Letters to the Editor
Gwool
Published Letters: 366 Editor's Choice: 40
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Echo Boom Self Absorption
[Read the article: "The Trap"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have always maintained the Baby Boom of whcih I am on the tail end was the most self absorbed generation in American History. How we got that way based on our WWII generation parents is beyond me. Perhaps they felt the need to indulge us, giving us the teens and twenties they wished they had when they were climbing out of the depression and fighting tyranny.
But the echo boom seems to have the same sense of entitlement. College tuition is expensive, they whine.
Well, no, actually, it is not. A WWII generation parent said to me and my college roomates was we were lamenting the college costs for our children that it hasn't changed much, if at all. Tuition costs for a private 4 year institution have tracked the cost of a luxury car since WWII (where his frame of reference stops). My friend's father used a Cadillac Sedan as the reference point.
Track that cost comparison, and it is not too far off the mark.
There's also more at play than just the evils of Reaganomics causing the bifurcation of our economy and obliterating our middle class. Information technology obviates the need for as many middle managers where the intellectually disinterested, but well mannered could earn a living. Where once you needed an acre of asses to compile data for senior management, you now have CRM software doing that work electronically.
So senior managers have a greater impact on the operation than they did in the past by virtue of the fact that we have eliminated management layers.
Likewise, losing our manufacturing base loses a number of reasonably compensated positions.
In the services economy we're trading more on wits than brawn, and we can do it far more efficiently thanks to information technology improvements. It means the economy is far less forgiving. You either have it intellectually or you do not.
Reaganomics clearly paid a role, but the message of this article seemed to be that taxing the bejeezus out of the rich would bring back economic parity, and that simply is not the case.
The economy is vastly different today than it was under JFK when the top marginal tax rate was given a dramatic decrease.
So pining for the good old days and lamenting that this generation has it harder than past generations is hardly a new phenomenon. There likewise did not seem to be a lot of sophisticated economic thinking going on in the article in terms of investigating root causes in the free market economy for why that economy has transformed itself over the years.
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Really now
[Read the article: I have the hots for my stepson]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The husband is not getting it done. The stepson is now looking attractive.
That sounds like a ticket to solitude.
Why not by something that takes C or D batteries and name it after your stepson?
And, apropos of nothing, what does Woody Allen say during sex?
"Hey, Baby, who *used* to be your daddy?"
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Infrastructure Maintenance is a Bipartisan Screw Up
[Read the article: The scourge of E. coli conservatism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know it is de rigeur around these parts to whipsaw repblicans for every social ill known to man, but infrastructure neglect happens to be a bipartisan problem.
I live in the lovely bastion of democratic party control called Massachusetts and have been a selectman in two different communities as well as a Finance Committee Chairman in one of them. I have been actively involved for 12 of the last 16 years. We have the same difficulties here. Sure, it would be easy to retort that we have had Republican Governors for close to 20 years but that ignores the fact that we have also had veto proof democrat majorities in BOTH the house and the senate, thereby rendering republican governors largely as figureheads.
We also have proposition 2 1/2 which says we can only raise property taxes by 2 1/2% per year without the local citizens voting to raise taxes.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to realize many government components have increased at a rate greater than 2.5%. Government remains labor intensive. Labor represents about 50% of a town budget. Having health insurance increase in double digits eats up the 2.5% increase before factoring in anything else. We also have this little state mandate called the Education Reform Act that has also eaten local budgets as well. Indeed, all of the money my current community has been allowed by statute to increase through local receipts has been consumed by state mandated education funding increases since 2002.
Town after town seeks overrides. Over 70% of all overrides fail in Massachusetts. The only ones that passed in my community have been for public safety apparatus such as fire engines and ambulances. Road Maintenance overrides have failed for 5 years in a row.
I imagine it is the same throughout the country. There's nothing sexy about voluntarily paying more money to repave roads, shore up bridges and repair water and sewer mains. When budgetary pressures hit, maintenance gets axed first.
It's part of the american mindset of living in the now. We love SUVs. Gas climbs over $3.00 and we flock to hybrids. Gas falls, we return to SUVs and Hybrids back up on car lots.
So, yes, bark away about a Republican Mayor boasting of tax cuts, but that remains only half the story. Name the democrat who went out banging the drum for public works investments? Name the towns that voted for public works projects only to have them vetoed by Republican lawmakers.
This is a bipartisan problem that is a function of infrastructure maintenance not being deemed a priority by voters. If good democracy has people voting based on enlightened self interest, then one sided explanations of how we get there does a huge disservice.
Deferring maintenance on "the commons" is a bipartisan flaw.