“Newt Gingrich wants to repeal child labor laws. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the man that we need to lead us into the 18th century.” MenWantNeedsChildrenLawCenturyHe ManLaborGentleman18th CenturyLadies And GentlemenNewtsChild LaborLabor Laws Author:David Letterman
“[The right] may never bring prayer back to schools, but it has rescued all manner of rightwing economic nostrums from history's dustbins. Having rolled back the landmark economic reforms of the sixties (the war on poverty) and those of the thirties (labor law, agricultural price supports, banking regulation), its leaders now turn their guns on the accomplishments of the earliest years of progressivism (Woodrow Wilson's estate tax; Theodore Roosevelt's anti-trust measures). With a little more effort, the backlash may well repeal the entire twentieth century.” YearsWellsMayLittlesWarSchoolLawTurnsPrayerEffortLeaderPovertySupportEconomicCenturyTaxesGunLaborReformAccomplishmentRegulationSixtyEstatesBankingTwentieth CenturyWilsonLandmarksBacklashProgressivismTheodoreWar On PovertyDustbinLabor LawsEconomic ReformsEstate Taxes Author:Thomas Frank
“In the course of the twenty-first century what may be called the "capital wage" could be added to the labor wage and the social wage, so that middle-class Americans - not merely an affluent minority - might derive income from three sources rather than just two.” FirstsMayTwoWisdomMightThreeCoursesPoliticsSocialClassEconomyMiddleCenturySourceLaborTwentiesIncomeLiberalismMinoritiesMiddle ClassAffluent Author:Michael Lind
“All of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment. It has come from figuring out how to produce more goods with fewer workers, thereby releasing labor to be more productive in other areas. It has never come about through permanent unemployment, but temporary unemployment, in the process of shifting people from one area to another.” PeopleMadeLastsProcessProgressCenturyProduceCoupleAreasEconomicsLaborWorkersPermanentProductiveGoodsTemporaryFewerUnemploymentShifting Author:Milton Friedman
“In the supposedly enlightened eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, parental indifference, child neglect, and raw cruelty appearedamong Europeans of all classes.... In mid-nineteenth- century France, families abandoned their children at the rate of thirty-three thousand a year.... It took sixty years after the criminalization of cruelty to animals for cruelty to children to be made punishable under English law.... Industrialized America added brutalizing child labor to the oppressions of the young.” YearsChildrenMadeAmericaLawYoungThreeWorkAnimalClassCenturyThousandLaborRateCrueltyOppressionFranceIndifferenceThirtyEnlightenedNeglectAbandonedSixtyNineteenth CenturyParentalAnimal CrueltyChild LaborEnglish Law Author:Letty Cottin Pogrebin
“With a full century of contrary proof in our possession and despite our demonstrated capacity for cooperative teamwork, some among us seem to accept the shibboleth of an unbridgeable gap between those who hire and those who are employed. We miserably fail to challenge the lie that what is good for management is necessarily bad for labor; that for one side to profit, the other must be depressed. Such distorted doctrine is false and foreign to the American scene where common ideals and purpose permit us a common approach toward the common good.” SeemsLyingPurposeSidesChallengesCommonAcceptingFailingCenturySceneApproachCapacityIdealsLaborManagementProfitPossessionProofContraryDoctrineDespiteGapsTeamworkPermitEmployedEmployersCommon GoodCooperatives Author:Dwight D. Eisenhower
“In the late 19th century there was a major union organization, Knights of Labor, and also a radical populist movement based on farmers. It's hard to believe, but it was based in Texas, and it was quite radical. They wanted their own banks, their own cooperatives, their own control over sales and commerce.” BelieveHardWantedCenturyMovementLateMajorsLaborOrganizationUnionsRadicalTexasFarmersCommerceKnights19th CenturyHard To BelieveCooperativesPopulist Author:Noam Chomsky
“In the name of economy a thousand wasteful devices would be invented; and in the name of efficiency new forms of mechanical time-wasting would be devised: both processes gained speed through the nineteenth century and have come close to the limit of extravagant futility in our own time. But labor-saving devices could only achieve their end-that of freeing mankind for higher functions-if the standard of living remained stable. The dogma of increasing wants nullified every real economy and set the community in a collective squirrel-cage.” IfsWantRealEndsWould BeFormNamesProcessCommunityEconomyAchieveMankindCenturyHigherThousandLimitsStandardsLaborFunctionSpeedSavingCollectivesDevicesWasting TimeStableDogmaEfficiencyConsumerismCagesNineteenth CenturyFutilityOverconsumptionExtravagantStandards Of LivingSquirrels Author:Lewis Mumford
“I'm enthralled by the national yearning that the Russians had during the 50s and 60s. The whole century was pretty rough for them. They suffered genocide, war, poverty, and half the population was sent to labor camps. But they were determined to get into space first.” FirstsWarWholeSpaceHalfPovertyCenturyLaborPopulationDeterminedRoughCampsGenocideYearning Author:George Meyer