Forgive me
I really don't have much sympathy for the four really rich families who lost their homes in the Malibu fire. Maybe it's because I just saw Spike Lee's great and saddening documentary about the Katrina victims, maybe it's because I'm a raging socialist and hate rich people. But why does the loss of 4 homes in Malibu deserve national news attention? On the local radio this morning was a disgusting interview segment of one of the victims' neighbors, who was bemoaning the fact that "we have to break the bad news to our neighbors, who just left the country on a vacation the other day, but at least their pets were rescued...." There's no need for hand-wringing as nobody was injured and they're all insured up the yin-yang and they always wanted to rebuild that troublesome back porch. And it's sickening to see them call it a war zone when none of these people have to join the military for a chance at making a living, like many of today's soldiers.
Labels: misc
posted by Felix Pardalis @ 7:40 PM
1 Comments:
Your link to the piece on the poor disproportionately bearing the burden of casualties in Iraq is broken. Here's the unbroken link.
As the article notes, I don't think the numbers are at all clear on who the enlistees and casualties are. Certainly the Heritage Foundation study concludes that the income of recruits is roughly the same as the population at large. Of course, anything the Heritage Foundation says, I take with a grain of salt. But they did at least emphasize that most recruits are young, and so of course are not big earners, and another proxy for wealth must be used. The Heritage study uses household income. The piece you linked to uses average city, county, and zip code income. Both have problems, but I think household is probably a better measure. If your family is pretty well off, but your community is not, you're still pretty likely to be well off. But if your community makes good money on average, but your family doesn't make squat, what sort of opportunities are you going to have, really?
All this has little to do with your post. Apologies. I agree that four luxury mansions burning down should not be national news.
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