On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:33:18 GMT, "Tom Littleton" wrote:


wrote in message
.. .

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I think what I'm trying to work through is that I feel both you and Ken are
vastly overgeneralizing. I do not feel that we NEED have a nation with a
glut of folks capable of
"burger flipping" as a skillset.

I didn't say, nor did I mean that we need a nation of burger-flippers (or any
other single vocation). I simply said that for some people, it's about as far
as they are capable of going, just like some are best suited to be doctors,
engineers, scientists, teachers, ditch-diggers, laborers, managers, soldiers,
etc., etc. - if you prefer, some simply aren't capable of (or even desire to)
producing more than about $15-20K a year of "work" (and some less than that).

Nor, do I agree with Ken that we are
overwhelmingly a nation of overachieving production machines. There is, as
always a continuum, but we have, IMO, lowered the overall skill levels over
the past few decades. For whatever reason, we have dumbed down basic
education, made higher education(especially in technical and scientific
fields) less regarded by both students and the institutions themselves, and
in so doing have done the national economy no real good.

I can tell you and it'll make Ken's head explode - we've created a large subset
of the population that feels they are entitled to things to which they simply
aren't entitled. It started black folks, who really didn't even ask for it -
they simply wanted what they were most certainly entitled to: the right to
succeed or fail on their own merits rather than the color of their skin. But
"liberals" went _way_ overboard - affirmative action, reverse discrimination,
etc. And it spread to all sorts of "disadvantaged" people. We've bred a
multi-racial subset who thinks they have a right to demand "fairness" as they
define it. As you well know, life isn't fair. Sometimes, even decent people
get hurt, and it just isn't the responsibility of the general public to cure,
fix, or mitigate everything. It just isn't possible to give everybody
everything.

Therefore, I applaud what Obama seems to be saying:

Oh, hell, I applaud a fair bit of what he _says_. My issues with him are what
he does, or, what he fails to do at any given moment versus what he previously
said he'd do. I'm enough of a realist to understand campaign promises, but on
not on the core things which were, by his own statements, "exempted" from the
typical promises.

short term stimulus
followed by a bit of belt tightening and a national focus on education and
innovation. Sure, it's political rah-rah, to an extent, but at least it
attempts to start getting the notion over to the people that this is no easy
ride that someone else does for you.
As for the way commerce was conducted in the 1950-75 timeframe, I do see
relevant ideas that seem to have been lost. Why, for instance, were
corporations perfectly profitable, and focused on the long term, when CEO's
and Presidents made around 20-30 times the entry level professional's
salary? When did it seem prudent to pay the leadership an average of 150
times entry? These weren't, for years on end, ever regulated matters, yet
were considered fair practice. I'm not claiming any rights or wrongs here,
so much as wondering where it all got off the track, with a shrinking
industrial production, widening gap between workers and exective's
compensation, lowering of educational standards and unregulated greed.
I do suspect it's going to as messy as making sausage getting back onto
sounder footing.......

Fair enough...

TC,
R
Tom