Conference turris::womannotes-v1

    > Why middle class, he didn't say

Listening to the interview, I got the funny feeling that "middle class"
equalled "white" (but not, of course, in so many words).

Wattenberg's approach ("the whole feminist agenda") seems similar to
Sweden's social democratic approach:  make it convenient for the
middle class to have kids (parental leave, day care, work adaptation)
and the middle class will have more kids.  This is a far cry from
"keep 'em pregnant and uneducated."  This was proposed in Sweden in
the late 1930's by Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, who answered the question
"why aren't people having kids" by pointing out that couples couldn't
get decent apartments in the cities.  Sweden then build large apartment
blocks, called "Myrdalen" (anthills), and instituted a number of social
reforms which, over the years, have come to include:

-- parental leave: now 1 year for each child (with pay) that may be
   split between the parents.  (Includes adoption.)  If the parent
   wishes to stay at home longer, "an equivalent job" is guaranteed
   for several years longer.

-- a parent may take up to (I think) 60 sick days per year to care for
   an ill child (who can't be placed in daycare that day).  (If you're
   sick, you don't get paid by your employeer, but receive an income-
   dependent amount from national health.)

-- day care is generally available, the cost is income-dependent.

-- rent subsidies are available.  My ex-brother-in-law, his girlfriend,
   and their two kids had a nice two-bedroom apartment for which they
   were paying $80/month (half of what I paid for a one-bedroom).
   (They were both students with only part-time income.)

-- five week's paid vacation per year.

-- "barnbidrag:" a grant of about $200/child/year paid to the parents "to
   be used for the child."  Payments were made quarterly: just before
   Christmas, spring holidays, summer holidays, and school start.

Martin.

    I heard it too! (I think we both heard the same thing this time,
    Wit :-))
    
    When he said he was in favor of the feminist agenda, a little voice
    inside me said "HA!" What he verbalized backed up the statement,
    but I have the funny feeling there's a hidden agenda.
    
    Then, the racist bent to the whole thing really turned me off. He's
    worried about the "industrial" countries having low birth-rates.
    He's backing his argument with some (seemed vague to me) "facts"
    about decline in world economy ?!?!?!?!?!?
    
    There' a little voice in my head whispering "racist".
    
    I thought the whole thing was scary.
    
    Dawn
    

    I remember something similar to this that I read about 20 years
    ago that the educated American middle class was 'breeding itself
    out of existance'. As I recall it was a kind of intellectual racism.

Re: .1

	 He claimed  that *adjusted for income* black women have lower
	 fertility  rates  than white women. In response to a question
	 he said that he wasn't racist, but was concerned about class.
	 His  later  worries  about the fraction of people of European
	 decreasing certainly sounded racist to me.

	 I certainly  agree  with making parental leave and child care
	 more  prevalent,  but  remember  other  people  at the AEI as
	 strong opponents of abortion and even contraception. I am not
	 in favor of forcing women to have children in this way, hence
	 my  beleif  that  he's  trying  to  force  women  out  of the
	 workforce.

Re: .2   What's wrong Dawn, we never agree about anything?  :-)

	 Note that  the  "entire  femminist  agenda"  that he mentions
	 leaves  out such things as equal pay for equal work, equality
	 of  opportunity,  and  reproductive freedom. Sounds like some
	 part of the femminist agenda to me.

--David

    
    One of his proposals is to bribe people (white middle-class americans,
    the last bastion of western civilization [I am sure he is a racist]) 
    to have children. He proposes paying people $2000 per child per year 
    for 18 years. And where will all this money come from? Why...Social 
    Security! You see, with all the Baby-Boomers out there, and so few 
    retirees to support, SS will soon be amassing an enormous surplus.
    
    .....Phooey.....
    
    I read an article by him in a recent Newsweek (or Business Week,
    or one of those type) And came away convinced that he is an out
    and out racist, who manipulates statistics, and makes wild, unfounded
    conclusions. Perfect example of Mark Twain's (or was it Will Rogers?)
    classification of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
    
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
                    

    I heard him on NPR this morning.  He claims to not be a racist,
    but seems real worried about "what some people (=other racists)
    think" (not his exact words).  At that, the interviewer asked him
    right out "why worry about those people?" which seemed like a brilliant
    question because Mr. Cretin couldn't answer it.
    
