LDC White Paper:

      THE EFFECT OF ECONOMY ON THE INSTITUTION OF THE FAMILY

                    by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
                          March 26, 1987

     If the internal economy of the family household does not
permit adequate parental care of children and youth until the age
of approximately eighteen years, we must expect a general decline
in public standards of morality, and permanent damage to the
personalities of the young. Broadly, the combination of the
institution of the family and sound general education are the
principal vehicles through which the personal character of the
young person is developed, and through which the cultural
development of the personality is accomplished.
     During the recent forty-five years, the United States, like
western Europe, has seen the institutions of family and education
systematically eroded, and now threatened possibly with
destruction, for chiefly two reasons. The most direct attack on
the family and education has come from an organized, and
increasingly aggressive effort to eradicate the values of western
european and american Judeo-Christian civilization, a so-called
"counter-culture" movement centered around such figures as the
late Bertrand Russell and his collaborators. The ability of the
institution of the family to resist the onslaught of the
organized counterculture, has been greatly undermined by the
elimination of the possibility, for most of our people, of both
an acceptable standard of living, and also a single-wage-earner
household.
     Let us consider how economy and education affect the
vitality of the family household as an institution. Let us look
first at the economic conditions which have contributed to the
present problem.

                  1. Economy Weakened the Family

     It is true, that women from immigrant populations were
employed as cheap-labor sorts of industrial operatives in textile
and other industries during the last century, and into the
present century. This was, chiefly, a practice which we imported
from England during the nineteenth century, which would have been
greatly disliked by the founders of our republic.
     However, on the good side, these immigrant families saw this
and kindred suffering, as a temporary sacrifice by their
generation, so that their children and grandchildren might
achieve the economic levels for a normal American family life.
Even when our society violated the rule in some cases, we
believed in the single-income family household, as the best and
normal way to bring children and youth up to their fullest
potential for adult ahievements.
     I know this personally, as do many of you from my
generation. Although my maternal grandmother's side of the family
were fairly well-to-do farmers, whose ancestors had settled here
during the 1670s, my mother's father came from Scotland in 1862,
and my paternal grandfather came from Quebec during the 1880s. My
paternal grandfather was bit of a genius, who succeeded here very
quickly, but on the scottish-immigrant side of my family, there
were those who worked their way up by the hard route in Fall
River, Massachusetts, over the last part of the nineteenth
century and into the beginning of this. Many of us have similar
family histories.
     The destruction of the single-wage-earner family began, not
during World War II, but after the war, beginning approximately
1948-1949. The war was an anomalous situation, in which women
undertook industrial operatives' employment to fill the gap
created by the large number of young adult men in military
service. Housewives who had returned to the home during
1945-1946, responded to the effects of the 1947-1948 recession,
to provide the second income needed for a child-rearing
household. At first, this struck families of industrial
operatives and lower-paid service strata.
     In each of the numerous cases I knew personally, back during
the 1940s and somewhat later, households regarded this as a
temporary arrangement. A housewife would view her earnings either
as "tiding the family over, until things get better," or saw this
second income as dedicated to some special purchases, such as the
purchase of a home, or key household furnishings. They considered
this an exceptional action, and foresaw a return to more normal
life a year or more ahead. Gradually, the exception became the
rule for an increasing ration of those households. With each
subsequent deterioration in the economy, the pattern spread,
until it became what it is today.
     Admittedly, the war-time employment of women contributed to
the post-1947 pattern. The fact that women were acclimated to
industrial and related forms of employment, and that this had
become an accepted practice of employers during the war, made the
transition an easier one. Back during the late 1940s, and early
1950s, the cause for the undermining of the single wage-earner
