Economic Revolutions
In Modern era, heavy industry and the information age went booming
Companies like Microsoft Corp. brought communication
Discovery of the new high tech economy was also prone to boom or bust, just like the old economy.
Scientific research propelled the economy.
Researchers unlocked the secrets of molecular genetics
They developed new strains of high yielding, pest/weather resistant crops.
They sought to cure hereditary diseases.
The movement started to fix genetic mutations.
The Bush administration, and many religious groups, believed that this research was killing people in the form of a human fetus.
Bush said a fetus is still a human life, despite its small size, and experimenting and destroying it is therefore wrong.
U.S. standard of living was still very high compared to most other nations.
The median household income in 2002 was $42,400,
The rich still got richer while the poor got poorer.
The richest 20% in 2001 raked in nearly half the nation’s income while the poorest 20% got a mere 4%.
The widening inequality could be measured in different ways as well
In 2004, over 40 million people had no medical insurance.
34 million lived at or below the poverty level.
Causes of the widening income gap
The Feminist Revolution
Women were greatly affected by the large changes of the late 1900s.
Women steadily increased their presence in the work place.
By 1990s, nearly half of all workers were women. Most surprising was the upsurge of employment in mothers.
By the 1990s, a majority of women with kids as young as one were working.
Many universities opened their doors to women such as Yale, Princeton, and even West Point, The Citadel, and Virginia Military Institute
feminists remained frustrated.
Women still got lower wages and were concentrated in few low-prestige, low-paying occupations.
For example, in 2002, on 29% of women were lawyers or judges and 25% physicians.
This was due to women interrupting their careers to bear and raise kids or taking a less-demanding job to also fulfill the roles of mother.
Discrimination and a focus on kids also helped account for the “gender-gap” in elections.
Women still voted for Democrats more than men.
Women were more willing to favor government support for health and child care, education, and job equality, as well as more vigilant in protecting abortion rights.
Mens’ lives changed in the 2000s as well.
Some employers gave maternity leave as well as paternity leave in recognition of shared obligations of the two-worker household.
More men shared the traditional female responsibilities such as 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
The nuclear suffered heavy blows in modern America. By the 1990s, half of all marriages ended in divorce.
Seven times more children were affected by divorce as compared to the beginning of the decade.
Traditional families weren’t just falling apart at an alarming rate, but they were also increasingly slow to form in the first place.
The proportion of adults living alone tripled in the 4 decades after 1950s. In the 1990s, 1/3 of women age 25 - 29 had never married.
Every fourth child in the U.S. was growing up in a household that lacked two parents.
Single parenthood was the #1 cause of poverty.
Child-rearing, the age-old goal of a family, was being pawned off to day-care centers, school, or TV
Families now assumed a variety of different forms.
Kids in households raised by a single parent, stepparent, or grandparent, and even kids with homosexual parents, encountered a degree of acceptance that would have been unimaginable a century earlier.
Homosexual "marriage" and teenage pregnancy was on a decline after the mid-1900s.
Families weren’t evaporating, but were changing into very different forms.
The Aging of America
The longer lives were largely due to miraculous medical advances.
One American in eight was over 65 years of age in 2000.
This aging of population raised a slew of economic, social, and political questions.
Seniors formed a potent electoral bloc that aggressively lobbied for government favors and achieved real gains for senior citizens.
The share of GNP spent on health care for people over 65 more than doubled in the 30 years after Medicare started.
However, the more money sent to health care meant less money elsewhere or an increased debt. The old are getting helped, but the young are being paying for it.
These triumphs for senior citizens brought fiscal strains, especially with Social Security.
At the beginning of the creation of Social Security, a small majority depended on it. But modern times, it has increased. And, now current workers’ Social Security contributions actually funds Social Security.
Due to the baby boom generation, the ratio of active workers-to-retirees is at a low-to-high level. And, health care costs have skyrocketed in recent years.
The "unfunded liability" was about $7 trillion.
Due to possible political repercussions, politicians are very reluctant to talk about changing Social Security. There are possible solutions are:
To delay Social Security payments and persuade older Americans to work longer.
To invest the current Social Security surplus in stocks and bonds to meet future obligations. This could also backfire, however, if the market drops.
A portion of the Social Security money could be privatized if younger people wanted to invest some of their payroll taxes into individual retirement accounts.
The New Immigration
Since 1980, newcomers continued to flow into modern America, at the rate of nearly 1 million per year.
