Stephanie Coontz Quotes
The most urgent issue facing American workers today is not the glass ceiling. It is the sinking floor.
Stephanie Coontz, Historian, Urging women to concentrate more on the smaller and smaller earning for the middle class worker and hold the glass ceiling problem in abeyance, “How Can We Help Men By Helping Women”, New York Times, January 12, 2014
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Under the economic stewardship of the George W. Bush administration, the rate of inflation was modest. However, while the wages of the highest executives had increase markedly, the wages of average workers actually had decreased for much of the administration.
The last 5 years of the 1990s were the last of the Clinton administration where he was the principle architect of economic policies for that period. While this statement was somewhat self serving, the economic and fiscal performance of the Clinton years were astoundingly superior to those before and after.
This appears to be the first political use of the phrase. It would take a century for legislation in some states to mandate a living wage. Roosevelt, as a reformer was incredibly ahead of his time.
Ten cents a day was a very low wage—it was about the equivalent of a meal at a tavern at the time. Workers throughout the country were outraged and give him a derogatory nickname—see Quotation 643585.
The reason the age rave grows faster than the median is that there are some earners at the top who increase by huge amounts while the rest of the population did not grow by much. This is the same phenomenon in England that occurred in the United States in the same period, only the United States differential was even greater.
Stephanie Coontz is an author, historian, and faculty member at Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001 to 2004. Coontz has authored and co-edited several books about the history of the family and marriage.
