As far as breeding, my wife and I have done well over the last 50 years.
My daughter is head if the emergency department at the the hospital where she works. Her emergency department is recognized as being in the top 10% in the country.
One son is an IT professional. He is in such demand that he has been recruited by companies all over the US.
My other son teaches college level mathematics. His students always rate him highly. From time to time he is recruited to do short term (usually about a year) projects for the university. He does them, but he can’t wait for them to be over so he can get back to his love of teaching math.
Maybe you see this as a waste of oxygen caused by someone who shouldn’t breed. Maybe you believe my children’s lives should have been taken through abortion.
All three love God, their family and their country. All are doing well and are happy. They learned their humanity and social skills by following those who set a good example and by learning to avoid the mistakes of those providing bad examples. They didn’t learn by following a script from class that thought it could direct them down a certain path.
The arts (whether it be painting, sculpture, music, acting, etc.) can and often are taught as trades. As far as appreciation of the arts, I don’t need to take a class to be taught some inner meaning to what I see or hear. The ‘inner meaning’ is simply the opinion of ‘experts’. I can decide what I like and what meaning these things have for me.
I don’t consider natural sciences to be liberal arts. We need mathematicians, engineers, geologist, biologist and others who observe and learn what they can from our environment. To me, these are very much like trades but at a different level.
I also consider English, history and government as essential. We have too many ‘educated’ people who don’t know the history of our country. They don’t understand why it was (and still is) very important for us to be a republic and not a true democracy. They don’t understand why states rights are more important and are supposed to supersede federal rights. Communication skills are also on a downward slope.
I do have little use for social sciences and humanities. These things are best learned through life, not by being told how we should interpret what is around us. My experience with professors in these ‘disciplines’ is that they feel they know what is best for society and the people in it. They tend too believe that you need to understand that and conform to their way of thinking. Individualism takes a backseat to the collective in their vision of what society should be like.
Some of our best philosophers and leaders were those who observed what was around them at the time and acted accordingly. Learning about them in history is a good thing, trying to teach us to be one… not so much.
When I was the one standing up I wanted to be the one sitting down. I worked hard. I learned. I earned the sitting down job. After a while I learned why the sitting job payed more. The stress of the sitting job was harder on my mind and body than the standing job ever was.
That said, we need more people willing and able to do the standing jobs and do them well. If the government wants to pay for education pay to teach the standing jobs and let the liberal arts people pay their own way.
Cursive writing will become like hierographics in a generation or two as they move toward emojis (like the original cave paintings). The circle of written language.
There is a big difference between wealth and income. Income is money you have coming in. Wealth are your assets. Those assets are only worth what someone else is willing to pay for them.
Most of the wealth for the richest people is in the form of real estate, investments and businesses they own. It isn’t something that can be spent, only sold.
Who are they going to sell those assets to? Should they give away those assets? Who will run the businesses they give away? Who takes possession of the real estate? What happens to the stocks, bonds and other financial assets?
Most of the wealth is acquired over time through appreciation of assets as well as hard work and risk taking in building a business.
Two people making the same income can have very different outcomes over time. One can spend and live pay check to pay check. The other could live more frugally and save and invest in various assets. Over time their wealth differences will be substantial.
Income is the best way to show how someone is doing now. Those with the highest incomes pay a much larger share of the taxes than those with the lowest incomes. Those in the top 50% of income pay almost 97% of the taxes.
Well, for tax year 2017: The top 10% in income paid 70.08% of total income taxes. I guess that means liberals must make up the top earners and are paying the bills for the conservatives who are complaining about all the free stuff they are getting.
Bleeb is at the garage window, trying to get away from the noise!