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From: jeff@rtech.ARPA (Jeff Lichtman)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: the dark forces
Message-ID: <250@rtech.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 22-Mar-85 18:49:31 EST
Article-I.D.: rtech.250
Posted: Fri Mar 22 18:49:31 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Mar-85 06:22:11 EST
References: <2037@inmet.UUCP> <2046@sun.uucp>
Organization: Relational Technology, Berkeley CA
Lines: 42

> > Many women are not moving
> > into the workforce because they're mega-career oriented; many of these women
> > with kids in day care work because their families need the two paychecks.
> 
> Actually, there is a third alternative which few seem to consider...
> Don't have Johnny in the first place, since it's impossible to raise him in a
> constructive manner.  The reason it's so difficult to provide for Johnny in
> the first place is because the world is overpopulated, and there isn't enough
> pie to divide into even one more piece for Johnny.
> -- 
> {ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sun!sunny (Ms. Sunny Kirsten)

I don't agree.  The U.S. isn't overpopulated, that is, it has more than
enough "pie" for everyone within its borders.  Yet it has become common
for both parents of a family in the U.S. to have to work in order to provide
enough income to feed the family and pay the bills.  This is a problem of
distribution; the incredible wealth that exists in this country is being
concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

Population is only a problem in those countries where basic needs exceed the
people's ability to meet them by production or trade.  Eventually it may happen
that this will happen throughout the whole world.  Currently, the world
capacity for production of basic needs (like food) exceeds the world demand.
The main reasons that people are starving are political.

I don't think it's fair to expect people in a prosperous country like the U.S.
to avoid having children in order to solve a population problem that doesn't
exist for them.

On another note, I'm surprised that no one has pointed out that another reason
more women are in the work force is that more of them are choosing to remain
single, and more women are divorced or separated.  It's also fairly common for
husbands in ghetto families to simply leave without providing any child support;
the mothers have the choice of working and leaving their kids alone or
going on welfare.  Vigorous enforcement of the law would help this situation,
but this often doesn't happen for poor people, especially women.

Sorry for the net.politics nature of this message, but the issues are
fundamentally political.
-- 
Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
aka Swazoo Koolak