ch 42 outline

Ch 42

Economic Revolutions

--->Entrepreneurs led the way to making the Internet a 21st century mall, library, and shopping center

--->White-collar jobs in financial services and high tech engineering were being outsourced to other countries like Ireland and India

--->In the Spring of 2000, the stock market began its biggest slide since WWII

--->By 2003, the market had lost $6 trillion in value

--->American’s pension plans shrank to 1/3 or more

--->Scientific research propelled the economy

--->Researchers unlocked the secrets of molecular genetics (1950s)

--->They developed new strains of high yielding, pest/weather resistant crops

--->They sought to cure hereditary diseases

Affluence and Inequality

--->Median household income in 2002 = $42,400

--->Americans, however, weren’t the world’s wealthiest people

--->The richest 20% in 2001 raked in nearly half the nation’s income while the poorest 20% got a mere 4%

--->The Welfare Reform Bill (1996) restricted access to social services and required able-bodied welfare recipients to find work

--->Chief executives roughly earned 245 times as much as the average worker

--->In 2004, over 40 million people had no medical insurance

--->34 million (12% of population) were impoverished

--->the increase of low-skilled immigrants

--->under funding of many schools in poor urban areas

The Feminist Revolution

--->1990s, nearly half of all workers were women

--->Many universities opened their doors to women (1960s):

--->Yale

--->Princeton

--->West Point

--->The Citadel and Virginia Military Institute (VMI)

--->women still got lower wages

--->For example, in 2002, on 29  % of women were lawyers or judges and 25% physicians

---->Women still voted for Democrats more than men

---->Mens’ lives changed in the 2000s as well

--->More men shared the traditional female responsibilities

--->cooking, laundry, and child care

--->In 1993, congress passed the Family Leave Bill, mandating job protection for working fathers as well as mothers who needed to take time off from work for family reasons

New Families and Old

---->by 1990s, one out of every two marriages ended in divorce

--->7x more children were affected by divorce compared to the beginning of the decade

--->The proportion of adults living alone tripled in the 4 decades after 1950s

--->In 1990s, 1/3 of women age 25 - 29 had never married

--->Kids in households were raised by a single parent, stepparent, or grandparent, and even kids with gay parents encountered a degree of acceptance that would have been unimaginable a century earlier.

--->y marriage and teenage pregnancy was on a decline after the mid-1900s

The Aging of America

--->Old age was expected, due to the fact that Americans were living longer than ever before, people born in 2000 could anticipate living to an average 70 years

--->1 American in 8 was over 65 years of age in 2000

--->The share of GNP spent on health care for people over 65 more than doubled

--->The ratio of active workers to retirees had dropped so low, that drastic adjustments were necessary

--->As WW2 baby boomers began to retire the Unfunded Liability the difference between what the government promised to pay to the elderly and the taxes it expected to take in was about $7 trillion

--->Pressure mounted:

--->to persuade older Americans to work longer

The New Immigration

--->Newcomers continued to flow into Modern America

--->Nearly 1 million per year from 1980s up to 2000s

--->Contradicting history, Europe provided few compared to Asia/Latin America

--->What prompted new immigration to the US?

--->New immigrants came for many of the same reasons as the old…

--->they came in search of jobs and economic opportunities

--->Some came with skills and even professional degrees and found their way into middle-class jobs

--->However, most came with fewer skills/less education, seeking work as janitors, nannies, farm laborers lawn cutters, or restraint workers

--->The southwest felt immigration the hardest, since Mexican migrants came heavily from there

--->By the turn of the century, Latinos made up nearly 1/3 of the population in California, Arizona, and Texas, and nearly 40% in New Mexico

--->Latinos succeeded in making the south west a bi-cultural region by holding onto to their culture by strength in numbers, compared to most immigrants whom had to conform. Plus, it did help to have their ‘mothering country” right next door

--->Some “old-stock” Americans feared about the modern America’s capacity to absorb all these immigrants

--->The Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986) attempted to choke off illegal entry by penalizing employers of the undocumented aliens and by granting amnesty of those already here

--->Ant-immigrant sentiment flared (a lot in CA) in the wake of economic recession in the early 1990s

CA voters approved a ballot initiative that attempted to deny benefits, including education, to illegal immigrants (later struck down by courts)

State then passed another law in 1998 which put an end to bilingual teaching in state schools

--->The fact was, that only 11.5% of foreign-born people accounted for the US population

Beyond the Melting Pot

--->Thanks to their increasing immigration and high birthrate Latinos were becoming an increasingly important minority

--->By 2003, the US was home to about 39 million of them

--->26 million Chicanos, Mexican American

--->3 million Puerto Ricans

--->1 million Cubans

--->Flexing political powers, Latinos elected mayors of Miami, Denver, and San Antonio

--->After many years of struggle, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC0, headed by Cesar Chavez, succeeded in making working conditions better for Chicano “stoop laborers” who followed the planting cycle of the American West

--->Asian Americans also made great strides

--->By the 1980s, they were America’s fastest-growing minority and their numbers reached about 12 million by 2003

--->Citizens of Asian ancestry were now counted among the most prosperous

--->In 2003, the average Asian household was 25% better off than that of the average white household

Indians, the original Americans, numbered some 2.4 million in 2000 census

--->Unemployment and alcoholism had blighted reservation life

--->Many tribes took advantage of their special legal status of independence by opening up casinos on reservations to the public

--->However, discrimination and poverty proved hard to break

Cities and Suburbs

--->Cities grew less safe, crime was the great scourge of urban life

--->The rate of violent crimes raised to its peak in the drug infested 80s, but then leveled out in the 90s.

--->The number of violent crimes substantially dropped in many areas after 1995

--->None the less, murders, robberies and rapes remained common in cities and rural areas and the suburbs

--->In mid-1990s, a swift and massive transition took place from cities to suburbs, making jobs “suburbanized.”

--->The nation’s brief “urban age” lasted for only a little less than 7 decades and with it, Americans noticed a new form of isolationism

--->Some affluent suburban neighborhoods stayed secluded, by staying locked in “gated communities”

--->By the first decade of the 21st century, big suburban rings around cities like NY, Chicago, Houston, and Washington DC had become more racially and ethically diverse

--->A huge shift of US population was underway from East to West

--->The Great Plains hurt from the 60% decline of all counties

--->Commercial redevelopment gained ground in cities like…

--->New York

--->Chicago

--->Los Angeles

--->Boston

--->San Francisco