Contradicting history, Europe provided few immigrants. The largest portion came from Asia and Latin America. These immigrants came for many of the same reasons all immigrants:
They left countries where the population was increasing rapidly and…
Where agricultural/industrial revolutions were shaking up old ways of life.
Mostly, like always, they came in search of jobs and economic opportunities a better life for their families.
Some came with skills and even professional degrees and found their way into middle-class jobs. However, most came with fewer skills/less education. They sought work as janitors, nannies, farm laborers, lawn cutters, etc.
The southwest felt immigration the most, since Mexican migrants naturally arrived in that section of the U.S.
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.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act attempted to choke off illegal entry by penalizing employers of the illegal immigrants and by granting amnesty to many of those already here.
Anti-immigrant sentiment was strong in California in the wake of economic recession in the early 1990s.
California voters approved a ballot initiative that attempted to deny benefits, including free public education, to illegal immigrants (it was later struck down by courts).
State then passed another law in 1998 which put an end to bilingual teaching in state schools.
Beyond the Melting Pot
Due to increasing immigration and high birthrate, Latinos were becoming an increasingly important minority
Hispanic mayors were elected in Miami, Denver, and San Antonio.
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 Americans. In 2003, the average Asian household was 25% better off than that of the average white household.
American Indians, numbered some 2.4 million in the 2000 census.
Unemployment and alcoholism had blighted reservation life. Half had left their reservations to live in cities.
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 1980s, but then it leveled out in the 90s. Violent crime dropped notably after about 1995.
Still, murder, robbery and rape remained common in cities and rural areas and drove many more people to the suburbs.
In the mid-1990s, a swift and massive transition took place from cities to suburbs, making jobs
The nation’s brief “urban age” lasted for only a little less than 7 decades.
Some affluent suburban neighborhoods stayed secluded, by staying locked in “gated communities.”
By the first decade of the 21st century, big suburban rings and beltways emerged around cities like New York, Chicago, Houston, and Washington D.C.
The cities as a whole were becoming more racially and ethically diverse, however local neighborhoods were often homogeneous.
Suburbs grew fastest in the West and Southwest, in areas such as L.A., San Diego, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
Builders of roads, water mains, and schools could barely keep up with the new towns sprouting up across the landscapes.
A huge shift of US population was underway from East to West, from North to South.
The Great Plains were hurt from the movement. The entire Plains held fewer people than the Los Angeles basin.
However, some cities started to show signs of renewal in downtown areas such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco.
Minority America
Racial and ethic tensions also exacerbated the problems of American cities. This was specifically evident in L.A. (a magnet for minorities).
There, in 1992, a mostly white jury exonerated white cops who had been videotaped ferociously beating a black suspect.
The minority neighborhoods of L.A. erupted in a riot of anger. There was looting, arson, killings. Many blacks addressed their anger toward Asian shopkeepers who armed themselves in protection.
The L.A. riots vividly testified to black skepticism about the U.S. system of justice.
Three years later, in L.A., a televised showing of O.J. Simpson’s murder trial fed white disillusionment with the court system and with race relations.
After months of testimony, the evidence (including Simpson's DNA) seemed overwhelmingly that O.J. Simpson was guilty. But, he was acquitted due to the fact some white officers had been shown to harbor racist sentiments.
In a a later civil trail, another jury unanimously found Simpson liable for the “wrongful deaths” of his former wife and another victim.
In 2002, 52% of blacks and only 21% of whites lived in inner cities.
The most desperate black ghettos were especially problematic. Blacks who'd benefited form the 60s Civil Rights Movement left to the suburbs along with whites. This left the poorest of the poor in the old city ghettos.
Without a middle class to help the community, the cities became plagued by unemployment, crime, and drug addiction.
TSome segments of black communities did prosper after the Civil Rights Movement, although they still had a long way to go to reach equality.
Voter tallies showed that black more blacks were going to the polls.
By the early 21st century, blacks had dramatically advanced into higher education. In 2002, 17% of blacks over 25 had a bachelor’s degree.
To keep the numbers up and growing, the courts still preserved affirmative action in the university admissions.
E Pluribus Plures
The Census Bureau furthered the debate when, in 2000, it allowed respondents to identify themselves with more than one of the six categories: black, white, Latino, American Indian, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.
The Life of the Mind
Despite the TV, American read more in the early 21st century, listened to more music, and were better educated than ever.
Colleges awarded some 2.5 million degrees in 2004. One quarter of the 25-34 age group was a college grad. This fact helped the economy.
What Americans read said much about Americans themselves.
Some authors wrote of the American western experience.
Larry McMurtry wrote about the end of the ca
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