RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade

[Harry Pollard]

Title: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n  Trade vs. Modern Trade

Ed,   If you are married with a family, you do whatever is necessary and legal to earn a living. Greater respect comes from feeding, clothing, and sheltering, your family, than from refusing a job because you are too good for it.   When I arrived in Toronto with my $84 I shared a YMCA room with another English immigrant. He had $500. After about 3 months, he said Canada was a joke and went home. So, he kept his respect.   I remember my first job got me $200 a month. I thought it was $50 a week – until I worked out it was really about $46.   I remember I would have one meal a day at a Chinese restaurant where I could get a meal from soup to dessert for 89 cents. I would make the meal last while I read a library book, or a newspaper. I actually began to save on my $200 a month.   However, it was quite a come-down from a couple of months earlier when I would be playing chess with a member of the government while having a ham sandwich in the National Liberal Club.   All of this was quite new to me, so I had to play it by ear. I suppose I didn’t do to badly. As I earlier mentioned, a year later I had my family across and within 6 months they moved into a newly built house.   I think, Ed, you write from the point of view of the established middle class. You do reasonably well at high school, get a qualification of some sort in college or university, enter a respectable job, work for 3 or 4 decades, enjoy a genteel – if not well paid - retirement.   We used to think that unlike the stratified English, the North Americans would be a lawyer one week, a doctor the next, an accountant the next. Wasn’t true, but that was what we thought.   Now perhaps over here, we have adopted some of the stratification of the old world.   But, whatever, money is translated into bacon and eggs and perhaps things with less cholesterol. Don’t look down on it.   Harry   ******************************************** Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655  Tujunga  CA  91042 Tel: 818 352-4141  --  Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net ********************************************   From: Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 7:12 PM To: Harry Pollard; 'Robert E. Bowd'; 'Thomas Lunde'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade   I do think that it's a little more than money in most cases.  It could be respect, including self-respect, stability - things like that.   Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Harry Pollard To: 'Ed Weick' ; 'Robert E. Bowd' ; 'Thomas Lunde' ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 8:57 PM Subject: RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade   Ed,   If you can't get a job as a programmer, you gat a job selling insurance, or laying bricks, or anything else that brings in money (if it's money you want).   Harry    ******************************************** Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655  Tujunga  CA  91042 Tel: 818 352-4141  --  Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net ********************************************       From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 11:45 AM To: Robert E. Bowd; Thomas Lunde; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade Good piece, Bob.  What we seem to need is a widely accepted sense of "entitlement" of some kind that galvanizes people into political action.  To get that, people would have to feel they have a common cause and a gut-level sense of betrayal by the system.  I don't see that in wealthy democracies, where most people are concerned with maintaining their status or moving up the ladder.  There are special interests and outlooks that make people adhere to one political philosophy or another, but there is very little sense of injustice or outrage.   A piece I posted earlier this morning dealt with how people in the now bust high-tech sector are coping with unemployment.  In reading the article in the Ottawa Citizen, it seemed to me that there was very little anger among the unemployed techies.  However, there was a lot of frustration, almost as though firing off job applications left, right and center, should somehow have fixed things up, but, dammit, it didn't, so what am I still doing wrong?  Individualism, not common cause.  Not what is wrong with the system, but what is wrong with me because I no longer seem to fit.   Ed    --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.548 / Virus Database: 341 - Release Date: 12/5/2003 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.548 / Virus Database: 341 - Release Date: 12/5/2003