household, was not war-time employment patterns, or feminism; the
cause was what most families viewed, at that time, as a cruel
economic circumstance.
     A popular, false explanation for this shift away from the
single-wage-earner household, which I first encountered during
the course of the 1950s, was that the household's appetites for
new kinds of household goods had increased, and that a second
household income was needed to satisfy these desire for new kinds
of things. The falseness of this supposed explanation is rather
simply proven.
     Assemble all of the physical objects -- food, clothing,
housing, and so forth -- which make up a standard household's
market-basket of physical-goods consumption. Now, measure the
labor-content of operatives employed in producing each of those
objects. Now take two such market-baskets, one for 1927, a
standard pre-depression year, and another for 1957. How much
labor-content did a wage-earner's market-basket buy in 1927, as
compared with 1957? New objects were added to the household
market-basket, between 1927 and 1957, but the operatives'
labor-content of the market-basket's total number of objects
actually declined over this period.
     If the true buying-power of a typical wage in 1957 had been
as great as in 1927, there would have been no need for a shift
from the single-wage-earner household during the late 1940s and
1950s.
     Some argue that the chief reason for the drop in average
purchasing power was the increase in military expenditures. Yet,
over the post-war period, the percentile of total income spent on
the military has been dropping, reaching an all-time, post-war
low during the 1980s.
     Some say that wages dropped during the post-war period
because of shift of income to investment in post-war retooling of
industry, yet by 1957, U.S. industries had fallen to levels of
obsolescence in plant, machinery, and equipment below those at
the end of the war. It is much worse today.
     There were several factors causing the post-war decline in
single-income buying-power for the average household. One of the
leading factors, was a shift in the patterns of employment. A
smaller and smaller percentile of the labor-force was employed in
producing physical goods, and a growing percentile was either
unemployed, or employed in administration, sales, and labor-
intensive services. Also, finance charges skyrocketted, so that
more and more of each dollar of income, of households, of
businesses, and government, was spent on debt-service.
     With every dollar a household spends on the operatives'
labor-content of its market-basket, it must spend additional
dollars on paying for the administration, sales, service
employments, plus debt-service, added on to the costs of the
operatives' labor-content of those goods. At the end of the war,
about sixty percent of the total labor-force was employed as
operatives, down to about twenty percent today. As the
labor-force grew, the number of employed operatives did not. Over
recent years, the absolute number of operatives employed has been
dropping at an accelerating rate. In other words, at the end of
the war, an average of forty cents of the after-tax,
household-purchases dollar was spent on administration, sales,
and services; today about eighty cents. Today, added to other
overhead charges built in, debt-service is, in net effect, the
largest single item of cost in everything purchased.
     Over the past ten years, while interest-rates have soared, a
new factor has been added. Under President Jimmy Carter, the U.S.
government adopted a policy of deliberately lowering the average
level of productivity. The way this was done, was to argue that
we must save energy. On the one side, fellows like Carter's
energy secretary, James Schlesinger, said that we must decrease
our dependency on high-priced, imported oil; they also said that
must not only ban nuclear energy, but must go back to types of
energy more primitive than coal and oil, wood. Today, we are as
dependent upon imported Middle East oil as we were in 1973, and
we have actual or virtual brown-outs in many regions of the
country, for lack of nuclear generation. So, to save energy,
cruder methods of production were used, and, as a result of that,
the average productivity of operatives has dropped, and continues
to drop. Real purchasing power is lowered additionally, as a
result of this lowering of productivity of operatives.
     If we understand these mistakes in economic policy, and
correct them, we can get back to a system in which the average
American family enjoys a high standard of living on the basis of
a single wage-earner's income. That is not all that we must do to
save the institution of the family, but it will be very difficult
to bring the family back to its proper condition and place in
society unless we make those changes in economic policy.