    	-Ellen

    re .0: The three words were (and I undoubtably have the wrong order):
    
    	Kinder, Kuche, Kirche
                    
    (the three K's)
    
    [Which just goes to show how I can no longer spell in German.]
    
    meaning
    
        Kids, Kitchen, Church
    
    [at least, that's what I meant to write]
    
    Not quite the same thing as "barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen".
    However, the proper position for women in church was in the pews, not
    in the pulpit (and of course wearing shoes :-) ).  
    
    re .*: Don't look for feminism on NPR.         
    
    	   Poor, overworked middle class: not only do they have to support
    	   the tax burden of the US, but now they're expected to have
    	   lots of babies too!  :-)

re .3
	Chalk me up as an "intellectual racist" if that is what you mean.
	I don't know if it's the same in the U.S.,  but in parts of
	Britain it seems to have become "fashionable" to speak badly,
	and support socialist policies for the simple reason that there exists
	an anti-middle class prejudice.  The British person of yester-year
	who spoke well and wanted to get on in life seems only to have been
	preserved in a rather artificial form by certain elite sectors
	of the community - and this hardly makes for a well-integrated
	society and so in fact they do not succeed.  I went to various
	different schools and learnt to get on with people of all backgrounds.

	But I seem to fit the middle class profile whether I like it or not.
	I happen to like who I am.  I once met a punk group on a train to
	London who were intimidating a girl,  so I decided to keep a close watch
	on the situation and worked myself into the conversation - in order
	to protect the girl if I could.  Realising that I was an
	inhibiting factor on the fun and games they planned with this
	girl (who was surrounded in her seat),  the leader of the group decided
	to have a go at me.  (I won't mention the name of the pop group in case
	I am sued for libel.)  This person chose to announce that he ought to
	knife me because I was middle class.  This is by no means
	the only incident where I have been at risk because of being label-
	classified as middle class.

 	In my home town it seems that nearly all of my contemporaries
	chose to conform.  In their teens most of these did
	not work at school (part of the conformity "requirement") and many
	did not get good jobs.  Those who did not conform tended to have
	fewer friends and some are almost withdrawn from society to this day.
	I was one of the lucky ones.
	It is easy to see that the dwindling process is continuing.  All
	the while the socialists blame the middle classes for everything.
	Soon there may be no-one left to blame.

	You see,  most originally middle class children I grew up with
	changed their manner and appearance just to escape intimidation
	from other children.  But I was always a fighter for my identity
	from an early age and learnt how to stand up to the majority if
	necessary and survive.  
	
	Now please note that this labelling and so forth was not my doing.
	Many kids would "conform" rather than be bullied.  I happen
	to be proud of myself that I didn't.  Of course I was a tall
	and strong child,  but I once had to stand up to as
	many as 12 kids and more than once.  But I was determined that
	people should accept me basically as I was and went to lengths
	to preserve myself as I was.

	I consider it ***survival*** of to want to promote that which
	is labelled by many people as middle class if that is what I am
	going to be labelled.  Such promotion is ethical and necessary.
	The reason for the dwindling of this class is...

		FEAR

	because of intimidation at an early age by what I will have to call
	the working classes I suppose.  Before the 70s pupils were
	segregated by and large according to ability while the very wealthy
	could afford private education.  From the seventies integration
	of the majority was forced in the form of comprehensive schools.
	But this of course meant that the person with "middle class"
	parents was then faced with "fight or conform" by those of less
	fortunate backgrounds.  I know one young woman who speaks
	with the most appalling voice,  works as a hairdresser and failed
	badly at school.  Her parents are upper middle class,  and her father
	owns a multinational hi-tech CAD/CAM manufacturing company.  You would
	not believe they were her parents to compare their voice and
	manner.  This young lady went to a comprehensive school I attended
	before I got out via a scholarship.  It is easy to see what
	happened to her.

