school. But those are the very things that hold them back academically: They weren't brought up to view education as important, they sometimes skip school to work /work so late that they don't do homework, get into drugs /alcohol (not that our middle class kids don't do that too, but that's another subject), and genuinely DON'T "GET" that goofing off today in my high school class will hurt their chances of passing at the end of the semester. These same actions will hold them back in the work world.
But DH and I have a seven figure portfolio (not including our home) and we work our ***** off, day in and day out. We're in our early 40s, in the top 1-1.5% of income earners in this country and we don't consider ourselves anywhere near being "wealthy". We've been working, saving and investing to get to this point for twenty years now. All of our accumulated wealth will be used to support us in retirement later in our lives. There's no time to "clap each other on the back" or congratulate each other. We're too busy working.
You and I are very much alike -- even in age. I don't think of us as "wealthy". In my mind, wealthy people are those who inherited money rather than working for it. I don't particularly think of my husband and I as high wage earners -- we're not really -- but we really make the most of everything we have.
Actually, more people are doing these things and they don't really seem to be helping.
Co-habitation might sound good, but it has the opposite effect in real life, couples who live together before marriage are much more likely to divorce. I would guess it's because there needs to be a major change when marriage happens or people continue on as if they are still just dating.
Yeah, I think the large number of people who are living together has essentially denegrated the concept of a life-long partner, and it's made it easier for people to make the decision to split up.
I know wealthy people, and I know poor people. MOST of the wealthy people I know have worked pretty hard. MOST of them got some breaks that other people weren't so lucky to get (DVCgirl and I both got kick on wealth accumulation with stock options - lucky us to exist in the right field - or be married to those in the right field - in the 1990s.) But then there are other people - my brother in law for instance - who has gotten break after break - and I suspect will be bankrupt again in another three years because bad breaks - sometimes helped along by bad decisions - keep following the good breaks.
Yep, I could say this same thing. I don't know anyone personally who became financially secure by accident or working just occasionally. But I know people who earn good wages and still have little to show for it.
And I think the working poor and our less educated citizens are less likely to ever "do well" because they don't recognize breaks, opportunities for what they are. I'm thinking of a relative who has had SO MUCH given to him, and he just makes bad choice after bad choice. He isn't bright, but he had so many chances to get help with school; still, he never graduated. Various family members have helped him find job after job, but always after a couple weeks or months, he feels that someone's treated him unfairly and he shows them: he quits. Someone else BOUGHT HIM a house, and his girlfriend complains that it isn't good enough, has too many things that need to be fixed. He's never, never, never going to get ahead.
Stephanie Koontz, who is a social and economic Historian out of Evergreen State College in Washington, might disagree with you that it is that different. She's written a few books on marriage and family history and one point she makes is that marriages didn't necessarily last longer in the past. People just wouldn't get divorced formally - they'd go out for cigarettes and never come back - setting up a new life somewhere else. Without the computer records that we take for granted, people didn't necessarily bother with formal legal marriage and divorce - the minister might marry you, but if the county courthouse was twenty miles away and your family was still horse and buggy - you might never register it. Also, because it was much more common for people to die early, more marriages dissolved through death in the past. She thinks its actually fairly likely that the number of single parents has been pretty stable. Other things have changed though. There is less community. You might live farther from family and families aren't as tight.
I come from a family that's deeply entrenched in the same rural area longer than America has been America, and I know for certain that this has not been true for us (we're also a family who's never thrown away a scrap of paper -- my grandmother could be on that Horders TV show; well, not really because she's categorized all those family records and stored them into plastic page protectors and notebooks labeled by family, but she literally has a whole room full of family records). Until my mother's generation, I don't think we've ever had a single parent in our family -- except, as you mentioned above -- when one spouse died young.
