It would appear that this is another outcome of forcibly removing
'peasants' from centuries old family farm plots to the city for "better
lives" working in factories. It is so good to have consumer goods to
block our eyes and ears to the needs of family and the elderly in
particular.
Darryl
On 1/7/2011 6:34 AM, Ray Harrell wrote:
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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