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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (45961)	11/22/2005 2:53:16 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

I don't think you realize I agree with you. In our society we use education as one way to stratify people. Education also educates, but we use education as proof that you are that smart and diligent enough to have jumped over those bars. In our society, that gives you additional respect and consideration for new opportunities. Other societies more heavily rely on the status of your birth family or other idiotic factors. Jonathan Swift imagined a society where people advanced in society by earning ribbons for "leaping and creeping", if my memory of "Gulliver's Travels" is intact. "The Emperor holds a stick in his hands, both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates advancing one by one, sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep under it backwards and forwards several times, according as the stick is advanced or depressed," (Swift 30). Whoever performs the best and longest in the leaping and creeping is rewarded "with the blue-coloured silk; the red is given to the next, and the green to the third, which they all wear girt twice round about the middle," (Swift 30-31). My Great-Grandfather remained in the Soviet Union after 1918. He managed to retain his status and his daughter by a second marriage, at the end of her life, lived in a large three room apartment one block off Red Square, had a Zil limousine with a driver at her disposal, and traveled often to Paris to visit family and go shopping. Unimaginable privileges, yet she was only a Doctor -- which had a much lower status in the Soviet system than in ours. The clever end up at the top, even after the rules change. How can everyone in society get to the top? They can't -- by definition. I prefer societies like Australia where wealth and opportunity are more equally distributed and "everyone has a fair go". Abominations like Brazil or Indonesia where the very few have almost everything and status is based largely on corruption and connections are the worst mankind can produce and I'm grateful I don't live there. But even in Australia, evryone is not at the top, nor can they be. I believe unions, or arbitration boards serve to protect employees from arbitrary employer actions. Some unions do well, while others become mutant, exceeding their legitimate role. Managements and society have to deal with that. However, the ruffian nature of some under-class members of society is not an attribute they acquire by being a union member. Criminals like Bernie Ebbers don't become criminals by being a CEO. Being a CEO provides them more opportunities to act out their criminal nature. Our society today reminds me of the 1970s British show, "Are You Being Served". England was experiencing a traumatic decline in living standard during that period. The show is about people coping with this trauma, often by placing more importance on petty distinctions as to which level employee at the department store was entitled to wear which type of hat, or tie. People are people, and America's standard of living is declining. .