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The author explains why Americans work so hard

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This article first appeared on the History News Network.
1. The Work Ethic Is Dead

This is true. The work ethic is dead. The myth is that its demise is a recent phenomenon.

According to historians, the work ethic actually began dying in the middle of the nineteenth century and finally succumbed entirely by the 1920s.

Two developments killed it. The first was industrialism, which made work dreadfully dull.

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Jewish glove makers in Chicago, Herbert Gutman found, grew morose and spiritless when the owner of the factory where they worked installed an assembly line. Nobody wanted to work all day sewing just one finger of a glove instead of the entire piece.

At congressional hearings held in the 1880s clergyman R. Heber Newton noted that the industrial worker"makes nothing," and"sees no complete product of his skill growing into finished shape in his hands." Hence, the worker feels dejected and lifeless. "What zest," he asked," can there be in the toil of this bit of manhood?"

Add to this the fact that factories exploited many workers and you understand why workers suddenly weren't as thrilled with the work ethic as they once may have been.
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A second factor in the death of the work ethic was the birth of consumerism in the 1920s.

"Want the good life?" businesses asked Americans. It's for sale! The goal in life then became living well not working hard. In the past one worked hard to gain the good life. Now one simply achieved it instantaneously by buying goods on credit.

Loren Baritz reports that in the 1920s "$6 billion worth of consumer goods were bought on credit: 85 percent of furniture sales, 80 percent of phonographs, 75 percent of electric washing machines, and most of the vacuum cleaners, pianos, sewing machines, radios, and electric refrigerators."

2. Workers Are Often Lazy Because Unions Protect Them

Union rules designed to protect workers from exploitation sometimes do indeed lead to laziness. But business is mainly responsible for undermining the work ethic.

While business extols the work ethic, so employees will work hard, it is business that created the "buy now, pay later" ethic that replaced the work ethic. (See Myth #1 above.)

The great fear of business is not that workers will not work but that they will stop buying. The secret nightmare of every business person is that Americans will suddenly wake up and become scrimpers and savers.

What are needed are spenders! Scrimping and saving (both associated with the work ethic) would spell ruin for the American economy.

3. The 40-Hour Work Week Is Sacrosanct in American Tradition

Actually, a hundred years ago, according to historian Benjamin Hunnicutt, Americans hoped that the people of the future -- us! -- would be toiling far fewer hours, if we had to work at all. The reality is we are more committed to the forty hour work week than they were.

Undoubtedly, our great grandparents would be shocked to learn we work nearly as many hours on average as they did. Indeed, they seem more committed to the ideal of a reduced work week than we are.

From the 1830s to the 1930s one of the prime objectives of the labor movement was reducing the hours spent working. But for seventy years, since the end of the Great Depression, labor unions haven't advocated a shorter work week.

Nobody today would advance the proposal for a 14 hour work week as some reformers did at the turn of the last century. During the Depression the U.S. Senate even passed a bill mandating a 30 hour work week--an unthinkable measure today.

4. Immigrants Always Worked Hard

Immigrants, to be sure, wanted to get ahead. But historian Roy Rosenzweig has shown that at least in Worcester, Massachusetts in the 1880s immigrants nursed suspicions about the work ethic and expressly rejected the middle class goals of home ownership, thrift, and punctuality. Instead they built their culture around the local watering hole, where they could create powerful bonds of community.

Drinking actually was an American tradition. After the Revolution, Americans drank more than any other people on earth save for the Swedes. That alone makes one wonder just how hard working our ancestors were. Research indicates that in 1820 Americans drank enough distilled spirits to supply every man, woman and child with five gallons of booze annually.

Hard to believe they got in a full day's work six days a week while high on all that alcohol.

5. Parks Are for Relaxation After a Hard Day at Work

Fine to relax while at the park, but reformers championed the building of the urban garden oasis as a means of improving the people who lived near them, particularly the poor and immigrants.

The great Frederick Law Olmstead, creator of New York's Central Park, claimed that parks would divert the"rough element of the city" from"unwholesome, vicious, destructive methods and habits" of recreation (that is, sex, drinking, etc.).

Henry Ward Beecher predicted parks would inspire the poor to have"gentle thoughts." One city official predicted that parks could cut prostitution by 98 percent.

It didn't turn out that way.