                  2. The Child-Rearing Function

     What, precisely, are the bad effects on the development of
the child, if the child is raised in a single-parent household,
or if both parents must be fully employed to provide the
household's income? What is it that parents do, which is so
essential, that the lack of this may probably damage the child's
development?
     The key word is "love." Unfortunately, we use the same word,
"love," to mean two quite different things. The ancient Greeks
had two words, "eros" and "agape." The first is simply what we
think of as "erotic love" and its connotations. The second is a
higher emotion, which we associate with such experiences as love
of God, the higher quality of love which (hopefully) binds a
married couple together to the end of life, love of parent toward
child, and love of friends.
     Focus upon the most beautiful experience a parent knows in
the relationship to a young child. Watch a very young child, for
example, playing with blocks. The child succeeds in putting more
blocks on top of one another than ever before, and the child is
elated with joy. Or, somewhat older, the child works out for the
first time the correct solution to a problem, and the child is
then suddenly elated, such that we might think that a beautiful,
warm light has been turned on in the child's mind. Sometimes,
seeing such joy in the child, we wish to weep quiet tears of joy.
This emotion in us is "agape."
     A good parent is bound to the child by this special kind of
emotion. It is the parent's action, to share this experience of
joy with the child, and to assist the child in making such
discoveries, which is the most essential role of the parent in
the development of the child's character and mental potential. A
healthy such relationship between the child and both parents, is
necessary to the full development of the child's adult character.
     "Daddy is home!" the child shouts with delight, rushing to
the door to greet the parent. If we are wise, such a relationship
to both parents, is what we value.
     Provided the standards set are both consistent and rational
ones, the parent's reproof of the child's errant behavior, is not
something opposite to this love.
     Think of the defective sort of adult personality, and see
where this appears early in childhood. The defective adult
personality is that of the "philosophical existentialist." This
sort of existentialist argues, "Whatever I feel is me. You have
to accept my feelings, or you are rejecting me." It is precisely
this sort of moral defect in the adult character, which parental
love must prevent.
     We do not love equally everything in the child. We love that
aspect of the child which evokes agape. We love discovery. We
love the child's expression of agape toward other children. We
love the child's developing potential for reason. We refuse to
recognize that which is base as the child's true identity. The
essence of sound reproof, is to say to the child, in effect,
"Come to your true self, the self we love."
     There is something far more important in this, than what we
describe sometimes as "teaching the child to behave." We are
building the child's character, by helping the child to choose
that aspect of himself or herself which is good and real.
     Although the existentialist's behavior is what we commonly
describe as "egoistical," actually the existentialist suffers a
very weak, insecure sense of personal identity. He is not really
certain who or what he is; he is the victim of whatever feelings
come over him. He is essentially a weak personality, a defective
personality, who was not enabled, as a child, to discover which
aspect of himself should be the lovable one.
     In adult, this existentialist character-type is not only a
defective personality, his mental powers are severely
handicapped. He may behave compulsively, even obsessively, but he
can not really "decide for himself," not in a rational way. Most
of us know the type very well. At a given moment, this child, in
school, can not solve the assigned problem. In one case, he
scribbles over the page where he should be working out the
problem. In another case, he writes out a nonsense- answer. In
every such case, in one way or another, rather that identifying
what he does not know, he runs away from the problem he can not
solve, and acts out an irrational impulse instead. He can not
force himself to decide, because he lacks the sense of confidence
in personal identity which is needed to work through problems in
a rational way.
     The child with an adequate personality, is one who has
learned to love that part of himself which is associated with
rational discovery of truth. It is the self which took joy in
successful block-play or other agape-provoking acts of child's
discoveries. It is toward this, that both parents must direct
love, especially in the young, pre-school-age child. By working
with the child, to strengthen a sense of self-love in achieving
these kinds of experiences, the child's character is developed.
     Later, during school-age years, the parents must continue to
base their relationship with the child on those same standards,
established, from infancy, during the pre-school- age years. In
the healthy family, this role with the pre- school-age child is
preformed in the greatest part by the mother, but the father's
daily and weekly participation to the same effect, in his own
way, is indispensable. The child's development requires a more or
less equal experience of agapic relations with parents of both
sexes, otherwise the child grown to adulthood will tend to suffer
a flaw in personality, especially in relations with its own and
the opposite sex.
     This requires a large amount of parents' time with the pre-
school-age child.
     Putting the young child into the custodial care of "child
care" facilities, is risking the child's character-development,
unless the "child care" experience is an agapic sort of play-
educational experience for that child, and the child's confident
sense of its relationship to the parents is effectively
maintained.
     Most "day-care" programs are today are essentially
commercial propositions, conducted by persons with little or no
insight into the matters we have considered here. Government, the
so-called "social workers" profession, and so on, have treated
the matter of "day-care" with a blend of incompetence and sheer
hypocrisy. The functionaries in "day-care" facilities should not
be less qualified than professional teachers, and must
understand, and be capable of dealing effectively with the
potentially anomalous features of this experience for the young
child.
     A young child needs its parents' attentions. Even persons
who are significantly defective in performance as parents, are
the best for the child, on condition that they genuinely love the
child.
     It can be argued that the performance of most parents is by
no means perfect. Nonetheless, this merely signifies that parents
must be helped to understand their part more effectively. The
essential thing, is the protect the institution of the family,
and to make it physically possible for parents to accomplish
their functions. Unless those primary conditions are established,
the family does not exist to be improved by any means. The
single-income household knows no really satisfactory substitute.

