Day of rest. Went to church as usual. The Sacrament Meeting talks were on reverence. For Father's Day we had a couple that raised nine children speak. It was good to hear from them, to get a perspective of somebody who made it this far. At times Sarah and I feel a little lonely in a sense (although we are in Utah and you would think we would not) - most people we know that have seven or more children are from the older generation and their children are gone. We actually know quite a few in that category. But we know only a handful of families that have seven or more in the house, and that is largely due to Sarah's efforts to network with other families that home school. I have often wondered why it is so. While the reasons are complex, one of them is that even though we have had great advances in technology and productivity, somehow we digressed from being able to more or less comfortably support a family of 5 or more children on one income to struggling to support a family of 2 children. Two incomes do not help much in increasing the number of children you can support - you are playing soccer without a goalie. While you can score more goals you get scored on much more than the little extra your goalie in the field can help you achieve. Here is some insight. I talked to a car mechanic a few days ago that started working straight out of high school back in 1975. He was getting paid $10/h. According to his memory, a starter home at that time could be bought for $10K, and a clerk at a grocery store made about $3.75/h. In 2000 the car shop where he worked was charging $50/h for labor, and he saw $16 of it. By now the numbers are $92 and $18. So the where is that extra money going? Not into the pockets of the car shop owners, that is not possible in a free market economy. You cannot almost double your prices unless your competitors are somehow handicapped and are not able to be profitable at a lower price than yours. According to those rough numbers, the clerk at a grocery store today makes roughly double of 1975 salary, so does the car mechanic. But you will not buy a starter home even for the four times of the home price of 1975. Another example, not cost of living related, unless you like to race a lot, but still very illustrative, is the cost of organizing a race and the exponentially rising race entry fees. Gone are the days when you could run a 10 K for 3$ with no shirt. The new generation of runners demands "the experience", which costs money. Ironically, the money a lot of them cannot afford to pay, but they do not realize it until they see their credit card bill, but by then it is too late. What happened? My explanation is that we have lost the common sense, our values have shifted, we have cursed ourselves, and are stuck in a vicious cycle of spending the money on "that which is of no worth" and our labor on "that which cannot satisfy". The way to get out is to begin to simplify, and be willing to defy what we perceive as the norm in that. Then maybe we have some hope.
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