At last, something to discuss that doesn't require me to dig out
my five volumes of Marxist theory. The wonderful thing about Journalists
and economists is that by law of averages there is always an economist
available at any given point of time at any point along the spectrum of
opinions about the "future". At least this is wonderful for journalists
because it means that they can always find someone to say exactly what
they want them to say depending upon the "story" needs of the day. So-
and-so says the economy is great, thats what we want to hear, so lets
quote him. I often compare economics with the complexities of
meteorology, with the cheif difference that meteorology has advanced
in the last 50 until now the weather forecasters can at least tell us
whether it is raining or not. The problem with economics, of course,
is the fact that they don't really know what they are looking at, nor why
(except for their nice fat pay checks).
As for modern families, of course they are better off because now
everyone works in the family (and work gives status, remember?) and we
can still catch our mid-day soap opera re-runs (in fact, one wonders whether
the development of the VCR was in fact a product of the fact that now
everyone works all day or whether the development of the VCR is what
_allows_ everyone to work all day--a debate for those who like to beat
those types of culture vs production issues to death. Of course, we
should also keep in mind the fact that a growing portion of the population is
now kicked out of the work place (thus denied "status", etc. and forced to
watch all those soap operas in the day time rather than in the evening).
The wonderful thing is that now people are fully socialized to believe
that they are only valuable because they "work" for someone else, so they
are happy to spend all their time doing this, even if they are compelled
to spend their paychecks on those now-necessary technological tools such
as the VCR (necessary to keep up on the soap operas), second cars, etc.
etc. etc.
Oh dear, I hope I didn't bore those on the list too much with this
arcane discussion. Next time I'll dig out my Marx texts and subsequent
revisionists and quote words at random throughout.
John Cross
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