[BrodiKennedy]

One of the resons we live here as

opposed to any of the various overpopulated arab,african or asian countries is that A) The fruits of your labors

result in freedom B)You are not expected to live in squalor and die of dysentary at the age of thirty and C) There

is a sense of fairness built into our way of thinking and living,hence its illeagal to kick puppies,enslave children

and sell women into sexual bondage.(not sure about that last one but Im checking.)

the conditions you describe

above are in fact reasonable for any fresh faced twenty two year old college graduate to endure for a while,until

they get thier professional feet underneath themselves and start getting traction economicaly.But in many

states,occupancy laws prohibit living more than one and a half families per single family dwelling.Exceeding those

restraints can result in all manner of unpleasantness,including seeing your children shuffled off to live in a state

sponsored concentration camp(foster home.)

In response to your baisic economic model...you are absolutly

right.Simply raising wages wont realy fix anything.We have forty years of backsliding to try and repair,so alot of

very difficult changes need to be made gradualy.But dont make the mistake of thinking that those changes dont need

to be made.The middle class is struggling more and more each year in what used to be a fairly comfortable

existance.And once the middle class begins feeling ANYTHING,the solution will be just as painful as the problem

itself.Rome went thru similar things many times.Once poverty begins to effect the middle classes,things are getting

bad.

A wonderful book entitled The Nazi Seizure of Power details how it was the middle class in Germany that

ultimately enabled the Nazis to gain control because thier standard of living was being threatend.The middle classes

in Germany didnt realy feel the pinch of the German recession as baddly as the poor and working classes,but the fear

that it was comming was enough to motivate them to seek answers to a potential problem.The answers they came up

with,at the time...seemed to make sense.They unfortunatly found out otherwise.

We no longer have the luxury of

time to figure out what needs to change.Our economic structure in this country is built largely on debt,foreign

trade,risky investments,overheated realestate and so forth.Its the working class that forms the backbone of the way

our economy works.Thier paychecks are what feed the middle class.Once those paychecks start suffering,the eventual

fall out can be extremely painful for everyone.

Something to note is the snails pace with which things like the

Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ have been "recovering."The loss of money at the low end has effected the

spending habbits of everyone.Throw in high energy costs and you get a stalled economy(dont get me started on the war

on terror and its "actual" cost.)Wage earners create jobs by spending,analists on Wall Street get paid to paint a

pretty picture to encourage the herd to spend more.But if the wage earners dont have the money to spend,they simply

dont.

And whatever you do,dont think that the low minimum wage only effects the lowest paid workers.Remember

that someone who earns $25.00 an hour has his pay scale calculated based on the minimum wage.It isnt just some

arbatrary number that someone pulled out of his ass one day while doing a crossword puzle.All of these things are

intimately interconnected.When one suffers,we all suffer eventualy.France is beggining to understand that leaving

the muzlim population with a forty percent unemployment rate doesnt realy work out too well.Generous government

handouts arennt enough.These people want the freedom that comes from being able to earn a living.