To: JDN who wrote (61969 ) 9/21/2004 3:56:28 PM From: QwikSand Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 64865 For the 90 million-strong investor class, The "90-million-strong" investor class? I take it that number includes people with money in 401k's. Those people are no more "investors" than the man in the moon, whether they think they are or not. The average household in the "investor class" by that definition owns some piddling amount of stock: $15,000, $25,000 whatever, generally an insignificant part of their net household worth. They are not people who depend on investments or investing for their future. To call them part of the "investor class" is disingenuous. It's trying to divide the population up into good guys and bad guys. It is Republican philosophy which depends on "class warfare", not the Dems'. EVERYONE, not just a mythical "investor class", has a stake in a competent government that defends the population from ALL THREATS, including terrorism, foreign invasion, and a variety of domestic social and environmental problems. All bureaucracies must be continuously watched and monitored closely, because they tend eventually to serve themselves rather than the social entities that conferred power on them originally. That's why we need a totally free, combative, adversarial press who asks government hard questions every day, not "fair and balanced" cheerleading machines. Nonetheless, Government isn't the problem. The problem is this Royalist fantasy about "owners" and "investors" in supposedly uncontrolled "free markets". There are NO simple answers to complex questions, notwithstanding the harmful slogan that made Ronald Reagan dear to the hearts of true-believers everywhere who want to be told what to do (as Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger has said so often). There is only a complex struggle with complex problems every single day. --QS