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To: Dave B who wrote (61724)	11/22/2000 5:14:01 PM
From: Dave B	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Happy Thanksgiving to All! From the San Jose Mercury, an article by Leigh Weimer: A Short List of Reasons We Should Be Thankful Fewer and fewer people can afford to live in expensive Silicon Valley. San Franciscans decry dot-commers pushing artists from their lofts. Oakland tries to lure more shoppers downtown, but to shop where? Everyone's traffic is worse. So what's to be thankful for this Thanksgiving? Lots. At the risk of being called an incurable Pollyanna (and I've been called worse), let me cite some points made by authors Stephen Moore and Julian Simon for the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. in looking back over the past 100 years: * The average life expectancy in 1900 was 47 years. Today, it is 77 and rising. * Our infant-mortality rate has dropped from 1 in 10 to 1 in 150. * Low-income Americans today have routine access to a quality of food, health care, consumer products, entertainment, communications and transportation that even the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers could only dream of. * A farmer a century ago could produce only one-hundredth of what his counterpart today is capable of growing and harvesting. * In the 19th century, almost all teenagers worked in factories or fields. Now, 9 in 10 attend high school. * Today's Americans have three times more leisure time than their great-grandparents did. * The price of food relative to wages has plummeted. In the early part of this century, the average American had to work two hours to earn enough to buy a chicken. Today, it takes 20 minutes. So life is perfectly wonderful? Nothing's perfect. But it's not as bad as some would have us believe. For that, be thankful. Please allow me to add a couple of my own: * One hundred years ago, a significant portion of our population was not allowed to eat in the same restaurants, use the same restrooms, or drink from the same water fountain as the rest of the population. Now they can. And some of the members of that population have since grown into some of the most powerful positions in the country (e.g. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff). * One hundred years ago, over one-half of the adult population of the country were not allowed to vote in elections for individuals who then governed the entire country. Now they can. In spite of any differences I may have with anyone on this board, past, present, or future, I hope everyone will accept my best wishes for all. Dave