	In my case,  such intimidation first happened to me at
	the age of five when I went to school in Tetbury,  Glos.,  where there
	was a small affluent community and a large very poor one and all shared
	the same infant and junior school,  unless the parents were
	exceptionally wealthy.  I suffered bullying at first but I don't
	regret those days because this equipped me for the more serious
	stuff that was to come.  Of course I was in the first generation
	to suffer.  In Britain the second generation is at hand and now
	the teachers who are my age are largely of the type that conformed
	to the "working class" mode of behaviour.  I strongly pity any
	middle class child who has to go through it today.

	I am strongly in favour of the survival of the ethics,  good manners
	and desire to succeed in life of the so-called middle class and am
	in no doubt that it is ethical and proper to have the motive for
	survival of ones group.

	I am resentful of any attempt to suggest that it is racism.  

re .6

>	Why worry about these people?

But then,  why worry about any other human being and his ability to succeed
in life?

Simon.

    re .8
    
    I agree with you.  There is no good in lowering standards to the
    lowest common denominator.
    
    The US is becoming a two class society also, and primarily for the
    same reasons.
    
    This is a big country though, and there are many many places where
    you can get away from all this crap.  I'd invite you to emigrate
    but you're obviously white and they won't let you in unless you
    have AIDS.
    
    /L.

    re -1:    WHOA!!!
    
    [this _is_ womannotes, right?  This is not the file where one would
    expect to find such racist, heterosexist horse hockey as the following:

    < Note 385.9 by RETORT::UMINA >
    
    >                                 ...I'd invite you to emigrate
    > but you're obviously white and they won't let you in unless you
    > have AIDS.
    
    I must have misunderstood.  Could you clarify please?
    
    Lee

    re .10:
    
    I agree, it is heterosexist and racist, and therefore OFFENSIVE.
    
    	-Ellen

I'm still waiting for an explanation.  I can't believe that I read 
something like that for it's face value.  There _has_ to be something else 
to it.  _Please_?

    I am not particularly comfortable with the original remark...
    
    asking someone to emigrate because of their opinion but then 
    stating that the person wouldn't be let into some unspecified 
    place because the person is white and does not have AIDS implies 
    that the orginal author feels the thought in question is appropriate 
    only to blacks or homosexuals .....which to me is - on its face value -
    both racist and heterosexist..... I would like the author of
    the original remark to contact me and explain what was meant....
    
    Bonnie J
    moderator

    Sorry gang, but you can delete the note if you want to (moderator),
    or you can take yourselves a little less seriously and reread the
    previous note and then read a little sarcasm into what I wrote.
    
    Then you'll get the explanation.  And maby a chuckl.
    
    On the other hand, now I do have a real comment, not meant to generate
    laughs.  I was really surprised how quickly people who seemed to
    be anti-label were so quick to assign labels.  It would seem to
    me that in this day and age one might be a little more cautious
    about tossing around labels that are offensive.  Arguing the points
    is far more appropriate.
    
    Of course one could be more direct with one's humor too.  But I
    really thought at the time from the dialog that goes across this
    file that it would be "understood".  Perhaps I should master typing
    those little faces.
    
    So if you got a chuckl have another.  If not, then please do.  Perhaps
    it's not Bill Cosby, but if we can't laugh at ourselves, our hangups,
    our frustrations, our indulgences, and even our mistakes, then this
    is going to be a pretty dull world.
    
    /Len
    

    Len,
    
    Thankyou for explaining your remark. Humor is always welcome in
    this file....but it is wise when writing in a public forum which
    is read by a wide variety of people not to make jokes that rely
    on ethnic or other group related steryotypes....you are bound
    to give offense no matter how innocuous you felt your remarks.
    
    I am all in favor of the quick quip or the humerous aside...
    just try and remember what who may read your words and craft
    them with skill....
    
    peace
    
    Bonnie J

        Back to the digression at hand. I, too, will risk the label of
        "classist", by saying that I'm quite contented with being in the
        upper-middle class and in touch with my middle-class WASP roots.
        I also will admit that I think that it is an unwise move for the
        inteligencia and those of us with resources to restrict our
        reproduction in the face of an expanding lower class. It can
        only lead to a concentration of wealth and power towards the top
        and an expansion of poverty at the bottom.
        
