Froma -- what an inspiring perspective. Just found this quote from Winston Churchill, "We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give." Gratitude and kind words -- even during a moment of anger -- may be the secret to survival. / R (www.ritawatson.com)

Ma'am;...I have to admit to being impressed by your intellect, and now must say I was wrong... You do not understand something about tradition, what you call intergenerational competition, and it is this: In generations past capital grew but slowly... Coming to America, one generation cleared the land, and built a shack, the next generation improved the land, and built a house. The Next generation improved on and added on, built better achieved more, got greater education, improving always its posititon in society with hard work and ingenuity... That progress has stopped... To feed interest, all the profit was stolen from farming... Middle men and bankers and taxes got it all, and so the farm was given up... Moving to the city, people could afford less, and had less children in the expectation that the wealth given to social security would save them in age... That wealth supported little the first social security generation, supports badly the greatest generation, and will support my generation not at all, but it was a theft of wealth... And all along, the process begun on the farms, of taking out of the productive people, and giving to the rich was continued, and added to, of making people work always for less of wages and more of promises...If people did better in the last generation it was by losing themselves of capital built up by generations, and so they were actually losing ground, having less and less to leave to their children... To get by, and to seem to get by, we could only have on credit, which sucked the capital out of us until we are now a people dependent upon the good will of our employers, with few productive jobs, and nothing left to sell but our civil rights...Look about you... The rich own this country and our government... The people have no equity, and no hope... Far from exceeding the generations past, they are not hanging onto anything... Do you see reverse mortgages advertized to the aged poor??? There goes a family's capital, their real progress... Who will buy their funerals when their wealth is gone, gone, gone... We have bought the illusion of progress with a mortgage on our futures... How many people will have to become Okies in our day, cutting loose, and saying good bye to earthly possessions to follow some hope of employment at the end of the road??? What does a nation do when the past is before it, instead of behind??? I have plenty to be thankful for... Not so my father, who may live to see a second great depression...For my part, the greatest blessing is a disenthralled mind... Faith is all that is holding this society together, and that is about to be tested and busted flat... I am already there...Thanks...Sweeney

Thank you for acknowledging we have the richest "poor" in the world. At least in San Antonio we have about 1000 private groups that support the poor in addition to some government aid that always seems to founder. Going hungry in this city comes from an ignorance of where to go for help and not availability.

My dad claimed that during the depression the Soviets made an anti-capitalism propaganda film of the Okies moving to California during the dust bowl and depression. It backfired when the Russian people noticed the "poor" people going down the highway had CARS and TRUCKS and STUFF and could go where they pleased. Poverty and hardship is relative.

I don't agree with Harrop often, but today's column makes a lot of good sense. Sweeney, I see, is occupying his usual position- namely, off his rocker and rambling incoherently.