At 08:57 AM 7/30/96 -0700, David Kline wrote:

A question though: What about the 3 million hard-working, reading, middle-class folks who have been downsized into oblivion the last three years alone? What about the tens of millions of readers who had the skills needed for the industrial age, but not for the information age?

I forgot to include a little anecdote about education in my original post. There seems to be a belief extant that education is something that you are completely dependent on others for. The masses will just sit there and melt away unless they are given a "program." "I need a program. Who's got a program? We need a program. All God's chillun's got programs." This is provably false. People can learn whatever they have to. (Within very broad intellectual limits.) If they *choose* not to learn (and you are not their parent or employer), it is a violation of their autonomy to browbeat them. You should leave them alone in their ignorance and, of course, not waste any money helping them since they have demonstrated that they aren't interested. An economist might say that those who reject education are making a choice. They are deciding that, for them, the value of today's leisure (L) plus today's income (I) is greater than the recreational value of education (R) plus the present value (PV) of future financial and psychic gains from education. L + I > R + PV In other words, all those people who were drinking beer or working construction while TM was going to college, graduate school, studying physics, and working for Intel were making the decision that *for them* the value of all that time off, plus current income, plus lack of skull sweat was greater than the chance of becoming a millionaire and retiring at 30-something. And they may well be right. In any case, we should honor their choices as we expect them to honor ours. To intervene in a big way in their lives (or in TMs) to challenge their choices is deeply wrong. We can't tell from the outside what the value of the education/work/leisure tradeoff is for an individual. All we can do is observe their actions. If you doubt that people can learn if they really have to... Greta spent her teens fleeing with he mother from Poland into the USSR on foot in advance of the Wermacht (religious differences). As the Wermacht receeded, so did Greta and her mother who preferred the West. In the course of events, they ended up in a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Austria. There was an understandable reluctance on the part of the DP to be repatriated to areas in the Soviet Zone of Occupation. (Operation Keelhaul would later hand many thousands of DPs over to the commies.) England or America were *by far* the first choice. A rumor went around the camp that England was desperately short of glove makers. Some people in the camp knew how to make gloves. Within a few weeks, everyone in the camp knew how to make gloves. English lessons were also very popular. There were no "programs" to teach either of these skills. The happy ending to the story is that Greta and her mother secured a trip to New York City. In the 45 years since she's been here, Greta has neither returned to Europe or ever felt the desire to do so in spite of the superior European social welfare systems. When asked why, she says that Europe had its shot at her and she doesn't believe in tempting fate. The point is that people can learn if they have to and if they don't have to they don't have to. Life in America today is as easy as it's ever been in human history (at least since the invention of agriculture), so if people want to relax we should let them -- and not subsidize them. DCF