                    3. Education & The Family

     The various "permissive child-rearing" dogmas, including the
version of Dr. Benjamin Spock, which damaged so many children of
the post-war period, are essentially a by-product of the
educational policies introduced by the Fabian "philosopher" John
Dewey. The extreme left-wing dogmas of Ivan Illich and others, or
the dogmas of the National Education Association, introduced
during the 1970s, merely carry Dewey's dogmas to a radical
extreme.
     Dewey began his career as a leading figure of the Chicago
Fabian School. After John D. Rockefeller II was indoctrinated in
Fabian views in England, he returned to the United States and
used his father's wealth to transform the Chicago Fabian School
into Chicago University. As a part of that, Rockefeller backing
lifted Dewey from obscurity to prominence. Dewey was associated
with the socialist intellectuals of the first decades of the
present century, became a leading admirer of Mussolini's fascism
during the 1920s, and drifted back into a left-liberal Fabian
posture during the 1930s. Overall, he probably did more to
destroy American public education than any other single
individual of this century.
     American public education began in the seventeenth century,
under the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The principles of education
were maintained into the eighteenth century, by a circle around
Cotton Mather, and, after him, by circles around Benjamin
Franklin. Public education was based on the classics, including
the Greek and Latin classics, with a strong influence of John
Milton, and increasing emphasis on pre-scientific and scientific
education. For these reason, european visitors described the
typical U.S. citizen of our young republic as "the Latin farmer"
in America. Then, our labor was twice as productive, and had
twice tne income of the English, largely because our population
was more than 90% literate, whereas 40% literacy of a poor
average quality, was the condition of the population of England.
     After 1815, developments in public education were strongly
influenced, at first, by developments in U.S. higher education,
as at West Point Academy, directly modelled upon the
accomplishments of the 1794-1815 Ecole Polytechnique in France.
Later, our education was influenced by the reforms introduced in
Germany by the Prussian reformer and Minister of Education,
Wilhelm von Humboldt. Although some, such as the left-wing
Concord group around Harvard, brought in the same radical
influences shaping Karl Marx at that time, beginning about the
1840s, at places such as Union College, the influence of the
Ecole Polytechnique and the Humboldt reforms set the standard.
     The reason I have mentioned these few key historical facts,
is that American educational policy before Dewey emphasized the
same principles I have identified in the development of pre-
school-age children. The principal goal of public education was
to continue the work of the family, in developing the character
and intellectual potentialities of the youth. Dewey and his
collaborators set out consciously to destroy that, and, by today,
have nearly succeeded.
     I suggest to any of you a not too difficult experiment,
which would permit you to discover for yourself that I am right
in what I have being saying on the decay in American education.
     Go back to the Declaration of Independence, the writings of
Tom Paine up into 1789, the Federalist Papers, and the speeches
of Abraham Lincoln. I suggest these to you, because these
documents and speeches were very popular in their time. It was
the Federalist Papers, for example, which won a majority of the
citizens to support the adoption of our Federal Constitution.
     Next, place side by side popular political speeches and some
of the leading newspaper columns of today.
     Compare these two sets of documents on two grounds. First,
compare them for language. Which represents the higher level of
literacy of both the authors and the majority of citizens?
Second, compare them for idea-content and quality of reasoning
used. Were our citizens more literate now, or then? Who thought
more profoundly, our citizens and political leaders then, or now?
The key to the difference is the change in our policies of public
education.
     Many parents have said, "I know the child I sent to school,
but I am not quite sure what came back." The institution of the
family and public education must have the same goals for the
development of the character and mental potential of the child
and youth. Above the age of five or six, education policy and
family policy are two sides of the same thing. The school must do
what the parents can not; but public education must be designed
as a continuation of early child-rearing, and as a partner of the
family's rearing of school-age persons.
     The school pupil must be taught no wrong thing, and the
method of education must be consistently rational, constantly
addressing and fostering that agapic emotion which the young
child experiences in discoveries made in successful block-play
constructions and other ways. Irrationality, inability to decide
rationally, avoiding the joy of discovery, substituting
irrational beliefs and impulses for rational discovery, and so
forth, must be efficiently reproved, and this reproof must occur
in such a way as to strengthen the student's self- confidence in
that aspect of his or her personality which is agapic, which is
associated with the experience of joy in rational discovery of
truth.
     Truth exists. We may not know truth perfectly, but it is our
right choice of goal to correct constantly earlier errors in our
knowledge; we should have an exceptionally high degree of
pleasure in making such discoveries rationally. "Right," "wrong,"
and "not quite right," are what is to be known, but knowing how
to prove which is true, is much more important. If education
successfully accomplishes this, and if it enables a person to
stand for what is proven, even against popular opinion, then
education has fostered both the development of mental
potentialities and also personal character.
     This is what Dewey consciously sought to destroy. This is
what we must put back.

