New Normal

Recommended reading, economic debates, predictions and opinions.

What is the new normal?

The economy will get better
16
33%
The economy is perfectly fine, on balance
10
21%
The economy has yet to bottom
22
46%
 
Total votes: 48

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ghariton
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Re: New Normal

Post by ghariton »

parvus wrote:I suspect this makes the question of references rather a moot point.
From Lucy Delap in History & Policy:
Even when formally employed before 1945, servants had fewer rights than other workers. Crucially, servants were unable to freely change jobs, since employers could legally refuse to provide a reference, making it extremely hard to find further work.

<snip>

While the high demand for servants at various points in the twentieth century gave them some resistance to exploitation, the legal framework governing their employment remained punitive. Insubordination and 'defiance to proper orders' were legitimate legal grounds for instant dismissal. One female servant sued her mistress for her wages at Shoreditch County Court in 1913, after she was fired for 'answering saucily' and 'slapping things all over the place'. She lost her case; unable to prove her word against that of her mistress. The ability of mistresses to withhold references or give a bad 'character' was key to keeping the balance of power on the side of employers, making servants reluctant to give any cause for complaint. Even during times of relatively high-demand, servants were well aware that any lack of compliance could lead to the sack. Mistresses had to provide one month's notice, or wages in lieu of the notice period, but crucially, they were not legally compelled to provide a reference. Few servants could gain another job without this. Jean Rennie, a cook in service in the 1930s, told of being sacked in London without a reference, after having had the nerve to admit to her mistress that she was a writer. Her subsequent destitution, despite her skilled status and high demand for cooks, makes clear the obstacles to those who left an employer on bad terms. Servants and reformers continually demanded changes to the character system, to compel mistresses to give a written reference that was subject to the usual libel laws.
From The History Press:
The alternative to a life of domestic drudgery for many women, ranging in age from those in early pubescence to those well past middle-age, was prostitution, especially for those females raised in institutions and without family support. Some were unable to find husbands to support them, whilst others may have been unwilling to become a chattel for life. Domestic service was a precarious living, as girls could be sacked immediately for breaking house rules or committing some other misdemeanour. Once employed, young women would arrive with their boxes, containing their work clothes and undergarments, possibly a Bible and perhaps a few personal mementos of their lives before entering service. If a maid displeased her mistress, her box might well be retained after dismissal – possibly to make up a deficit from real or imagined thieving. However, without a box and a ‘character’, a written recommendation or reference, it was extremely difficult to find another position.

Working life was grim until about a century ago, whether in the city or in the country. Conditions were unimaginable to most of us. Job mobility was practically non-existent, in part because people were uneducated and unsophisticated, and didn't know enough to take advantage of opportunities.

When some people bemoan how things are so much more difficult for Generation this or Generation that, their reference point is usually within the last half century. If they extended their time horizon back to a century or so, they would be amazed.

The "New Normal" will be a huge improvement on our grandparents' or great-gramdparents' lives.

George
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brucecohen
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Re: New Normal

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ghariton wrote: When some people bemoan how things are so much more difficult for Generation this or Generation that, their reference point is usually within the last half century. If they extended their time horizon back to a century or so, they would be amazed.
Which explains why the 45-year-old suffering final stage cancer should be happy because his/her ancestors 150-200 years ago didn't make it past 30.
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ghariton
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Re: New Normal

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brucecohen wrote:Which explains why the 45-year-old suffering final stage cancer should be happy because his/her ancestors 150-200 years ago didn't make it past 30.
Yes, life expectancy has increased tremendously, and is still increasing. At least in that respect, life is still getting better and better.

People die of cancer and coronary disease now at much higher rates than in the past, because, in the main, they no longer die of infectious diseases. That is part of progress.

As to happiness, we have a goodly number of studies that show it is mostly a relative thing. It depends on whom you compare yourself to, over time and across space. Human nature seems inclined to comparisons with those who are better off than we are, and that often guides the standard of comparison. So, across space, people in developed countries seldom compare their fates with those of people in developing countries. Police in Montreal don't compare their salaries to those in New Brunswick, but rather to those in Toronto.

And, to the point of this discussion, twenty-year-olds today compare their economic situation to the best-off generation they can think of, mostly their parents or grandparents. They don't compare with older generations.

Nobody ever said that progress has to be monotonic.

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brucecohen
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Re: New Normal

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ghariton wrote: And, to the point of this discussion, twenty-year-olds today compare their economic situation to the best-off generation they can think of, mostly their parents or grandparents.
No, I don't think they compare their lot to that of "the best-off generation they can think of." They compare to the previous generation because that generation formed their frame of reference and heavily influenced their expectation and values. As it happens, the previous generation was better off than those that came before it. That has been the pattern in North America until now.
They don't compare with older generations.
Why would/should they?
Nobody ever said that progress has to be monotonic.
Yes, they have.
The American Dream is a crucial thread in this country's tapestry, woven through politics, music and culture.