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Why do Americans work so much? Five myths for Labor Day about the U.S. work ethic and unions

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This article first appeared on the History News Network. 1. The Work Ethic Is Dead This is true. The work ethic is dead. The myth is that its demise is a recent phenomenon. According to historians, the work ethic actually began dying in the middle of the nineteenth century and finally succumbed entirely by the 1920s.

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In this article, the author will explain how democracy is and how it effects us today.

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Democracy in the United States is strong, but showing some cracks. That is the conclusion of a new survey of 1,571 political scientists.

Almost all said that the United States performed well on some of the most important measures of democracy: free and fair elections, freedom of speech and judicial limits on executive power.

But fewer than two-thirds said other important standards of democracy were being met: no interference with the press and respect for judicial independence by elected branches of government. And a minority said the United States was succeeding at equal rights or basic behavioral norms of civil discourse.

The survey was the first to be conducted by Bright Line Watch, a new project formed by four researchers - two from Dartmouth and one each from Yale and the University of Rochester - to study democratic performance in the United States after the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump, and to compare it with other countries.

The researchers said the survey was devised to try to avoid political bias, although before the election three of them wrote an open letter saying Mr. Trump threatened democracy.

"Our concern is bringing academic expertise to the question, 'How strong, or under threat, are basic institutions of American democracy?' " said Susan Stokes, a professor of political science at Yale and an organizer of Bright Line Watch. "That's a nonpartisan question in the same sense that the Constitution is a nonpartisan document."

The fourth organizer, who did not sign the letter, is Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth and a contributor to The Upshot. Bright Line Watch conducted the survey by contacting 9,820 faculty members from 511 institutions represented at the American Political Science Association meeting.

The project plans to survey the scholars quarterly, and The Upshot will follow the results.

In their initial assessments of the health of United States democracy in February, the political scientists were measured, in contrast with the sense of alarm expressed by some left-leaning thinkers.

"It reinforces the story that the U.S. is a high-functioning democracy," Mr. Nyhan said. "It's not perfect, but it has stronger and more resilient institutions than other countries that have had democratic backsliding or turns toward authoritarianism."

The survey asked political scientists to rate the importance of 19 characteristics of a democratic government, then rate how well the United States currently fares on each. The bulk of respondents said the United States fully or mostly met half of the democratic standards, and fell short on half.

By far the most important element of democratic government, they said, was that elections are conducted and ballots counted without fraud or manipulation. This was also the element they thought the United States did best: 86 percent said the United States fully or mostly meets that standard. That assessment stands in sharp contrast to Mr. Trump's unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.

The United States is doing less well on the second- and third-most essential elements of a democracy, according to the respondents: equal political and legal rights and equal voting rights. About one-third said the country did not meet or only partly met these standards.

Two red flags - principles that were deemed important to democracy, but in which the United States is underperforming - have arisen during the Trump administration. They are that government officials do not use public office for private gains, they said, and that elections are free from foreign influence.

About half of respondents expressed skepticism that Congress and the Constitution were able to effectively limit executive power.

The areas in which American democracy is failing - according to more than 80 percent of respondents - concerned civil behavior. This involved norms that elected majorities should act with restraint and reciprocity, that politicians should campaign without disparaging their opponents' patriotism or loyalty, and that public officials should recognize bureaucratic or scientific consensus.

The experts said that these were not essential to democracy, but that they were beneficial. Although behaviors like these aren't enshrined in the Constitution or in statutes, political scientists say they help make democracies work.

Researchers who study how democracies have formed and fallen apart in other parts of the world have said that democracies often erode slowly, and identified various unwritten rules that get broken, like fair play or an acceptance that the opposition will sometimes win. Examples are giving nominees a confirmation hearing, or graciously accepting election results.

"They're norms not in the Constitution but the kinds of practices that generate compromise, and if they go away things can unravel pretty quickly," Mr. Nyhan said.

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Democracy in the United States is strong, but showing some cracks. That is the conclusion of a new survey of 1,571 political scientists. Almost all said that the United States performed well on some of the most important measures of democracy: free and fair elections, freedom of speech and judicial limits on executive power.

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In this article you will see the author explain what it means to have equality in america for women

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How the Fight for Gender Equality Is Changing in 2018

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Ai-jen Poo outlines the new ways women are demanding gender equality in the post-Weinstein, #MeToo era on International Women's Day.

