One of the reasons I pay as much in taxes as I do without complaining as much as I could is that I understand I do not operate in a vacuum but in a densely populated society, and the distribution of wealth in that society is on a bell curve.

I understand as well that soup kitchens, bread lines, and people sleeping on hot-air grates or under the lilac bushes in the park for want of any place or any group to call their own is a pathetically condmening reflection on our larger group. My own belief is that the vast majority of people flourish when given something to do which adds value and from which they can acquire exchange, some pride of place, a sense of being a person among other people. A small minority are too bent out of shape to respond to thes ebasic needs, but I think they are common denominators.

One of my favorite Mudcatters has a job as a job-coach for people who have serious deficits in their social abilities, for whatever reason. She teaches them, and coaches them on job sites on how to buckle down and produce.

For a miniscule fraction of the money this nation has spent killing people in the world, we could have a corps of socially-minded trainers and facilitators who could help turn the majority of the jobless, homeless, friendless, shaveless, bathless individuals that are found in every city into contirbuting memebers of society in one or another capacity.

This worked on a gigantic scale after the Great Depression, under FDR's leadership.

It is the lessons from that period that constantly remind me that some method of balancig the extremes on the bell-curve is necessary. It HAS to be coupled with education and individual kicks in the ass to the correct necessary degree. Some people need just a little, some need a lot. Hubby is not completely off the mark, he's just stuck in one corner of the whole picture.

I spent months between jobs last year, but I scrambled back through applying a lot of communication and flogging the networks.

Some people don't have such networks or don't know how to communicate, and a little training can do wonders.

A