The stable two-parent families in which children learned manners and morals were more or less abolished, so that a household with two continuously married parents is now a luxury item, as is an orderly classroom.
Once upon a time, there was something the poorer members of society mostly had which they lack today, as well as christian values, patriotism, two-parent families, an education that taught them to be properly deferential, etc. They mostly had jobs. Unemployment was held well below a million from 1942 to the 1980s; These days it is officially about two and a half million. The definition of what constitutes unemployment has been revised over thirty times since 1980, always to make the figures look lower, so the true total is much higher. Add in the sections of the workforce dependent on low-paid part-time insecure short-term work, and anything up to a third of the population comes within the definition of “underclass”. A proper, steady, secure job, even a low-paid one, confers enormous benefits. It gives a person the priceless feeling that they are making their own way in the world. It supplies discipline. If you don’t get up in the morning, if you clock on late too often, you don’t have a job any more. A person’s life has structure, predictability and a sense of self-worth. Pay and working conditions were not always terribly good, but at least life was not chaotic. In contrast, life on the dole is extremely chaotic. It doesn’t matter what time you get up in the morning. The system of payments is capricious. If you are good at working the system, you can get much more than you are entitled to. We read the stories regularly. But (and this is less widely reported), if you are not good at working the system, or if the system is inefficient and loses your papers, or if someone lays an information and lies about you to officials, or an official simply doesn’t like you, then you can end up getting much less than you are entitled to. The way it is set up positively encourages chaos and corruption. At the same time, we are all constantly told, day in day out, that the only true source of happiness is endless consumption; buy more and more showy gew-gaws. “Retail therapy” really can make you feel better, for a while. If you’re feeling low, a new toy can put the gloss back on life, for a while. But the chances are it will have ceased to amuse you long before you’ve paid off the store-card loan you raised to buy it. So you’re deeper in debt, which is worrying and depressing; “oh, but I must have one of those, it’s so cool, it will make me feel better”….. so the cycle repeats, not so much retail therapy as retail addiction, and about as hard to break as heroin. If you’re a member of the underclass, these delights are denied to you. It’s no wonder so many become disaffected, drunk, drugged, angry and dangerous. In such a society, going on about “traditional values” is as useful as putting elastoplast on cancer.
Once upon a time, there was something the poorer members of society mostly had which they lack today, as well as christian values, patriotism, two-parent families, an education that taught them to be properly deferential, etc. They mostly had jobs. Unemployment was held well below a million from 1942 to the 1980s;
ReplyDeleteThese days it is officially about two and a half million. The definition of what constitutes unemployment has been revised over thirty times since 1980, always to make the figures look lower, so the true total is much higher. Add in the sections of the workforce dependent on low-paid part-time insecure short-term work, and anything up to a third of the population comes within the definition of “underclass”.
A proper, steady, secure job, even a low-paid one, confers enormous benefits. It gives a person the priceless feeling that they are making their own way in the world. It supplies discipline. If you don’t get up in the morning, if you clock on late too often, you don’t have a job any more. A person’s life has structure, predictability and a sense of self-worth. Pay and working conditions were not always terribly good, but at least life was not chaotic.
In contrast, life on the dole is extremely chaotic. It doesn’t matter what time you get up in the morning. The system of payments is capricious. If you are good at working the system, you can get much more than you are entitled to. We read the stories regularly. But (and this is less widely reported), if you are not good at working the system, or if the system is inefficient and loses your papers, or if someone lays an information and lies about you to officials, or an official simply doesn’t like you, then you can end up getting much less than you are entitled to. The way it is set up positively encourages chaos and corruption.
At the same time, we are all constantly told, day in day out, that the only true source of happiness is endless consumption; buy more and more showy gew-gaws. “Retail therapy” really can make you feel better, for a while. If you’re feeling low, a new toy can put the gloss back on life, for a while. But the chances are it will have ceased to amuse you long before you’ve paid off the store-card loan you raised to buy it. So you’re deeper in debt, which is worrying and depressing; “oh, but I must have one of those, it’s so cool, it will make me feel better”….. so the cycle repeats, not so much retail therapy as retail addiction, and about as hard to break as heroin.
If you’re a member of the underclass, these delights are denied to you. It’s no wonder so many become disaffected, drunk, drugged, angry and dangerous.
In such a society, going on about “traditional values” is as useful as putting elastoplast on cancer.