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In this article, it will explain how America is unified

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Despite our many differences, Americans have always come together every Independence Day to celebrate our national birthday. Which is truly fitting. From the nation's beginnings, our leaders have warned that strength can be found only in unity.

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The author will explain in this poem how marriage in america works depending on age

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Shutterstock

SALT LAKE CITY - In the future, marriage may not dominate as "the institution the majority of adults live in" as it has in the past, according to a new analysis that finds significant differences in marital status between younger and older generations.

Americans are living two different age-driven stories of marriage, according to Wendy Wang, director of research at the Institute for Family Studies, who analyzed recent data and wrote a brief about the trends.

"I charted the trend of young and old and, for people younger than 65, marriage is going down every year," she said. "There's no sign of it returning. I think overall, with older people passing, the marriage rate will very likely drop below 50 percent. It's barely hanging in there."

The share who have never married "breaks a new record every year," she said.

Slowing that decline, which has been happening since the 1960s, is a slight increase in the share of married older Americans, making those 65 and older more likely to be married than younger adults.
Living longer
Factors driving the downward trend in marriage for those 18-64 include delayed marriage by younger adults, more cohabitation and the fact that 36 percent have never married, up from 26 percent in 1990. "When you delay marriage, the chance of not getting married increases as well," Wang said.

Older men living longer than they used to largely drives the increase in the share of elderly who are married. In 1990, more than one-third of people 65 and older were widowed. That number is now slightly less than one-fourth. The percentage of women 65 and older who are widowed has dropped from half to just over one-third.

Meanwhile, divorce overall has dropped but doubled since 1990 for those 55 and older and tripled for those 65 and older, according to Bowling Green State University demographers Susan L. Brown, I-Fen Lin and Krista K. Payne.

But even though divorce among the elderly has increased in the past few decades, the rate has recently stabilized and is a comparatively small share that doesn't come close to the number of older people who are widowed, Wang found.

With men living longer and consequently fewer women widowed, more old women are married than in the past. In 1960, among those 65 and older, there were 64 married women for every 100 married men; now there are 80 married women. And she notes that for those over 75, that same comparison has jumped from 48 to 68 married women for every 100 married men. The difference between men and women reflects that women are still more likely to outlive their spouses than are men.

"It's striking that the percentage of older Americans who are married has been going up, even though their divorce rate is also rising," said Andrew Cherlin, chairman of the Department of Sociology and director of the Program on Social Policy at Johns Hopkins University. "It shows how important the rise in life expectancy has been for them. More older Americans are married because more of their spouses are alive than in past generations."

But older Americans propping up marriage rates won't last if current overall marriage trends continue, Wang concluded.

"In the long run, with the passing of older generations, we are heading to an age when marriage will no longer be the institution the majority of adults live in," she wrote. "The gap between married adults and those who are not married, aligning with the class divide in the U.S., is likely to deepen in the future."
More time as single
Experts slice marriage trend data different ways, but most agree that marriage is still viewed as valuable, although the portion of their lives people will spend single keeps growing.

"There's so much confusion, along with both panic and wishful thinking. Marriage is not declining as much as some of these figures suggest. But nor is it rebounding in a significant way," said Stephanie Coontz, director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families and a history professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

This week, in a piece for The New York Times, Coontz looked at the portion of life people spend single versus married: Of the 37 years between age 18 and 55, Americans were married for an average of 29 back in 1960. "That's almost 80 percent of what was then regarded as the prime of life. By 2015, the average had dropped to only 18 years. That's less than half."

She noted that at age 45, 80 percent of Americans were married in 2014, which was also true of people that age in 1976. She also quoted University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen's calculation that 85 percent of white women and 78 percent of black women will marry.

Coontz noted that people who are single tend to socialize outside their families more and likely develop relationship skills that help them in many ways, including with marriage.

"All this suggests that marriage is still very valued and many indications suggest that during the time people are married, their marriages are better than in the past," Coontz told the Deseret News. Her evidence: There are decreases in domestic violence; marriages in the prime years of life are lasting longer, and surveys show the vast majority of Americans said their own relationships were as good or better than those of their parents.

"Equality in housework and child care is now a strong predictor of marital and sexual satisfaction, and marriages have been getting more equal in that regard," Coontz said.

