"Maybe traditional social values aren’t so essential to a good society"

[cthulu2016]

Background: There has been a lot of back and forth about Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 which bemoans the moral decay of the bottom 80% of white Americans without recognizing that 1) some of the "moral decay" isn't moral decay, but merely non-traditional and 2) that much of the moral decay is the product of people not having any damn money or security. Marriage rates, for instance, are directly tied to having some m-o-n-e-y, and labor force participation is directly tied to jobs and relative strength of wages.

February 9, 2012, 8:27 am
A Strange Form of Social Collapse
Paul Krugman

Reading Charles Murray and all the commentary about the sources of moral collapse among working-class whites, I’ve had a nagging question: is it really all that bad?

I mean, yes, marriage rates are way down, and labor force participation is down among prime-age men (although not as much as some of the rhetoric might imply), But it’s generally left as an implication that these trends must be causing huge social ills. Are they?

Well, one thing oddly missing in Murray is any discussion of that traditional indicator of social breakdown, teenage pregnancy. You can see why — because it has actually been falling like a stone:





So here’s a thought: maybe traditional social values are eroding in the white working class — but maybe those traditional social values aren’t as essential to a good society as conservatives like to imagine.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/a-strange-form-of-social-collapse/

[cthulu2016]

1. ...

[Joe Shlabotnik]

2. I would assume that that the moral decay is at the top 20%,

since they're the ones in charge. The bottom 80% is just trying to cope within a shrinking pie environment. Sounds like blaming the victims, while justifying the insatiable greed of the privileged few.

[Rex]

3. Funny...at one time it was the leaders

that were to blame for our failing society...now I guess it is all the working serfs fault. The 1% of the 1% should be the ones in the spotlight.