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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (46446)	5/9/2001 11:25:48 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 70976

OT I recall that people of modest means 50 years ago could afford most consumer goods. My parents, a teacher and a bookkeeper, had a house, car, TV, radios, washer, dryer, power lawn mower, and no debt but the mortgage. Medical care was also not the expensive proposition it is today. People of modest means (say at 35% of the average US income) 50 years ago where poorer then people of equivilently modest means are today. Home ownership is up from 50 years ago. Radios, TVs and cars are frequently owned even by many of the poor in the US today. People of modest means today also have many consumer goods that were simply unavailable 50 years ago. Medical care is more expensive compared to the average income but that is mostly because we can do more today and patients get charged for all of the new medical technologies. Tim

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (46446)	5/9/2001 2:47:32 PM
From: Sam Citron	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

"Unlike other species, human competition has little effect on the gene pool and hence does not improve the species." Interesting. Why not? Does it have anything to do with inherited wealth-- causing fathers who are prodigious savers to frequently have profligate offspring? "Minimum wage rates pretty much eliminate almost all the benefits available to more affluent consumers and capitalists." True, but minimum wage jobs are by definition for the minimally qualified worker. With experience generally comes higher pay, unless it is truly a dead-end job. "Your 'innovation' for some and low paying, benefitless service jobs for the rest is elitist." You may call it elitist, but I just don't see any other way out. IMO you have correctly identified a serious issue for the USA: the ability of the internet to move good jobs from Aptos to Accra. As I indicated in my response, I believe that our success as a nation will depend on our ability to innovate. This is our number one strategic advantage above all other nations and we must continue to exploit it through a relentless pursuit of science and technology harnessed to the needs and desires of the planet. But the reality is that not all of us are cut out to be scientists and engineers. And thank God for that. We will always need artists, restauranteurs, carpenters, carpet salesmen, etc. And I only hope and pray that a free and competitive market will always determine their relative wage differentials. "I think 'reparation' should be given for other types of injury and loss." In what types of situations would you be willing to subsidize the indemnification of or payment of "reparations" to individuals who are stuck in low paying jobs?