Hi Keith,
Some questions and comments below:
Keith Hudson wrote:
Ed,
I don't agree with the original author of the article that there'll be
an increasing servants and nannie class. (a) The middle class have a
host of labour-saving devices now. (b) The bottom classes are nowhere
near as conditioned and biddable as they were in pre-WW2 days. (c)
Residences are highly stratified now.The rich and the poor don't live
adjacently as they used to a century ago. The rich and the upper
middle class are increasingly living in highly secure areas with no
entrance for anybody without a specific purpose.
Many professions fall into these categories still, though their services
are not by any stretch exclusively consumed by the middle or upper
classes. Here in B.C., the top two industries are hospitality and
tourism. Under hospitality, we have the huge sector of caregivers Ed
mentioned, who may be certified or not, but are typically reimbursed,
directly or indirectly, by government. Our province is famous for
attracting retirees, and the aging baby-boomers will provide such
servant-class positions for a few decades. Caregivers are now the new
breed of domestic, with, as you describe, some value-added skills. All
classes of seniors qualify for basic health care in-home or public
residential services. Wages are pretty much pathetic, even for the
better paid amongst them. Bottom wages ($8.00) are paid to live-ins,
predominantly immigrants from the Philippines who will save money to
send back home. For established BC residents, with costly homes/rents,
families and pets, these assignments are untenable and cost prohibitive.
As to actual nannies, increasing in numbers due to double family
incomes, they are again live-in Philippine or early child care workers
usually in daycare settings.
Another sub-category of servants would be that of home
maintenance/gardening, but few are on-site even in wealthier homes today
because of better equipment within the trades and specialization of
skills.
Tourist trade positions also attract immigrants/students; some in
wilderness resorts that provide accommodation, but most reside in towns
where larger chains, thanks to Mc Donalds lobbying, are able not only to
have employees on call for only one hour's labour, but can dish out
starting wages below minimum to students. Obviously, many unskilled
other workers are forced into these jobs, too, and will remain at this
level into old age. Many chains do not allow tipping, so they can't even
hope to improve their meager wage.
BC is but the prettiest place in Canada that is filling up with senior
retirees, and like the undertakers and pharmacists, there'll continue to
be jobs for those looking after them.
As real value-adding work moves upstream (educationally) then I think
the underclasses and the poor will be left where they live now.
Already in many of our housing ('sink') estates in the UK the shops
have long left, the police hardly ever visit, community premises are
vandalized, schools have the lowest grades of teachers (either
inexperienced or those who have failed elsewhere), there are no sports
facilities, social workers (who don't live there, of course) work from
steel-containers offices, etc, As the welfare state is cut back due to
the new austerity even social workers will make sure of scheduling
their daily diaries elsewhere. Welfare benefits will be delivered by
Securicor vans and armed guards. Very little private charity work will
be taking place, as in Victorian England because the worthy ladies are
now at work (usually earning salaries several times more than the
average person could earn)..
Don't Welfare payments get delivered primarily by direct deposit? I
realize not everyone has an address or a bank account, but they would be
the exception.
Private charity work, to you, means what? Here, government depends on
armies of volunteers to pick up the slack where once they delivered.
This sector is far more organized and prevalent than before, though as
government has been cutting off funding, they are admittedly cash
challenged. Typically, they'll hire people to canvass corporations or to
motivate volunteers to solicit funds. But these volunteers are a good
example of those who often should be paid for their valuable services,
and at one time would have been, but government is systematically
slashing where society's most vulnerable are concerned, demanding that
NGOs undergo tight qualifying standards for ever-diminishing grants.
Where BC Lottery Corp. used to fund worthy seniors and recreational
charities, funds were cut without notice mid-program. Then only
partially restored due to public outcry. But gaming appears to have been
taken over by government crime bosses, and the province is opening up
casinos. On-line gambling now has a $9,999.00 limit. But there's no
money for education, health care, the arts, renewable energies or
infrastructural maintenance. What are they building here? Certainly not
minds to take over in future. Is this something one would call sound
investment by government? Or could our values be altered before the pot
is gone? (We pissed away a billion on security for the Olympics. In
Toronto, they paid out the same for security for the G8/G20. A
ridiculously expensive location to secure, chosen by Harper to punish
the city for not electing any neo-cons, as a resident friend put it.)
