The USA went through this issue in my parent's generation. After the depression the families broke up to move to the corners of the nation to work. People like my parents, basically put the money aside for them to not have to depend upon the children financially. What that did was to free the children to go to work in situations like the Arts which are very fragile economically and which the nation doesn't support in the private market. But of course the Artists are now like Chinese parents with little capital, no retirement, an iffy medical situation and a predatory congress that wants to cut elderly benefits "for the children's sake." Meanwhile the GOP and the Evangelicals also have no discipline when it comes to birth rate. They are against birth control and abortion but have no answer when it comes to how these people will live or support their immense families with a good education or them in their old age. This is the ticking time bomb that the tea party and the GOP are ignoring and that the Democrats are too cowardly to address. Anyway, this is the Chinese Government's answer. At the end of the article are comments from around the world to the story.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 4:29 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] China law to make children visit parents At 13:48 06/01/2011 -0800, Mike Gurstein wrote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12130140 But not only to visit parents but to care for them mentally and physically we learn! Now that China is copying its way, technologically, into Western consumerism, it is also discovering our fault lines -- including governmental inadequacy (and ineptitude) in coping with welfare for the old and the needy. The Confucian duty of caring for one's parents was fine with multi-generational families on their own plots in older times, and when 95% of the population hardly stirred more than 5 miles from their places of birth. It is rather reminiscent of Tudor England when the same phenomenon was occurring -- when young adults started forsaking their parents in the countryside and migrated into the new townships even if they couldn't find work there. In those days, by a decree of 1536, their ears were cut off. (More exactly, one ear was cut off. If they remained without a job or didn't return to their parents, the other ear was cut off. If they still persisted, they were executed.) It was a short-lived policy, however, and the butchery disappeared within a generation. So, I suspect, will China's neoConfucian proposal. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/ <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/> 2011/01/ <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>
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