            4. The Child's Meaning of Individual Life?

     Sooner or later, future adulthood dawns, as every child
confronts the reality of death. A relative, a friend of the
family, some public figure, or someone else dies, and this event
prompts the child to ask himself, or his parents: "Will I die,
too, Mommy?"
     As soon as this question comes into our heads, and it
usually does at some fairly early age, a corrollary question
begins to form in the mind of the child. "What is life all
about?" Life begins, it ends. It is an in-betweeness between a
moment of conception and of death. "When I die, what will it
mean, that I have lived?" Perhaps, the parent's reply is: "You
will be with God." Once this notion is established in the child's
mind, he feels an impulse to shake his head; there is another
question he wishes answered: "What will my life mean to people
after I am dead?" Except to be taken up to God after death, what
does it mean to live this brief in-betweenness on Earth?
     Will that child's living through adulthood change something,
and accomplish this beneficial result in some way which is of
durable value to later generations? Perhaps, Grandfather tells
the child, "I helped build that." The alert child's mind searches
for information on what grandparents, great uncles, and perhaps
their grandparents might have done. The child's quest becomes
broader. He has begun to think historically.
     The child is thus nearing the point of personal development
at which study of the Greek classics is in order. Old literature,
in a dead language? Not at all. Those Greek writers, Homer,
Aeschylos, and Plato, were living men, at the center of their
times, What became of what they did? Is there, in more than 2,500
years sweep of europea civilization, some common issue, some
common thread, such that, by understanding that, a child might
discover what might still be meaningful in his own life's work,
two thousand years ahead?
     If a child could choose a path of self-development, toward
contributing something which might be even modestly and most
indirectly beneficial, a hundred or more years from now, that
child would glow with joy, as he announces his intended
profession "when I grow up." If the child is more modest in
goals, to each is afforded the chance to rear children, such that
they or their grandchildren might do some good thing, or, if
lacking children of one's own, to help the development of the
children of others. Death is not to be feared, but only the
failure to fulfill that special sort of purpose which is the
durable purpose of our having lived.
     Thus, a more profound reflection upon death, leads us to
define more sharply, and more effectively, the personal identity
which is our life, and to walk that pathway in the joy of knowing
that one's life will continue to have been necessary after one's
death. From the point that the child learns, that Santa Claus is
a cheerful myth, and that death exists, education and personal
development pass beyond mere joyful play, and education as
self-development begins in deadly seriousness.
     We who set policies of education, must view this matter so,
with that sense of deadly seriousness.
     Yet, a thinking child will not be long deceived in certain
important matters. The child grasps the limitation of his own
powers. It is through the means afforded by society, that he may
act, and it is that society which will nurture, or will destroy
his best endeavor. Education and family are so constrained,
seeking to fulfil their purpose. If the child sees good endeavor
crushed about him, sensing also the limitation of his own powers,
how many children will not be infected with a deep pessimism, not
only about the society around them, but also the meaning of their
personal lives?
     In history, there have been exceptional personalities, so
strong in both mental development and personal character, that
they have fought for the good with an optimistic spirit, even
when the entire society was steeped in contrary opinion, and
steeped in degraded pessimism. Yet, it is the more general rule,
that the young developed in healthy family circumstances, and of
good education, are all too easily crushed in spirit, when the
overwhelming trends in the society promote deep historical and