        The lower class is growing due to immigration, loss of mid-level
        jobs to foreign competition, the expansion of automation, and
        the effects of high tech, and economic difficulties such as
        inflation. Adding to that a difference in birth rates across
        classes is not, to my mind, a good thing. 
        
        I don't think that this is the most important factor in the
        deepening gap between the upper and lower classes and the spread
        of poverty, but it does seem to me to be one of the many factors
        involved. I think the denial of the class structure and the
        disrepute into which the middle class has fallen are factors
        which have contributed more to the worsening of the social
        environment rather than to its advance. 

    I don't know if I'm being smiley-faced here, or downright vicious. I
    feel insulted by the underlying assumption that because of the social
    conditions in which I was raised, I am inherently incapable of ever
    being of value to society, of ever being anything but lower class. 
    You assume that there is no social mobility.

    I was born poor and raised poor; my father, a mechanic, worked hard
    all his life, was always employed, and still only recently managed
    to earn a salary that put him above the offical poverty level.
    
    I'm amazed at what an easy solution you've found to deep-rooted social
    problems -- you have the babies and we won't. 
    
    I think you'd find most of us would be glad to have far fewer babies,
    if we had access to decent birth control at reasonable prices. If we
    even knew about birth control in the first place, if we learned it
    before it was too late.  Then we don't get the education we need to
    raise ourselves out of the gutters (you think we like it here?),
    even if we manage to get a good job housing costs so much we can
    barely keep ourselves and our families out of poverty.
    
    No wonder we're hostile when we hear people smugly proclaiming that
    yes, they went to Dartmouth, but there's no old boy's network, it
    really wasn't any advantage at all.  
    
    And all we have to do is let you have the babies.
    
    I'm all for it!

    --bonnie    

        I have, I guess, again been unclear. I believe quite strongly in
        social mobility. Without it my middle calss ancestors would
        never have been middle classed. The large majority would have
        remained peasants, some lower still as slaves, and the very few
        would have remained in the upper classes.
        
        I in no way claim that being from or in the working class is
        incapacitaing or in any way shameful. I do feel that it can be a
        very real challenge to move up through the classes. I also feel
        that anything that adds to the number of people in the lower
        classes, adds to that difficulty. As the gulf between the upper
        and lower classes broadens due to many many forces, the effort
        to cross it becomes greater.
        
        Further, it is not my intent by the pride in my heritage and my
        class to diminish or devalue the other classes or cultures. I
        feel that we all have a lot to be proud of and that we should
        not denegrate the contibutions of any group or raise ourselves
        by lowering others. Just as I am proud to be a WASP, I expect
        and hope my black friends will be proud of their heritage and
        the CHinese of theirs and so on and so on. Black pride should
        not have to threaten whites nor vice versa. 
        
        I thought I had said that I don't think this (any disparity in
        birth rates) is an important factor, and had hoped to illustrate
        that there were many many factors involved. I do feel that
        denial of the existence of class, of the dynamics of class
        interaction and social mobility, and the disparaging of the
        middle class (and of each of the classes) leads to at least as
        many problems as are caused by class itself. 
        
        I did recognize that there was a potential for misunderstanding
        here, and for accusations of classism. I honestly did not put
        forth my thoughts here to belittle or to hurt anyone but to be
        candid as to how I felt about the subject, in hopes that there
        could be an increase in understanding amongst us.
        
        If I caused any pain or ill-ease, I am sorry. That was far
        from my intention. 
        

    
    If the middle class is too bored or selfish to recreate then let them
    die off. 
        

