Jobs And Inequality

But David R. Henderson says just a minute. Take a look at the US Census data, particularly Table 3. Distribution of Households by Selected Characteristics within Income Quintiles: 2005.

Throughout the report, U.S. households are categorized by the quintile (fifth) they're in. In 2005, the lowest quintile had incomes of up to $19,178 and the highest quintile had incomes exceeding $91,705. People often picture families at all quintiles looking pretty much alike except for income and ethnicity. But that picture is false.

You see in one quintile, 64.2 percent of householders didn’t work at all during the year. And in another quintile 73.0 percent of householders “worked full-time, year-round.”

Now, which would you think is which?

Exactly. In the lowest quintile nearly two-thirds of householders didn’t work at all. And in the highest quintile they worked like dogs. Actually, in the highest quintile 76.3 percent of households had two or more earners, while in the lowest quintile 58.7 had no earners.

Here are the numbers, extracted from US Census Bureau Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States, 2005. Table 3.

Extract from Table 3. Distribution of Households by Selected Characteristics within Income Quintiles: 2005
Characteristic	Lowest Quintile “Poor”	Highest Quintile “Rich”
Number of Earners
No earners	58.7%	2.6%
One earner	35.9%	21.1%
Two or more earners	5.5%	76.3%
Work Experience of Householder
Worrked full-time, year-round	14.0%	73.0%
Worked part-time or part-year	21.9%	15.7%
Did not work	64.2%	11.3%

Makes you think, doesn’t it.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

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Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
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China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
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Religion, Property, and Family

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F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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