Though the phrase has different meanings to different people, it suggests an underlying belief that hard work pays off and that the next generation will have a better life than the previous generation. <snip>

The American Dream is an implicit contract that says if you play by the rules, you'll move ahead. It's a faith that is almost unique to this country, says Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center.

"When Germans or French are asked the same questions about whether it's within all of our power to get ahead, or whether our success is really determined by forces outside our control, most German and French respondents say, 'No, success is really beyond our control,' " Dimock says.<snip>

This sense that the contract is threatened intrigued political scientist John Kenneth White of Catholic University. "We have a lack of confidence by many Americans in the future of the country," says White, who edited a collection of essays called The American Dream in the 21st Century.

This crisis of confidence is not just because the economy is bad. In fact, the American Dream flowered at a time when the economy was at its worst.

"If you go back to the Great Depression where the American Dream originated as a concept, strikingly enough, there was still hope and optimism about the future," White says.

A Long History Of Optimism

In 1931, author James Adam wrote a book with the working title The American Dream. Ultimately it was retitled The Epic of America. Historians say that text marked the American Dream's emergence into the spotlight.

Yet the underlying themes had been bubbling up through the American psyche for much longer. In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald opened his iconic novel The Great Gatsby with these lines:

In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

The American motifs of growth and optimism even stretch back as far as the Constitutional Convention.

"The chair in which Washington sat had a sun, and the question was asked, is it rising or setting?" White says. "And the framers answered that question by saying it's a rising sun."

At that time, the American Dream was not available to everyone in the country. Black people were kept as slaves. Women were not allowed to vote or own property.

The story of the 20th century is one of the American Dream gradually being extended to more of the population.<snip>

That faith is faltering, especially among the poor, says pollster Dimock. "Lower income whites and lower income African-Americans are more skeptical about the American Dream. Higher income blacks are pretty optimistic about the American Dream, as are higher income whites."

As cynical as this may seem, the numbers suggest that the people most likely to believe in the American Dream today are those who've already attained it.

"There's a certain truth to that," Dimock says. "There are people struggling. And what you're seeing especially right now are people who feel like they played the game the right way, like they did what they were supposed to do, and the rules they thought they could play by and be OK have changed on them somehow."
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Re: New Normal

Post by parvus »

Thanks George for your assiduity and generous, as always, responses. But I think your focus is too narrow.

I'm not denying that being a scullery maid could be as wretched as being a factory slave (although domestic service frequently paid better). But two things: I spoke of the possibility of going back to the informal, unproductiveprofitableorganized economy after being involuntarily unemployed in an organized workplace. I am assured, by my 80-year-old ex-employer that domestic service was always an option.

Second, I should have been more precise. You are describing a master-servant relationship. I was thinking of a master-manager-servants relationship, as for example in the "great houses" in Britain and the Continent. Also, I wasn't really distinguishing between men and women, nor for that matter between permanent and temporary employment. It was not uncommon for non-referenced fieldhands to pick up seasonal work. I believe my paternal grandfather was a seasonal worker in Nottinghamshire before the Second World War (and that makes me think of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London). So part of me thinks of the distinction between townhouse labour and estate labour. City living required small staffs; estates much larger ones. I'm not sure whether the capacity to muck out a stable required a formal written reference.
Domestic servants were theoretically distinct from farm servants, who were hired to work primarily in an agricultural capacity. However, a strict division between domestic and farm service is problematic, even when, as for this article, only sources that specified that they were detailing domestic service wages were used. Higgs points out it is unlikely that domestic servants were ‘rigorously separated’ from the economic function of their household.11 Therefore, occasionally, the line between domestic and farm service was blurred. Particularly in lower-status households with smaller establishments, domestic servants worked both indoors and outdoors. Maids in agricultural households would have helped in weeding, leading the plough, picking gravel, feeding stock, and milking as well as domestic duties in the farm house.12 Using sources from high-status households somewhat mitigates this elision of farm and domestic service. In smaller households domestic servants had to be generalists, performing whatever work was at hand.13 In larger households they were more specialized and unlikely to be also engaged in farm service.
Third, the unemployed secretary in the 19th century would have been a man, not a woman. (But then, the service economy wasn't very well developed either.)

So the question then becomes, where do unemployed textile workers of both sexes find alternatives to factory work? Well, at the turn of the century, roughly 50% of the North American/European population lived on the land. Assuming family ties in the region, it would not have been that hard to return from the big city to become a field hand or a Jill-of-all-trades with a big or even a small household, which obviates the need for references.

Naturally, this does not apply to immigrants in the New World. Or does it? It appears the bourgeoisie was eager for women just off the boat, while the men preferred to keep their daughters out of hostelries and factories (the latter to keep male wages up).

I think you are overlooking the fluidity of arrangements in the unorganized economy, the largely familial economy of the 19th century.
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