This page will display some opposing views I have received from readers of this website. I have removed their email addresses for their privacy but I will add it at their own request.

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Charlie's lament:

Alf,

I'm always impressed how quickly the enterprise capitalists
are able to interpret and then speak for the 80% of the 'poor',
which their writings clearly show they despise ... no, I would
have to go beyond that. If they're willing to let people starve,
remain uneducated, live in tenement slums, and die for their
country that abandons them, that goes far beyond "despise".

The only offset for this self-serving, self-aggrandizing attitude
is a knowledge one day these despisor 20%'s will need to be
coddle fed and have their asses wiped by the 80% despisees.

Ironic is hardly the word.

I started working at 13, when my father pawned me off on the
local gardener. At 14, I caddied golf clubs for rich doctors and
lawyers, carrying kangaroo doubles over 18 holes for a hotdog,
a coke, and $1. That's right. $1. I spent the entire four years of
high school working nights and weekends as a fry cook, my
summers working in sweltering factories on assembly lines.

All through college, I worked as a fraternity waiter and coffee
bar espresso puller, and in the summer, more factory lines.
One summer, I produced one million parts. I didn't get a bonus,
but I'm sure my supervisor did.

For a brief moment after graduation I was head of an EPA
department, before the 1973-1974 recession kicked me back
on the street, with a 1955 pickup truck and $500 cash, working
construction in the day, working nights as an aerospace machinist.

In that 44 years of work, I've been busted and homeless three
times, living in an abandoned railroad car while I worked as a
farm laborer, then an abandoned warehouse under Seattle's
Pike Place market while I drove delivery trucks, then in an
abandoned VW microbus while I worked in a fish cannery,
and finally in the back seat of my 1970 Dodge, showering at
the YMCA every morning, and working in an office job until
I could afford first & last on a flea bag 1BR apartment in SF.

It's taken me over 30 years as an engineer, making my clients
and employers into millionaires, for me to make over $100,000
in salary. Thirty years! With no pension!! I own my own home,
I own two >10-year old cars, and have saved enough money
to put my two children through any state college they want.

They will graduate into the world's worst depression, and their
entire lives as 80%'rs will be remembering a bucolic childhood,
where Dad worked 60- to 80- hours a week, for decades, so he
could live long enough to read some 20%'r say how lazy he was.

Charlie

Alf's notes:
Charlie misses the point. Over 90% of today's 20%'rs started out on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. There is no guarantee that all people starting out on the lowest economic level (in or near poverty) will get to the higher rungs through toil and hard work. There are other factors that lead to success such as making the right choices when opportunity presents itself. A chess game does not consist of making random moves on the board. Only very reasoned moves can lead to ultimate succes and the winning of the game. Any sport like football and basketball require the right decisions and superior skill to win. These games are not fair in that at the end of the game the scores are added together and points are equaly divided between winner and loser.

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