h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"How did we get from the early 1900's where the old man worked and the wife took care of the home and kids? "

Is this the world you hanker after MoFoLo?

Also, were the house prices you gave a typo? Our house cost £330,000 two years ago and was at the cheaper end of the market here for a family home. In the UK at least, shocking house prices are a major reason why familes increasingly need both parents bringing in a wage.

My appologies kelli. No I do not. But my point was that people lived on one income. now that doesn't make it. Heck in a lot of cases two incomes don't make it.

No not a typo. When I get a chance I'll see what that means in pounds. The property in my depressed area is selling for less than it did 30 years ago.


Actually I think one of the worst jumps in cost to income came about thirty years ago when the Unions got the Auto manufacturers to about double their income. peripheral industries were force to increase there wages and the cost of cars jumped more than double in about a three year span.

any way, again I wasn't clear and didn't mean that woman should stay at home. But if we could go back to those days I would think it would be a better world if one parent were to sacrafice and stay home. But may be it wouldn't. Who really knows. There are a lot of theories. And just as it is in politics how one believes more or less is in whose theories you read and believe.


Congradulations. When are you due?

Mo

> How did we get from the early 1900's where the old man worked and the wife took care of the home and kids?

Specifically, the dollar is less valued than it was in the early 1900's. We'd just gotten out of the Great Depression, which affected the whole world, not just America. Movies cost 5¢. A meal at a restaurant could cost as much as 25¢. My parents paid $60 a month to rent a house. The last time I paid rent, it was $575 a month, and that was cheap.

Of course, quality of life for the poor and minorities in the 1900's was abysmal. Just look at the tenant farmers in California, or how blacks were treated in the cities. Their lives were worse than a homeless person's today. At least a homeless person can receive medical care, three squares a day, and work with the city's day labor program.

I'm also seeing the gap between the rich and poor widen. The middle class is sliding into poverty. The upper middle class is now classifed as 'rich' while the lower middle class has to work three or four jobs to make ends meet.

This is a dangerous trend. Not only for working Americans, but for business owners. Many business owners think that to make money, they have to appeal to the rich people, not the poor people. There's lots of nice suburbs being built with homes from $150,000 to $2.5 million. How many people can afford a home like that? Those suburbs are going to be abandoned, because they're eventually going to run out of rich people. Luxury cars like Hummers and Cadillacs are going to have the same problem. A rich person can only own so many cars before he runs out of room in his four-car garage.

It's past time to enact some anti-trust fund legislation. The Republicans' big-name contributors want to protect their inheritance from being decimated by the estate tax. Corporations are making a killing, and their executives are retiring with ridiculously large severance packages. All the while their employees are losing pensions and retirement savings! Our Republican Congress refuses to do a thing about it. They seem to be more interested in keeping their lobbyists and contributors happy.

Interesting point about the suburbs, Lentilla.

Does anyone remember how many old victorian houses got divided into apartments, and eventually areas around them became the poorer neighborhoods? They were built not too long before the depression hit...

SC

Lentilla,

I won't argue how badly our Republican Congress is doing. I would comment though, that our situation goes way back and we had Democratic Congresses as well. Our situation hasn't happened overnight and won't obviously get fixed overnight. What we need is a change. Not more of one party over the other but people with visions of correcting our problems rather than finding fault with some one eles.

We also need people who want to clean up government on the local, city, state and federal level. Right now I see both Republicans and Democrats that are working their jobs for all the money they can but not working at their jobs.

We have some beautiful victorian homes here in Toledo, OH that once housed families of grandparents, parents and children. Some where along the line the kids decided they didn't want to be around their parents or maybe they found a good job too far away to live where they grew up. Some of them still look as if they were one home rather than a house split up into four apartments.

It seems the more we grow as a country the more we fall apart as a country. In checking the newspapers and television articles from European countries, Scandinavian countries and other parts of the world I find no one else is doing any better internally. What a wonderful world we live in.

I think the housing situation is the same in urban areas all around the world, old large houses are more valuable split up into apartments which then changes the nature of the area.

However there are also areas where the reverse happens, run down areas where old large houses had been converted into flats suddenly become trendy and get converted back into single homes again.

I see both these things happening here in South London in different places at the same time.

"We have some beautiful Victorian homes here in Toledo, OH that once housed families of grandparents, parents and children"

The situation here in the UK was similar but a lot of the time they had no choice as the wages were often not high enough for each generation to buy there own homes, so married couples often lived with one set of the parents.
The splitting up of these extended family groups appears to me to be the direct result of increased wealth.

Oh and deputy prime minister aka "the Mouth of the Humber" has been at it again, if he keeps it up I'll assume he has been taking lessons in international diplomacy from Prince Phillip.

oops missed the link out

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4800827.stm

*secret *

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/17/MNGCLKKD2A4.DTL

That warrants a

Of course, the Whitewash House is quickly claiming that they have every legal right to wiretap anybody they want... Watergate, anybody?

I'll join that conga line anyway.

"There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," said the Judge.

conga conga conga

it works to the rhythm

there are no her-ed-I
tary kings in A-mer-
ica! and no powers
not created by the
Consti-conga-tution!
ya-da-dada-da-Da!!

*joins the conga line*

Woohoo, Conga!!!

SC

One step forward, one potentially back...

On other frontiers of technology: There was a feature on PBS Nightly News tonight on the rfid (radio frequency I.D.) tags. The spokesman from the manufacturer was touting that you could just walk out of WalMart with your tagged merchandise and have the scanners check out your purchases against your credit or debit card...automatically.

Since the tags are to be imbedded in the clothing, I'd really want to make sure I didn't wear any clothing *INTO* the store from a previous trip...

SC

[hh]
conga line

I liked the part in the article where right after it says that the judge stated there are no hereditary Kings in America, the reporter says the adminstration couldn't disagree more.

Impeachment, anyone?

*Joins the conga line*

I just hope it sti-icks!
I just hope it sti-icks!


I'm not sure RFID tags are as bad as everyone thinks they are. True, there is a potential for abuse, but a little technical know-how, common sense, and perhaps good governance will protect people. SC, I wouldn't worry about wearing clothes into the store, at least not if you've cut the tags off and washed them first .

Good for the judge.

Good for Prescott. (I don't think I've ever said that before!)

We want RFID on library books, so we can track them down in student houses. I have visions of a hand-held homing device which starts beeping when you get close to the missing book, until it reaches a really high pitch when you find it behind the fridge/under the pot plant/in the VCR. I don't like that Walmart idea, though. What if a bunch of people walked out together? Would one person end up paying for everyone's shopping?

PS - We would, of course, apply for search warrants first.

What if you wander in and out of the same store several times on a single shopping trip?