    Any species which limits its' population will be overrun
    by one that doesn't. Lazarus Long

< Note 385.18 by WEBSTR::RANDALL "I'm no lady" >
                          -< the lower class speaks >-

    
>    I think you'd find most of us would be glad to have far fewer babies,
>    if we had access to decent birth control at reasonable prices. If we
>    even knew about birth control in the first place, if we learned it
>    before it was too late.  Then we don't get the education we need to
>    raise ourselves out of the gutters (you think we like it here?),
>    even if we manage to get a good job housing costs so much we can
>    barely keep ourselves and our families out of poverty.

    This may have been true when you were growing up, but according to
    a  midwife  (and erstwhile housemate) who practiced in a poor area
    of  New  Haven,  it  was  a status symbol for the boys to father a
    child,  and  the  girls  didn't  really  care.  At least partially
    because   of  pressure  from  their  boyfriends,  the  girls  were
    uninterested  in  contraception,  even  after they'd had a baby or
    two.  In  some  cases the group made IUDs a standard part of the 6
    week  post-partum  exam,  which  raises  all  sorts of interesting
    questions  about  informed  consent,  which  they  ignored  on the
    grounds  that  what they were doing was right. For what it's worth
    the median age at first pregnancy in her practice was 14.    

--David

    re: .22 -- 
    
    I think what we have here is at least partly a difference between city
    poverty and rural poverty.  The rural poor tend to get married young
    and have lots of kids.  They *tend* not to have as many kids outside
    of wedlock.  
    
    Your friend's experience does, however, illustrate what I meant by
    learning some other way of doing things.  
    
    Access to birth control is usually take to mean "it's there if you want
    it," (and I admit I wasn't very clear here), but that's far too simple
    a view.  By the time you're fourteen and have figured out that the deck
    of life is stacked against you, it's too late to come in and say that
    you shouldn't have babies when a baby is the only thing you've ever
    learned how to do.  As you point out, by then it doesn't matter if the
    pill is dispensed in candy machines.  The *idea* of controlling one's
    reproduction has to be emotionally and psychologically accessible
    first. 

    --bonnie

    I think it is ridiculous to have children in order to prevent society
    being overrun by different social class... Children who come from from the 
    so-called 'advantaged' classes but are still unloved generally turn
    out to be just as socially deficient and socially destructive as
    children from any other class. They just (sometimes) do it with 
    more elegance.

    There are powerful social and economic interests that have a real
    stake, albeit a short-sighted one, in maintaining population growth at
    the bottom of the social pyramid.  It is expensive to have and raise
    children; those who do so from marginally adequate resources will tend
    to be very docile and obedient in order to protect themselves and their
    children from loss of those resources.  Those at the top of the pyramid
    benefit from that docility on the part of the labor force.
    
    Therefore, so long as the socioeconomic membranes between classes are
    perceived as at least somewhat permeable by individual effort ("Work
    hard and you too can succeed"), the only people who would benefit in
    the short term from decreased lower-class birthrates are the members of
    the lower classes themselves. Thus the right way to maintain
    upper-class advantages, over the short term, is to discourage or
    prevent that reduction by social mystification and/or elimination of
    options.  And that is exactly what we see happening. 
    
    What I wonder is whether the technology of social control will be
    adequate to prevent revolution when the bill for our current
    "prosperity" is finally presented. 
                               
    						=maggie

    Rereading what I wrote last night, I find that I didn't make clear one
    underlying reality about poor people "having babies":  economic and
    social analysis doesn't touch on the emotional life of real people,
    and children are an emotional issue.
    
    The support and warmth of the family unit is one of the few strengths a
    poor family has; the pleasures of family living are about the only
    pleasures you get. This is true whether we're talking about a
    traditional family or a single mother of three or a matriarch of
    a loosely-related clan. 
    
    It's tremendously comforting to know that there is a cohesive unit
    supporting you, to have partners in the struggle against a cruel,
    indifferent, and often unjust world.  Yes, poverty can destroy the
    family structure (but so can middle-class drinking), and a strong
    family can turn the poorest life into a rich and rewarding one.  I grew
    up broke but I didn't grow up impoverished. 
    
