This is a Corner just a stone's throw from my home. Also, in Trimble, I passed a plant that read, "REARDON METAL".I've finished Atlas Shrugged.
I've shaped my political leanings and fondness for Chick Morrison's name by reading it.
Unions seem redundant in the modern society: they were a product of unjust treatment back in the days of Mining Tokens, when you were forced to climb around blind in caves sucking coal dust for pay until you got Black Lung. Nowadays, you get a respirator, proper payment, and compensation for any injury - You've protection from your employer's whims, and Unions now seem to be a noose around enterprise.
Affirmative Action seems archaic now, too. First off - I don't see the point in paying minorities for being minorities: "Judge me not by the color of my skin unless it is in a positive light"? That's almost backwards racism. Msicar, or something.
In addition, there is a theorized "Minority-Majority" - The Hispanic-Asian population boom that followed World War II is still in full swing and soon will put the plain old Wonderbreads like me in the category of "Minority". I don't think it's right that I be payed for being White, or a massive influx of people be payed for being some other color. You'll never quite be rid of the concept of a "Them" versus an "Us" regardless of what race you are, but I think we've come a long way from the Poll Tax and White Primary Election.
As for Welfare, I think you should have a job or something before you cash in on it. There is no shortage of Work in the United States, just a shortage of enjoyable work: I would like to work the Retail Job that has been archtypical of every first paycheck; if I desperately needed a job, however, I could unload crates, tar roads, or something. You must make roughly $20 an hour to equal the benefits of Welfare - at that point, what's the incentive to work? You're essentially crossing your fingers and hoping the person is a Dagny Taggart or John Galt who is, at best, taking from you on Credit, but those are larger-than-life people, and the average person is blatantly more likely to stay there feigning ineptitude to make $20 an hour.
Social Security, as well...
It was a good idea for its time, but since its introduction there have been medical advancements. Social Security was initially a crutch for those who were 65 or so during a time where people died at age 60 - if you were on it, you weren't on it for long. Now we have that privilege extended to any and all in an age where people live to be about 80. This means that, what was initially a small crutch for the elderly for a span of a few years is now an umbrella that pays out to whoever's under it and for fifteen years or so. With medicine socialized, as well, I think the medical treatments that it was supposed help with have been eased. One-sixth of our Gross Domestic Product is out the window under those seventeen years - the age should be adjusted to fit the standards it once represented, if nothing more: 65+ is the fastest-growing Age Group in the United States.
Foreign Aid seems iffy as well. You cannot throw dollars of a weakening currency at a Nation and expect it to get better. Wealth, indeed, is not distributed, it is created. As such, what you need to do to fix a nation is send someone who knows what they're doing over there, and back their efforts. If places like Nigeria had no opportunity, they would have been abandoned long ago, like a majority of the Sahara. Send doctors to train doctors - create a program for revising the infrastructure. Capitalize on what resources are present - in Nigeria's case, Mining - and provide sanitary water or something. You cannot simply transplant wealth like a heart and expect it to work.
These things are not free, no, but they are simple things that can be done with little money: Paving a road, punching a hole where you'd drill a well, running a classroom - that is manageable, and Greg Mortenson managed to do it as a third party.
Currency - I would like to go back to some sort of backed standard, as they had in Atlas Shrugged. I would like a world where the strength of a currency is not measured merely by how much intangible faith is held in a bill. You cannot weaken a currency if it has actual Value beyond it's implication.
...Ahh, and love. It has shaped love as well.
Thankfully, I do not adore you at a deficit.
I think you earn what praise I do give you.
We trade our anticipations.
I trust a glorious something to comes of us.
In the months that follow this,
I have a sneaking suspicion that I may glance back upon myself and how influenced I was by this book, and I'll laugh and call myself an idiotic idealist or something, or I'll find contradiction, and not check my premises.
Egh, I can't wait to unwind, and just read Maus for a bit...
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