cultural pessimism. It appears to be the case, that if education
is poor in moral quality, and if the trends in society are
demoralizing, that individuals of healthy family circumstances
will rarely be able to act contrary to the prevailing trends in
mood and opinion.
     How does a good family help to destroy, so often, however
unwittingly, the moral and mental potential of a good child? Do
parents realize what they are saying to the child, when they say
such things as, "Keep your head down. Keep out of trouble. Stick
to personal and family affairs. Learn to live with the way things
are." What is the child hearing? He is hearing, that if the
society around him is moving in a good direction, he will be
successful in good enterprises; but, if the society is moving
downward morally, he had better learn to slide downward with it.
The child with a defective personality, a weak personal identity,
will blow with the winds; but, even a child whose character is
better developed, if he follows such parental advice, will also
drift morally with the crowd.
     Here comes the moral duty of government.
     The moral function of government is to adopt, and to lead
the nation in those kinds of achievements which uplift the
spirits of the citizens, which encourage the child and youth to
believe in the feasibility of great changes for the better, and
to believe that he or she has the prospect of a meaningful
participation in enterprises of such a quality. The nation must
situate the family and education in a rational climate of
cultural optimism, a sense that the nation exists for the
improvement of the human condition, and that each person in that
nation has the opportunity to be a part of such achievements.
     For decades, as an economist, I have understood that the
future of scientific and technological progress on Earth is
intertwined with mankind's exploration of space. About ten years
ago, I decided that a commitment to colonization of Mars, during
the first half of the next century, and the earth-forming of some
planetary body, such as Saturn's moon, Titan, beginning the
second half of the next century, were probably the best way to
mobilize needed advances in technology on Earth. In July 1985, I
had the occasion to present a general plan for beginning a
permanent colonization of Mars during the year 2027 A.D. Less
than a year later, the U.S. Space Commission adopted the same
goal, for approximately the same date. We are now very close to
making the first decisions which will actually launch such a
project.
     In presenting this Mars-colonization project, I have been
obliged to make a rather artificial distinction between the moral
benefits of the project, and the practical economic ones.
Governments and business firms prefer to hear about the economic
benefits of an investment, without getting into the moral
benefits. One has to state proposals that way, if one wishes to
have them adopted.
     The practical economic benefits are very real ones. I have
been careful to estimate the benefits very conservatively, rather
than risk overstatement. Yet, although the economic benefits are
enormous, I can not really separate the idea of economic and
moral benefits in my own mind. God appears to have constructed
the laws of the universe such, that the right thing to do,
morally, usually turns out to lead to the greatest practical
benefits, sooner or later, and such that undertakings of truly
great practical benefit, are also the right moral choices.
     This equivalence of great practical benefits, and moral
benefits, stands out most clearly to me, when I think of the
impact of the Mars-colonization project on the minds of our
children. I like to think of some child from an impoverished
family today, who might grow up to make important contributions
to this project, and that one or more of whose children might be
among the first colonists on Mars. If a great enterprise can
reach down to some child, in the worst of those circumstances we
associate with despair and ignorance, and inspire that child to
participate effectively in such an enterprise, I am certain that
government has grasped the essence of a sense of its proper moral
purpose.
     In that way, the Mars-colonization project typifies what
government must do to strengthen the work of our institutions of
family and education.