    When a poor child gets old enough to start thinking of herself as an
    adult, and starts to realize she could work hard at an honest job done
    exceptionally well for the rest of her life and still not make enough
    to live on, it's natural to turn to each other, to try to make a new
    family and a new nest of warmth to hold off the storms. It's not so
    easy to see that you've actually lowered your chances of making things
    better.  When you don't see a way to make things better, you don't even
    care.  A fourteen-year-old mother cuddling a smiling, wriggling infant
    might be enjoying the only love she's ever going to get. 
    
    It's easy, as maggie pointed out, for those at the top of the pyramid
    to exploit this desire in order to keep us docile and keep us from
    taking control of our lives.  

    I don't know what all this proves.  It indicates that conventional
    birth-control education isn't going to be effective, because it (quite
    by accident) tells people in desperate need of love and success that
    they can't have the only thing they might be good at.  
    
    It also indicates that the birth rate is only incidentally connected to
    the causes of the social problems we face.  Lowering the birth rate
    among the lower classes might spread scarce resources less thin, but it
    does nothing to address the reasons why those resources are so scarce
    in the first place. 

    --bonnie

    .25 was quite interesting, as were a number of other notes which
    attempted to explain the birth rate of the current middle class.
    I offer no explaination but do make a prediction, if a younger couple
    win the White House and they have children then the middle class
    birth rate will increase.  The lemmings of the 60's begat the lemmings
    of the 80's.  Jack and Jackie (the Kennedy White House) made children
    fashionable, for a time.  The fashion will again be in vogue if
    we see a happy (superficialy at least) couple with very young children
    in the White House.
    
    Fo those who take offense quite easily, not all couples who expanded
    their families in the 60's were lemmings.
    
    Douglas

    Maybe, Douglas (your reasoning is always impressive!), but I suspect
    that if we do see such an increase it will be a short-term one the
    major result of which will be to hasten the socioeconomic polarisation
    of the country (i.e., make the "bill" to which I referred bigger,
    and the demands for "payment" more pressing).
    
    						=maggie

    NO, NO, NO, You guys just DON't understand.
    
    Look.
    
    WE (the middle class) (you know, the Good Guys) let THEM (YOU know
    who I mean) have as many kids as they can.
    
    THEN, we continue to limit access to health care!
    
    Simple, eh?
    
    N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o Problem!
    
    :-} :-} :-} :-}
    
    Dawn
    

    I think it was Lillian Breslow Rubin who did an interesting study in
    the 60s of urban black poverty.  She addressed many problems social
    workers saw in the welfare family, such as exorbitant spending with no
    saving of any windfalls, such as high birth rate and huge families.
    Her conclusions (explosive at the time, but taken almost for granted
    these days I think) were that 1) the spending was a way of saving:
    all $$ would go somewhere, and if huge gifts were given to others,
    those others "owed" a favor which could be called in when times
    got rough again as they inevitably would.  and 2) making a big family
    not only gets higher welfare payments, but provided an extended
    family to function as support network.
    
    Interesting book, I wish I could remember the name...
    
    Lee

    re .25
    
    Maggie,
    
    I couldn't agree with you more.  In fact, the greater the lower
    class population burden the more the upper class benefits.  Consider:
    
    The middle class is strapped by taxes to support/feed and cloth
    them, therefore unable to make the break from middle to upper, offering
    little competition at the high end.
    
    The banking system profits from the masses voting more and more
    social programs that there isn't money enough to pay for.  To wit:
    
    You probably think that our deficits are financed by the sale of
    treasury bonds.  To some extent you are right, a small portion of
    the deficit is financed that way.  The majority of the deficit is
    financed by borrowing money from the Federal Reserve Bank.
    
    The Federal Reserve Bank is NOT part of the Federal Government.
     It is a privately held corporation that was allowed by Congress
    to use the name and given control over our currency and economy
    early this century to "control the dynamic swings in economic activity
    to provide a stable environment for financial and economic growth".
    
    What you may not know is that the Federal Reserve AUTHORIZES the
    treasury to inflate the currency by the shortfall in federal finances
    (because the treasury bill sales are never enough) and that this
    inflation is credit to our Fed account as money "borrowed" from
    the Fed.
    
    OF course we pay interest on the money at the going rate.
    
