If you're unemployed, it's not because there isn't any work.

[mbperrin]

46. Umm, the Soviet Union was rife with corruption and money to the top from the beginning.

Looked around a bit at China lately? Bit of an Industrial Revolution there at this moment.

It was my pleasure to have a 15 year old Chinese exchange student take my senior economics class this year. Top of her class with a near-perfect mark, eager to learn, bright, daughter of an accountant and a work at home mom.

Know what really caught her eye? She commented on the second day of class how many trash dumpsters there were in the alleys for so few houses.

And if work doesn't pay enough to make a living, why should we do it? Let some of these hedge fund guys cut their own hedges and mow their own lawns in this 100 degree weather, change their own oil, just thinking that after they are treated for heatstroke, they might appreciate the underclass a bit more.

Of course, I have a bias in these things - my grandfather was a member of the IWW organizing the oilfields in the 30s, and my dad helped organized the United Postal Workers, and I, counter to many in Texas, don't belong to a "professional teacher's association." I belong to the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO.

So if I seem a little cavalier in my attitude that there are far too many resources wasted on people who simply don't produce and cannot produce anything real to justify that expenditure and far too few resources invested in people who could actually make our lives better in every way.