From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Tue Feb 05 2002 - 11:17:02 MST
On 2/3/02 4:35 AM, "Miriam English" <miriam@werple.net.au> wrote:
> Those who have been born into the richer classes,
> who have gained their wealth and knowledge from countless generations
> before them, demand that they alone be recognised as being the creators of
> their good fortune and that they are damned if they will share it with
> anybody else.
I can't speak for your country, but in the U.S. your assumptions would
simply be wrong. Nearly all the wealthy people in this country are entirely
self-made, and the majority of those achieved wealth as blue-collar workers
who were not born into the vaguest semblance of privilege. This may not
square with popular perception, but it is in fact the truth. Those born
into "the richer classes" as you are painting them are almost a non-existent
class here and largely irrelevant as they are vastly outnumbered by more
"deserving" folk of similar economic means.
People use rhetoric like yours about a vanishingly small class of people to
pass laws that exact punitive measures largely against self-made blue-collar
people of modest background. That is like putting a hundred men in prison
to make sure that the five criminals among them are also in prison.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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