December 29, 2009 at 9:00 pm · Filed under Aid Fellow Travelers, Confound Authority, Finish Ahead
The best ideas are always the simplest.
About a year ago, I wrote a post that used George Bailey as a metaphor for the community. I suggested that the citizens of Muncie could all pull together, make relatively small changes and investments in their community, and our city would be a better place.
Well, it turns out that I haven’t been the only one thinking along those lines. Lots of people have been working to come up with effective and sustainable ways to improve their communities, and do so with minimal impact to the already-strained finances of its members.
As it happens, though, the simpler the idea, the better it is; and a group has come up with one of the simplest of all: Move your money.
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March 17, 2009 at 10:09 am · Filed under Aid Fellow Travelers, Musings
A friend of mine wrote:
No individual decides to quit his/her job. Many individuals, however, when still in high school and considering their futures, compare staying in high school and then going on to college to simply dropping out and letting everyone else “row the boat.” They look at their older sister who got that teaching or nursing degree and consider that sister’s lifestyle, comparing it to that of their older brother who dropped out of high school and has turned living at the public trough into an art form. He gets the food and the rent and the medical and the tax checks (even though he has never paid a penny of income tax, himself) and the health club membership and, perhaps most importantly, the overflowing public adoration of any candidate aspiring to political office.
It sounds harsh, but the saying “Stupid should hurt” is a good one.
What is this older brother’s name?
Lots of people draw these elaborate hypothetical scenarios, but where in reality do these people exist?
And why should “stupid hurt?” Some people are just stupid. They aren’t lazy or careless, they just aren’t very smart. My friend and I are intelligent guys – at the very least, above average – and we’re not alone. What of our counterparts on the other end of the IQ spectrum? Are people suggesting they should be kicked to the curb because they drew the genetic short straw?
And what of the millions of people out there who were just poorly-raised? One of the revelations that surfaced during the Presidential campaign was how widespread the “anti-intelligence” attitude is throughout rural and blue-collar America (or “the real America,” as Sarah Palin terms it).
So, some young man from Kansas, raised by a couple of hayseeds that thought college was too “elite” for their kid, should be doomed to poverty when his blue-collar job gets outsourced because why? To teach him a lesson?
The point is well-taken in the instances my friend describes. One of the faults in that reasoning, however, is the assumption that all, or even most, of the people in that position made conscious choices that led them there.
Another is the implicit idea that everyone that wants to make a life for themselves should go to college and pursue a degreed career. Someone has to pick up the trash, wait the tables and pick the vegetables. Why should the people that work hard to perform these vital functions be any less deserving of the chance to provide for their families?
To me, that’s the part that sounds stupid; and yes, it hurts.