I think many parts of the big cities and many peripheral housing
estates will look more and more like the favelas that you knew in Sao
Paulo. The only entities (apart from drug gangs) that I can think of
which will want to go into these areas in a meaningful way on a daily
basis will be private schools so long as they receive a decent income
per pupil (e.g. the same as the per capita cost of the present state
system). They'll be looking for, and teaching, pupils with exceptional
talent who are being increasingly sought by the universities and for
which, in due course, bonuses (like soccer transfer fees) will be paid.
The new government in the UK, since its election a couple of months
ago, is already opening application lists for businesses, charities,
groups of parents, groups of teachers, who want to start new
independent schools in September this year. About 600 such have
already applied. Almost all these applications so far are from
middle-class people for schools in middle-class areas. But, in due
course, -- if the present impetus is maintained -- I think we might
see an increasing number of business proposals by competent firms able
to move into the most broken-down, untruly areas and run fine schools
for those parents (probably mostly single parents) who are strongly
motivated to see that their children are given worthwhile skills.
If corporations are involved, one can just imagine the worthwhile
skills: those that will further the interests, ie. profits of
corporations. And, as you say, they will be successful, though not
necessarily because of competence, but because of ability to self-fund.
Yet if parents are truly concerned for children's futures, then only
sustainable industry should be considered in this process. Sustainable
encompasses every facet of society which is not harmful to it.
There has been too much whiff-whaff about education in the past few
decades. It is not about " a desire for learning" or "creativity" or
"opening young minds", etc. This is fine for children of the elite and
upper middle class who already have social confidence before they go
to school, who know during school that it's highly likely that
there'll be a good job for them somewhere in their parents' world, who
have time, leisure and sports facilities in a secure environment. But
for 70% of the children in the past 50 years most post-puberty
education at school has been a waste of time, and half of those
children have been actively alienated from anything to do with
"learning". What they've really wanted were tangible skills.
I can't quite tell if you're speaking for the masses, or voicing a
personal view. Tangible skills come and go, but even these are lost on
the undeveloped mind in real life situations that demand more than
memorized facts, and both society and the individual need all senses
nurtured, as Ray keeps reminding us, for optimum health, resourcefulness
and achievement of mastery alike. I can understand that if skills are
not imparted, kids will not be able to earn a living in the immediate
future, but education is so much more than preparing for just one set of
skills. And must they be limited to an education for positions designed
for them by IT, or could we teach them how to use all of what they've
got--not only for the sake of nurturing their capacity, but for the fact
that IT is going to evolve, may even not have much future should our
earth experience significant change. Skills taught in schools today are
primarily boring, for a boring, hurtful market with no future that is
failing them today. Children deserve /choice/ here, too, but as with
increasing privatization of government responsibilities, education will
become ever more corporatized away from genuine values, and humanity
will no longer know itself nor the world which could have stayed a
paradise. Who's consulting with students for these vapid plans? My bet
is that we should start immediately, and that we'll bring about better
minds and systems far sooner, /without selective breeding./
Natalia
Keith
At 08:41 24/07/2010 -0400, you wrote:
If I read this correctly, we are heading for a major socio-economic
split. Those with an aptitude for IT and all of its uses will rise
and everybody else will fall. This suggests the emergence or
continuity of yet another socio-economic category, that of the
care-givers and organizers. Assuming the growth of an increasingly
impoverished nanny class, a world could emerge in which a great
number of people have little to do other than bow, scrape and mill
about when they are not peddling drugs and commiting petty crimes.
Given that the IT class, the best and the brightest, will spend its
time perpetually staring into and poking at little machines, there
will be a great emergent need to ensure that society does not
collapse into chaos. A leadership class, perhaps consisting of some
of the best and brightest will have to be present to ensure that
everyone has a chance of staying alive and healthy. Or perhaps all
I'm saying is that we might expect to see lawyers, doctors,
bureaucrats, social workers, police and politicians to continue to
organize and look after things whatever other splits occur in
society. However, they would be increasingly indebted to the IT
overclass, which would make life easier for them by poking away and
devising new programs.
Ed
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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