Word: working-class
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Banlieues like Bobigny, Aulnay-sous-Bois and the original flash point of Clichy-sous-Bois make up a tinderbox that few foreigners see and no one in France wants to talk about. The working-class suburbs of Paris are dominated by sterile high-rise public housing, where Arab immigrants from North Africa were shunted when they started arriving in the postcolonial years. Now their children and grandchildren subsist in squalor alongside fresh waves of African and South Asian immigrants and their French-born children. Families struggle to hang on to their dignity, while drug dealers and petty criminals exploit...
Much of Levenson's work depicts old-fashioned working-class life--people felling trees, mining a granite quarry, repairing locomotives, working a farm. That reflects his own blue collar background in Danvers, Mass. His Russian-immigrant parents were poor, but his mother, a seamstress, and father, a tailor, bequeathed good genes to Levenson and his three younger sisters. Today two sisters are also in their 90s, and the "baby" will be 87 on Sept. 30. Levenson, who yearned to be an illustrator, was able to attend the Massachusetts College of Art but left during the Depression. The only work...
...seeing a world where kids feel being pregnant is a viable option," sighs Maggie Bitman, who runs a parenting program in North Adams. "They feel their lives are in disarray." The situation is similar in the mostly white, down-at-the-heels southern counties of Illinois, and in white, working-class areas where the work has disappeared. The underlying reasons for the pregnancies are no different from those in urban ghettos: lack of opportunity, absence of interesting alternatives to childbearing. The girls feel "locked into their stations in life," says Health Official Wood Bennett of southern Illinois. "They...
...Raising payroll taxes Bush says he has ruled out a tax hike, but it forms a key part of other proposals. Some would simply raise the payroll tax rate, set at 12.4%, but critics argue that would disproportionately affect working-class and middle-class families. Others, including Peter Diamond of M.I.T. and Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution, want to raise the ceiling on taxable income. Today only the first $90,000 of income is subject to payroll tax. Such a change would generate more revenue for Social Security but affect only 6% of the work force...
Both talked extensively about their working-class family histories, highlighting that their parents had taught them the value of hard work and the importance of treating all people with respect. They both expounded on the importance of racial equality and addressed the need to reach out to those who work full-time and still live in poverty...