Quote:
Originally Posted by sjh
I think part of this is because very few groups, on either side, wish to help the public to grasp the truth but would rather perpetuate their agendas. (cf. some of the postings on this thread)
This nation has plenty of revenue to accomplish amazing things. It's just chosen to behave 'like-a-drunken-sailor.'
My apologizes to sailors.
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No offense taken.
Quite true what you've said. It's not just about equal opportunity, but being willing to get off your keister and take advantage of that opportunity.
My old elementary school principal said many years ago that if he were in charge of HS curriculums, some form of basic economics would be manadatory for all students - not national or world-level economic theory - but the basics they'd need to know to run their own households and plan for the future - how to balance a checkbook, setting aside money for monthly bills, calculating interest payments and total payoffs on home mortgages, understanding retirement and 401K plans and compound interest, etc, etc.
I grew up listening to my grandparent's, parents, aunts and uncles, tell tales of what they had to go thru to survive the Great Depression. And my parents and I had to go thru the malaise and hardships of the economic downturns of the 70's and early 80's. My first two or three years in the Navy as a junior enlisted, when I was getting paid the princely sum of $250 every two weeks.
That taught me some hard economic lessons. I realized that the only certain way I was going to have anything better was to put in the effort and earn it, to plan for where I wanted to be in the future.
Part of the reason many of the younger generations never learned these lessons might be the prolonged boom economy of the 90's - at the time touted as the "new economy" and that recessions and depressions were a thing of the past - only to realize in hindsight that it was fed by many of the same mistakes and shenanigans that led to the Depression of the 30's, along with a few new twists such as "debt derivatives" - such that they bought the bull and came to believe that a good job and a comfortable lifestyle was their birthright, not something that had to be earned.