Upscale Young Men Seem To Go For

As A General Rule, When Something Gets Elevated To Apple-pie Status In The Hierarchy Of American Values, You Have To Suspect That Its Actual Monetary Value Is Skidding Toward Zero. Take Motherhood: Nobody Ever Thought Of Putting It On A Moral Pedestal Until Some Brash Feminists Pointed Out, About A Century Ago, That The Pay Is Lousy And The Career Ladder Nonexistent. Same Thing With Work: Would We Be So Reverent About The 'work Ethic' If It Wasn't For The Fact That The Average Working Stiff's Hourly Pay Is Shrinking, Year By Year.

That's Free Enterprise, Friends: Freedom To Gamble, Freedom To Lose. And The Great Thing - The Truly Democratic Thing About It - Is That You Don't Even Have To Be A Player To Lose.

Ineluctably, The Insults Inflicted In One War Call Forth New Wars Of Retaliation, Which May Be Waged Within Months Of The Original Conflict Or Generations Later.

I Grew Up Hearing Over And Over, To The Point Of Tedium, That "hard Work" Was The Secret Of Success: "work Hard And You'll Get Ahead" Or "it's Hard Work That Got Us Where We Are." No One Ever Said That You Could Work Hard - Harder Even Than You Ever Thought Possible - And Still Find Yourself Sinking Ever Deeper Into Poverty And Debt.

We Are Reaching The Point, If We Have Not Passed It Already, Where The Largest Public Housing Program In America Will Be Our Penitentiary System.