Opportunity means an even playing field

This is in response to Bruce Johnson, who could not understand my support of the 99 percent and the Occupy movement.

First of all, it is because equal opportunity means an even playing field. Instead, today, “it takes money to make money.” That inherited wealth was made off the backs of immigrants in the East and West, and of slaves in the South, the very ones whose children are treated like scum today.

Poor people are not inferior, although many are less educated. Many people would love to work for a living, if only it were possible for them to do so, but today I see the corporate rich outsourcing their labor needs, and doing most of their commerce overseas instead of in the United States, because they can avoid taxes and labor laws.

They actually admit as much “I’m not going to hire anyone until the Bush tax cut is extended.” What do they care if the U.S. becomes as poor as a third world country?

Wow, they could live at home the way they do abroad. What do they care if the food is full of chemicals, as they purchase expensive organic items, or if the air is so polluted it is dangerous to stand at the curb on a city street?

Secondly, it is because generations of wealth and comfort breed indolence, giving rise to a population of what I call “fish-hatchery people.” You know, the kind who can’t compete in the mainstream, because they don‘t know what it is to do without, improvise, survive or even excel under adverse circumstances.

Solutions to world problems are not going to create themselves, and we need young men and women who are capable and motivated, and who have an equal opportunity to contribute and to gain from their contribution.

Finally, wealth is time and power, and those who have it use it to perpetuate their good fortune, which is only human, but hardly democratic.

VAL THORNTON

Sandpoint