Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (37583)	7/6/2005 8:43:48 AM
From: Suma	Respond to of 90947

Thank you Tim for sharing this with me. I will try to point out where I fit in and don't. By Thomas Sowell The Washington Times Commentary July 5, 2005 Recently a friend described a meeting with a nasty-tempered leftist from a rich family. Unfortunately, many leftists were born with a silver spoon in their mouths and, instead of being grateful, are venomous against American society. >I am not nasty tempered, well not a lot.(:) and I am not against American society, in fact I should like it to be all that it can be. ( oh, also, middle class family )< Conversely, there are people like yours truly who were born on the other end of the economic scale and think this is a great country. No one has really explained either phenomenon. Maybe a painful early confrontation with the facts of life makes it harder in later years to get all worked up over abstract issues that seem to preoccupy the left. >>We all get worked up on S.I. Sometimes a vacation is good like I had when I was so ill< Once you have ever had to go hungry, it is hard to get worked up over the fact some people can afford only pizza while others can afford caviar. Once you have had to walk to work from Harlem to a factory south of the Brooklyn Bridge, the difference between driving a Honda and driving a Lexus seems kind of petty, too. >Fortunately the only time I have gone hungry is on camping trips where the cook was lousy.< Would a poverty-stricken peasant in Bangladesh find the difference between the average American's standard of living and that of a millionaire something to get excited about? If he had a choice between a certainty of getting the first and a 1-in-2 chance of getting the second, would he take the risk to go for a million bucks? I doubt it. The general public has never been as worked up about "income distribution" as the left. Nor is this due to any deeper understanding on the part of the left. On the contrary, liberals and other leftists have constantly misconceived the issue. I don't think I am a leftist.. A liberal, yes and Libitarian a lot of the times. Differences between people in different income brackets tell you absolutely nothing about who those people are or how long they have been in those brackets. Most Americans who are at some point in their lives in the bottom 20 percent in income are in the top 20 percent at some other point. >My weathly friends... when I was growing up, were not phased by money. It was a matter of course. It had been in the family. I was jealous that in the 9th grade a lot of them went to private schools... My Dad was not so much for a great education for women...(:( They usually start at the bottom and work their way up, with a few blips up and down along the way. The more affluent the country becomes, the less those transient statistical differences really matter, except to those with the money, the leisure and the inclination to adopt indignation as a way of life. Environmentalism is another playground of the affluent. "Nature" is wonderful when you can look out on it from your luxury cabin in the woods or upscale digs at the shore. >I preferred sleeping in a tent on the ground by a lake... Or canoe trips up the Delaware River... Or living in the out of doors all summer in a tent with a wood platform as I did camping on the Delaware at Shawnee on the Delaware for 3 years< Roughing it in the wild is great when you know that, if something goes wrong, a helicopter can lift you to safety or to a hospital, as the case may be. This is what might be called artificial nature or the illusion of nature. >Who knew about helicopters. We were just starting to trust planes. < Real nature can be pretty ugly, as the pioneers discovered, and as the bleached bones of their animals or of the pioneers themselves on the old trails can attest. Even in more recent times, anyone who has had to get up on cold mornings, all winter long, to start a fire to heat the house is unlikely to regard it as a romantic experience. It's romantic if you do it for a little while, by choice, knowing it is only a matter of time before you return to your home with central heating, provided by oil you don't want drilled offshore or in Alaska or by coal you deplore seeing mined anywhere. Personally, only within the last few years have I been able to enjoy starting a fire in the fireplace -- in my centrally heated home. It reminded me too much of being a kid down South when a fireplace was all we had to keep warm in the winter. Don't use the fireplace anymore as the heat goes up the chimney. Use a gas fired fireplace. Pretty and energy efficient. Of all the romantic self-indulgences of the affluent and the wealthy, few are more ridiculous than their passion to "save" farmland. This country has no shortage of farmland or of food. One of our biggest problems is overeating and, even so, there are huge agricultural surpluses that cost the taxpayers billions of dollars every year. Yet the greenies with lots of green push for laws and policies to prevent farmers from selling their land to people who want to build houses on it. I weigh 120 pounds and overeating has never been a problem with me nor has weight. Lucky I guess. Would it be worth it to be rich if it also meant >Rich in spirit, rich in friends, rich in health... these are the most important things to me now.< Money is transient and one cannot take it with them... my parent's favorite line from Philadelphia Story. Mary Lou