Don on not only the wrong page, but reading the wrong book.

The book you read Don should be retitled “ the rich are getting richer, while the poor get poorer”. Obviously your one of the former.

My Grandfather drove a horse and cart! And he was sure as the sun rises in the east there will always be Grandfathers driving horse and carts, always was always will be! Ditto slavery, child Labour and the exploitation of the poor, downtrodden and impoverished by extreme capitalists/capitalism!

And even more logical than the intrinsically absurd premise of your latest effort Don.

After all, there is only one constant in the entire universe and that one constant is constant change.

Thus we had China impoverished and home to over billion largely dirt poor people, able to apply logic's rationale and the very antithesis of trickle-down economics, to their economy and lift over a billion people out of poverty in fifty short years and into the bargain become the very economic entity (hated commies) that gives us our current standard of living.

Imagine where any of us would be if Don's, always was always will be, thesis held any water whatsoever! Particularly in all the tiger economies and Communist China, or even the highly successful Celtic economic miracle, only cruelled by foreign debt-laden real estate speculation!

Sound familiar?

Expected so much better from the pen of such a highly credentialled academic!

There are very few reasons why this country can't lead the world as the most egalitarian and universally prosperous; and they are the troglodytes in our midst, with either power and or influence, whose moribund ramblings decide our less than the best we can do, always was always will be, the powerful predatory pernicious personalities dining out on the most vulnerable, future.

And our own hell here on earth in the making!
Alan B.

What a problem envy is, the divisions between rich and poor.
Rich in what? Poor in what? Attitude?

We aim at being egalitarian - we may not always get there, but there is nothing wrong with having a bloody good go at it.

Yes Ponder, the problem of envy.

I am a millionaire, but only because of property value inflation. If the market crashed tomorrow, & my place was worth only the $200,000 I paid for it 27 years ago, my life would not change because I was not a millionaire.

I really don't give a damn that someone else is a billionaire. I only want to eat nice stake a few times a weak & I have no desire to drink Hermitage. My living standard is probably better than Henery the 8Th's.

If I were given a million dollars, provided I spent it in 24 hours, I really don't know what I would spend it on.

I really don't want to buy another yacht & sail the Pacific again &
I can't imagine anything much worse than being stuck on a cruise ship or in a holiday resort for a week.

My 48 year old home is quite comfortable.
I would not change my 16, 18 & 38 year old cars for anything, & my 65 year old tractor starts easily & does everything I ask of it.

I certainly would not give a cent to the hordes complaining that the government, read taxpayer, doesn't give them enough.

I know, I'd buy & burn a million dollars worth of coal. If the scam is true, the CO2 might warm up the frigid nights we are having around here.

Don't bother ponder, the hasbeens of this world just don't get it. Aren't ever genuinely concerned with the plight of the less well off. Think that what they've achieved is somehow remarkable and can't imagine a better world where every boy and his dog, even him and his, are comparatively better off.

Thinks we all envy him!? Risible!

Can't imagine power cheaper than coal or a better economy other than a coal-fired one!

But would drurther give a one finger salute and urge you to, go visit the nearest taxidermist.

And continue to believe that they got what they have through diligent application only! Never what other folks may have contributed?

A self-made man born in the log cabin hewn from a hostile wilderness with his own to bare hands!

Can't imagine a better system where there are no homeless, no poor or downtrodden?

After all in such a world, who would they be? Not even a Has Been, just a run of the mill nobody living in some vainglorious past. And the older he gets the better he was!

As for shovelling on more coal? Must have worked a treat, given the hottest July on record hereabouts. Imagine, who would he be in a more egalitarian world, where we all were seriously better off?

And for him and his ilk a frightening prospect that can never ever be allowed a snowflakes chance in hell of ever becoming our literal reality?

Who could they look down on them with such self-satisfied smugness!?
Alan B.

Ponder,
Does the term egalitarian come from the german egal as in who cares ?