Word: menials
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...last, he believes, only until alternatives are found. What are those alternatives? Gans suggests that social workers could counsel the rich; policemen could concentrate on traffic and organized crime; entertainers, hippies and adolescents could be given a bigger scapegoat role than they already have. But most solutions-like paying menial workers higher wages -would cause the affluent both fiscal and psychological pain. As a result, Gans concludes, poverty may disappear only "when the powerless can obtain enough power to change society...
Although Bennett agreed that blacks generally occupy more menial positions than whites in South Africa, he said, "If you were a black down there, would you rather have no job or a job not as good as a white...
Balfour also maintains, "We've got to make ordinary work more respectable." In the current issue of Sodal Policy, M.I.T.'s Herbert J. Gans contemplates very ordinary work indeed. He presents a whimsical scenario for a Dirty Work Movement, which raises the pay of toilet cleaners and other menial laborers to $20 an hour, creating a new economic elite. As a result, everyone wants to go into dirty work, and the D.W.M. sets up educational prerequisites and a licensing system to keep out clean workers. Hippies even start wearing white shirts to express their sympathies for the new underclass...
President Nixon has tried to dignify menial work by exhortations. Although his choice of examples may have been unfortunate, he had a valid point when speaking about the job needs of those on welfare. He argued that there is as much dignity in scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans "as there is in any other work to be done in this country, including my own." Equally to the point was former HEW Secretary John Gardner's comment that "an excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher." Disconcerting though it may be to parents who have heavily invested...
Although Bennett agreed that blacks generally occupy more menial positions than whites in South Africa, he said, "If you were a black down there, would you rather have no job or a job not as good as a white...