             5. Economics & Strengthening the Family

     The most important task of U.S. domestic policy, during the
coming ten years, is to restore and strengthen the institution of
the family household. If we ensure the optimal development of the
personal character and intellectual development of our children,
we need not fear what those children will make of the future in
their own time.
     Economic policy has an indispensable part to contribute to
this result.
     It must be policy, to create the circumstances in which
every family has the opportunity to enjoy a good level of
material existence, by means of the income gained by a single
regular wage-earner in that family. This requires a combination
of some changes in economic policy, and some strengthening of
certain useful, existing policies.
     First, we must reestablish the economic policy on which our
republic was founded: increase of the productive powers of labor,
through fostering technological progress, together with
increasing quantities of ever-cheaper energy-supplies, and
through growing rates of investment per-capita, in plant,
equipment, machinery, and basic ecnomic infrastructure.
     Second, to accomplish that, we must increase substantially
the percentile of our total labor-force employed as operatives in
the production of modern qualities of physical goods, with much
lower percentiles of employment in administration, sales, and
low-skilled services than duing the recent twenty years. Although
we must cut back on many categories of employment in
adininistration, sales, and services, there are several special
categories of administration and services in which employment
must be increased. These include direct management of production,
engineering, physical sciences, education, and health; all of
these contribute directly to maintaining and improving
productivity.
     To accomplish that, we must change the credit and taxation
policies of government, using credit- and tax-incentives to
encourage greater flow of investment into the most desirable
categories of investment and employment.
     I propose that we adopt as a national goal, fifty per cent
of the labor-force employed as operatives in the production of
modern qualities of physical goods,  and a medium-term goal of
ten percent of the labor-force employed in research and
development. I propose that we adopt the objective of meeting the
physical market-basket needs of households with the productive
output of twenty percent of our labor-force,  and thirty percent
employed in production of capital goods of infrastructure and
physical production.
     The first step,  is the use of credit and tax-policy
changes,  to restore production in idled work-places in
agriculture and industries,  and to make needed infrastructure
repairs and improvements in water-management,  general
transportation, prodution and distribution of energy-supplies,
and basic urban-industrial infrastructure. The immediate
objectives are:  to put unemployed to work,  also to shift people
from low-paid,  labor-intensive services employment,  into
higher-paid skilled and semi-skilled employment as operatives,
and to draw masses of unemployed,  and often desperate youth into
combined work and training programs in large-scale infrastructure
projects.
     There is no wishful thinking in proposing this. If the
President and Congress of the United States make the proper
changes in credit and taxation policies,  and if the President
calls in the managements of key enterprises,  and asks them to
produce a plan for increasing the employment of operatives by,
first,  five percent,  and then ten percent of the total labor-
force,  we could soon have production increasing in the major
industries,  and spilling new volumes of orders into the smaller
industries which supply them. We did that sort of thing at the
beginning of the last war,  and the method would work much better
under conditions of peace-time economic mobilization. Some of we
older folk remember what this economy can do,  if need be.
     As soon as we can increase the percentile of the labor-force
employed as operatives by about five percent,  a real and strong
economic recovery will be under way. By the time the increase in
percentile of employed operatives increases by ten percent,  a
significant increase in the general level of real household
incomes will occur. As we progress from that point,  our
objective of the single-wage-earner household becomes a realistic
one.
     Provided we adopt the Mars-colonization project,  the spin-
offs of new technology coming into production and improved
product designs will increase productivity by not less than an
average rate of between 3% and 5% per year. I list a few
examples,  so the point is more easily understood.
     The U.S. used to require a steel capacity of about 130
millions tons a year. We are falling below 90 millions tons now.
Of 90 millions tons consumed,  about 40 millions tons comes from
domestic production of new iron and steel;  the rest is either
remelted scrap or imported. Generally,  the steel capacity we
have is obsolete.
     On this,  I propose we do two things.  First,  shift the
emphasis from old types of metals to space-age ceramics,  and
rebuild our steel-making or equivalent capacity up to about 150
millions tons a year,  at least,  using proven but uninstalled
new and relatively very environentally clean methods,  far better
and cheaper than any in use anywhere in the world today. We have
the basic technology;  use it.
     I propose that we bring together our aerospace and
automotive industries,  and have them reach a consensus on the
use of new,  better materials,  and on the fostering of a new
generation of machine-tool industry,  using such modern methods
as laser techniques. That action would spill over from these
industries,  to revolutionize quality of product-design and
productivities,  throughout the nation's industry.
     We have worked-out designs for a national fresh-water
management system. We have a major water crisis;  we are running
out of needed clean water for human use and for agriculture in
many parts of the nation. Enlarge the U.S. Corps of Engineers,
and use that existing system as a way of channelling desperate,
unemployed youth into work-training programs,  in which they make
a valuable contribution,  and through which we save many lives
which would otherwise be condemned to the scrap-heap of crime and
degeneracy.
     Basically,  all this means is,  let's get the nation back to
work producing for physical needs,  improving the quality of
products,  and producing more and more with less and less effort
required to do it. With emphasis on technological progress, and
with the kinds of measures I have indicated,  we could double the
average income of this nation by the end of this century -- and
that is a very safe estimate. We have the needs to support a
market on the scale;  we must match needs with a sufficient
number of families earning sufficient income to buy those needs.
Cut the excess overhead in unemployment,  administration,  sales,
and low-skilled services,  and increase employment in either
producing physical goods,  or in engineering,  science,
education,  and health. Mobilize the credit,  and with the right
tax policies,  and a few major projects to stimulate
technological progress,  success is just a matter of a lot of
honest work.

