Recent Comments

1. about 13 years ago on Doonesbury

   It’s strange…I’m living below the poverty line, and I’m definitely not destitute. I have a nice apartment, I can get food at the foodbank (which has been necessary working only part-time), my upstairs neighbor lets me mooch off his wi-fi, no-one regularly tries to bomb my neighborhood, and I have a college degree, which means I have a better shot at getting a job in this economy than a lot of other people.

   And yet every time I ride the bus or go to any major shopping area, I see homeless people, many of them vets, whose lives suck. There are a lot of them. I’ve hung out and talked with homeless people a lot, and their lives are not really any better than a lot of poor people in 3rd world countries. Likewise, all the unlucky kids who get born in the ghettos and projects.

   If my parents hadn’t been able to bail me out when I was short sometimes, “there but for the Grace of God” I might have gone.

2. about 13 years ago on Doonesbury

   @pschearerPeople should be able to enjoy the wealth that they create, that is true. However, our form of capitalism is not like Monopoly, where everyone gets the same amount of wealth to being with, and then gains or loses money based on their choices (and the “dice” of extraneous circumstances beyond their control). Wealth is passed from generation to generation, and I would guess that the vast majority of the 1% started their careers by stepping into boots that their great-grandfathers had pulled themselves up by. So are they entitled to enjoy family wealth that they did nothing to earn?

   Personally, I think that even in a “perfect world”, some families/individuals would be wealthier than others, maybe much wealthier. But, no one would be poor from lack of access to the necessary resources to create wealth: quality education, well-paying jobs, and a Market regulated to prevent the kind of surge/depression that we’ve recently gone through.