A political post. Deal.

[kellinator]

I haven't made many political posts in the months since the election for various reasons I'm not going to get into here, but I couldn't pass this one up. Thanks to tick_wonderdog for the story.

BUSH: HOLDING THREE JOBS 'UNIQUELY AMERICAN'
Tues Feb 8 2005 9:27:01 ET

Last Friday when promoting social security reform with 'regular' citizens in Omaha, Nebraska, President Bush walked into an awkward unscripted moment in which he stated that carrying three jobs at a time is 'uniquely American.'

While talking with audience participants, the president met Mary Mornin, a woman in her late fifties who told the president she was a divorced mother of three, including a 'mentally challenged' son.

The President comforted Mornin on the security of social security stating that 'the promises made will be kept by the government.'

But without prompting Mornin began to elaborate on her life circumstances.

Begin transcript:

MS. MORNIN: That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.

THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?

MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)

Yeah, that's really funny from someone who has never had to worry about how to pay the bills and doesn't cut his vacation short for little things like tsunamis.

Something I've been thinking about a lot recently, even before Time's cover article on "twixters" and why my generation refuses to grow up (sorry, I couldn't find a link) is the declining standard of living in the United States. When our parents were our age, if you didn't want to go to college, you could still get a decent job and have a house and a family. Now one of the reasons I'm so ambivalent about the question of children is because I have serious doubts that I'll ever be able to afford the things I think a child should have -- specifically a good education like the one I got. (Not that a college degree, or where it's from, really means much anymore. My brother's degree is from a vo-tech community college; mine is from a Top-20 university. He made nearly twice what I did last year. Which is my fault for not being interested in the fields that pay well. But I digress.)

We can't leave these issues to the politicians of any party. They're all rich and greedy anyway. If we want to deal with this, we have to do it ourselves -- and unfortunately, I have no clue of how to do that.

Comments

[notgruntled.livejournal.com]

During the Reagan years, when manufacturing jobs were being replaced by service sector jobs, a popular joke went something like this:

Republican: But we've created two million new jobs!

Laid-off factory worker: I know. I have three of them.

Now we have a president who thinks that's just nifty. Satire is dead.

Your post made me wonder about the claim that home ownership is at an all-time high. Could those statistics be skewed by the fact that more young adults, folks who used to be renters, are living with their parents instead? Census statistics are based on heads of households. If more people delay heading their own household, that would change the landscape.

That said, I'm not so sure about the declining standard of living. We spend a lot of money on non-essentials. When I was a kid, air conditioning and color TV were luxuries, and we had neither. Now, you'd be hard-pressed to find an apartment in a housing project that doesn't have both.

It used to be that paying for information meant buying a TV, paying for a phone line and subscribing to a newspaper. Now, I have a landline phone, a cell phone, three computers on wired or wireless DSL, cable wired to three TVs, and a Salon subscription.

It used to be the normal course of events that kids lived with their parents until they married. Which they used to do a lot earlier in life. In the early postwar era, youngsters went from their parents' house to a dorm, and thence to a home with a spouse.

Our generation is spending more years in school and marrying later. That confuses the Baby Boomers, who assume that the way they were brought up is the way it always was. Ain't so. Look at any Laura Ingalls Wilder book -- every family has grown offspring hanging around.

As far as giving your kids an education as good as yours, you'll find a way. My great-grandmother put five kids through college while working as a public school principal in appalachia during the Depression. My mom got her degree as a single mother raising two kids, then sent both of us to top-20 schools. Me once, my sister twice (BA, MA).

Retirement is another generational change. We assume that at fifty- or sixty-something, we'll be able to kick back for the rest of our lives. A couple of generations ago, it was assumed that you'd work until you died, or until you got so infirm that someone would have to care for you. Which was academic for the majority of the population, who never made it to fifty- or sixty-something.

It's difficult -- no, I'd say, impossible -- to gauge where we are relative to past generations. We can compare our yard line to theirs, but the goal posts have shifted, the rules have changed, and there's a parking lot where the old stadium used to be. Comparing our stats to theirs is like comparing rushing yards to on-base percentage during a power play behind the three-point line.