Posted on 06/24/2013 3:23:44 AM PDT by rellimpank
In his revealing book "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010," Charles Murray spends hundreds of pages using statistics to illustrate the rising inequality that is increasingly putting the white working class on the path toward generational poverty.
Murray concludes by suggesting that the "new upper class" — which increasingly is cloistered in pockets of rich, highly educated super-neighborhoods — move into the communities of "regular" people.
"Age-old human wisdom has understood that a life well lived requires engagement with those around us," writes Murray, who himself lives in what he describes as an increasingly troubled "blue-collar and agricultural region of Maryland."
He closes: "A civic Great Awakening among the new upper class can arise in part from the renewed understanding that it can be pleasant to lead a glossy life, but it is ultimately more rewarding — and more fun — to lead a textured life, and be in the midst of others who are leading textured lives."
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
Gosh, whatta ya say to that?
The textured life, that is a new one for me, and around here the concern is more the common core standards than failing schools. Then there is Shannon County.
Sounds like somebody who is liberal, who wants to prove how liberal he is, by sending his kids to failing inner city schools.
It also sounds like some who feels oh so superior. He’s going to uplift the school by virtue of his kids attending. Just the action of his kids attending somehow will fix a failing school. I sure don’t get this liberal superiority complex.
This is the guy who wrote “The Bell Curve” - hardly a liberal. But maybe, a bit of an elitist....
Oops. No coffee yet - my last post was completely wrong. It isn’t Charles Murray, and it’s not even a “he.”
I’ve read the book and it makes a lot of sense. I wouldn’t suggest that wealthy people should move to the hood but there are some very good points made.
My governor is one of those people who has spent his life insulated in a world of tech geeks and simply can’t conceive that some people actually like down and dirty blue collar jobs. The result is that he spends all his time on encouraging the tech industry while ignoring manufacturing which is the real job creator.
Something FReepers obviously understand is the media and their insular little world of liberalism. Everyone they know is liberal and they all agree that conservatives are crazy and unworthy of respect or even rights.
You were right the first time. The book’s author is the same as The Bell Curve.
If you are not west coast or northeast Elite then home school your kids to give them a much better chance to escape the deliberate “impoverisation” of the white middle class.
i have a friend who when she got married deliberately moved into the ghetto, although she could have lived elsewhere, bought and fixed up a house and they have stayed there. I don’t get it but hey, it’s not my life.
A fellow I have known since 1965 now down in Gainesville was like that. He has a super genius for a son and insisted on sending him to the public school because he didn’t want to separate him from what Pete called “the common people.” The boy was pretty much hired by NASA before he finished his senior year but would have finished high school several years sooner had he been sent to one of the private science oriented schools that offered scholarships when he was in 5th grade. The boy excelled but got his education outside of school entirely and almost entirely on his own.
Not so much. The real job creator(s) are small businesses, some of whom do manufacturing, some not. The stimulus totally missed the target (for anything other than sending more money into the pockets of unions and crony capitalists) by not putting most of the money into small business investment.
Not every manufacturer is big. In fact as you said, small businesses are the job creators but many of those are small factories with under 50 employees. I once worked in a bindery that only had 5 full time employees and put out over a half million books per week.
yeah the house they bought was far from beautiful and not even well built. It was, however the largest on the block but that is still small by nice house standards, no family room, 3 bedrooms shared drive, no garage, dungeon basement.
My governor is one of those people who has spent his life insulated in a world of tech geeks and simply can’t conceive that some people actually like down and dirty blue collar jobs. The result is that he spends all his time on encouraging the tech industry while ignoring manufacturing which is the real job creator.I've been watching those videos on YouTube about the meth epidemic in California and the Midwest. Horrible.
One of the things that keeps going through my mind as I watch is that 50 or 100 years ago, these people would be working in American factories. They'd be able to start at a low level and work their way up. At the low levels, the work may be boring, but those with intelligence can always find their way to less boring assignments; there's never enough motivated, intelligent people around as anyone who has run a business knows.
I know I said "intelligent" in the last sentence, and I can just hear some people saying "yeah, but the people in the meth videos aren't intelligent."
But there are different kinds of intelligence (I know you are aware of this cripplecreek). Some people learn well in a classroom setting, others - with plenty of intelligence - do not. They learn better in "real world" settings, working with their hands, doing real things.
I think many of the troubled souls in the meth videos are people of that type.
The politicians and technocrats who run our country have done away with millions of jobs of that type, largely because some of them generate smoke or bad smells. As a result, we have a society that runs on skills related to information handling. This leaves millions of young people out in the cold.
HEH...this is NOT news to me, as my present company is about the same size as your book bindery. But our products are VERY "high-tech content" systems rather than high volume. We do about $1MM sales a year. We're on the same page.
I have no doubt that Charles Murray is an elitist. Highly intelligent people always know that they possess this quality and therefore are much above the rest of society. Even ol' humble Abe Lincoln, as his secretaries in their biographies attested, was acutely aware that he was much more intelligent than the average bear (I don't recall them stating it that way, though).
Sounds just like my house!!
My attitude is that if you’re going to say “Our state is open for business” you’ve got to mean all business.
I know that if I were governor, I would have been all over the east coast gun manufacturers based on the fact that its an easier move to make, you don’t have to unionize, and we have a pool of knowledgeable people.
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