Sir;...It is good that Americans identify with the underdog since we are rapidly becoming a nation of underdogs....We have had to do better with less for so long, that now, the man wants everyone to do everything for nothing...It's progress man; and you are included out, but don't take it personally...It's still your job, it's just that now someone else is doing it ....You know; I think your story illustrates how essential it is for this nation to have a few splendid failures.... Too often we suffer our lackluster successes...I like to split the difference, and be a lackluster failure...It pays the same as any other sort of failure, but has less of pretense...Today, the occupation of bum is being taken over by people with no education in it, or practice at all... When a guy like me gets beat into a dumpster by a guy used to getting out of the gate by eight wearing a suit and tie, you know things are getting hard in the wasteland... But no one wants to admit it... They don't go to church, and ask for help... They just quit going to church, and giving money they haven't got for food...Now, I don't really care...I've got my poverty to fall back on, if I don't fall too far...I may as well be unemployed...I wasn't doing anything anyway...And I hate to gloat...I could have been a journalist; which is one of those jobs for which more people are trained than can possible be employed.... I can't imagine actually being trained for a job where so much failure is guaranteed...What is the point in throwing that kind of money away on an education???Why not just be a failure and say: I am a journalist.....People will understand....Better than saying: I am a failure, and I paid for the privilage...That is like adding insult to insanity...What we are seeing about us is a process inevitable to capitalism, of winnowing the chaff from the grain...It is a little rough for all those who find they are chaff who thought they were grain.... Ultimately we are finding as a society that all the jobs must support all the people, and that people laid off from jobs to increase profits still must be supported by the jobs they no longer do... In a sense, that is the good part, because capital usually goes to war for markets...If the producers can be forced to give money for the subsistence of the poor, a market at home will make war abroad unnecessary...But then we will have to forget about producing for new, or for luxury... And smaller and smaller numbers of workers will never be in a position to demand a living wage...You have to be able to control the supply to control the price, and now, that is out of the question with so much supply of labor... And it leaves us divided even more between success and failure, and when many of the failures have the same skills as the successful, I have say that the division is false; that either both are failures or both are successful..We cannot explain success and failure based upon skill, and so words like luck, or fate, or fortune come into play.... We should not accept a division of this people based solely upon fate...In this day and age, resorting to fate, or faith to explain the human condition is simply irrational... To me; the division of people can only be along a single line... It is between those who are too smart to fool, and those who are too fool to smart....Thanks again Mr. Shields... Sweeney