Orwell #2
In a country like England, in spite of its class-structure, there does exist a certain cultural unity. All through the Christian ages, and especially since the French Revolution, the Western world has been haunted by the idea of freedom and equality; it is only an idea, but it has penetrated to all ranks of society. The most atrocious injustices, cruelties, lies, snobberies exist everywhere, but there are not many people who can regard these things with the same indifference as, say, a Roman slave-owner. Even the millionaire suffers from a vague sense of guilt, like a dog eating a stolen leg of mutton.
-- "Charles Dickens"
-- "Charles Dickens"
posted by awol | 8:17 AM
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"Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind."
from "the Communist Manifesto" 1848
Karl Marx (age 29) and Friedrich Engels (age 27)
Speaking of class . . .
No one talks much about the impact that privatizing social security wil have on children whose parents die when they are still minors.
My own personal experienc makes me notice this omission in public discussion of private accounts. My father died before I was born. My mother, orphaned when she was eight, only had a high-school education. She never made more than $25,000 a year in her entire life.
You would think that, as a child in such a household, I would have had fairly restricted educational opportunities. But thanks in large part to FDR, I went to Oberlin College and Yale Graduate School, and am now a professor. My mother took the social security payments that came to us after my father's death, and saved them for my college education. I also have student loans, but they're not debilitating.
I wonder whether a child today, whose family also suffers financial hardship due to the death of a parent, would have the same opportunities I did 20 years ago when I started college.
In any case, I would like to hear what the proponents of privatization have to say about this. How will the new, market-dependent personal accounts take care of children whose parents die untimely deaths? No child left behind?
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