    Even though the Fed really never loaned it to us.  They merely said
    we could create it, then they charge us interest on what we created.
    
    No wonder 1/3 of our Federal budget goes to pay interest on this
    debt.  Now if you're a megabanker (ps the Fed is owned by 6 families,
    only 1 of which is American, and these same 6 empires own the Federal
    reserve bank in all western countries), the best way to make money
    is to foster lower class expansion, creating high debt burdens and
    high tax rates for those who are productive.
    
    You see, most of us are so busy keeping ahead of our tax burden
    we don't have time to figure out what's really happening to us.
    
    In fact, the social environment is being engineered to keep us
    "enslaved" and until some well united and fairly intelligent group
    that can take on the system begins to emerge, I think we are all
    at their mercy.
    
    Two more points.. first the State of Washington is attempting to
    call the question on the Federal Reserve Bank with legislation thanks
    primarily to the efforst of Senator MetCalf.  About 6 other states
    had joined in the effort to abolish the Fed's control of our money
    supply and to prevent them from charging us interest on our own
    inflation.
    
    Second, you might now realize that it is not the people who elect
    our representatives, but the Fed.  Think about it.  Did you really
    want Carter to stay in when interest rates were 23% and unemployment
    as a result was heading for double digits.  Of course not.  You
    blamed him, yet Carter was probably doing his job - and therefore
    a problem for  the Fed - so they got rid of him.
    
    Mr. Reagan on the other hand is playing along.  Hence low rates,
    economic growth etc....  Notice how much money we are "borrowing"
    (remember most of it is created out of thin air, not borrowed, but
    we pay interest on it anyway) these days.  That keeps the flow of
    cash and resources coming in.
    
    Perhaps the womens movement in this country can yet aspire to a
    higher goal.  After freeing women, they can work on freeing all
    of mankind.  You are probably the only group in the country with
    the intelligence, perserverence, and altruistic motives to do it.
    
    I will post Senator MetCalfs address here for those who might be
    interested in finding out more about this.  He is much more articulate
    than I am on this subject, and has a lot of reference material you
    can go look up.
    
    /Len

re .20
>    If the middle class is too bored or selfish to recreate then let them
>    die off. 
	My point was that children who are brought up in a way which
	causes them to be labelled as middle class are bullied into
	conforming to the standards of the children who do this labelling.

re .25
	In my experience one becomes socially disadvantaged if
	one is conditioned to become so,  and many kids
	accepted this conditioning rather than stand up for themselves
	or any attempt to get on in life.  I am not saying
	this is absolute,  but the fact that there is more
	pressure on a child to conform "downwards" (bullying
	is itself a downward form of behaviour) results
	in a dwindling of those who want to improve their lot.
	And "live and let live" is itself a standard of behaviour.

	The fact that you have to be poor to have your children
	paid for under socialism is entirely a different matter
	and in my opinion has less of an impact than what happens
	to those children afterwards.

	Also the relationship between "class" and wealth is more imagined
	than real:  At least in Britain, the government statistics dividing
	people into categories of affluence
	took no account whatever of how people acquired their identity,
	with or without pressure from peer groups.  

	Note that conditioning by peer groups has more impact than
	who your parents were in a state school system,  where people
	come from different backgrounds.

Simon.

    	I don't see too much problem with encouraging the "upper classes"
    to breed more.
    
    	Consider a mathematical model. If each couple produces about
    two offspring, then you have a stable population. Split the population
    into two groups that do not interbreed too much, and it is still
    stable.
    
    	Now consider that one of the groups is distinguished by having
    inherited wealth (group A). If the other group (B) increases in
    size, then group A becomes collectively and individually richer,
    since their ownership of resources allows them to buy more labour.
    On the other hand, if it is group A that is increasing in size,
    then in the next generation the inherited wealth is spread more
    thinly.
    
    	If you were to pass a law that said that families with inherited
    wealth *must* have children in proportion to that wealth, you would
    eliminate the upper class within a generation.
    
    	And the 6 families referred to earlier would be too busy in
    the bedroom to influence U.S. presidents.