Hello everyone On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 9:46 AM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Dan said to David: > ... Still, don't we have some responsibility to take care of ourselves? ...I > guess I don't understand this need to be taken care of. Maybe I've been > taking care of myself too long. > > > dmb says: > There is no doubt that self-reliance is a long-held American ideal. (Thanks > to Emerson.) But if we're talking about the man who is surrounded by flood > waters and trapped on his roof, I don't see how we can condemn him for just > sitting around waiting to be taken care of.
Dan: Actually, no, I wasn't talking about that extreme situation. Rather, I was talking about people sitting around waiting for someone to come and help them fix their homes up so they can move back in, or better yet, get a handout to move somewhere else. dmb: And I don't think the ideal of "self-reliance" can be used to deny the validity of FEMA, your local fire and police departments and it doesn't mean we ought not buy flood insurance. I mean, for some things it is just wildly inefficient and impractical not to act collectively. But there is a corporately funded conservative meme out there that tells us that government is bad and anyone who wants a government of, by and for the people has some kind of character flaw. Dan: A person buys flood insurance if they live in a flood plain, sure. But it is expensive, as anyone knows who has to buy it. But the home where I lived wasn't in a flood plain. So no, I did not have flood insurance. It seemed impractical to buy something I never thought I'd need. My insurance agent never even suggested it. "FEMA’s mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards." [http://www.fema.gov/about/index.shtm#0] The way I understand this, FEMA's mission is one of support. It is the responsibility of citizens, not the government, to feed, house, and cloth themselves. When disaster strikes and help is needed, they should be there, yes. Not in perpetuity though. Katrina hit New Orleans 6 years ago. 6 years! Come on. Isn't that enough time to recover? dm: Remember the mythical "welfare queen" who is supposedly living high on the hog, driving her Cadillac to pick up her government check? This picture doesn't comport with reality. The fact it, 80% of all the wealth created during my entire adult life ti > me has gone to the top 1%. Wealth has been moving out of the middle class > and into the pockets of the very wealth for 40 years now. At this point, the > richest 400 people have as much as the bottom 50%. Think about that for a > minute. 400 people have as much money as 150,000,000 people. And yet people > still believe it when they are told that teachers and fireman are making too > much! That's insane, don't you think? Dan: Yes, there is an unfair distribution of wealth in this country. I agree. And I could mention how my teacher-neighbor leaves for work at 8:30 am and comes home at 3:30 pm every day, gets every weekend, holiday, x-mas break and spring break off, and doesn't work for 3 months during the summer, but I won't. Well, maybe I will. She worked a total of 165 days at 6 hours a day last year compared to my 320+ days at 10 to 14 hours a day. I am not complaining, mind you. I love doing what I do so I don't mind doing it every day. But, I have to say that I don't care for it much when I see my property tax bill has gone up again (even though the value of my home has gone down) on account of the school district needing additional money to pay teachers more than I make, even though they only work half as much. Of course, they probably spend a lot of time at home grading papers and such (wink, wink). Honestly, though, I don't have any answers. It'd be nice to be part of that 1% I guess but that isn't happening any time soon. So I just keep trying to make it another mile down the road. Thanks for the word, Dan Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