"But marriage is no longer the main institution in which we make all our significant financial, personal, work and residential decisions, nor the only place where we incur caregiving obligations, take care of others or receive care from others," she said. "So as individuals we need to prepare for the unmarried times of our life, and as a society we can no longer channel all our caregiving support systems through marriage, pretending that all married couples need such benefits (many do not have children or elder care obligations) and that unmarried people don't need them."
Other findings
Among Wang's other findings:

* Education is a significant factor in whether one marries. The share of married people who are less educated fell from 58 percent in 1990 to 43 percent in 2016. The share of married college graduates dropped just 6 percent - and last year, 61 percent of those with a degree were married.

Wang and other experts used to divide people into three categories based on education attainment: college grads, some college and high school diploma or less. But now the difference between those who have no more than a high school diploma and those who attended college but did not graduate is so small, she said, researchers focus simply on whether one graduated college.

* Age is significant, too. Just over one-fourth of young adults 18-34 were married in 2016, a number that stood at 43 percent in 1990.

* The decline in marriage is true among all racial and ethnic groups.

* An improved economy has brought more wedding bells, as the number of newlyweds increased to 4.6 million in 2016 from 4.2 million in 2011. That hasn't nudged the proportion who are married up, though, because more people also fit into the never-married category.

* The economy impacts both whether people marry and whether they divorce.

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Marriage in America: It's a different story depending on age

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Shutterstock SALT LAKE CITY - In the future, marriage may not dominate as "the institution the majority of adults live in" as it has in the past, according to a new analysis that finds significant differences in marital status between younger and older generations.

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This article will explain the rights us american citizens have

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The author in this article will explain how diversity is increasing in America and why it is a good thing.

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Farmland outside a Midwestern city turns into a bedroom enclave of commuting urban professionals. A handful of non-white people move to Dubuque, Iowa. Already diverse cities become increasingly mixed with immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

These are just some of the ways diversity is increasing in U.S. communities.
[ Donald Trump lost most of the American economy in this election]
To quantify how America is changing, we used the diversity index, which measures the chance that two people chosen at random will not be the same race and ethnicity. A high score means a county has people of many races and ethnicities, while a low score means the community is made up of a single dominant group.

To make these maps, we calculated the racial and ethnic diversity in every county in the contiguous United States for 2000, and again with the latest data from 2014.

Not diverse, but changing fast

The bright yellow areas had very little diversity in 2000 but are experiencing the greatest rate of change. This pattern is evident from northern New England through vast swaths of the Midwest. It covers 56 million people. That's one-sixth of the country that remained almost completely white all the way to 2000, but is now beginning the gradual change to a multicultural mix.

"When I was growing up in 1960s Dubuque, you didn't see any other race, practically everybody was white," said Janelle Lutgen, a Republican activist in Iowa. "I don't think I worked with anybody of color, or went to school with anybody of color."

But now Dubuque and the neighboring tri-State area of Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin along the Mississippi River is bright yellow with change, enough to generate some friction.
[ If you've ever described people as 'white working class,' read this]
Dubuque had a Black Lives Matter march and rally earlier this month. The participants mirrored the Iowa community - they were virtually all white - but said that addressing division was a goal. Lutgen, the Republican activist, agreed that change doesn't have to mean conflict.

"I think it's more the unknown than the actual problem," she said of neighbors uncomfortable with increased diversity. "It's more a perceived problem than an actual problem."

A different type of bright yellow spot is Hamilton County, Ind., a commuter haven just north of Indianapolis, where diversity is arriving in the form of rapid growth. This county's population increased by 59 percent since 2000, and the community offers affordable housing, a thriving business community and excellent schools.

The arrivals are often professional and diverse. In 2000, the county was 93 percent white, while in 2014, it was 85 percent white, with the second-largest group being Asians, followed by Hispanics and African Americans.

Cities in this county made it on lists of " best places to live" and " happiest suburb." Hamilton had the nation's greatest increase in racial and ethnic diversity of any county with at least 50,000 people.

Already very diverse

The blue swath of the country is made of counties that are already diverse. More than 190 million people, 60 percent of the country, lives in this blue area. It includes big cities, which are magnets for diverse populations. The curved region in the Southeast includes areas with white and African American communities, as well as Georgia and the Carolinas, where the Hispanic population is increasing.
[ How rural resentment helps explain the surprising victory of Donald Trump]
The Southwest is a mix of Hispanic, white and Native American. The Pacific Northwest is similar, but has an additional Asian population which increases diversity.