                       6. The Role of Women

     The rearing of children is the characteristic form of life
of adult men and women into their late forties and early fifties,
otherwise humanity would not exist. During those adult years,
life is usually,  normally centered around the care of children,
and the development of their character and intellectual
potentials. If this were not the case,  the quality of the next
generation would be more or less defective. There is no possible
alternate to the assumption that for nearly all women, twenty or
more years of their adult lives will be centered around the
responsibility of rearing children,  and,  to only a lesser
degree,  men too. If this were ever not to be the case,  as
tended to be a key feature of the internal decay of Rome,  the
society in question would be more or less doomed,  as a culture
which had become functionally unfit to endure.
     The question of the general roles of men and women,  and of
the general character of their relationships to one another, must
be located within that framework. A minority of adult men and
women may not choose to marry,  or,  even if married,  may adopt
exceptional kinds of responsibilities which preclude occupation
with child-rearing. Such cases are necessarily exceptional ones
in a healthy society,  and even in these exceptional cases,  the
roles and relationships must echo the norms of personal
development established for adult members of child-rearing
households,  if for no other reason than that their personalities
are molded by a child-rearing society.  Any different setting for
questions bearing upon the needs and roles of women,  would be an
absurd one.
     Although the question of culture is a matter of individual
personality and practice, culture is not primarily individual.
The existence of a society is a matter of successive generations,
so that the question of the rightness or wrongness of any
considered choices of cultural values,  is a matter of knowing to
what result the practice of such values would lead,  several
generations later.
     First of all,  will those values ensure that a significant
population exists,  to continue such a culture, several
generations from now? For example,  it is shown,  that a
continuation of the present birth-rate in Germany ensures that
the last German-speaker might die during the course of the coming
century. Obviously,  whatever cultural values are causing the low
birth-rate,  are defective ones.
     Second,  presuming that population continues to exist,  what
quality of society will it represent?
     The question of the role and rights of women in society must
be stated within the framework of a model child-rearing role. The
necessity quality of mothers,  and the rights of women as
persons,  are so situated. The questions are implicitly answered
most effectively,  by working our way outward from the
child-rearing role.
     The quality of a mother's personal development and life
bears chiefly on the relevance of that to the development of the
character and intellectual potential of the child. Concretely, we
live in a society which depends upon a certain level of
technology. For that reason,  in the development of the child,
there is a premium on rationality,  and upon potential for
mastering new technologies, If the child lacks those qualities,
the child is poorly equipped for adult life. This presupposes
that the qualities of the mother are consistent with fostering
that kind of development in the child.
     A women adequately developed to be potentially such a
mother,  has personal cultural needs which correspond to her
development. If she becomes a mother,  she requires a certain
form of function in society prior to,  and after child-rearing.
Her personal life during the child-rearing period,  must be
consistent with the kind of person she must be,  and her
activities,  prior to and after the child-rearing period of her
life.
     Part of this challenge is addressed by labor-saving devices
in the home. The time and effort she must direct to the rearing
of children is unavoidable, but other elements of housekeeping
labor are targets for labor-saving devices. The function of
labor-saving devices,  is to enable her to sustain a quality of
intellectual development life equal to that afforded to the male.
Thus,  her opportunities for career or equivalent activity,
before and after child-rearing years,  must be consistent with
this.
     Formally,  women today have political equality,  barring
some unpleasant or outrightly unjust features of the situation in
certain forms of employment. The practical problems lie chiefly
elsewhere,  in places more covered over,  or avoided by the
feminist organizers,  than addressed.
     The greatest injustice is reflected in the incidence of
broken marriages. The recent      @    is,  is associated
with the direct and indirect cultural and moral impact of the
so-called "sexual revolution." The institution of marriage is
taken less seriously,  to the effect that marriage tends often to
be more of an existentialist event,  than a serious union.
Influential meddlers,  most more or less directly apostles of the
radical "counter-culture,"  aided by the news and entertainment
industry,  poison marriages by propagandizing ever-new criteria
by which to measure desirability of maintaining the relationship.
The more essential fact,  is that agapic love,  the true basis
for a durable union,  is lacking.
     The primary source of the increase of broken marriages,
relative to earlier periods,  is not the fault of either partner.
It is chiefly the impact upon the individuals,  of a general
cultural pessimism pervading our society. List all of the
putative causes for broken marriages today,  and during earlier
generations. Why the increase in incidence of broken marriages?
The increase can not be attributed to the individuals,  but
rather some change for the worse afoot in the society.
     There are two factors in society as a whole,  which are
responsible for the entirety of the increased incidence of broken
marriages. First,  those cultural values on which durable
marriage depends,  have been undermined massively,  and
intentionally by the radical "counter-culture." Second,  the
society has undergone a deepening cultural pessimism since the
1963-1966 period of transition in policies of government.
     A society steeped in increasing cultural pessimism,  creates
an environment incompatible with agape. Those strongly affected
by this pessimism,  lose the capacity for agape. This loss
promotes a loss of a healthy sense of personal identity,  and a
corresponding loss of the capacity to recognize such a personal
identity in others. The persons so affected,  become defective
personalties,  even losing the sense of personal identity and
capacity for reason they may have once possessed. Cultural
pessimism among defective personalities,  is the precondition for
successful spread of the influence of the radical counter-
culture.
     There are three factors which offer us the prospect of
reversing such trends.
     First,  the justified and growing panic against the rapid
spread of the fatal AIDS infection, has begun to turn the
population back toward traditional family-centered values.
     Second,  the collapse of the economy hss reached the point
that growing numbers of the population are in revolt against
Washington,  and reaching the stage of acting to change things
for the better. Insofar as this angry mood is channelled into
constructive changes in policies and practices,  this fosters a
rebirth of cultural optimism in the population.
     Third,  those actions which promote restoration of the
family institution,  as those are outlined above,  will promote a
powerful surge of optimism,  and a discarding of those practices
which are associated with the 1966-1986 rise of the radical
counterculture. As families gain the material means and the
cultural optimism to do so,  the value of the family as an
institution will be restored,  and be valued all the more because
we came so near to losing it.

                             30-30-30