Bob Cratchit is the model for the new American middle class

He served long and faithfully with few raises to show for it, no retirement, no pension, no job security. What is he complaining about? He has a roof, he is clothed, his family is not literally starving. Too bad his youngest has untreated healthcare needs too expensive for the family to deal with, but thems the breaks.

Today, Scrooge and Marley would be a large multi-national corporation and Scrooge would have no problem telling Bob Cratchit that his accounting position had been outsourced to India - "nothing personal" and that don't worry about Tiny Tim's surgery, there's always COBRA.

Who believes still in the fairy tale that Mr. Scrooge sees the light and learns how to keep Christmas in his heart the year round and treats his employees humanely and recompenses them fairly just for the sure joy of it?

because they could only afford one or two children if they wanted to feed, clothe, and educate them. In addition, Mom had to go out and work for a paycheck if they didn't want to live in grotty rentals all their lives.

Of course, it made a difference that the older kids didn't have to go out and scratch for money, themselves, to feed the younger ones. That part is an improvement for the kids but not for family finances.

Other than that, it's just about right. Skilled work (and Cratchit was both educated and skilled) is going for peanuts and we're supposed to pull our forelocks and bow and be grateful for starvation wages so some Indian doesn't get the job for less.

This country, after 40 years of rabid conservatism, sucks if you aint rich.

back then, you had to have a number of kids, because you pretty much weren't sure that any of them would make it out of childhood alive ...

and farming was extremely labor-intensive ...

in Mediaeval societies. We let them wait until 11 or 12 if we could here, unless the family was extremely desperate and sent 5 year olds to sort coal.

However, I have peers who wanted more children but who felt they couldn't have them because they couldn't afford more than the one or two they had.

This is wrong, too, and rather my point.