Some places in these blue areas, however, can be very different at the neighborhood level. A county can contain smaller segregated communities in addition to more diverse neighborhoods.

Diverse and getting more so

The diversity index measurement has a natural cap, so once a place is very diverse, the measurement will not keep increasing. There is no place that registered the highest level of diversity and also in the highest rate of change. These scattered light blue and light green areas, however, have become more diverse since 2000. Notable clusters of increasing diversity surround Boston, Seattle and Orlando. The area covers almost 60 million people, just under one-fifth of the country.

Not diverse and staying that way

Even when most of the country is becoming more diverse, there is an exception to every rule. The isolated zones of dark green are neither diverse nor experiencing change. They include just over 8 million people, 3 percent of the nation. Some of them are areas that are almost all Hispanic, such as along the Texas-Mexico border, or are entirely Native American. Some of those places are likely to remain homogeneous into the foreseeable future.
[ To improve diversity, don't make people go to diversity training. Really.]
In addition, clusters of counties in West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana and Idaho have remained virtually all white since 2000.

How people react to changing diversity

Before and since the election, diversity has been at the heart of issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement, resistance to political correctness, the "Hamilton" cast's message to Vice President-elect Mike Pence and attitudes about immigration.

Perceptions of "other" people lead not only to misunderstandings, experts said, but also to hostility. Some of it is simple psychology. People know their own lives are complex and have many explanations for what they do, said Patrick R. Grzanka, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee who studies social inequality. But people then reduce "outside groups" to a cardboard caricature - and a negative one at that.
[ Urban and rural America are becoming increasingly polarized]
For instance, residents in a multiethnic urban society can think that they live in a cooperative community of people coming together but disparage rural areas as backward. Meanwhile, people in rural communities prize their tight relationships but describe cities as crime-ridden and harsh. Both sides are shocked at the generalizations used by the other side.

In the wake of the election, Grzanka said, the depth of misunderstanding creates "a profoundly important moment. It is really dangerous." To cross the barrier, he said, people must say "I need to learn why their version of America is so terrifying to me. ... If you hate NAFTA and I love NAFTA, we've got to be able to talk about this stuff and not just characterize each other as ridiculous human beings."

Diversity also makes the country more dynamic and bolsters the workforce, benefits highlighted by demographer William Frey, a research professor at the University of Michigan and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Frey recently published " Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America. " If you only look at the country's white population, Frey said, it would look like Japan, with an aging population and too few young workers to grow the economy.
[ Residents in most diverse areas say their neighborhoods are better than others]
He said it's important to see the diversity question in terms of age. Forty-seven states and 90 percent of the counties have an absolute decline in white population under age 20. All net growth of children in this country is coming from racial and ethnic minorities.

"If we're going to have a productive economy in the future, new young people with new ideas energizing the labor force - taxpayers supporting the Social Security Trust Fund and Medicare for retirees - it's in our best interest if this younger generation is treated well and welcomed with open arms into the labor force," Frey said.

Source: Post analysis of Census Bureau data. Bonnie Berkowitz contributed to this report.

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Where the country is becoming more diverse

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Farmland outside a Midwestern city turns into a bedroom enclave of commuting urban professionals. A handful of non-white people move to Dubuque, Iowa. Already diverse cities become increasingly mixed with immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America. These are just some of the ways diversity is increasing in U.S. communities.

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In this poem, you will see the author talk about being an american in the 1990's

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Blog - Watch Eileen Myles read An American Poem in 1993 - Serpent's Tail Books

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We totally agree with Lena. Eileen Myles is the cult New York poet you may have heard of, and will never forget if you haven't yet. Her poetry is thrilling, alive with wit and perception, funny and fast-moving. You might recognise her from a couple of recent appearances in hit US TV series 'Transparent'.

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The author in this article will explain the informality and different races in America

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In this poem, you will see the author explain what it means to be independent in America

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Independence Poems - Poems For Independence - - Poem by | Poem Hunter

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Independence poems written by famous poets. Browse through to read poems for independence. This page has the widest range of independence love and quotes.